Important milestone reached for high definition disc recorders; market is outpacing DVD’s growth
Stats from Gfk Retail and Technology Japan have revealed that in the first week of November Blu-ray disc recording hardware outsold DVD recorders for the first time.
In the same period last year Blu-ray disc recorders accounted for just ten per cent of the market, but falling prices in recent months have seen the format finally begin to establish itself in the marketplace.
Gfk also points out that Blu-ray disc recorders are replacing their DVD equivalents in Japanese homes 1.5 times faster than DVD replaced VHS in the ‘90s. It’s taken Blu-ray 53 weeks to grab the market share sales majority – DVD took 82 weeks to achieve the same.
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Comments
Lets face it..
... it was going to happen sooner or later. With prices on Blu-ray players/recorders coming down in price, and near enough everybody already owning a DVD player/recorder it was inevitable. Lets see if that success can come to Europe.
Re: Lets face it..
I don't think you can look at the two upgrades and compare them really. VHS-DVD was going from tape to disc, which was something of an unknown quantity. DVD-BR is simply going from disc to a larger format disc, people are already familiar with the format, hence they are more willing/eager to upgrade. A better comparison would have been people upgrading from SP-VHS to LP/EP-VHS as the similarities are more relevant.
You also of course have the simple matter, that there weren't many people with VHS recorders in their PC when DVD was introduced. In fact, there probably wasn't that many people with PC's when DVD was introduced at all. Nowadays, almost everyone has a DVD recorder, therefore you have a larger user base that is upgrading. So it's simple logic that the upgrade rate would be far higher.
I guess they are just scratching for positive figures to make BR more appealing. Making new BR movies the same price as DVD's would make them appealing. You can still find £7 DVD's being sold for £25+ on BR... 4 times the quality? I don't think so! 4 times the cost to produce? Not a chance!
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