mntwister @ Jan 8th 2009 10:15AM

63 million blu-ray discs is nothing to ,laugh at, the studios made more money on these than on the dvd's they sold (not as a whole but probably per title for many titles). Plus the graphs shown yesterday that blu-ray is ahead of dvd in its first 2 years was also good news. I believe there WILL be a replacement physical media format for dvd called blu-ray, despire all of the downloading and tv's with streaming added or whatever. I might have to doubt blu-ray will ever become as big as dvd, but I think it will.

The problem with downloads and streams is there are TOO MANY of them. Each offers different movies, most are 720p for their high def, and it's similar to a format war where a consumer has to decide which one to go with. It's also true blu-ray has limited titles as well, but I believe that if they start to include digital copies it has a better chance. If I were a movie studio, I would be including a separate dvd inside each blu-ray, so that those who cannot afford a blu-ray player will be able to buy their new releases, play them now on their dvd players and take them anywhere (portables, ect), and when they are able, they will have started a blu-ray collection. Considering how much a dvd costs the studios to press, this is not entirely out of the question.

To sum it up, people are used to physical media, many like having their movies on their shelves. Hard drives and storage drives will always fail at some point-and then what? Streaming seems the best option, when they can get the bandwidth and short download times for 1080p.

Until they can make a download take only a few minutes, in 1080p, with lossless audio and all of the disc extras plus the bdlive features, which I think is quite a ways off, I think blu-ray has the big opportunity in 2009. I believe players will be down to $199, some even $149, and I also believe the studios will start reducing man.list prices on titles already out, which I think is the big deal now. The player prices are not out of reach, but replacing movies for many people is, example: the 1966 Batman movie with Adam West (just an example). Fox is listing this at $39.95. I also see hundreds of blu-rays out there that were boxoffice flops, or made very little at the boxoffice for $39.95 or $34.95 retail. These movies should be $29.95 Manufacturer list price at the very most. Case in point: Warner's taking 50 titles and reducing them to $19.95 was a great movie, I think more studios will follow, probably not with new releases but older titles.

I am an optomist when it comes to blu-ray because I think the format is awesome (yes, hd-dvd was great too) but I believe the physical disc is a no-brainer for all those millions of people with high def televisions. They simply will not keep buying their new releases in dvd format for their high def tv's forever.