The End of Blu-ray? - [technology]
05:43 AM EST - Mar,04 2019 - post a comment Catastrophic thinking, perhaps, but Samsung's recent decision to discontinue its Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray players has evidently convinced some enthusiasts the format is finished and on its last legs. ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols, for one, bluntly stated this week "Blu-ray is dead," justifying that thought by relaying Samsung's market dominance.
The numbers speak for themselves. According to the Digital Entertainment Group 2018 home entertainment report, we spent more than ever on video last year, $23.3 billion, up 11.5 percent from 2017. Of that, subscription streaming -- led by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu -- took the lion's share, with a 30 percent year-over-year rise to $12.9 billion. We also bought and rented another $4.55 billion worth of online movies and TV shows. Blu-ray? Even with the growing popularity of 4K Blu-ray, movie, and TV show sales only came to $4.03 billion. That's a 14.6-percent drop from 2017.
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