…now that I have a blu-ray disc player, I’ve been paying more attention to assorted forum threads talking about the format.

There’s lots of folks out there who are convinced that both HD formats are doomed and that, instead of any disc format succeeding in the marketplace, we’re going to all be switching to digital downloads in the next few years… and this may be true.  I’m no oracle.

But, what gets to me is that people keep comparing blu-ray to laserdisc, with the implication that laserdisc was a failure and that blu-ray will be following in its footsteps.

This bewilders me.

Laserdisc had, well, more than a few shortcomings.  The discs were prone to self-destructing, the players were expensive, the discs were difficult to master and costly to produce, and you had to flip the disc over or put a new disc in every hour.

Even so, and even with less than 5% market penetration, and in a time when most people thought that VHS on their 19″ TVs looked JUST FINE and that letterboxing was taking away picture, it still managed to last for 20 years and get 10,000+ titles released – from high-profile blockbuster movies to the most obscure foreign and indie titles you could think of.

I’m HOPING that blu-ray “fails” even half as well as laserdisc “failed”.