DVD players are finally losing market share

Blu-ray and online content are starting to take hold.

It seems that DVD players are finally starting to go the way of VHS, but it's still going to be a long while yet before you need to begin worrying about your movie library.

According to research outfit In-Stat, shipments of Blu-ray devices are starting to account for a significant chunk of the disc player and recorder market, but it's going to be four years or more until they start to overtake those of DVD players, which currently stand at about 90 million units a year.

Despite the lower volume, because Blu-ray players are still more expensive than DVD players, Blu-ray revenues are currently around four times larger than those of DVD players. However the price of Blu-ray players has been dropping fast and, while Japan is still the main market for both DVD and Blu-ray players, in the US Blu-ray units are now selling below cost on average.

"In North America, significant price drops of Blu-ray players drove unit shipments to triple in 2009," said Michelle Abraham, one of In-Stat's analysts.

"The cost differential between standard definition DVD and Blu-ray is becoming much smaller and new features such as IP/network connectivity are becoming increasingly important. Blu-ray is finally starting to make significant advances market."

Although the recession has meant we're apparently spending more time at home, it seems that we aren't upgrading our media players as worldwide DVD and Blu-ray player and recorder unit shipments declined to 137 million units in 2008. However the report expects 2009 to have been a better year and 2010 to start seeing Blu-ray shipments really ramp up.

Furthermore it seems that, after dropping a wodge of cash on an HD telly, it's not just Blu-ray we're after, but any high definition content as most of the popular Blu-ray players are those with networking capabilities as well. Similarly units containing hard drives are also becoming increasingly popular as we collectively move away from traditional programming to more video-on-demand, streaming and similar services.