The Wall Street Journal is reporting things are getting bleaker by the day for Blu-ray.
Player prices are falling due to overstocking at stores, and not because the technology is getting deeper market penetration. At this time Blu-ray is only making up 4% of the entire home video market, which is a far cry from even the most conservative predictions of where the format should have been by this time.
The price reductions are probably also a part of a plan to try to increase the market adoption rate for Blu-ray. A lot of the hindrance is coming from how much more the movies can cost than a standard DVD version of the same film.
What does this all mean for consumers? If you are looking to get in to Blu-ray, you will probably see some amazing sales around Thanksgiving time in the USA, especially on “Black Friday”. On the other hand, I’m still not fully convinced buying another physical format is such a good idea. On the up side, these players do play standard DVDs and will upconvert their signal to near-HD quality, so if you find a player for insanely cheap, you might as well pick it up just for that reason alone.
