New research from The NPD Group (http://www.npd.com) shows that Blu-ray is, indeed, catching on. Which, it seems to me, shows that Apple is making a mistake in ignoring the technology.

In the home, flat-panel TVs has grown to 64% in 2009, up from 61% in 2009 while the percentage of households with two or more flat-panel televisions remained flat. The broadening penetration of HDTV coupled with lower player prices, however, proved to be a boon for standalone Blu-ray players, which nearly doubled since last year, going from just 6% in 2009 to 11% in 2010. Deep discounting during the 2009 holiday season was one key factor behind this increase.

On a related note, Wi-Fi is becoming a must-have feature across a range of devices, as network connectivity migrates into the living room, reports In-Stat (http://www.in-stat.com). Digital televisions, Blu-ray players, and portable media players (PMPs) are among the leading categories in terms of total volume and growth. Shipments of digital televisions with Wi-Fi will grow more than ten-fold, from under five million units in 2009, to more than 60 million units in 2014.

Driving this shift is both unit growth of the digital TVs, as well as Wi-Fi attach rates that increase from just 4% in 2009 to 33% in 2014. Across all stationary consumer electronics, which includes set top boxes, game consoles, Blu-ray players, digital picture frames, among other devices, Wi-Fi-enabled devices will exceed 200 million units by 2014.

“Wi-Fi swept through the computing market, driven by the need to access and share broadband connectivity,” says Frank Dickson, In-Stat’s vice president of Research. “That same consumer desire is now resulting in Wi-Fi adoption across the entire range of connected consumer electronics, driving significant Wi-Fi volumes. The ubiquitous adoption of Wi-Fi in consumer electronics is Wi-Fi’s manifest destiny.”