quaiky said:
not true. dvd is the first line and its at bit below 70% in the 7th year (which is 2004 based on start in 1997 according to that graph), so dvd had the fastest adoption rate till now.
what year do we see as the start of BD? 2006, if you start with 2008 then near 10% is a really good adoption rate till now.
But to keep up with DVD it has to do about 10% per year from now on which will be harder i guess since it will be dependant on HDTV adoption rate too (no idea how high that is atm).
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What needs to be considered when evaluating DVD growth is that DVD adoption did not occur as rapidly as it did because consumers were driven to the higher quality picture and sound. Rather, the growth was triggered by the obvious convenience, cost, and reliability advantages DVD has over VHS, much the same way CD so quickly replaced audio cassettes.
The average Joe does not or cannot differentiate the improved visual/audio clarity of many of these advanced devices. What drives Joe 6-pack to adopt new tech is convenience, and in the case of DVDs and CDs over reel cassettes (either audio or VHS), it can be as mundane as having a format with seek/search capability.
A second catalyst that drove rapid DVD adoption was the substantial savings passed to the retailer that provided incentive to shift their stock out of VHS and into DVD. Smaller packaging = more stock per square foot. Lighter packaging = cheaper to ship/distribute to retail. More durable media and no moving parts = rapid adoption in the rental market, which further drove player sales. All these things together drove the brick and mortars to jump out of VHS and into DVDs -- the consumers ultimately had little choice in deciding the future of the format.
The next round will be much different, and for many, many reasons. NetFlix and BlockBuster are scrambling to go digital, because they foresee losing rental share to companies that provide DLC, such as Sony, Apple, and the OnDemand services offered via cable and satellite carriers. The brick-and-mortar retailers would happily go digital too; they'd rather stock a thousand different subscription/points cards than any physical media itself, because it takes less space, is easier to sort & file, and there is no temptation for the consumer to shoplift since points cards are worthless until activated at checkout. There's no sunk cost for the retailer in stock. Steal a stack of PSN cards ... your retailer doesn't care because the cards have no value when they're just on the shelf, and the entire rack can be replaced for a few pennies anyway.
You see this shift apparent already in diminishing selections of CDs at large retailers and the slow extinction of "the record store," as anybody with $10 cash can pick up an iTunes card in the checkout lane of their supermarket. As the iPhone and iPod are married more tightly together, there's even less dependance on having a PC to sync up content to the handheld. You'll just use 3G to download music straight to the device. Amazon already does this with eBooks on their Kindle Reader -- no cellular carrier subscriptions required!
As companies migrate to DLC, there will be less push towards Blu-Ray. BD, on its own, does not offer so many compelling advantages to Joe 6-pack to force a shift out of other existing tech, particularly given BD's cost. The only saving grace to DVD/BD is that the file size makes downloading, such as with music, too difficult/time consuming at present for full length feature films. These barriers are too easily rectifiable to inhibit adoption long term though. At the very least they can be circumvented entirely with media distribution kiosks. Think about going to Best Buy or Blockbuster or someplace and popping in a 32Gb SDHC card or whatever and downloading your next purchase while you're in the store. Prefer NetFlix and don't have the bandwidth for their next gen download solution? Well, there's a lot of incentive for a company like NetFlix to push film formats to solid state carts. They're far more durable than optical discs, and much smaller and lighter, which would reduce their per transaction postage, which for companies like NetFlix, could save them tens of millions of dollars.
I just don't think BD is going to have the shelf life Sony thought it did. They put an awful lot of money into winning a format war that probably wasn't worth winning.
