The Blu-ray Rollercoaster: Adoption Rate Surges Again
Every time a new, trailblazing technology debuts
, pundits and technology-lovers begin the process of predicting just how fast it will replace its predecessors and competitors. It happened with CDs, it happened with DVDs and it is happening now with Blu-ray. If you check the news stories (and op-eds) of the last three years, you will find that the adoption rate of Blu-ray players, not to mention the pricier recorders, has fluctuated up and down in strange and often unfathomable cycles.
Generally, though, the sales have gone up after movie studio announcements of popular movies coming to the format, and down during periods of no news. In the world of tech, especially consumer electronics, the saying that no news is good news is completely wrong. Tech adoption rates, after the initial surge from early adopters and well-heeled gadget-lovers, depend on PR and media presence. After 2009, a flat year for Blu-ray growth and adoption, things appear to be heading up again.
Kiosk and you shall receive
Redbox is a firm that rents DVDs via self-service kiosks in almost 25,000 locations nationwide. In July 2010 the company announced that it was going to offer what it calls super-size rentals ($1.50 Blu-ray movies) in about half those places right away, with (they hope) all locations serving them up by the end of the year. The kiosks are becoming familiar sights at military bases, grocery stores and fast-food restaurants all over the U.S. and Redbox has good data on rental patterns and growth potential.
Such recent films as Bounty Hunter, The Book of Eli, Green Zone and Brooklyn's Finest are among the first Blu-ray titles being made available at Redbox locations. Customers can visit the company Web site at Redbox.com to check availability of Blu-ray titles in their area. The firm explained that the number and selection of Blu-ray movies would vary by location, but that new titles would be added every week. The company did not say if it would standardize the listings nationwide.
Whither the hardware?
Like other technologies that start out expensive and take time to drop in price, Blu-ray adoption has been less than swift, but seems to be trending up. An industry study published in Screen Digest reports that DVD is still good enough for most people, and that consumers in a tight economy are having at least some trouble justifying the additional expense of both the players (and recorders) and the rentals. Nothing slows new-tech adoption like a recession, but new devices with true potential seem to weather the storm and bounce back as people's finances do. This seems to be happening now with Blu-ray.
Of course, this specific sort of resistance will wane not only as the economy picks up steam but as prices continue to drop for the hardware. In March 2010, the Target chain began selling a Philips BDP5010 Blu-ray Disc player for $69.98, featuring support for DivX (compressed movie files) and a SDHC card reader. The player also has BD Live, meaning it can download additional materials over your broadband connection, and HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) that integrates all device controls into one remote device.
The naysayers
Among the Blu-ray naysayers are such tech industry titans as Steve Jobs of Apple, who put his money where his mouth is by making the newly-released Apple TV a streaming-only device. (You can stream your movie library from your computer, of course, but the Apple TV has no more internal storage.) At Apple's June iPhone 4 event, Jobs dismissed Blu-ray as "a bag of hurt" and ventured that it would be soundly trounced "by Internet downloadable formats."
Still, makers of Blu-ray hardware and movie studios are positive about the future. There are certain fundamental changes required of consumers, especially the requirement of a special disc player and the fact that the improved quality can only be appreciated on an HDTV. Consumers that do not have newer, high-resolution TVs or monitors have little reason to invest in Blu-ray hardware, so there is something of a threshold for buyers to cross. This is what they see happening now, say Blu-ray proponents.
Future still bright
The ABI Research firm predicts that penetration of Blu-ray players (excluding PCs and game consoles with the technology built in) will more than double in North America. From about 8 percent of TV-owning homes in 2009 the figure is expected to hit 18 percent by the end of 2010. Another bright spot is the recent Nielsen data that shows Blu-ray movies accounting for 11 percent of all DVD movie sales. This is a 60 percent increase during a year in which DVD sales, as a whole, dropped about 1 percent.
Taking a lesson from CDs and DVDs, we can safely say that Blu-ray is here to stay. As the economy picks up and prices keep falling, we should see the adoption rate rise again as the world welcomes a new and better way of watching movies.
by: Mingki Tsui.
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