In spite of all this excellent news, the gamble here is that consumers will begin to take notice and be interested in moving on up. When I say consumers, I don't mean those of us who frequent [too much
] this forum, but the consumer who *is* interested in that $199 or $299 player and the $14.99 - $19.99 movie.
How does Sony convince that consumer to move to blu?
There's a lot of apathy out there if we're to believe all the recent polls. Overcoming that will be no easy task. In fact, I think it'll be the hardest fight and will have to be won in far less time than this silly war was.
Sony, the studios, and Toshiba squandered the last two years in a pissing content that ultimately hurt everyone. They now have a limited window to fix things.
Can they do it? How do they do it?
Some not well-thought-out ideas --
-- campaign to educate that upconvert players are NOT HD and never will be, regardless of what TV they are connected to.
-- release BD versions of movies 1-2 months before SD-DVD version
-- lower the price of BD to a more reasonable $19.99 (WTF FOX???). or even cap them at $24.99. people will pay a little more if they see quality.
-- tie in advertising with HDTV. it doesn't seem to be hard to convince a person to purchase an HDTV. Go the extra mile and help them understand that upconvert players will not provide HD content; only Blu will.
-- ensure they know their DVD collection will play on their new Blu player
-- distribute firmware update CDs or have a program for brick-n-mortar stores to provide update CDs to customers free of charge (or at maybe 0.99).