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Beta News’s Jacqueline Emigh has analyzed the latest weekly Nielson VideoScan figures, and determined that it may take Blu-ray as many as nine years to take 50 percent of DVD’s market share. Pointing to Home Media Magazine research, she says that 8.8 million Blu-ray Discs have been sold in 2008, which is a 57 percent increase in sales over 2007 (5.6 million), with the holiday buying season still ahead. It is worth noting that the format will not take a 50 percent market share in 2008, as was predicted by Sony’s Ryoji Chubachi. Blu-ray Disc player pricing is tracking well to those of DVD in its third year (players were selling for around $300 during the 1999 holiday season, the DVD format’s third such season; Blu-ray players have already dropped below $250 for their third holiday season), and it was estimated that almost 5.5 million stand-alone DVD players were sold by January 2000 (before the DVD-based PlayStation®2 spurred a big rise in consumer adoption); Sony has projected that as many as 7 million stand-alone Blu-ray Disc players will be in the market by March 2009. Mark Fritz from eMediaLive wonders if AACS is killing the Blu-ray Disc industry, as the mandatory copy protection algorithm requires an up-front licensing fee of almost $3,000, according to an industry source, in addition to a $1,300 per-title, and additional per-disc fees beyond that. Mark investigates whether these prohibitive costs are making it impossible for independent film producers to release on Blu-ray. Matthew Garrahan from the Financial Times quotes Buy.com’s Vice President of Marketing as saying “HD DVD sales are still very strong,” even though the format has been abandoned by its backers, including Toshiba, Universal, and Paramount. The quote stems from discs selling for as little as $10 and players selling for less than $60, as Matthew reports. Halcro and Qsonix have released a list of the equipment they will be demonstrating at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest being held from October 10 through the 12. The two-channel system will include tri-amped Acoustic Zen loudspeakers with six Halcro dm88 amplifiers, with source material provided by a Qsonix digital music management system. Read more home theatre industry news from September 30.
Tags:
- equipment -
- Blu-ray -
- AACS -
- Halcro -
- Qsonix -
- news -
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