Sony still awaits Blu-ray success

London : Sales of Sony's premium product have disappointed so far, accounting for just 12 per cent of DVD player sales in Europe.

The Blu-ray player offers pictures with up to six times more detail than standard DVDs, and should be the ideal way to view films on the high-definition TVs now reckoned to be in nearly 50 per cent of households. But although big-name releases such as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Star Trek XI had been expected to boost sales of Blu-ray players and discs during the festive season, the format has not been the hit that many expected.

Two years ago, Sony was brimming with confidence: in April 2007, it produced an internal presentation of sales projections which reckoned that by the end of 2009, 27 million players would be in use, and 85 million discs sold.

Blu-ray player sales have grown rapidly this year, but they still make up less than 12 per cent of DVD player sales in western Europe, according to data released recently by the analysis company GfK Group.

"Sales have been disappointing for the industry," said Richard Cooper, senior video analyst at the media analysis company Screen Digest. "They were expecting that it would be adopted more quickly. But you wouldn't choose to launch a premium upgrade product in the middle of a recession."

Blu-ray is a high-end product; it is difficult to persuade people to upgrade to more expensive, premium products when they are surrounded with "good enough" cheaper ones. DVD was able to supplant VHS video because it offered direct access to any point on the disc, was more robust than tape, and had extras such as deleted scenes, commentaries and multiple languages. Even so, it took just over 10 years for DVD to completely kill off VHS sales.

Format war

Another problem was that like VHS, which outlasted Betamax, Blu-ray began in a format war with Toshiba's HD DVD format. Although HD DVD bowed out of competition in early 2008, it had left people wary of committing to the new format.

The way seemed to be open. The difference is, instead of just one challenger, Blu-ray now faces many challenges in the fight for attention, including HD tele-vision and, particularly, the internet, where the iPlayer and YouTube — which both also offer high-definition versions — can be piped into TV sets via games consoles including the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3. And there are also legal and illegal downloads in growing numbers, plus Sky and Virgin offering what are effectively video-on-demand services in standard and high definition.

In 2005 Bill Gates commented that Blu-ray would be "the last physical format there will ever be" because in the future, "everything's going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk".

And now the film industry is moving to embrace content delivered over the internet. Warner Brothers has launched a Europe-wide video on demand service that sees titles available to cable customers in some countries the same day they are released on DVD.

Apple, meanwhile, is reportedly sounding out leading US broadcasters with a view to launching subscription TV through its online store iTunes. And in the UK, media companies offering video on demand, such as BT and Virgin, continue to expand their services.

But it is too early to read the last rites of Blu-ray. "There's a huge number of channels on TV, and it's easier to go to video-on-demand than it was before. Yet people still buy content in a package," said Cooper. Blu-ray can offer the complete package — discs, extras and, with newer machines, links to online extras, he explained.

Mike O'Mahoney, general sales manager at the consumer electronics company Pioneer, admits that take-up has been "fairly slow" but says that this year sales have been up 150-fold on 2008, helped by falling prices of players and discs.

One challenge has been that people can buy an "upscaling" DVD player — which will make an ordinary DVD played on a high-definition TV appear to fill the screen. Such upscaling players typically cost no more than 100, and the apparent improvement in quality over a normal DVD player (though using the same disc) is enough for many viewers.

Other problems

But there are other problems. Ben Rose, an internet analyst, said: "The main issue is content. Most of the movie archive doesn't have an HD digital transfer and therefore can't be released on Blu-ray. Blockbusters like those from George Lucas or Spielberg are going to capture the public on the new format and they just aren't here yet."

Even among illegal downloaders, the preference is still for standard quality over HD, Rose notes, pointing to statistics from one of the largest "torrent" sites which shows that there were 12,500 "standard" downloads of the latest Doctor Who episode, The Waters of Mars, against 2,500 of the HD version. The same applies for Top Gear, also popular with downloaders, where only 1 in 3 went for the HD version.

GfK adds that the sales are underestimated because every PS3 sold is also a Blu-ray player. So far, 2.5 million have been sold in the UK. It may be that Blu-ray is simply sidling into peoples' homes but whether it will be the success that was dreamed of in 2007 is quite another matter.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd