HD-DVD dead - now for the real Challenge Blu-Ray vs DVD

[theRepublic]

twesterm said:

MikeB said:
I am Legend [Blu-Ray] is currently number 2 on Amazon's DVD bestsellers.

Blu-Ray is gaining shelf space fast in North America, Europe and Japan. Blu-Ray movies can be bought just about anywhere, all DVD shops and at all rental shops, the signs are clear Blu-Ray is already an important factor and penetration is rising sharply this year also due to the PS3. New SDTV sales are insignificant, the market is clearly moving towards HD.

Not true at all. All Blockbusters and big chains are starting to carry BluRay and giving it more space (and I do rent BluRay when possible just because I can even though I can't tell the difference between than and upscaled DVD's) but go to small and medium towns.

This last weekend I visited my parents in a town of about 3000-4000 people and they wanted me to go pick them up a movie. They actually have a BluRay player (and it's not a PS3!) but the two local rental shops don't carry BluRay because there's no point when only a handful of people in the town can use it. Later I was visiting some friends in the next town over that's right around 20,000 people and their rental places except for Blockbuster don't have BluRay.

So don't think that everywhere has fully adopted yet.

-edit-

Also saying SDTV's are insignificant is silly as well.  Once again, go to small towns and small cities and browse their shops and trying saying that again.  Even the 20k person towns Best Buy has a pretty good number of non HDTV's and they do fairly well there too because not everyone can afford HDTV's, especially in smaller towns and cities.

I totally agree with this.  When video rental stores move entirely to BluRay, we will know it has won.  That is the only reason my parents switched from videotapes to DVD back in the day.  Even with the obvious benefits of DVD over videotapes, the switch took a couple of years.  BluRay requires a HDTV to get the benefits, and many people don't even have one of those yet.

At this point BluRay is not even close to DVD.  I live in a big college town (20,000+ undergrads, and that only makes up a small part of the city), and I just saw BluRay rentals for the first time about a couple of weeks ago at a Hollywood Video.  It is a very small part of the store.  Other places don't even have it yet.  It will be years before BluRay overtakes and then elimates DVD.

 In that amount of time, I could see HD downloads overcoming a lot of the current issues and criticisms surrounding it.  Then it would make BluRay irrelavant.  Or maybe HD downloads will be the big thing after BluRay has had a life like DVD or videotapes.