Big Picture Big Sound

According to the facts and figures shared by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) at a private meeting with the Big Picture Big Sound staff at the Consumer Electronics Show, the format continues to enjoy remarkable growth, even amid the extended economic downturn. What's more, the 3D segment of the home entertainment realm has surprised many skeptics with its robust sales. We furiously jotted down the sundry stats, which were compiled by respected industry research sources.

Among the highlights:

• Blu-ray Installed Base: Blu-ray content unit sales increased by 75% in 2010 over 2009 sales (content unit sales), while the number of Blu-ray-capable households (including the Sony PlayStation 3 gaming console) grew by 57%, to 25.4 million. Again, that's the number of households, not the number of players, as some homes--like mine--contain more than one player. That's roughly 20% of U.S. households ready to watch HD discs. The number of set-top-type players also finally surpassed the number of PS3s in homes last year.

 

• Video Content Distribution: Tallying both physical and electronic sell-through and rental, packaged media accounted for 88% of consumer content consumption, down from 90% last year, but neither is this the steep drop-off foretold but the doom-saying digerati. Sub-text: Plenty of people (me included) still like physical media.  Moreover, Blu-ray Disc was the fastest growing segment of all distribution, up 64.2% over 2009. BD rental revenue was also up 105.5% over the same period.

 

• 3D: A whopping 1.8 million 3D TVs were sold in 2010, which was really only the last nine months of the year when you look at actual consumer availability. Although, to be fair, lots of folks are buying into these newfangled TVs with 3D as one of a long list of features, not necessarily as the main reason for purchasing. Comparing the first nine months of 3D TV sales to the first full year of HDTV sales, 3D adoption has outpaced HDTV by four-to-one. 3D BD players now account for more than 20% of the Blu-ray set-top players currently in households, not counting the PS3. (Including PS3, which is firmware upgradable to be 3D-capable, the percentage of 3D capable players in the installed base jumps to over 60%.) FutureSource projects that by 2015, 3D TVs will be in more than 60% of U.S. households, and 3D Blu-ray players will be in more than 75% of U.S. households.

 

• About 40 BD 3D titles were released in 2010, including about a dozen hardware/software "bundles," some being manufacturer-exclusive. Seventy more theatrical titles are due on Blu-ray 3D in 2011.

• Looking Ahead: Recordable Blu-ray might just be the next frontier, offering a portable, safe, convenient way to not only protect the collected high-def home movies languishing on consumer's fragile hard drives, but to share them in the living room as well. Recordable Blu-ray is still a computer thing, not expected to dethrone the HD DVR in the home theater anytime soon, but the BDA is doing its part by keeping it simple, versus the plethora of recordable DVD formats: Just write-once BD-R and re-writable BD-RE.