Bozster @ Dec 31st 2008 2:22PM

Wow is all I can say.. I completely disagree with Steve or Ben whoever was from you two talking about numbers.

I think your logic is way off.

First of all you are using numbers that are completely incorrect.

The numbers of 12% you talk about for Blu-Ray sales, are exactly what BDA is counting on. This is not 12% of ALL people buying DVDs, this is not 12% of ALL DVD sales, this is only 12% of "revenue" based on top 20 titles. So when you say that it's 12% marketshare of all people buying DVDs is completely incorrect and this is why the numbers shown from NPD in this manner are simply misleading trying to paint a picture that's false.

Second, the reason why studios went with Blu-Ray and the whole talk that they wouldn't have gone Blu-Ray at all if they saw benefit in digital downloads is so way off base in any logical manner you look at, it really makes me wonder how exactly you base your conclusions.

Any logical and tech savvy person knows that 3 years ago and even earlier, digital downloads were not really viable solution. We've seen digital downloads rise maybe for a year now and it's rapidly growing because right now everyone already noticed that consumer react positively to convenience this system offers.

You say video on demand is off the chart but fail to acknowledge that digital downloads won't be successful. It's really an interesting way of looking at things.

First of all, digital downloads even today, are in much higher number of presence among consumers then Blu-Ray. Every person who has a PC, an Xbox, a PS3, a Vudu, Roku has access to digital downloads, unlike Blu-Ray..

The reason why numbers revenue wise are not the same or higher then Blu-Ray is because people rent more instead of buying, although I'd really like to know where you get this claim to begin with. In any case, even if it is less at this point, it's totally fine as we've already started witnessing that people owning movies is going away. A lot of people realized that optical media they buy is just collecting dust and with online services offering large catalogs of movies for rent there's no need to even own a movie.

If you want to look at it from business perspective, studios and everyone would rather rent you a movie multiple time on demand at $4 or $5 then sell you one disc at $20 and never get any more money for that movie. Not to mention the expense they have for packaging, replication, marketing etc, where as with digital downloads they basically only need to master once and it's endless distribution and money for them.

There's so much more you are simply forgetting (deliberately or not) in discussing why and how in regards to Blu-Ray and digital downloads as successors, that I'm really forced to believe that you are either highly biased and refuse to acknowledge this or you are pushing interests of CE companies who support Blu-Ray.

Everyone is aware that digital is the future, be it 2,3-5 years from now but it's inevitable. This is why studios are indeed giving support in a big way from day to day by signing up with content providers in digital realm. They make clean money there and have no replication or production problems.

Once DRM is sorted out for owning movies and making them platform agnostic, the days of optical media will be behind us once and for all.

I think you should try to be more objective and land down to Earth if you want to continue being looked at seriously.

I was actually pleasantly surprised when I saw Darren's post about Blu-Ray. It's obvious that he's also seeing what many have been talking about and that's that Blu-Ray probably won't die, but with each month, digital downloads are more and more accessible to people.