Surprise, surprise, more people are buying Blu-ray players this year over last year. I guess that’s to be expected. In all, retailers have ordered 13 percent more Blu-ray players this year. That’s 3.3 million for those keeping track. So this brings the total amount of Blu-ray players – including PS3s – in American households to a whopping 11.7 million and in nearly 25% of homes that own an HDTV when considering that 45 million US homes have high-def sets. Yeah, that’s cool. But I still don’t want a Blu-ray player.
There was a time when I was totally in the HD DVD camp. I was yelling its virtues from atop a mountain. It was going to revolutionize home-based HD viewing. But then I got fed up with the whole HD DVD vs Blu-ray thing. Why in the world would I invest money into equipment and discs that might be obsolete one day. The day I came to that conclusion was the day physical media died for me.
Sure, some folks will still buy Blu-ray players and I won’t try to stop them. It’s the only way to get the very best HD audio and video at home. Hell, most of the time it can be a better picture than from your local cinema. But I’m totally content with the HD picture that streaming media services like Netflix and Vudu offer. The point and click convenience is so much more satisfying that a higher quality picture to me.
So while Mom and Pops will still buy Blu-ray players from slightly pushy Best Buy salesmen, the rest of us will probably be just fine without a Blu-ray player at this point. Maybe, just maybe, if the players and titles drop in price even more, I’ll pick one up just because. Maybe.