A year since HD DVD conceded defeat at last CES, Blu-Ray and its backers will be touting their so-called success at this year’s CES, but the reality is far from it. As numbers point out, very few consumers know about Blu-Ray, and those who do still do not see enough value for the premium. As NYT points out in this story, “Going from the whirring VCRs of yore to a DVD player was a big leap in picture quality and convenience, while the jump from DVD to Blu-ray is subtler, at least for those who do not have the latest and largest high-definition televisions.” With the economy being what it is, the march towards HDTVs has also slowed down. Plus the inevitable march towards HD downloads online put the future of physical media, HD or not, in jeopardy. You can argue about when that future will arrive, but it surely will..case in point, read the previous Netflix-LG story about broadband TVs.

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What the Blu-Ray backers are banking on is merging these new discs with online content: the story says the group will support for a feature called BD Live (as in Blu-ray disc live), which lets people download additional material from the Internet and interact with friends in text chats that appear on the TV while playing a movie. But again, where did we hear that before…