See that last character in the title? That’s a period. “Polka Dot”, as my mother would say.

 

In his October 28, 2008 article titled “Blu-ray is dead – heckuva job, Sony!“, Robin Harris (no, not the late, great comedian) declares that “12 months from now Blu-ray will be a videophile niche, not a mass market product.” Hmm… well, today is January 6, 2014 and Blu-ray is “still going”. Fairly strong, in fact.

 

No, I’m not a videophile and I can EASILY tell the difference between a DVD and a Blu-ray with my naked eye even on under 20-inch displays. The difference is anything but marginal, and it only gets worse to disgusting on larger displays (meaning anything 32-inches and above). The DVD for The Matrix (one of my 3 favorite movies of all time) looks absolutely horrendous on my low-budget 40-inch Insignia TV. Which I bought in 2010. And it’s not because the TV is “old”. Any Blu-ray in the same player on the same TV shows pristine and clear. DVD, on the other hand? If I could afford it I would replace ALL my DVDs with Blu-rays, TODAY. Seriously. And I wasn’t a Blu-ray fan, either. In fact, the switch was a distinct pain-in-the-arse because at the time my Xbox didn’t and wouldn’t ever play Blu-rays… which meant that I had to buy yet ANOTHER player.

 

Anyway, my point is that this guy clearly got it wrong; very wrong. Even if now there’s talk of another standard coming out in 2015 that’s supposed to push the typical storage on a single disc to 300 GB, Blu-ray has served its purpose and then some. It did all this a full 4 years or so after the predicted demise. ZDNet published this crap for the simple purpose of getting clicks, not because it was based on solid research or fact. The number quoted in this article was 4% market share of physical media sales. That is a pretty dismal number… but don’t forget that back then it was still competing with the death throws if HD-DVD and the then reigning champion, DVD. However, if I remember correctly, DVD had a similarly slow uptake versus VHS. And we all know how long VHS stayed around after its supposed “death”.

 

Quick Poll: It’s 2014, yet how many VHS tapes are still in your house? EXACTLY.

 

You can find the full article (or, complete miss as I like to call it) here: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/blu-ray-is-dead-heckuva-job-sony/365.

 

And I’m also calling BS on ZDNet.com for keeping this dated and completely incorrect article around and in the “Facebook Activity” list for The mobile web is dead, long live the app, which is the article I really went there to read. You can see this in the attached screenshot.