Lets take a look at what happened. HD-DVD and Blu-ray were introduced practically simultaneously as the next generation of home entertainment. Both promised more pixels, more audio channels, less compression and BETTER EVERYTHING! Consumers were excited when they heard about one or the other, but as soon as they had heard about both, there was an inevitable "Oh, for crap's sake." Nobody wants to buy into a format that may or may not stick around and that may or may not have their favorite movies on-board. So nobody bought any players or movies. Well, smart people didn't buy them. I think most of them that were sold were bought by, you know, family and stuff. I'm lookin' at you, Hiroku Toshiba. Anyway, so the smart people waited. Because certainly one of the formats was going to die a hideous death, blue lasers pathetically piercing through the dirt that rained down on its grave.
While the waiting was going on, price wars and rebates were rampant. This is good. Companies discovered that consumers didn't want to spend $800 on a movie player. And that they wanted to get some movies for free with the player. Even if those movies were things like Ultraviolet.
So, eventually HD-DVD died. Or was murdered, depending on who you ask. Consumers' faces lit up, and they got the gonna-buy-HD smirk and they dug into their pockets for their Economic Stimulus Check™ and headed to the store. When they arrived, all glossy-eyed and drooling, they noticed that Blu-ray prices across the board were up. No more cool rebates. No more free second-rate movies. Oh, and real movies cost like THIRTY BUCKS. Wow. Umm... let's go look at digital cameras.
So now the news is all afloat with "Why can't Blu-ray sell more units? Why don't consumers like HD? Why doesn't a single person on earth watch movies anymore?"
The answer I think we all know. Bring the prices back down to a reasonable level. Make movies cost less than a ticket to SeaWorld. Until then, stop complaining.
