Blu-ray's Dip Not All That Surprising

I've been working on a book about the trade-offs consumers make between fidelity and convenience -- and Blu-ray keeps proving the point. Today, a report from NPD Group says Blu-ray player sales are DOWN despite the disappearance of competing standard HD-DVD.

The problem with Blu-ray is that its fidelity isn't so much better than DVDs that consumers will feel compelled to make the switch. And its convenience factor -- how easy it is to get and how cheap it is -- doesn't come close to comparing with DVDs. So Blu-ray is neither high enough fidelity or high enough convenience to win over a mass market.

My bet is that Blu-ray plods along until it gets overtaken by high-def digital downloads. At this point, trying to improve disk-based movies with a new standard is reminiscent of Kodak inventing Advantix -- then a new film-based standard -- just before digital cameras took off.

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