By Scott Nichols

In a Q & A session that followed Apple's press conference yesterday, Steve Jobs expressed concerns about including the Blu-ray format in Apple products like the new MacBook. OK, that's the sugar-coated version of it. What Jobs actually said was that Blu-ray is "just a bag of hurt," and that he's still waiting until "Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace."

But wait, didn't Blu-ray win the format war against HD-DVD? Shouldn't it have been selling like hotcakes and taking over the market by now?

Considering that Blu-ray is the dominant HD video format, it has had a pretty rough time. For the average consumer the cost of a new Blu-ray player plus the higher cost of Blu-ray movies is just too much to pay for the HD upgrade. And even with recent drops in Blu-ray player prices only 1.7 percent of American homes have jumped on board the Blu-ray bandwagon. And with news that the cost of Blu-ray discs won't drop any time soon in the current economic situation most people will opt for the cheaper DVD version. Of course, the average movie watcher probably doesn't buy many discs, but instead rents most movies. But with services like Netflix charging extra for Blu-ray rentals that option is seeming less viable than just renting the DVD.

The cost wouldn't be such an issue if the upgrade to Blu-ray seemed worth it. But to most, the jump from DVD to Blu-ray just isn't drastic enough. Sure, it looks better, but it's hard to argue that DVD's look terrible by comparison. When DVD came in to replace VHS, it offered a clear difference in both quality and features that made VHS look arcane by comparison. Blu-ray doesn't offer enough of a difference from DVD to justify the cost of the upgrade.

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