SilverWook said:

Blu Ray is being sold in stores that never carried Laserdiscs. There was a time in the late 80's/early 90's I had to plan a trip to Los Angeles just to buy them.

The players broke the magic $100 barrier last Christmas. The cheapest low end LD player would have set you back four hundred at the very least.

And there's a Blu Ray bargain bin at my local supermarket. I bought The Dark Crystal for ten bucks! I paid nearly a hundred bucks for the Collector's Edition LD back in the day.

How sweet it is now. ;)

Harmy said:

And it would also be good to point out that unlike other formats such as Betamax or CED, the LD format lived happily alongside VHS for over 20yrs. I wouldn't call that a failure.

You both got a point there. But these are different times. Most people bought a DVD player when it came out. I can buy one for $40 or less. And I clearly remember the marketing guys talking about the supreme quality that DVD put on the screen. It's an optical marvel. And that is exactly why it sold so well. Blu-ray is a very worthy opponent and while BD will sell well it will never reach what DVD sold. The life cycle of between DVD and BD is much shorter than it was between VHS and DVD. And we are talking about this very big issue of giving up your collection (VHS) in favor of DVD because it was not compatible. If BD players hadn't been able to read DVDs would you really think that the consumer would readily have swallowed the bait.

BD sells well and will do so in the future but it is not that much of an invention. So calling it a failure is very harsh. It has a lot of potential but not as much as the DVD had back in the day.