Is Blu-ray ascending or dying?
Depending on which section of the press you look at today, Blu-ray is either set to grow rapidly over the coming year, or is doomed to failure.
Do you trust market research, or the extremely vocal argument of an "industry expert"?
Blu-ray players will slip below $150 during the traditional Black Friday bargain fest in the US, according to the Wall Street Journal.
However, that's not going to save Blu-ray, which will be dead in just 12 months time, according to ZDNet's Robin Harris, who seems to think the whole of Sony and the Blu-ray Disc Association are smoking crack (yeah, nice move Robin).
He believes that the average consumer will be just as happy with standard DVDs being upscaled to a high definition TV, rather than investing in a disc technology which in five years will have been completely replaced by digital downloads.
I don't happen to agree that Blu-ray faces a quick and tragic death.
Harris isn't enamoured with market research companies either, which means he'd consider the outlook from Futuresource -- that Blu-ray hardware sales will triple in Europe next year -- null and void.
Blu-ray's future isn't guaranteed, but then that's true of a lot of things at present. Many non-essential commodities will suffer over the coming year, which is more to do with the economy than how worthy they are as products.
Having said that, Blu-ray is still an emerging format, and it wouldn't be surprising if sales suffered more than that of standard DVDs. Still, 4% of the US disc market isn't terrible. Perhaps when we eventually get out of the doldrums, towards the end of next year, the format will pick up more strongly.
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