At what point will Blu-ray Disc be considered a mass-market success?

[Anthony P]

agree completely. and i think the average consumer will drive blu-ray this way if it does go mainstream. the average consumer just doesn't really care about high quality picture and sound. we well could end up with crappy bd releases at a cheap price to appease the average consumer.

I doubt it. It misses the reality, for example even though the average consumer had a small 4:3 TV and hated black bars, DVD did not go full screen but went wide screen. If we assume your reasoning is right then the opposite would have happened.

driving is done by the stronger forces, nuts like us are loud, and we will ***** and we will make decisions based on our likes and dislikes on the other hand a J6P won't say and won't care and in the end he buys 10 movies in his life time and it is based on the title (most likely a kids film) and not on any other factor (yes if it is too expensive he might wait a bit).

The other issue with your reasoning is that in reality asking for lossless or better PQ does not really add to the cost. Yes an old film that needs a lot of restoration can be done cheaply or expensively and that would affect PQ, but then again who is most likely to rebuy for the 10th time the same movie? and why? on a new release it should not be more expensive to put the bit meter higher, actually it could even be cheaper (less time tweaking by the tech)