Wow maybe Sony was right about Blu-ray?

[Diomedes1976]

mid-May, said spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien. That's cheaper than most alternatives but a hefty price hike from a typical $50 DVD player.

The format also faces sales challenges that DVDs did not when they took over from VHS in the late 1990s. It doesn't save any space compared to DVD, and there's no need to replace a DVD collection even once you buy a Blu-ray player because it will play your old discs.

There also is a proliferation of direct-to-home offerings appearing on cable, satellite and the Internet that threaten to stop Blu-ray growth in its tracks. Blu-ray backers say, however, consumers prefer physical copies of movies over virtual ones, especially when some online rental services impose a time limit.

And Blu-ray's adoption curve is similar to -- maybe even faster than -- that of DVDs, backers say. Blu-ray players, now available for three years, cost $100 less than DVD players did at a comparable point in their life cycle, said Dorinda Marticorena, a senior vice president at Warner Home Video, a unit of Time Warner Inc.

"DVD was exactly the same thing. Players were expensive and there were not many titles. Lo and behold, the awareness went up and demand went up," said Andy Parsons, chair of the association's U.S. promotion committee. "It'll happen in good time."

Blu-ray still has a long, uphill climb. Last year, more than 101 million U.S. households could play DVDs, compared to 3.7 million that could play Blu-ray discs, including those with PlayStation 3 consoles, according to Adams.

But that's double the 1.6 million DVD devices that were in U.S. households in 1998, the comparable second year they were available. By the end of 2008, 14.4 million U.S. households are expected to be Blu-ray compatible, compared to the 9.4 U.S. million households that could play DVDs in year three.