Blu-ray Disc’s victory over HD-DVD is the first battle in a much longer struggle, according to Strategy Analytics. A major challenge lies ahead if the industry is to persuade hundreds of millions of DVD owners that they should switch to a completely new format.

“Blu-ray Disc has passed its first real test by beating HD-DVD,” says David Mercer, Principal Analyst at Strategy Analytics (pictured). “But a much bigger challenge now lies ahead if BD is to become as successful as DVD, and content owners, retailers and manufacturers must now demonstrate that they can work together to promote BD effectively.”

The first challenge is to persuade DVD users to jump to the next-generation true high definition format in a market where DVD players costing less than $100 can already offer HD-like video quality through upscaling techniques.

Another challenge for the Blu-ray promoters is to persuade consumers to actually buy new movies on a physical disc, but not rent or buy them from internet online services like Apple iTunes or Microsoft Xbox Live. "Even though high-definition content available online is much lower quality compared to movies on Blu-ray or HD DVD, end-users who see no major difference between DVD and high-def content in general are likely to stick to online services instead of getting rather expensive players and discs," says Mercer.

Strategy Analytics calls for the industry "to unite behind a major promotional campaign to push Blu-ray as the preferred optical disc standard for the high definition age, together with HDTV sets," without which it is highly unlikely that a high-definition video format may become popular overnight.

If those conditions are met, Strategy Analytics predicts that cumulative sales of stand-alone Blu-ray Disc players excluding games consoles, PCs and other devices will reach more that 100 million units worldwide by 2012.

Story filed 20.02.08