LordTheNightKnight said:
The thing is that DVD overtook VHS because it was convenient.* So far, only DVRs have come close. Neither blu-ray, or HD-DVD, nor downloading movies, has become more convenient than DVD. Until that happens, they won't go mainstream. *Quality over convenience is usually the justification for why DVD is supposedly obsolete now, but how many media formats overtook another, based on quality, not convenience? |
However, the actually transition to DVD was not so convenient. One of the advantages of Blu-Ray, and the reason why I believe that it has been and will continue to overtake DVD faster than DVD overtook VHS, is backwards compatibility. When buying a DVD player in 1998, consumers had to decide whether to keep a VHS player lying around, or get rid of their VHS collection. With Blu-Ray, they don't need to make this decision, as the players still play DVDs, and they make them look better as well. Because of this, the upgrade to a new format isn't as much of a hassle.
If CEs start phasing out DVD players as the manufacturing costs of Blu-Ray players drop, then eventually everyone will have Blu-Ray. Once Blu-Ray takes 80+% marketshare, studios will stop producing DVDs, much like they stopped producing VHS.