Blockbuster: DVD to Blu-ray shift slower than VHS to DVD

Film rental firm Blockbuster has said that consumers will be slow at swapping their DVD libraries over to Blu-ray.

According to a report by Home Media magazine, Thomas Casey, CFO of Blockbuster said at a recent investor conference in New York that he doesn’t think Blu-ray’s replacement of DVD is “going to be nearly like DVD replacing VHS”.

Although he didn’t give any timeframe for consumer adoption of the HD format, he hinted that the wholesale and retail prices of Blu-ray films could be one of the problems slowing consumer uptake.

He also claimed that Blu-ray still has a market penetration of less than 5 per cent, but couldn’t escape the obvious by stating that sales of Blu-ray “will get better”.

The Blu-ray Disc Association recently predicted that Christmas 2008 will be a truly festive season for the HD format. Market watcher Futuresource has also predicted that 12m Blu-ray Discs will have been purchased in Europe this year and that sales will be at 250m units a year by 2012.