LAS VEGAS–Seven years after the Blu-ray Disc Association announced at CES that it had completed the technical specification for the format, the Blu-ray format continues to forge ahead—and its proponents must ponder its future when 4K HDTV televisions are all the rage here at this week’s CES.

The first Blu-ray player was priced at $1000 from Samsung, but you can now buy a Blu-ray player for about one-tenth of what a unit cost in 2006. According to the Blu-ray Disc Association, the format is being widely adopted: 50 million households now have Blu-ray playback capability.

That’s not bad for a physical disc-based format that grew up with the cloud of, well, the cloud and digital distribution over the Internet.

“Despite the dire predictions about internet distribution making physical media obsolete, Blu-ray has thrived,” says Andy Parsons, BDA president. Projected unit sales are for 2012 are up 21.3 percent year-over-year, according to Screen Digest, led by marquee titles like The Avengers, Brave, Ted, and Twilight.

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