Recent articles in Information Week and CrucnGear indicates that currently 7% of American homes have Blu-ray players wile 11% have the discontinued HD DVD format players.
Too funny; HD DVD has been dead for 6 months and Sony is still having problems selling their overpriced format- but perhaps $99 clearance sales of the older 1.0 and 1.1 profile players may soon help (although I think multiple Blu-Ray ‘profiles’ have been one of the big problems with Blu-Ray since its inception).
Warner Brothers is offering a $4.95 HD DVD to Blu-Ray trade in. If you are a HD DVD adopter, you now have the option of sending n the HD DVD jacket sleeve (the case cover) + $4.95 per disc to ‘upgrade’ to the Blu-Ray format.
I may do this for ‘A Clockwork Orange’, but I haven’t fired up a physical disc device in several months; I am starting to realize that physical media is already outdated and is only there to foster materialism- i.e. the need to own things I will never watch more than once (which is exactly what the studios want).
Once the large ISPs in this country pull their heads out of their ass and provide real, low-cost broadband maybe we hope for a reasonable ‘on-demand’ 1080p HD video system- pay $3 and watch any movie with no wait/artifacts/etc.
Based on what I have seen of how capitalism ‘works’, this won’t happen in the US within the remainder of my years…
