For perspective: the entire movie studio system is dependent on DVD sales to turn a profit on most movies. And since 2007 the trend on DVD sales has been straight down... while rental sales have remained flat.
So it is no particular wonder that BluRay sales are taking off slowly, especially in this time of great prosperity.
I have seen figures indicating that there are some 10 million BD players already out there in the US - this is impressive market penetration when you remember how expensive the first units were, and that it was only two years ago that most consumers sat on the sideline trying to figure out whether HD or BD would be the new format.
Beyond consumer priced machines, the thing that is driving BD sales is that flat panel sales remain strong through June - one of the few CE retail bright spots.
I would assume (because I don't know for a fact) that the majority of these displays are 1080p - which IMHO is the only real reason to buy BluRay.
The forecast for 2009 is 100 million BD discs in North America, Europe and Japan combined. The same analyst projects that "...by 2012, around 50 per cent of US and 35 per cent of Western European video disc retail sale volumes will be Blu-ray."
IMHO one of the bigger barriers to adoption is that the studios are strapped so they are not spending the extra money to do the remastering, remixing and incorporate the advanced technologies (think BD2, deep color etc) that will really differentiate BD from DVD for the consumer.
In the same vein, most of the BD releases are of new films, while the DVD catalog offers wonderful diversity.
For me, the superior quality of BD makes it my choice but with my Oppo handling the upscaling, the quality of DVDs is generally very good. Where DVD will never be able to compete with BD is in the new audio formats which are dazzling.
Like Ozzy, I rent most of my BD discs. Netflix offers an ever increasing number of BD titles. In fact they recently added a $2/month premium if you want BD instead of DVD. We have a "one at a time" subscription and find that we can watch about 8 Netflix BDs a month which brings the rental price down to about $1.25 each - pretty competitive for an evenings entertainment.
Generally prices will decrease as volume increases so we may all start buying more discs in a year or two, especially if the catalog broadens to include more kinds of material, more remastered materials come out like the Coppola Godfather project etc.
