Will Christmas ‘08 Be The Year Blu-Ray Takes Off?

With the global economy firmly in the tank right now, the one industry that seems to be doing fairly ok is the entertainment industry. Not a huge surprise - typically in economic hard times, movies and the like do fairly well as folks crave the escapism a little more than usual. Still, Hollywood's been nervous about the DVD industry for a while, and the hi-def Blu-Ray express has yet to take off. Therefore, one might logically think that people would be sticking with the tried and true DVD format a little tighter than usual this year, especially since OG DVDs and their players tend to be significantly cheaper than the HD Blu-Ray format. however, that may not be the case after all.

Via Cynopsis:

Will Santa help ignite the struggling Blu-ray format once and for all this Christmas? HDTV owners have been on the fence about investing in another physical disc player as high-quality video streaming solutions continue to emerge. The Digital Entertainment Group is pointing to a new study by market research firm SmithGeiger which found that "HDTV owners familiar with Blu-ray" favored the format over downloading and streaming by a margin of nearly 10-1. Some 70% claimed they liked having a portable physical disc to stick on their shelf. For most of us, pricing will be the key factor and Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) should prove pivotal for the format. K-mart is expected to offer Sony's BD Live-ready BDP-S350 unit for $180. Wal-Mart is planning to sell the Magnavox Blu-ray player for $128, according to an advance copy of the retailer's circular obtained by CNNMoney.com. Meanwhile individual Blu-ray movie titles are approaching the $10 mark.

Of course, those $10 titles are generally the same ones that were the $10 DVD titles of 10 years ago, featuring a few decent flicks but nothing that's going to set the sales charts on fire. Stlll, even if the studios don't quite understand that at $39.99 MSRP sales just aren't going to take off in the current economy, retailers seem to get it. The week's biggest release, "Kung Fu Panda," is supposed to cost you forty bucks, but everywhere I look it's on sale in the $20 range, just a few dollars more than the regular DVD collector's edition. Heck, Amazon's currently got the $40 3-disc "Wall-E" Blu-Ray available for a pre-order price of $25. If I had a player already, I'd be all over it. As it is, I'm tempted to buy them for future use.