Blu-ray to be mainstream next year

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by kefrank

I appreciate your semantic analysis, but the NPD study that the article references isn't about whether the term mainstream can be applied generally to Blu-ray as a technology. It's about whether or not Blu-ray usage has "penetrated the mainstream" consumer market. The mere availability of Blu-ray to consumers, while indirectly related, is still a separate thing.

There is no "mainstream" market (it'd be the homologous total of the market, impossible to measure), and if there was, they're counting the "mainstream" market as the less likely to convert members of the total market rather than being widely available to the total market. If a new technology can permeate in a way that all people are familiar with it but not for non-tech minded people who will never want it, is that not mainstream?

Think of it this way. A small arthouse movie gets picked up for distribution by Disney and gets a wide release. This movie can now be called mainstream regardless of how much money it actually makes, regardless of how it actually appeals to the market. It's the wide release that defines it, and frankly, Blu-ray is almost as wide as it can get.

It all just comes down to them using a term incorrectly to define market penetration. I guess it's somewhat forgivable with them explaining what they mean by it and the fact that there is no word I know of for what they're trying to describe, but it's unfortunate to see them using terms haphazardly like that.