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Blu-ray ramp beats DVD up-take in Europe

But not for much longer?

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More Western Europeans own Blu-ray Disc players in the format's third year of availability than owned DVD players at the same stage in that technology's development.

So said market watcher and Blu-ray advocate Jim Bottoms of research company Futuresource today.

"2008 represents year three for BD and we anticipate more than 10m players, including PS3s, in use by the end of this year," he said. "Looking back to DVD’s early years, we see that closer to 1.5m DVD players were installed by the end of year three [1999]."

Interestingly, BD fared less well than DVD during the formats' respective first year on sale - 2006 and 1997, respectively. In 1997, some 50,000 DVD players were sold - the best BD could manage was 10,000 units.

But from year two onwards, BD has proved more popular than DVD did at the same point in its history.

Blu-ray Disc and DVD take-up in Western Europe

BD vs DVD

Source: Futuresource

“Looking forward, BD installations are projected to continue to run significantly ahead of DVD," said Bottoms, nonetheless. "The timing of the PS3 launch has clearly provided a big boost to the initial uptake of BD - with a number of hot games titles now starting to emerge and console prices continuing to fall we can expect to see continued strong uptake.

“Longer term, as player prices continue to fall, title availability grows and awareness increases, BD players will become the product of choice – given the fact that they also play DVD and CD media – and there will come a time when the branded suppliers focus on this higher capacity drive, mirroring the trend we saw with DVD players replacing CD decks.”

Futuresource's numbers only go out as far as year six - 2011 for BD. It's interesting to see DVD narrowing the gap, and following the two lines, it could well be that year seven or year eight's numbers will see BD with a lower installed base at that stage than DVD had.

Will we all be downloading movies by then?

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Latest Comments

Sometimes I post anonymously, sometimes i dont

Because i'm a bit scared to say what i really feel - even though this is the internet!

I can't wait to get home tonight and make love to my PS3.

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hmmm

@ martin usher...

"Since the improvement in quality is slight" - wtf? for me its bigger than video to dvd (since i had a very good vhs player and my first dvd player was bobbins). the problem is lots of people have el cheapo 720i 'HD' tvs but then dont see the difference between that and PAL...

on a decent player with a good 1080p TV the difference is MASSIVE! even the audio sounds much crisper - and i have a decent AV system too...

mind you tho... i have a VM V+ box that can stream HD movies. and unlike the (cr)apple tv (sorry - rip off for what it is, and no surround sound?!?! wtf!) it support PROPER DOLBY DIGITAL 5.1 too... just realised i havent even had a go on that yet! prices seem pretty cheap compared to other sources too... plus i guess it uses the box's bandwidth so not limiting my daily quota :)

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BD equipment runs on malware

When I buy a DVD player I only need to unlock it once. I am also sure that all DVDs that I already have and will have in the future will play on it.

With BD you are not sure of anything!

If you region-unlock the player you should expect that at some point some "clever" BD+ disc will refuse to play on it.

Even if you do not do anything you should expect that at some point you will buy a BD disc that will not play on it because the player's keys have been revoked.

Moreover, *every* time you buy a new BD disc and attempt to play it on your player you should expect your player to be disabled through a system renewability message - all at the whim of a recording studio or MPAA.

If you buy a BD player you don't own it and you don't have any rights to expect it to work.

If you like having to ask daddy's permission every time you want to do something in your own house - by all means, go ahead, buy BD. Otherwise, I recommend to think twice before doing it.

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