Is the importance of Blu-Ray overstated?

[bdbdbd]

makingmusic476 said:

MikeB said:
@ bdbdbd

When we put it into perspective with number of people who have high-speed internet access (by 2012), meaning the number of people having access to DLC, and the amount of money spent around the world, BD adoption seems to be a bit small to compete DD.

Broadband internet usage growth has seen a significant slowdown. Downloads will increase, but this does not mean the average consumer will suddenly prefer pay to download their high quality movies instead of buying movies on disc for reasons mentioned earlier.

Broadband internet usage does compete with DVD sales and Cinema visits, but not so much with regard to Digital Distribution sales at this point and probably for a very, very long time to come. Free (usually low quality) illegal downloads of pirated movies is the main concern.

Still I think many prefer to own or rent to watch the full HDTV quality experience, coming in nice box with lots of extras. You could easily copy VCR tapes and illegal copies were floating around en masse as well, likewise with regard to on CD (DivX) and DVD (usually downloaded over the internet, so this is where DD and disc media meet).

That made me think of an interesting point. If people aren't willing to pay to upgrade to Blu-Ray players or start buying more expensive Blu-rays over DVDs (both of which will inevitably drop drastically in price), why would they start paying for unnecessary bandwidth just to download movies? Sure, the infrastructure for faster internet speeds may be there, but companies like AT&T are perfectly fine charging an arm and a leg for higher internet speeds, and the average person feels no need to upgrade (like my dad), because what they have now is just fine for surfing the web, gaming online, etc.

First off, good points from both.

Now the growth has seen significant drop a) where b) the market has reached the point where growth is slowing down, which means it's already huge.
Another things to factor is the mobile connection internet to compete with wired internet, even with similar speeds.

I give my wifes mother as an example, she upgraded 56k internet connection to 1M broadband. Why? Because, the 22€ she needs to pay for her broadband in comparision to her average 15€ phonebill wasn't much to pay for 18 times as fast connection with unlimited internet access. Since she had unlimited access, she didn't anymore needed to work so much offline as before, which made internet usage more comfortable.

And when we are talking about DD competing BD, it's not the quality or technical specs we are talking about, it's the amount of content available and service.