Good news coming from the Blu-ray camp, sales of Blu-ray disks are up 91%.  If that wasn’t good enough news, standalone player sales are up 25%, bringing the total number of blu-ray playing devices in the US (Including the PS3) to almost 11 million.  The sad thing is that half of that number is PS3 consoles instead of a bunch of standalone players which are getting cheaper all the time. 

By itself, that number sounds significant until you realize that there are 260 million DVD players floating around not counting the ones built into computers and I doubt even counting the ones in game consoles.  Eventually Blu-ray will likely catch up but not anytime soon at the rate they are going.

I have always stated that the problem with Blu-ray is price and lack of advertising and I still stick to that.  As long as Blu-ray movies are 3 times what you can buy a DVD for and players are above $75, they will fail to see big numbers.  Also, there needs to be more of a push to show consumers why Blu-ray is so much better.  The only advertising for blu-ray I have seen is in a movie theater.  If the companies pushing Blu-ray address these two issues, they will soon see a big move in the right direction, otherwise DVD will be hanging around for a long time.  [via Electronic House]