I specifically bought a second-hand PS3 to use as a Blu-Ray player. And to play Journey, which was PS3-only at the time. Other PS3 games didn't really appeal to me, I already had everything I wanted on PC. But for Blu-Rays the PS3 was indeed an excellent player.

And for some brain dead reason the PS5 doesn’t have a dedicated media remote you can actually buy.

Xbox does.

Microsoft didn't really bet on the HD-DVD. It was a separate add on supplied at cost because that was the best deal they got from either consortium.

In contrast, Sony was absolutely shipping the PS3 as a loss leader to get drives out there, similar to how Sony used the PS2 to make DVD's standard.

You’re also forgetting the precursor to streaming: digital movie downloads, like on iTunes. I’m sure that also helped Blu-rays never really take over.

Which, in some way, is a shame, because I distinctly remember watching a movie on a plain DVD on my parents’ HD TV in very early 2006 and thinking, “Wow, this somehow looks like shit!” and I know I would’ve felt differently if we had a Blu-ray or HD-DVD, but since this was very early 2006, they didn’t even exist yet.

For enthusiasts? No. But they were significantly more expensive and it just about took one to justify the price difference. Today there's obviously a price difference but nowhere near as significant - uhd bd took that place. They never became the default like DVD did - where every PC has a player and things beyond movies (ignoring PS3 games) shipped on BD... So usage was obviously contingent on ownership of a player - outside of the PS3, that was a specialty device... And expensive. In its early years, <=720p tvs, fuzzy plasma, and dlp projectors were still commonplace. IMO it's biggest failure was being ahead of its time. Today I have no idea why one would buy a DVD over a BD... But both have or are losing to streaming and soon we'll own nothing.

it didn’t feel like it ever dominated the market before streaming took over

HD-DVD was better error-correction (thus longevity) but Blu-ray (ugh. The name) had payola. Payola makes leaders.

I suspect the switching of horses from what's better to what's more popular derailed the adoption back then when we resisted shallow popularity better.

That was before 4k streaming. One of those “you don’t know better” things.

I owned 1600 DVDs at my peak. And literally just watched one a few hours ago and the picture quality is a bit shit to be honest. Especially the subtitles look janky as fuck because they’re not text but images, pixelated images.

I’m currently slowly upgrading The Good Ones to Blu-ray and the Really Good Ones to 4k BD

But only the ones I know I want to watch in 10, 20 or 30 years. As long as I have the media and a compatible player no company can tell me I can’t watch it.

Most people didn't have tvs with 1080p resolutions when blurays came out. It was all SD, and so dvds ruled the market.

Once HD tvs were common, streaming was now the common medium. And streaming looked better than the standard def dvds.

Blurays will stay niche on comparison for sure, but I can't imagine anyone who is watching a dvd on a large HD (let alone 4k) TV is going to think the DVD looks good.

If you get 4k Bluerays, often higher than theaters which are often only 2K Resolution.

That was my initial reaction as well! :/

It’s only the specific blu-ray format that came out in 2006 (first working 2005). Optical discs themselves could be said to have been used since the late 19th century.

Video capture is the solution to that. You may have compromises on rip quality, but the storage medium for that file can be anything with enough capacity - HDDs, Optical Media, Tapes, Flash storage.

The scene will outlive Blu-Ray, and I think it will outlive us all.

Buy a PS5 and all your games on disc. Support the format!