Daily Blog – Brian Florian – May 28th, 2008: BLU-SOMETHING-OR-OTHER

I was at a certain video rental store the other day and overheard a gentleman ask the clerk, “Will these Blu-ray things play in my DVD player?”

Before you accuse that innocent bystander of being a neophyte, it gets better:  the clerk actually said, with abject uncertainty, “Um . . . I don’t think so…”

Sad, really.

Now we could point a finger at the chain store head office for not making sure their employees are versed in what should be the basics of their trade, but the bottom line is that, by and large, many consumers really still have no idea what Blu-ray is.

Makes you wonder what all the format-fighting was really about.

Come on Sony: are you just going to sit there and watch your “winning” format spin its wheels into oblivion, or are you going to get off your duff and actually nurture the thing?  If there is one thing the past 20 years have taught us, its that Hi-Def-anything doesn’t exactly sell itself.

History has also taught us something about Sony-backed formats . . . but here’s hoping.