According to Wikipedia, the BD logo was trademarked in 2001, and the first consumer player was released in 2003. That's not a reaction to poor sales after 2004. And yes, that chart shows 2004 as the peak, but 2005 and 2006 are just barely below that.

Thank you for the information. And I agree that the sales for 2005 and 2006 are similar. Please note that I did not say that there was a major decline in sales when Blu-ray was introduced, but that sales of DVD had begun to "soften."

EDIT: Reviewing that first consumer player released in 2003, if Wikipedia is correct:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#History_2

Also, the final Blu-ray specification itself wasn't completed until early 2006:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01...ray_spec_done/

Of course I admit that like all consumer products, research and development was done long before the first consumer Blu-ray player was actually released, but by the time the first Blu-ray player was released in mid-2006 there were signs that DVD sales were beginning to slightly soften, which was a major concern to studios.

Of course in the corporate world, sales leveling-off is a euphemism for "the sky is falling", even if it is still a multi-billion dollar business.

There have been two formats called "Blu-ray." The first was a recordable disc released in Japan in the early 2000s. It was largely a failure, but the name was recycled for the precorded Blu-ray format we know today, which was launched in 2006.

Either way, the format wasn't created as a reaction to media sales after 2004.

I disagree. New titles don't sell as well as they used to. Many people are content to wait till they can stream it for "free."

I completely agree that Blu-ray was not created strictly as a reaction to media sales after 2004, as Blu-ray was obviously being developed by that point. What I did say was that by the time Blu-ray was actually released in mid-2006, DVD sales had been "softening" for nearly two years by that point, and as a result, the decline in DVD sales would have been a factor in the decision to actually release Blu-ray in 2006.

Maybe. I don't know what went into the release schedule. It's true that 2005-2006 being roughly equal to 2004 were a crest after the constant gains of the preceding years (per the aforementioned chart).

(On a tangent).

Bluray only really started being developed after the blue laser patent disputes were settled.

http://optics.org/article/9657
https://web.archive.org/web/20130420...ngineer05.html