Is the importance of Blu-Ray overstated?

[MikeB]

People seem to be far more visually orientated than audio orientated. The market is moving from PAL or worse NTSC TV sets towards much better HDTV technology. Without high definition content the much better resolution provided by these TVs is largely lost.

Blu-Ray movie playback allows consumers to get the best possible picture quality on their HDTV sets. I think it's crucial not only for the gaming industry but the movie industry as well. Blu-Ray adoption is now happening faster than was the case for DVD adoption, within a couple of years it will probably have gained a majority share of the overall DVD market.

Digital distribution of movies and games is a nice low cost feature for distributers and consumers. However it's not a mainstream approach. Worldwide its potential is very limited, even for the US with a high penetration of high speed internet usage, most ordinary consumer still will prefer to rent and buy their movies on (scratch resistant) disc for many years to come.

Just look at the 360, a product marketed to death for its Live service, yet even in the US there's a very large chunk of its userbase which does not use the internet at all. About a third subscribe to Live Gold to play online games.

Roadblocks:
1) A large chunk of potential consumers does not have internet access at home, another large chunk only have very limited bandwidth and/or limited download quota. Such people often only use the internet to read webpages and email.

This goes even for the countries with the highest internet penetration. Current avalable movies are far below Blu-Ray audio-visual quality standards, this to limit the download time.

2) Technical issues, XBox Live down? Internet provider down? 360 died? Harddrive dead?

3) DVD retailers and rental services, they are going to push for Blu-Ray in full force. Digital distribution, cutting them out of the market would be a horror scenario for them.

IMO would the market go fully digital, the big losers will be the consumers and this would cost many jobs. IMO it's not going to happen in a very long time.