Blu-ray disc players and recorders will finally kill sales of DVD players and recorders in 2015, about nine years after the first commercial BD players hit the market, according to a newly released report by In-Stat market research company.

“DVD players and recorder shipments will decline over the next five years for most regions.  By 2015, DVD recorders will be essentially phased out entirely, with only negligible shipments to Japan,” says Norm Bogen, vice president of digital entertainment at In-Stat.

The new research from the market tracking company forecasts that the number of Blu-ray player units shipped will reach 105 million in 2015. Since by 2015 the reach of HDTV will increase dramatically compared to today and the majority of TV-channels will broadcast in high-definition, DVD recorders will also be replaced with the standard providing higher capacity or even BD players with large hard drives and digital services.

“Blu-ray recorders will replace DVD recorders, and many consumers of recorders will even drop the physical disk media option altogether and instead opt for a player with a large hard drive or a DMS in which to store DLNA-certified and other digital video content,” added Mr. Bogen.

The Blu-ray disc players themselves will also likely be vastly different from players as we generally know them. Already at the end of 2010, over 15% of Netflix subscribers opted for Blu-ray subscriptions, which means that people demand Internet video streaming capability from BD players. Naturally, by 2015 virtually all players should support this feature. Other capabilities, such as Internet browing, Wi-Fi and so on are also likely to get more popular on BD players in the future.

Tags: Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D