Paul Sweeting, Editor of ContentAgenda, wrote recently that Toshiba and Kaleidescape are bringing to market players that up-vert standard DVD video to 1080p HiDef video.
"We have some customers who want Blu-ray just because it's the latest and greatest thing," Kaleidescape CEO Michael Malcolm told Media Wonk. "But believed all along that Blu-ray would not be a successful product because the difference is just not compelling enough compared to DVD. Some early adopters will buy it, but I never believed it would make the leap to the enthusiast or early mainstream market."
At the same time, the adoption curve in Western Europefor Blu-ray is faster than that for traditional DVD players, this according to a Futuresource study reported on UK's Pocket-lint:
"2008 represents year three for BD and here at Futuresource Consulting, we anticipate more than 10 million players, including PS3, in use by the end of this year. Looking back to DVD’s early years, we see that closer to 1.5 million DVD players were installed by the end of year three."
If Futuresource's numbers are correct, Sony's PS3 game console has apparently made a big difference in Blu-ray adoption rates.
Not surprisingly, more developers (but no content companies) have been added to the list of Blu-ray BD+ authorized companies. The newbies include Cheertek Inc., Fujitsu Ten Limited, Starlight Video Limited, Sunplus Technology, TCL Technoly Electronics Co., Ltd., and Victor Company of Japan, Ltd.
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