So Blu-ray prices – at least in the States – are on the rise again following Toshiba’s sharp exit from its damaging format war with Sony and others. PriceGrabber says the average price of a Blu-ray player is now $400 (£198), compared to just $300 (£149) a few months ago.

You could argue that some kind of price rise was inevitable. Blu-ray makers are now trying to recoup some of the money they lost trying to stay within shouting distance of Toshiba, which was also engaged in drastic price-cutting as a way of keeping ahead of its rivals.

More than once during the last year HD DVD promoters told us that no matter how cheap Blu-ray got, their players would be cheaper still.

Player gain is Tosh's loss

At the time this suggested that Toshiba was willing to lose money so it could gain market share – something the company always denied. Toshiba has yet to effectively deny reports from the Nikkei business daily that it in fact lost $986 million (£448 million) on the whole sorry venture in 2007 alone.

(Maybe it would have been better off giving the money to the Blu-ray camp so it could have subsidised the cost of its players? We’d have all benefited then.)

The ‘average’ price rise also suggests that high-end player makers are now confident of jumping on board, distorting the market with pricey devices aimed at video connoisseurs.

Profits before punters?

Nevertheless, the news of Blu-ray price rises also smacks of profiteering – since there’s no competition to be had, Blu-ray licensees are now making hay while the sun shines, so the argument goes.

It’s not likely to shine for long. Competition between Blu-ray makers will now be intense as they all try to grab a piece of the pie, with the more budget-oriented makers hoping for mass adoption by us punters so economies of scale can kick in and they can keep their shareholders happy.

The problem is that there’s no guarantee the Blu-ray pie will ever get very big at all. The overwhelming majority of people in this country still have no idea what high def is, let alone Blu-ray, and aren’t likely to pony up for something they see as being of negligible benefit – it’s not like the great transition between VHS and DVD in that respect.

Worse for the industry is that many people already have high def simply because they own an HD TV, many more have upscaling DVD players that do nearly as good a job as the real deal.

Hollywood or bust

Hollywood is also likely to face the same challenges as the movie biz when it comes to the ways in which we consume our content. Many of us are more likely to watch a movie download on a PC, or video player with a tiny screen than we are to sit down in front of a Blu-ray equipped home cinema system.

Blu-ray then needs to get real cheap, real fast and become as ubiquitous as DVD did if it’s ever to succeed long-term. With average prices currently heading in the wrong direction, that looks likely to happen soon.