Blu-ray vs. DVD in Christmas Epic

BLU-ray is set to receive a big push this Christmas after the UK's biggest film distributors unveiled a £1million TV advertising campaign to help promote the High Definition format.

The push comes as Blu-ray producers hope to capitalise on sales of HDTV sets and a drop in the number of DVDs sold this year.

Disc sales Dip

During the first half of the year DVD sales fell by nearly 10%.

Blu-ray sales on the other hand saw an increase of over 200% compared to twelve months ago.

Although this may sound like phenomenal growth in reality, DVD retains control of the market with 33 sales for every Blu-ray disc sold.

The latest figures show that 99.6 million DVDs were sold in the first six months of this year and only 3.1 million Blu-ray discs sold in the same period, indicating that despite killing off HD-DVD, Blu-ray still faces a long road ahead to remove the stranglehold of DVD, hence the Christmas campaign.

Lavinia Carey, Director General, British Video Association, commented: "11 million British households now own a High Definition television, yet many of them are failing to make the most of their technology. The best way to enjoy films at home is in High Definition and on Blu-ray discs and our goal is to boost understanding of the benefits of Blu-ray in the run up to Christmas."

Blu-ray's Growth

The popularity of hardware such as PS3s - which have an inbuilt Blu-ray player - has helped the recent fortunes of Blu-ray somewhat but the costs involved in buying dedicated Blu-ray hardware and indeed the discs themselves has kept many people from upgrading.

Helen Davis Jayaleth, Head of Video at Screen Digest, argues that attempts by Blu-ray to gain market share have been hampered by a number factors.

She commented that: "Clearly the start of a global recession was not the ideal time to launch an upgrade to what many consumers consider to be a perfectly serviceable home entertainment system."

Indeed, those who do own Blu-ray players are often as likely to rent their films from online DVD rental websites as buy them outright.

Blockbuster and Lovefilm both stock extensive ranges of Blu-ray titles alongside standard DVDs,without charging any extra costs while all of the DVDs from WhyBuyGames [Ed: closed] are Blu-ray.

Spreading the Blu-ray love

Rewritable Blu-ray technology will help to increase the popularity of the format, as the much larger capacity of the discs themselves - 50 GB - means that Blu-ray can become multi-functional, in a similar fashion to DVD, to backup PC data for example.

It is also likely to increase piracy of Blu-ray movies and whilst doing nothing for sales of official Blu-ray titles, may help bring the format enter an increased number of living rooms.

DVD sales rose after the price of the technology dropped and movie lovers were able to junk their VHS systems in favour of the vastly superior, quicker to use and more compact format, whether this campaign can convince the general populace that Blu-ray offers as much potential improvement in their viewing experience for yet more cash outlay remains to be seen.

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