Blu-ray is actually doing pretty well all things considered.

The first quarter of 2009 showed Blu-ray hardware sales growth was double that of last year, performing well despite persistent economic trauma. Approximately 9 million Blu-ray discs were purchased in the US in the first quarter of 2009. Compare that to the same quarter last year, when only 4.8 million discs were sold. There are around 11 million households in the US using Blu-ray technology and 24 million discs were sold in the US last year.

Estimates are that over 100 million Blu-ray discs will be sold in 2009 in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. The projection has 80 million of the discs being sold in the United States alone.

Also, the average price of Blu-ray players has been an obstacle for many consumers up until recently. The price has dropped considerably, hovering now around the $200 mark. (Walmart was selling Blu-ray players for $130 just before Father's Day.) A consortium of Chinese manufacturers recently issued what has become known as the "Blu-ray Report" and they estimate that the average price of players could sink as low as $99 by the end of the year. Sub-$100 players could really be a game changer.

As you suspect, I think the reason they dropped the licensing fees is to get more titles out there. The new fee structure makes it possible for people like me to finally think about releasing some product. The numbers now make some sense and I can probably turn a reasonable profit on a relatively small run of a couple of thousand discs. Up until now, I have been burning my own and selling them that way.

I've been seeing less & less BD's at my local walmart. At first it was almost a whole shelf. Then it went to 1/2 a shelf. Now it's a front of one of those mid-isle displays & 1/2 of them are "budget". $15 or under.

I've ended up going to Target (which has a GREAT selection) or amazon.

I think they know they need to move fast,, stuff like netflix streaming to xbox and such is where we will be very soon,, like last night at my house. I know some people like to have movie collections and BD is cool for that

It's certainly a step in the right direction however the upfront fees are still exhorbitant. For 500 units it's $1020 plus the cost of the masters and pressing etc. I can get 500 DVDs for less than that, all up. I'd be happier if they dropped all the upfront fess and increased the per unit fee. $0.20 per copy would be quite acceptable. They'd make more money overall from the big releases and they'd get a lot more of us at our level on board.

Bob.

Well, my own 2 cents, Absolutely FWIW...

PC sales are down quite a bit, so not as many shiny, new PCs with BD drives in them as expected. PS3 sales have been very low -- the PS2 turned out to be a huge mover for the DVD market. Blu Ray has some rather nasty DRM stuff possible that turns a lot of consumers off. Hard drives are cheap, & every week dozens of portables are on sale -- less reason for consumers to invest to burn data to BD than with DVD a few years back. PCs are fast enough, GPUs have HD accel, specialized devices are plentiful enough, & alternative codecs good enough, that many have an alternative for HD storage at home. HDTV sales, which might have jumped a bit in the US with the hyped (for years) changeover didn't spike when the changeover was delayed. QAM & HDTV are most often DRMed by the cable companies, so a huge source of in-home content moving Blu Ray adoption never happened. Cable operators have both reduced rez/quality for HD, & incorporated SD DVRs in the cable box, destroying what was the VCR effect, and getting viewers used to less than HD, HD viewing.

In a nutshell, IMHO most of the stuff that moved DVD adoption into the mainstream, albeit after roughly a decade of being there, is missing so far with BD. Add in the recession, and manufacturers'/Hollywood's greed -- figure in better educated consumers (been thru the same process with DVD players going from $200+ to $19.95) -- and it'll likely be a while frankly.

Good news is that the alternative of IPTV/on-line video, which might have really hurt BD adoption, doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon -- greed also helped prevent building out the delivery pipeline, &/or maintaining what was already there (praise ATT). Another bit of good news, with a twist, is decrypting BD is coming along -- Bill Gates allegedly said without piracy, Windows would have had a much harder time competing with *nix, & the same applies to driving BD adoption, just as it did with DVDs. HD cams are getting cheaper almost daily, which is good. Nvidia & ATI both have, & are continuing to develop GPU accelerated HD encoding, which while not currently up to pro levels, will drive HD & BD adoption. While the recession ("Depression III" here in MI) hurts sales, it also helps among those lucky enough to still be employed -- home entertainment is still cheaper than going out. And finally, while it's not happening nearly as fast as if Microsoft/Toshiba won the format war [Boo.. Hiss :-) ], 1080p PC monitors are getting both cheap & common, & thanks to pervasive DRM, Blu Ray is about the only source of 1080p content (unless you like PBS). In fact, about the only real threat I personally see towards wide-spread BD adoption is if Washington DC in fact does get behind building out broadband -- there are loads of IPTV lobbyists with dreams of villas in the Caribbean.

At the end of the day, to me it's interesting, & a good sign that they're actually looking at the marketplace & willing to bend a little this go 'round.

"I've been seeing less & less BD's at my local walmart. ...I've ended up going to Target (which has a GREAT selection) or amazon."

It would be interesting to compare the number of titles online @ Walmart, before/after. While Target does some regional stuff, Walmart has that end of things really mastered... What any particular store has available is unique to that store, & even varies according to the predicted weather! IOW, if the on-line selection has dropped, they see the market as a whole not worth investing as much in -- if it's just certain stores, just a matter of what the locals are buying. From a personal standpoint, might even tell you something about your neighbors if only certain genres were cut?

I was in my local Walmart yesterday and they don't even have a BD section anymore. There's a few titles scattered in with the DVDs and that's about it. The 'latest movies' shelf was about 80% DVD and 20% BD.

The have almost as many DVD players for sale as BD players.

Add to that that the typical DVD costs 1/5 of the corresponding DVD, and the average BD player about 4 times as much as even an upscaling DVD player, and you have to wonder how many average consumers are interested.

Heck, i just went 5.1 audio for the first time this summer. HD video? I've seen it at other people's houses. It's an eye opener ... for about 2 minutes. After that, it's still just video, and way too expensive at that.

kelly, I'd say DVD's on my BD player on an HDTV look much better then upscaled with a DVD player. Those right there look much nicer imho. And, then why would I buy a $20/30 BD when I can get it on DVD for 5. The only BD's I've bought are ones eighter a) are hard to get on DVD, b) same price as a new DVD or c) cheap (a few more $$ then the same cheap DVD).

I'm not sure of walmart's online is a good comparison though... they seem to compete with the stores. Some things I can get a lot cheaper online vs the store, some the other way around.

"I'm not sure of walmart's online is a good comparison though... they seem to compete with the stores. Some things I can get a lot cheaper online vs the store, some the other way around."

I'm sorry -- should have been clearer... What I meant was if Walmart wasn't selling many BD discs across the US, they'd cut back the number of titles on-line. If they weren't selling as many in an individual store, they'd cut back there too, but a store in one location would have no bearing on one across town, or the state etc. You usually have more products in store for any given category than on-line, which I think reflects stock common across their distro centers.

As far as on-line shopping at Walmart, prices are individualized for the store, time of year, & as I mentioned, even weather. Unfortunately unlike Best Buy you can't get the on-line price in a store unless that happens to be the store price. If the item is ship to store, you can pick it up at the store & pay on-line pricing. If the Store price is lower, that's the only place to get that price. Fortunately there is no penalty for not picking up something you get shipped to store, so if you get there & it's cheaper, well, go through checkouts. ;-)

Not a Walmart fanatic -- in fact there's not even one really close by... just fascinated by their data mining set-up... or watch Discovery too much. ;-)

Both of my local Walmart stores also have less BD discs than before.

In terms of the increase in BD sales I searched this and I question some of the sources for the so-called statistics regarding Blu-Ray sales.

For example, some of the positive articles cite Adams Media Research. I went to their website and despite the fact that I don't really know who they are, all that I could find was this quote.

Despite Blu-ray's success, US video sales to decline in 2009

From that TG Daily and the others seem to ramp up the supposed surge in Blu-Ray sales? That's not what AMR said as far as I can see. I sometimes wonder what their ties are to the industries involved based upon some of these claims.

The quote in the third post: Estimates are that over 100 million Blu-ray discs will be sold in 2009 in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan came from other articles that cite research by
Future Source Consulting who say:
"Futuresource Consulting is a new force in research and knowledge-based consulting, formed in June 2008 through a merger between Understanding & Solutions and Decision Tree Consulting (DTC). " Huh? In 2008 Futuresource issued this white paper about the number of people ripping DVDs.
They've come up with stats that there are roughly a third in the United States and the United Kingdom who admit to ripping DVDs. A third??? Really?
Turns out that the research was sponsored by MACROVISION as they noted. And after all the fines for illegal downloaded content where did Futuresource find 5,331 respondents (criminals)? And what incentive did they have for admitting it to Futuresource? You can't tell from the report.

Instead I trust a long time independent research company like Harris International more:

CNS noted the Harris International polling in their article Blu-ray sales are stagnating. What’s to blame?
And also the PC Magazine in the article Blu-Ray I Hardly Know Ye.
Of the 2,401 Americans surveyed, only 25 percent planned to switch to Blu-ray completely, and 43 percent want prices to come down significantly before they invest.

In fact, a Harris Interactive Poll (PDF) found that 93 percent of those surveyed have no interest in purchasing a Blu-Ray DVD player, despite HDTV ownership rising to 47 percent, up from 35 percent a year ago.

Both articles are dated June 22, 2009.

The Harris poll they cite is here. dated June 19, 2009.

With more than 2000 respondents the Margin of Error for the polling is very low.

John

I think the typical Wal Mart customer doesn't care about the 'advantages' of Blu Ray, since it involves not just a player upgrade but a TV/Flat Panel upgrade as well. Many of them won't have PCs that can play back Blu Ray either.

On the other hand, my local Costco seems to have expanded their Blu Ray offerings along with Best Buy. I still buy both formats, my player upscales DVD quite nicely, so I won't be replacing my DVD collection the way I did with VHS.