Mixed messages on Blu-ray outlook

Blu-ray player prices are falling. The war with HD DVD is over. Disc creators are packing on the features and releasing tons of highly-anticipated movies on the BD format. The future's looking bright, no?

Not so fast: Now even the mainstream media is hopping on the Blu-ray failwagon, saying that not only has Blu-ray still not taken off, it may never become an unqualified success.

KCBS reports that prices are still the big hurdle: Even at $199 for some ultra-low-end BD players, the drives are still too expensive when put up against $50 DVD players, and that's particularly problematic in a recession environment.

The other big issue: High-def online downloads are growing immensely in popularity, so now Blu-ray has to fight not just against DVD but against reasonably high-quality downloads that require no extra hardware to view. (It doesn't help that high-end electronics buyers are the most likely to be interested in both BD and downloaded content, further segmented a small piece of the market.) Online is also clearly the bandwagon that major market influencer Apple wants you to hop on, with Steve Jobs now famously calling Blu-ray "a bag of hurt" that he wants no part of as a business.

But that's just one side of the coin: On the other hand, at least one company says it's seeing pretty brisk uptake in Blu-ray technology. Netflix has announced that it is expecting half a million of its 8.7 million subscribers to pay $1 extra a month in order to rent Blu-ray discs from the online service. That's about six percent of its membership (which is in line with overall Blu-ray market share figures for retail movie sales), but means an extra $6 million of revenue a year for the company, just to start.

How about you? I know I ask this a lot, but have you bought into Blu-ray or still waiting it out? If you're not a BD user, why not? And have you already jumped onto online downloads?