New York - Sales of Blu-ray standalone players plummeted 40 percent from January to February, then rose only 2 percent from February to March in spite of winning the high def format war, according to a report by research firm NPD Group. This is bad news for the home entertainment industry, which has put its hopes into a drastic increase in adoption of the next generation high def DVD players after Toshiba dropped its support for the HD DVD format earlier this year in favor of Sony's (NYSE: SNE) Blu-ray format.

Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at NPD, said to the New York Times that consumers are instead opting for much cheaper upconverting standard DVD players. With prices around $70, upconverting DVD player saw a 5 percent rise in sales in the first quarter of 2008, compared to same quarter a year ago. Blu-ray players still cost more than $300.

Blu-ray adoption is being driven primarily by sales of heavily-subsidized Sony PlayStation 3 game consoles which are bundled with a Blu-ray player.

Joakim Baage

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