14 DAY TRIAL // A study from the market intelligence firm Centris says that the number of United States households who own a Blu-ray players has more than doubled since the same period ion 2008 in no small part because of the sales numbers posted by the PlayStation 3 home gaming consoles from Sony, which includes a player.
The number of households which have a Blu-ray device has reached 17 percent and Home Media Magazine, who cites the Centris study, says that the number is higher than the percentage of American households that has access to the Netflix service, which hovers around 15%.
About 20 million homes have both a Blu-ray players and a DVD centered device with the numbers of people who use the PlayStation 3 to play Blu-ray content being 2 percent higher than those who use a stand alone device.
Despite the fact that many gamers questioned the addition of the Blu-ray to the PS3 when the console launched, mainly because it led to a higher initial retail price, the Centris report says that the Sony platform actually lead the creation of a Blu-ray market, with stand alone players only now catching up.
The report also says that the DVD is still the most important format when it comes to video rental but Blu-ray disks are gaining ground among more active consumers, who are younger and tend to rent higher amounts of content.
The research report adds that, “Although more Blu-ray households rented or purchase DVDs than they did Blu-ray discs, BD households actually rented or purchased more Blu-ray titles and DVD on average”.
Sony recently introduced a new firmware update for the PlayStation 3 which allows the device to play three dimensional content from the Blu-ray, something which many stand alone players are unable to do.
The bigger disk format also allows the PS3 to get exclusive titles that come packed with more high quality cutscenes and audio than titles launched in rival consoles.