December 2, 2005

Fox launches PR war for Blu Ray

20th Century Fox this week kicked off a Public Relations campaign for Blu-Ray technology, and electronics companies are expected to push Blu-ray at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month.

What’s really interesting is the breakdown of statistics - that the format war will only apply to about 16 million US homeowners:

The new high-definition discs offer more vivid color, sharper contrast and see-every-pore detail than DVDs. But it’s not as dramatic an improvement in picture quality as, say, the leap from videotape to DVD.

And that kind of peer-through-the-window clarity only works with high-definition TVs. That shrinks the potential audience to the 16 million or so people in the United States who own HDTVs — a fraction of the 110 million households with televisions, according to researcher In-Stat.

The early HD-DVD players will sell for $1,000 — limiting their appeal to only the most affluent early-adopters. Even if Sony’s PlayStation 3 is priced like the Xbox 360, at $400 it’s hardly an impulse buy.

These new high-definition discs will sell for a premium, too, as the studios pack them with interactive features, such as games and downloadable movie trailers, to justify the added cost. Who knows how many movies there will be?

In-Stat estimates there’ll be about 2 million high-definition players in America by 2009, compared with nearly 90 million DVD players. That means it’ll remain a luxury item, at least for the foreseeable future.

Filed Under Blu Ray