The Digital Media Player (DMP) market will grow into its own category, rivaling today’s DVD,  Blu-ray player and game console market, and become a very high growth driver for the CE companies, that first perfect the players and the marketing around them.

 

 The reason for this trend is 

^{50% CRT to Flat screen transition = market for DMP}

^{The number of US household with HD TV are over 50%, although consumers are willing to pay $50 and upward more for the a connected TV, that does not mean they will change the TV set. It could instead translate into that the market have undergone the technological shift from CRT to flat screen and thus consumers are not wiling to shell out another 500-1000 dollars for a connected TV. They might instead be willing to shell out 100-300 dollars for a device that upgrades their current TV to a full featured video playing machine.}

^{Movie studios leave the “Rest of World” flank open to DMP}

^{International theatrical release windows ruin the market for online movies in Europe, since the delayed date of both theater releases and more importantly DVD releases are much delayed in comparison with the US releases. Thus online peer 2 peer network often have the DVD release, before the movie has is show date in theaters in Europe.  This  release gap opens up for pirating,  but it also help grow the market for DMA’s in Europe and Asia.}

 

^{“It's the Format, “S..pid”}

 ^{Awareness for DMP is there}  

^{On the forum avsforum.com, over 1.3 million users have viewed the thread on WD TV players, and similar the thread on the popcorn hour, remains on of the most read and discussed forum threads on both Avfoums.com[2] and avsforum.com. More importantly it seems that  Early Adopters are opting for DMP instead of HTPC's Game consoles and Blu-ray players.}

 

^{The DMP industry it still in it’s experimentation phase}

^{There is a profiliation of entrants that are joining the industry. The mpcclub.com a website for DMA followers has reviewed over 30 new DMA products[3], similar but still different to the popcorn Hour over the last year. Large storage companies like Western digital, Seagate and QNAP, are entering the scene. Network companies like Netgear, Linksys and DLink have their offerings. Asus just announced their O!Play DMA at Computex in June. Asian OEM producers and European are experimenting with new products coming out monthly; Bloobbox in Italy, RaidSonic and Fantec in Germany, Blusen in Spain, Tivx in Holland, Xtreamer. For a complete listing of currently available digital media players see http://www.iboum.com} 

 

^{Consumers want their movie collection in their home, not in the cloud}

^{On the go capabilities, to the summerhouse or over at friends, Why did portable hard disk become popular? Because people want to share their media! Online is ok, but for the most it is easier just to load it up ion the hard drive and take it with you over to Joe’s place.} 

^{Users want mkv’s, Xvids not Some proprietary DRM}

^{License required and protected format like Digital Copy that Sony have displayed recently, http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/01/08/portable-copy-makes-us-wonder-why-we-still-have-umd/} 

^{Consumers want Xvid, Mkv video format and containers as the new media format container for their movie collection just like mp3 became for digital music files}

 

^{Connected Blu-ray Players; A pipe dream:}

^{From tens of thousands of units in 2009 to 12.6 million units in 2013. The format and BD-live limitations.}

^{Why psychical discs players?}

^{Since online video is now appealing,with sites such as hulu.com and Netflix.com,  the attractiveness of a physical disc player like blu-ray have suddenly disappeared, and consumers might be looking for cheaper alternatives than connected blue ray players that cost above $300.}

 

^{The Itunes 2 Bitrorrent Ratio.}

^{The iPod logic downloaded versus illegal music. The average user of iPod has 400 pieces of music on it, however the total sales of online tune on iTunes has only been around 30 numbers per user. Thant means that rest are coming form somewhere else, if you apply the  to the DMA/VOD market, you should see a large market for adapters than can handle the  total movie consumption on a device, that has harddisk and offline streaming capabilities.}