Paramount Is Back In; Blu-ray Wins Or Woes?

The news of the week was that Paramount returned to Blu. While I'm really looking forward to There Will Be Blood and Cloverfield in Blu, I'm hopeful that an announcement of an HD re-release of Zodiac on the format is around the corner. I'm also crossing fingers that the Indiana Jones films will find their way to Blu before year-end to coincide with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on standard def home video.

And the Blu news keeps coming, but frankly, some of the pundits are all over the place.  HDTVUK reports Bernstein Research analyst Michael Nathanson saying, "quarter of U.S. homes to have Blu-ray players by 2011," and yet almost in the same breath questions consumers' willingness to upgrade their catalog software titles. I recall this argument back in 1997 when most everyone was sure that DVD would never eat into the VHS market share.  After all, DVD was the successor to laserdisc and at that time considered a niche format. Who would want Caddyshack on DVD with versions already existing on VHS and laserdisc? Hookay...

In the same week, HDTVUK asks, "Is Blu-ray in trouble or is it still just very early days?" and references an ABI research report that states, "the Blu-ray player market is not all that encouraging" and relies on the PS3, which is a "cause for concern." While I agree with that hardware observation and can now only recommend the Panasonic BD-30 and upcoming BD-50 standalone players because of their build, firmware, software compatibility, and customer support, I would have added "currently" to that statement. Rather than a cause for concern, it is a huge opportunity for growth given the recent Blu-ray software sales upswing. Now that the HD disc format war is over, hardware manufacturers are hard at work and profile 2.0 players will be on store shelves well before the 2008 holiday season. Methinks this will be a Blu, rather than white, Christmas.