When we brought the news last week about Blu-ray player sales being down 40%, we thought, well, disc sales might still be up. People are still buying more PlayStation 3’s, which don’t count as a Blu-ray player sale. But when we see numbers like these, an over 7% drop in Blu-ray disc sales, you have to question what’s going on.

As far as I know, the week before wasn’t anything special. No reason for the sales being higher that week. So at this point, with HD-DVD out of the race, your numbers shouldn’t be going down. They should be up.

I still stand by my point, Blu-ray has a long way to go. The benefit is too low for the average consumer to pay a premium for it. I think the only way for Blu-ray to take over, is waiting for the prices to drop to DVD level. At that point it would be like choosing between an old and a new model with the same price. If you are smart enough, you will take the new model.

It will be interesting to see how it develops. If it will take off. Because video-on-demand is also ready to become the number one movie provider.

A study by Oliver Wyman shows how the industry can make us, the consumers, even poorer. The average consumer said to be willing to spend $7 to $9 for a high-definition VOD (video-on-demand) movie. While the current price for a downloaded standard-definition movie is about $4.

The survey also showed the problems with the current on-demand format. Digital rights management makes it hard for consumers to transfer movies between different systems and makes the downloads very limited. If people would really own the movie, they would be willing to pay $5 more for a download. This means owning a digital copy in an ‘online storage locker’ and being able to transfer the movie between different devices.