Honestly predictions mean little. Disney estimated 2015, and they have no agenda to distort their numbers negatively. In fact, their viewpoint is probably slanted the other way, i.e. promote Blu Ray.

Except that there are probably hundreds of millions of installed DVD players out there, and what do you think content providers are going to do? Say fuck you..buy a Blu Ray player? No way. This isn't a case where there is an URGENT MISSION CRITICAL need to buy a Blu Ray player - i.e. DVD is not obsolete like VHS was since the formats were incompatible.

One reason I don't think it'll go down that fast is that dual layer DVDs are still expensive compared to their standard counterparts.

I agree it'll go down but I don't think it'll reach the same cheap level anytime soon. Wouldn't manufacturers have to pay some fee for doing Blu-ray as opposed to standard DVDs? I could be completely wrong on that.

Please stop looking at this from today's perspective. My premise was pretty clear. I was creating a hypothesis of what might (and I believe will) be the case five years from now, in which the number of DVD-only players is rapidly dwindling, and there are more people who own Blu-ray players than those who don't.

Anyone producing DVDs that bear the DVD logo must pay a fee for the use of the logo. There are some companies (such as Madacy) that produce discs that do not bear the logo, but I don't know what the legal ramifications of that practice are.

As far as replication cost goes, do you really believe that the cost for Blu-ray will be that much higher than DVD in five years? I so, then we really are approaching this discussion from vastly different perspectives.

I'm not looking at it based on today's perspective, I'm looking at it from the persepective of predictions from Blu Ray execs, which say even by 2015, Blu Ray will barely have a majority.

So lets say it is 2015 and Disney's predictions are correct.
Are you going to argue that 44% of the market will not be served by companies whose job it is to ensure that anybody that wants their product can have it? Cmon. Disney wants to sell as many copies of Enchanted 3: Return to Omaha, as it can, and whether it is from the 56% percent of Blu Ray owners, or 44% of DVD owners, they will be served. This isn't a case where companies can just turn off the spigot like they did with HD DVD because as far as I know about 1% of the market, if that much, actually owned HD DVD players and their need for media could be ignored.

Then we shouldn't put too much credibility into your predictions either considering how you offered all sorts of different scenarios as to why and how the market will be restructured in the future:

What did the content-providers do with the millions of installed VHS players 10 years ago? They restricted content. With SONY being a content-owner and a format backer I think that it is quite reasonable to expect a similar trend. Even if backwards compatibility isn't an issue.

Finally what agenda do EMA have?

Pro-B

I don't do this for a living nor am I an expert in any of this. I am just discussing things. Honestly, I have not earned any credibility, and neither have you. Everything is just my opinion and I couldn't care less what you think of it, or if you put stock in it.

Statements made by a big Blu Ray supporter, are however, important. so 2012, 2015, whatever..neither one of those dates are certain, they are based on projections and if you have ever been involved in forecasting projections, you know it is more an art than a science and can be manipulated for whatever agenda a person has.

However, officials with publicly traded companies have a bit more responsibility than EMA to provide accurate numbers, as their jobs are the line. An association is just an hodge-podge of companies with the goal of promoting products.

And once again, VHS - DVD = No compability DVD- Blu Ray = backwards compatibility. IF CE companies or Sony really wanted to push Blu Ray as the sole exclusive future, they would have taken backwards compatibility out, like they what they did to the 2nd generation PS3 with PS2 compatibility. By doing so, they ensured Blu Ray wouldn't die a quick death because of no DVD compatibility (like D-VHS) but they did ensure that DVD would be around for some time.

Actually, that is exactly what I am saying (but not "arguing", sorry). When the first sales figures came in showing that DVD sales had exceeded VHS sales, studios and retailers both began turning off the spigot. The millions and millions of people who had yet to upgrade from VHS to DVD? They were given the choice to move forward or be left behind. Obviously, most chose to move forward.

My hunch is that the same transition will play out with Blu-ray, and that it won't take until 2015 (though, of course, anything is possible).

there is a larger profit margin on the sale of a bd than on a dvd so it is in everyone's interest to promote that format over the older one. when sales are nearly equal the revenue accrued through bd will be significantly greater than that from dvd.

The top 20 isn't available yet, but Jumper was the #1 seller again this week. Fool's Gold was a close second and The Bucket List was third.

Men in Black didn't even make the top 3 but Fools Gold did? What the hell?

it's not that surprising. fool's gold is a day and date that did well at the box office.

Strong second week showing for Bucket List confirms the usually ignored "geezer" demographic likes Blu-Ray!

Bucket List was actually a decent movie though. Can't say the same for Fools Gold.

Numbers are up as of 6/22:

HomeMediaMagazine

Blu-ray sales down 33.41% over previous week to $8.48 Million.....6% of top 20 vs. DVD.

DVD had a rough week too, being off 23% from previous week.

Except, as I said previously, Blu Ray players play DVD, so any Blu Ray player can still play DVD and to turn off DVD sales would be just be a plain stupid decision.

Actually, it would not be stupid at all even though you continue to analyze future market progression while only evaluating pricing, penetration,etc. by current sales data. There are basically two factors that the studios could consider before restricting content on DVD: a) SDVD sluggish sales/low margins and b) BR consumer penetration.

With point a the trend is to have more and more BR releases by the end of the year and identical if not lower sales margins, not market presence, for SDVD. Unless you wish to argue that sales will remain in the 6-10% bracket for BR until the end of the holiday season, which I think will not be the case, then most certainly the effect on SDVD sales will start to be more and more obvious.

With point b you could consider everything that I wrote above and add up the fact that the casual pool the BR market has been feeding off of (PS3) will continue to expand.

In my opinion it isn't whether or not BR will remain niche, it is whether or not it forces DVD into niche status, and if it does the big question in this economy is when.

Pro-B

Again, BD sales are NOT 6-10% of DVD sales.

TOP 20 are 6-10%, and I would not expect that to move very much. People will certainly buy more BDs in the holiday period, but DVD sales will also surge in this period.

Again, the pratfalls of percentages.

Exactly!

The top 20 titles during the holiday season will be the top 20 titles spread out amongst the majors, BR or not. I would be shocked if we had catalog titles (The Godfather?) breaking into the top 10 replacing blockbusters, wouldn't you? These will be the big sellers = most revenue. And since it is even more unlikely that a non-major distrib produces a catalog title that breaks into the Top 20 the majors will be watching closely where the blockbuster market heads (their expectations for BR are already published by HTM). This is what matters: whether or not a trend emerges (read sustained shrinking numbers for SDVD and growing percentages for BR), not whether current percentages represent all BR vs. SDVD sales.

It is the majors and their evaluation of the market that matters not the smaller distribs, they will follow wherever the big guns head.

Pro-B

And there will be dozens of retailers that have $3-5 DVDs

What if BD sales remain flat? "There's always next year!"

You TOTALLY deal in what ifs, and occasionally dabble in reality. Reality is that gas will be $5/gallon in a few weeks. What will your winter heating bill look like? COL is on the rise. Forclosures are happening more and more.

THIS is reality. Perhaps DVD is declining because the excess "fun" money is not there, rather than it declining due to the format sent by Jesus, Allah, Buddah, God and Khali in a co-op effort, BD. Maybe people need to eat and get to work more than they need to quintuple dip on The Fifth Element. I know in your mind "DVD down =BD on the rise" but the data does not back it up.

Here's a figure: BD sales DOWN 33.41% (now this is a percentage and we know you loves them percentages). So when it goes up 4% next week, we'll hear you crow about what a great gain it is, even though it is a net loss of 29%. Now you will predictably counter that DVD sales are down too, and I thank you in advance for supporting my point.

So, you don't expect Blu-ray to see any benefit at all during the holiday season? You really believe that DVD sales will experience the same level of surge that Blu-ray players and software will?

If that's what you really believe, then I think one of us is going to be very surprised by the Blu-ray sales figures for this December, and I don't think it's going to be me.

Indeed, excess fun money is not there: even Starbucks is closing 600 stores on account of declining sales. Unnecessary luxuries are the first things people cut out of their budgets when economic woes come around. Unfortunately, this includes home video of any flavor.

Just FYI, that comment (at least for me) nullified the credibility of anything else you might have said.