A store Manager at a Sydney JB Hi Fi Store where consumers were lining up 10 deep at the counter with discounted movies and games said “Blu ray and games are in big demand and it has been like this righ through the holiday periord”.

Sales of Blu-ray movies were up 75% year-to-year at the start of December, according to Nash Information Services, and are expected to nearly double for the full year. Blu-ray is on track to be a $2 billion business this year, while the DVD business—down 13% through the first three quarters of the year—is expected to shrink to $8 billion.

According to movie industry executives a combination of the weak economy, online piracy and low-cost rental and streaming services such as that being offered by Telstra, has driven continued declines in DVD sales this year, but strong growth in Blu-ray—premium-priced discs that offer a higher-quality home viewing experience—suggests consumers still have an appetite for physical home-movie products.

“Blu-ray is not going to live up to its older brother—the DVD—but if people don’t give up on physical products prematurely, it still has the potential to have a decent run,” said Russ Crupnick, entertainment analyst with NPD Group, a market-research firm. “There’s a much better selection on Blu-ray than on video-streaming services, and people are far more comfortable with the format, so I think the industry is in danger of moving faster than consumers want to on these new online platforms.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that the NPD Group has  said that 13% of  households had a Blu-ray player at the beginning of the year, and that number could rise to 20% early next year, driven by a proliferation of Blu-ray players available for under $150.

“Blu-ray is on the brink of becoming really mainstream,” said Bruce Nash, head of Nash Information Services, who expects it to grow into about one-third of the home video market. “If you look back five years, people would buy DVDs on their way home on a Friday in order to watch a film—maybe only once. With Blu-ray, people are a lot more selective. They’ll watch those one-time movies on-demand through their cable provider or they’ll wait to rent it through Netflix, but big movies like ‘Inception,’ ‘Avatar’ and ‘Toy Story 3’ can be successful on Blu-ray.”

On Thursday, Amazon.com was selling the three-disc extended collector’s edition of “Avatar” on Blu-ray for $24.99, while the DVD version was priced at $15.49.
Studios are bolstering their Blu-ray offerings by selling titles in value packs that also include a DVD version of the film and a digital file that can be transferred to a laptop or mobile device.

Source: Smarthouse