While this is having a bigger impact on Sony, saying it's a monopoly is a bit of a misnomer.  There were numerous companies involved in the development of Blu Ray.  Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG, Hitachi, Sharp and Samsung are all involved, and are part of the BDA which licenses the technology (ergo, the money doesn't just go to Sony).

^^This (and ^This)

Also, consider the combination (in the US anyway) of physical media going away just when the FCC decides to f*** over consumers with their pro-business (i.e. pro-greed) Net Neutrality b.s.  How wonderful for Comcast, Verizon, etc when consumers will have to pay extra for the privledge of streaming high-def content.

Not looking forward to the day disk based media in extinct. But, its to be expected, bluray has been a massively wasted potential.

Anybody esle misses the DVD days of the mid 2000's where every other month will see the re-release of a classic 80's or 90's film in a spectacular ''Special Edition''. Endless and endless amounts of re-releases.

Those days are long gone. Instead, studios would prefer to release abysmally thin content on standard bluray movies simply to have that ''exclusive'' to the 3D versions of those movies. Re-releases often have LESS content than the dvd counter part.

I find myself buying less and less blurays now, but no way am I willing to make the full transition to digital only.

I remember when DVD first started becoming mainstream in the early 2000s (we got out first DVD player during the 2000 holiday season)... movie prices were generally in the $25-$30 range, and VHS was in the $15-$20 for new movies. Within a couple of years VHS was all but dead and both DVD players and movies were much more affordable starting at the sub-$100 price range and the $15-$20 price range, respectively.

Fast forward to today, and while the BR format has been around for almost a decade now and you can pick up a solid BR player in the sub-$100 price range (I picked one up a couple weeks ago for my parents for $70 on sale), new BR movies are STILL in the $25-$30 range. This is just too expensive for most people to accept and to totally abandon DVD for, which is still "good enough" for most people, and with tons of movies as low as $5 in most brick & mortar stores has much more value to the average consumer than BR does.

Personally, I've been ready to jump to digital-only for quite some time now. While I appreciate having the physical box and whatnot, it's not something I'll really miss. People will get used to it, like already happened to music.

I really expected more from someone that apparently follows me around and pretends to know me...

If you really think I am the market "norm" in terms of what people own, buy or like...you are delusional. I would buy a Plasma over LCD any day. Currently I'm rocking a 65 inch 4K TV but will sell it and get a 4K DLP projector once its widely available. I tend to get the best of the best because I have the means and interest in technology.

However unlike some people here I fully know that 95% of the population doesn't give a shit that plasma has deeper blacks and response time, that 144hz gaming on PC's rapes the consoles or that Bluray non compressed quality is slightly better than digital.

The bottom line is that the general population lives in the "good enough" state of mind when buying technology. Even for me who demands the best, bluray and physical media is a a shittier option due to sheer convinience. Digital video distribution today is more than adequate for someone with high end gear in order to enjoy content to the full extent.

Lol no offense, but I honestly don't remember the last time I quoted you or have even acknowledged your posts, so I don't get what you're talking about when you say I follow you around. But I'm delusional? Lol, whatever you say.

Also, you obviously don't understand why I pointed out your hypocrisy. You chastized the sentiment that console gamers have to make do with not having the best gaming experience in terms of performance compared to PC in the Driveclub thread, but then turn around and defend the general population being satisfied with lower quality media in this thread. Your hypocritical stance was just hilarious to me that's all. No need to get so offended.

P.S. When you say plasmas have better response times over LCDs, I hope you don't mean input lag because that is just false. LCDs generally have far lower input lag times than plasmas.

You are referencing a post where I said something along the lines of..."Imagine how awesome it would be if they made PC version of Halo and didn't hold back to console spec limitations"...and are calling me a hypocrite because I am saying that general public doesn't care about high end, best of the best cool stuff. That is all I will say about that reference.

However, in terms of your last statement...

Reponse Time: time taken for a pixel to change value and back again. Plasma rapes LCDs when it comes to pixel response time.

Input Lag: delay in time between signal input to a display and that same signal being displayed on-screen

I was referencing the first.

And no, generally LCD's don't have far lower input lag. Input lag goes up the better picture processing technology is. High end LCDs have just as much input lag as high end plasmas, if not more. Low end brand name LCDs have less because because their picture is easier to process and display. Very few plasmas these days are low end. Same goes with monitors, TN panels typically have lower input delay while IPS monitors have better color quality.

It's not really surprising when you consider the cost difference. It's like £7.50 - £15 for a single blu-ray movie on amazon or £6.99 for a month of access to Netflix's entire library (a lot of which is still HD, just a compressed equivalent) :p

If HD digital media cost the same amount as a blu-ray movie (like the prices of retail games vs their cost on PSN/XBL), then blu-ray would most likely be an awful lot more popular.

Yet prices of HD digital movies to own are generally higher than blu-ray disks. Renting has always been cheaper. If you're happy with whatever Netflix serves up and don't care about owning a movie, then yes it's the better choice than buying blu-rays obviously.