Sales of DVD discs have begun to decline, however, and Blu-ray has yet to take up the slack, leading some analysts to conclude that retailers risk losing sales to movie downloads, much as they lost CD sales to music downloads.
European regulators have begun an inquiry into possible antitrust and anticompetitive practices by the Blu-ray Disc Association as it relates to agreements and restrictions on producing content for Blu-ray and its competing high-definition format, HD DVD.
By sheer coincidence, a programme to study it had just begun, so dozens of the world's telescopes - from visible to radio to gamma-ray - were watching.