A law of consumer behaviour which I have come to respect is that people will almost always trade convenience for quality. In other words, true audiophiles and cineastes are rare: most people just want their digital media to be convenient and easy to use, which is why people junked higher quality CDs for lower quality MP3 music files. Because people are so time poor, they'll quite happily pay a premium for extra convenience, and whether it's the iPod and iTunes, or digital radio instead of FM, it's almost always ease of use rather than improved quality that gets people to adopt new gear.

This is one of the reasons that I've been so sceptical about the high-definition DVD formats. They're no more convenient than the current, perfectly good DVD, and although they're better quality, the kind of people who care about quality will have got hold of a good upscaling DVD player, which can do a great job of squeezing more performance from ordinary DVDs. At that point, the difference in quality simply doesn't justify paying the premium. At Amazon.co.uk you can get a copy of Scorsese's gangland masterpiece Goodfellas on DVD for £3.98. The same film on Blu-ray will cost you £17.98. If you go DVD, you'll also be able to afford copies of, say, Raging Bull, Casino, and The Departed and still have a little change left. So you have to ask yourself: do you like movies, or do you like high-definition movies?

Of course there is one type of consumer who cares about movie quality and the movies: the home-cinema buff. Home cinema is one application where Blu-ray really does punch its weight. Once you've blown up an image to the size of a decent home-cinema screen, small differences in picture quality become much more apparent. The ambitious home-cinema buff tries to squeeze as much performance as he or she (who am I kidding? He...) can out of the system, which means using the best quality video source available. Like so many decadent habits, from spa baths to cocaine, home cinema used to be a hobby that only obsessives or the mega rich could indulge in, but the incredible price drops we've seen in consumer electronics over the last decade mean that it's no longer something that only the super affluent can afford.

So if you can climb out of the bath and blow your nose, and beg, borrow or steal a decent projector and hook it up to a PS3 showing a Blu-ray film, the results can be really impressive. Take one of the earliest films released on the format, the revamped Bond vehicle Casino Royale. This film caused much ribaldry at the time because it was so shamefully stuffed with lame product placement. At one point, hilariously, Bond checks out the surveillance recordings in a hotel security system and it's made quite clear that they've all being recorded on Blu-ray disc. The product placement is still naff, but stick this film on Blu-ray through a decent home cinema system and the results are amazing – and definitely over the top for surveillance recording. Action sequences like the opening parkour extravaganza, with those death-defying crane leaps against a blue, blue sky, look simply breathtaking.

But will this thing go mass market, or remain the preserve of the movie nerd? You can see retailers are starting to give the format more promotion: I went to HMV in Oxford Street last week and chatted to a sales guy and obvious film buff who proudly pointed out that they've doubled their in-store racking for Blu-ray films. He confessed that he and his colleagues had been blown away by the beauty of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey on Blu-ray, standing slack jawed in front of a display plasma and seeing that film's elegant sixties space stations as if for the first time. My local Blockbuster has also dramatically increased the rack space it's giving to Blu-ray promotion.

The success of the format is a big deal for our corporate overlords: clearly the entertainment giants want to sell us many of the same films yet again on the new format, but will we fall for it?

According to recent research from Futuresource Consulting, by 2012 between 40 and 50 per cent of consumer spending on video discs will move to Blu-ray. For that to happen players have to get cheaper, the studios have to open up their back catalogues of older movies at reasonable prices, and retailers have to get behind the format, all of which Futuresource is confident will happen.

I'm still not completely convinced: the elephant in the corner is the prospect that new forms of online delivery will make actually buying a disc with data on it seem as redundant as Super 8 cassettes. I have plenty of movies on hard drives, and you can't beat the convenience of fifty movies that are one click away. On the other hand, I do miss the physical token of the DVD packaging, and examining someone's actual DVD collection on their shelves is much more fun than scanning a database of video files.

I asked Mai Hoang, senior analyst at Futuresource Consulting, but she was remarkably confident that despite the lessons of the music industry, consumers were going to keep buying discs with movies on them for some time: “Consumer habits don't change overnight, and consumers still prefer to have their films on a physical disc. Overall movie revenues will be predominately packaged media over the next five to ten years,” Ms Hoang said.

She also reckons that Blu-ray adoption so far has been on a par with sales of DVDs at the same stage: “Of course the format war made people hesitant, but now it's gaining momentum. In 2008 in the UK we're anticipating total sales of 4.5 million titles, In 2012 we're expecting sales of 93 million titles. We've seen a very strong push from Sony and other studios. HMV are working very closely with them, installing in-store kiosks to demonstrate the benefit,” she said.

So that explains the Kubrick fan. I asked her what she thought were the critical success factors in order to get widespread consumer adoption of the format.

“It's about getting consumers aware: the format wars were more focused on competing with HD-DVD, not demonstrating the benefits of high-definition over DVD. The install of PS3 was a big factor. This year we're looking at a total installed high-definition hardware base of just under 2.4 million players in use. By 2012 we expect that to be 12.9 million combined player base of PS3s and standalone Blu-ray players.”

And amazingly, it doesn't look as though we'll all have to go and buy The Sound of Music one more time, although I might have to get The Fifth Element one more time:

“Most sales have been new-release driven. We don't expect consumers to replace their whole collection, although there is some replacement of key action titles where high definition really makes a difference. It will appeal to the mass market. The broadcast TV industry has driven consumer appetite for high-definition content. TVs are HD ready, and it will all encourage more title sales moving forward,” Ms Hoang said.

So who knows? Maybe the future won't be Orange after all, but instead a nice marine Blu. Of course neither I nor the good people of Futuresource really know. In the end you, dear reader, and your shopping habits will decide. In the meantime I'll be watching Pan's Labyrinth on Blu-ray one more time.

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Michael Parsons helped to launch The Industry Standard magazine, and was the launch Editor of CNET.co.uk

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