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Blu-ray disc sales jump in Q4 2008

9 January 2009 22:02 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 6 comments

The past year has been very eventful for Blu-ray. Many new Blu-ray products have been shown at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this year, where just a year ago Blu-ray jumped ahead of its former rival dvd.cfm" target="_blank">HD DVD. "It turned out to be a phenomenal year for Blu-ray," said Tom Adams of Adams Media Research. In the fourth quarter of 2008, which is only too important for tech companies, U.S. consumers bought up 28.6 million Blu-ray titles.

In the same period of 2007, U.S. consumers bought about 9.5 million titles. The biggest selling Blu-ray title, of course, was 2008's box office heavyweight "The Dark Knight", which was also the first Blu-ray title to sell over 1 million copies, according to the Blu-ray Disc Association.

BDA President, Andy Parsons, looks back at the beginning of the DVD-era to prove strength in Blu-ray, claiming a faster adoption rate than DVD, and CD. He counts 10.7 million Blu-ray players sold in the United States by the end of 2008, about two and half years since they first became available. By comparison, three years after DVD was launched, there were 5.4 million DVD players in consumers homes.

Critics of these statistics might point out that of the 10.7 million Blu-ray players counted, over 6 million are PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles, which arguably are sold moreso for gaming than Blu-ray. However, while this point could force player sales to become more evenly matched with early DVD player sales, rising Blu-ray disc sales may indicate growing interest in Blu-ray amongst PS3 owners who previously were not interested or aware of the Blu-ray functionality.

"I've gone from being conservative for 2008 to now, for 2009, being cautiously optimistic," said analyst Paul Erickson at DisplaySearch. "We will continue to see steady and stable increases in Blu-ray disc demand."

Permalink to this article | Topic: HDTV

New Panasonic Blu-ray players add streaming capabiliy (13 January 2009)

CES 2009: Pioneer introduced a trio of BD players (9 January 2009)

CES 2009: JVC revealed their first Blu-ray player (9 January 2009)

Blu-ray players from LG add YouTube, CinemaNow (30 December 2008)

Blu-ray price cuts hurt OEM manufacturers (25 December 2008)

Blu-ray movie sales are strong in Europe (22 December 2008)

'Dark Knight' set to break 2 million Blu-ray sales (20 December 2008)

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Discuss this article!
HDNow (Junior Member) 10 January 2009 21:45
Bluray is here to stay. [ + quote]
Oner (Moderator) 11 January 2009 21:43
Yep. ;) Search > http://forums.afterdawn.com/search Rules > http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/2487 Important Rule > http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/380660 [ + quote]
bryston (Senior Member) 11 January 2009 21:58
2008 was an important year for BD. It was the end of the HD format wars and a new beginning. The consuming public never likes a format war. As in SD DVD's case there was only one standard, and the consumer adopted quickly.Now with one standard, the consumer can get behind BD without fear of purchasing an orphan . BD offers HD to the consumer, and as it gets more adoptees, prices for both software and hardware continues to decline, as it should. Sub $200 players were seen for the first time, a first. The advent of 120Hz refresh rate HD displays and BD offered the consumer a home theater expierence never seen before. 2008 was a stellar year for BD. Let's see what 2009 holds. [ + quote]
borhan9 (AfterDawn Addict) 13 January 2009 19:36
This is a kinda no brainer due to the fact that blu-ray won the battle and now its the only format therefore numbers are going to only increase so the only thing we can measure is which blu-ray titles will sell more than others. [ + quote]
hermes_vb (Senior Member) 16 January 2009 14:16
And they complain DVD sales are down. Of course they are down. BR is gaining some ground. [ + quote]
Gnawnivek (Junior Member) 16 January 2009 16:15
This is very funny, when i was buying a lot (2007 and 2008), all i hear is BD is doomed, sale is low. Now, when i'm not buying (trying not to spend more than necessary), BD is taking off, BD is here to stay... [ + quote]