Consumers Not Buying Blu-Ray Despite Format Win

A Blu-ray win over HD-DVD in the bloody format war hasn't translated into a sales victory for the next generation DVD technology. A recent study by the NPD Group has shown that Blu-ray sales only increased by 2 percent from February to March and that Blu-ray sales dropped 40 percent from January to February.
I think three things are contributing to this:

• Hardware is still expensive compared to DVD. In a slowing economy where the average person is starting to feel the pinch at the gas pump as well as the grocery store, spending $400 on a new disc player (not to mention the more expensive discs) is just not on the agenda for a lot of people.

• Many can't tell the difference. Videophiles aside, many consumers are hard pressed to tell a substantial difference between upconverted DVD from a $40 player correctly connected to the display and true HD material from Blu-ray, especially from across the living room.

• It's too soon. Many consumers feel they 'just' upgraded to the DVD format, though for some that was more than a decade ago, and are not in haste to start replacing their video collections like they did with DVD. Add to this the expense of upgrading to a new flat panel HDTV, which many have recently done or are doing this year (whether they need to or not) in light of the February 2009 digital transition, and the consumer is hesitant to spend another $400 + discs in light of the previous two arguments.
  

At any rate, I don't see Blu-ray overtaking DVD as the dominant format at any time in the foreseeable future.

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