Blu-ray may have won the high-def format war, but it still has a tough fight in its hands which is to get customers to actually ditch the standard DVD format. And though adoption has been rather slow for the format - thanks in part to the still relatively high price tag for equipment - Sony claims Blu-ray discs could outsell DVDs in three year's time.
According to Tim Meade, Asia Pacific vice president for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, global sales of Blu-ray discs are expected to increase from 9 percent in 2007 to 25 percent by the end of this year. The rise in sales will be fueled by the introduction of more discs and lower-priced Blu-ray players and should reach a ratio of roughly 40:60 compared to DVD in 2010.
Blu-ray would supposedly take the lead a year later. Sony is the main proponent of the high-def format, so their big claims are to be expected. If they are accurate, however, Blu-ray would still have to face another growing threat: digital distribution. Of course, digital distribution still can't match the video and sound quality offerings of a disc-based medium but, hopefully with the proper infrastructure and bandwidth, in a few years it will.