More than 300 IT executives and dozens of vendors met to talk about midmarket solutions at the Midsize Enterprise Summit.
ChannelWeb picked 15 common beliefs about Microsoft and gave channel partners the opportunity to explain why they're more fiction than fact.
ChannelWeb visited Tech Data's headquarters for a strategy update and was given a behind-the-scenes tour of how the distributor operates.
It will take another 12 months to 18 months before the Blu-ray market "kicks into gear," according to a new study from ABI Research. Part of the problem is that prices on Blu-ray players remain high while functionality remains low.
Plenty of stand-alone Blu-ray players are selling for $400 or more, but many players on the market now do not support functions such as Blu-ray Disc Profile 2.0 (also known as BD-Live), a feature that enables users to supplement content on Blu-ray discs with additional downloaded content from the Internet. Yet movie studios such as Sony Pictures Home Entertainment are already releasing movie titles with BD-Live features embedded.
The disconnect between pricing and functionality, coupled with a depressed U.S. economy, could hold Blu-ray sales back until 2009 or beyond.
ABI says Blu-ray player pricing will have to come down to the $200 level before consumers start to replace their standard DVD players with high-def models en masse.
In 2008, PlayStation 3 gaming consoles with Blu-ray players will make up over 85 percent of the market and will continue to dominate until 2013. In the meantime, optical drive manufacturers have lowered prices on Blu-ray drives for PCs to try to gain traction, according to ABI.
News of the slow uptake isn't stopping movie studios from releasing Hollywood hits in the Blu-ray format. Paramount Pictures on May 20 is slated to roll out its first Blu-ray titles since it changed its mind in February about going exclusively with Toshiba's HD DVD. The studio's forthcoming Blu-ray titles include "Bee Movie," "Face/Off" and "Next."
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