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PC World: Sales of Blu-ray players in 2008 aren’t exactly stellar, despite lower prices and the lack of competition from the recently departed HD-DVD format.

But are things looking up for Blu-ray? Recent reports indicate that 2009 may bring better times for Sony’s high-def video format.

According to a report from Futuresource, sales of Blu-ray discs and players in Europe are up significantly this holiday season, and the upswing is expected to continue into the new year.

The report optimistically predicts that European sales of Blu-ray players will more than triple in 2009, reaching 2.5 million units-and that excludes sales of Playstation 3 consoles, which double as Blu-ray players.

Sales of Blu-ray discs are picking up, too. Shoppers worldwide are snapping up the Blu-ray version of Christopher Nolan’s Batman sequel The Dark Knight in huge numbers: More than 1 million copies have sold in the U.S. alone, and 1.7 million globally.

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PCMag.com: A report from the NPD Group shows a large disparity between sales of the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. One obvious reason is the difference in price, but Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter suggests that the difference is also due to the sagging sales of HDTVs.

“We believe that PS3 sales are being impacted by lower demand for HD televisions as a result of the recession,” Pachter said via GamesIndustry.biz.

However, it’s not all bad news for Sony. Pachter also said he expects sales to pick up throughout the first half of 2009, due to increased interest in PS3 exclusives and the system’s Blu-ray player.

“We believe that several PS3 exclusives, notably LittleBigPlanet, along with focus on the Blu-ray will drive hardware sales over the next six months,” he said.

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Crave: Sony reports that Blu-ray’s interactive platform is catching on. Sony’s servers for BD-Live content are coming up on the one million hit mark, according to a report by Video Business, and Sony VP Rich Marty is quoted saying that “consumers are engaging with this game-changing interactivity and are defining BD Live as that killer application.”

That’s in pretty stark contrast to previous reports that industry insiders considered Blu-ray’s interactive features to be mostly a let down. If BD-Live truly is catching on, then we’ve underestimated the public’s desire for slowly loading movie trailers.

While the one million mark is surprising to us, we’d bet that the majority of those visits were made by PS3 owners–rather than more mainstream standalone players–for a few reasons.

First, only a fraction of standalone Blu-ray are Profile 2.0 compatible, which is necessary to access BD-Live features. Of those Profile 2.0 players, so far all of them require a wired Ethernet connection to connect to BD-Live features, while the PS3 can connect via Wi-Fi. Lastly, in our experience, even the best standalone Blu-ray players have handled online content clumsily compared to the PS3, which boasts superior processing power. For BD-Live to go mainstream it needs to work on all players, which means Blu-ray hardware makers have to improve the user experience.

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Home Cinema Choice: Two of Hollywood’s most influential film-makers have been eulogizing about Blu-ray.

Anarchic Kevin Smith and fantasy king Guillermo del Toro both give the new format the thumbs up, with the latter describing the format’s potential as ‘fantastic.’

Kevin Smith confesses that he’s been a convert ever since Paramount gave him a Panasonic 103in plasma and Blu-ray player as a gift.

Guillermo del Toro agrees, saying Blu-ray is a ‘fantastic format.’

Del Toro is a keen advocate of the kind of access the Blu-ray format can bring to movie fans. ‘I try to make my DVDs and Blu-rays an all-access educational glimpse into the filmmaking process. We try to keep it very candid and educational.’

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Electricpig: German engineering maestro Loewe was promoting its new chain of Gallery shops in the UK and we took the chance to talk to the company’s CEO, Frieder Löhrer, on his plans for the future.

Currently, all of Loewe’s line use LCD screens, so we asked him if there were plans to make use of OLED, as Sony has in its recent XEL-1 TV, but Löhrer was reticent, only stating that “we watch all the techniques that are on the market, almost on a daily basis. We believe that in 2-3 years, this technique could become part of the future.”

Löhrer was much more optimistic though when we quizzed him on the prospect of Blu-ray built into Loewe’s boxes. “I cannot say no,” he said. “Its a technique that we forsee not for the year 2008, but I would assume for early 2010.”

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HDTV UK: The Blu-ray Disc Association continues to tell us that the Blu-ray Disc format is doing well in Europe, despite the current economic situation.

Chairman of the BDA European Promotions Committee, Frank Simonis, said that there had been “strong and solid growth” in every national territory.

“What we have learned from this meeting is that market conditions vary country by country in Europe – our markets reflect the nature and character of each country – however Blu-ray is just as appealing to consumers in Scandinavia, as it is in France, UK and Italy,” he said.

Meanwhile, spokesman for Futuresource Consulting, Jim Bottoms, gave an upbeat presentation about the speed of Blu-ray adoption. Though he acknowledged that Europe lags the US by around six months, due in part to the delayed launch of the PS3 here, he said that the continued growth in the high definition TV sector would lead to a natural market for Blu-ray.

Bottoms: “By 2010, almost half the screens shipped in Europe will be 1080p.”

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Techradar: Tech-savvy movie pirates are looking to Blu-ray for the latest line in knock-off goods. Unfortunately, like most pirated material, the discs you get aren’t Blu-ray at all, but AVCHD copies.

The faux Blu-ray discs that are being created in China bypass the BD format in favour of good ol’ DVD. Essentially, the pirates illegally copy legitimate Bu-ray discs, downgrade the quality to 1080i, by way of the AVCHD codec, and record the results straight to DVD.

AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition) is the same codec used in hi-def video cameras. It compresses hi-def footage, so it can be squeezed on to the likes of an SD card without any spacing issues.

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THR.com: A new study shows bright prospects for such high-definition media as HDTV and Blu-ray Discs, based on respondents’ familiarity with and preference for the products.

The SmithGeiger survey of 1,600 HDTV owners in the U.S., U.K. and Japan was commissioned by the home entertainment trade organization Digital Entertainment Group.

Respondents were asked to assess their overall satisfaction with HDTV, related programming services and Blu-ray.

In a key finding respondents expressed a 10-to-1 preference for Blu-ray over downloading or streaming for their home entertainment. Of those, 70% said they valued the physical portability of film and TV content on disc.

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Electricpig: We’ve heard a lot about BD-Live, or Blu-ray Profile 2.0, and how it’s revolutionising bonus content on a movie disc, but a new app demonstrates that it’s not just about downloading interviews and featurettes onto your Blu-ray player – you can also interact with it using your mobile phone.

The app is called Video Bulletin Board, and allows users to upload photos and videos shot on their mobile to the BD-Live enabled players of their Blu-ray using friends.

Once a user has received a picture on their player, they can click to call the sender back straight away.

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Techradar: Blu-ray is facing its biggest challenge yet, and it’s all because of the economic downturn, says Disney. Speaking recently about the high-definition format, Lori MacPherson, GM of domestic home-entertainment, said: “The economy is the biggest challenge, because there are just so many pieces to the Blu-ray puzzle that consumers face”.

“You need the high-definition television set, you need the player, you need the cables, you need the software.” The comments were made at the HD3 conference this week, where a group of movie industry heads got together to discuss the future of the home entertainment industry.

MacPherson was also quizzed on DVD upscaling and whether this had anything to do with the slow sales of Blu-ray. “For me, it’s the difference between costume jewelry and a diamond,” she remarked. “Costume jewelry is nice, but I still want the diamond.”

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HDTV UK: Microsoft is to provide an update to Windows Vista that will allow Blu-ray discs to be recorded.

A first beta version of Service Pack 2 for Vista has been released to a small group of Technology Adoption Program customers for evaluation.

Though the ability to write data to Blu-ray discs will exist, Microsoft did not say whether a revised Windows Media Player would play Blu-ray movie discs.

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HD News: According to London-based analysts FutureSource, the predicted demise of the high definition DVD format Blu-ray has been exaggerated.

Two trends have emerged which place the success of Blu-ray in doubt. Firstly, many of us appreciate the quality of Blu-ray but are quite happy to hang on to our collection of DVD’s and Secondly, a growing number of manufacturers have long appreciated the potential for ‘upscaling’ technology as an intermediate solution – a solution which many consumers have adopted.

However, in a new report, FutureSource predicts that 1.8million BD players will ship into the UK and Europe by the close of 2009, a figure that does not include Sony’s PS3 games console which has a built-in Blu-ray drive. They believe that Blu-ray will benefit from the change in consumer spending habits as a result of the recent credit crunch; that they will opt to spend more of their disposable income on home entertainment.

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