Blu-Ray Versus Streaming: Where Do You Stand?

screened.com: I remember heading to a friend-of-a-friend’s house to watch the 2004 Super Bowl (also the first time I watched anything on HDTV) and seeing racks upon racks of DVDs lining the walls, surely a few hundred or more. I remember thinking both that it was impressive that this guy was willing to spend so much money on films, but also that his home theater was going to be looking like a collection of eight-tracks in a decade or so.

But I guess we’re creeping up on that decade mark and that DVD collection isn’t quite as outdated as Sony and the other creators of the Blu-Ray standard might’ve wished for. Oddly enough, 2004 marked the peak of the U.S. home video market, when consumers gobbled up $21.8 billion in DVDs and rentals; in 2010 that had fallen to $18.8 billion after six straight years of declines. Blu-ray sales were up by 50% over the last year, but that’s still building up from a fairly small base. Blu-ray is obviously going to see sales increases for the next few y…