Am I wrong to feel like Blu-ray was always something for the enthusiasts?

DVDs were good enough for most people, Blu-ray was more expensive and it didn’t feel like it ever dominated the market before streaming took over. I often see impressive DVD collections, I rarely see more than a handful of Blu-rays anywhere.

For enthusiasts? No. But they were significantly more expensive and it just about took one to justify the price difference. Today there’s obviously a price difference but nowhere near as significant - uhd bd took that place. They never became the default like DVD did - where every PC has a player and things beyond movies (ignoring PS3 games) shipped on BD… So usage was obviously contingent on ownership of a player - outside of the PS3, that was a specialty device… And expensive. In its early years, <=720p tvs, fuzzy plasma, and dlp projectors were still commonplace. IMO it’s biggest failure was being ahead of its time. Today I have no idea why one would buy a DVD over a BD… But both have or are losing to streaming and soon we’ll own nothing.

Today I have no idea why one would buy a DVD over a BD

Having bought multiple DVDs (in combo packs with Blu-Ray) in the past year, it’s because, unlike Blu-Ray, they actually fucking play reliably on my computer. Blu-Ray is about 50/50 IME. (Entirely the fault of the DRM – not the physical material.)