Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending September 7th, 2008
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Sep 13th 2008 1:46PM
posted Sep 13th 2008 1:46PM
After slacking and missing last week's Nielsen VideoScan chart, courtesy of Home Media Magazine, we're back for more -- believe us, you didn't miss much. For the second week in a row sales are up, so much in fact that we haven't seen revenues this high for Blu-ray since Jumper was released in June. While last week's increase was due to The Nightmare Before Christmas, this week the Blu-ray release of Transformers easily killed the competition. This one title easily accounts for DVD revenues going down, while Blu-ray's going up. So while this isn't really an indication future success, this holiday season will be when the big Hollywood DVD and Blu-ray titles are all released day-and-date with each other. We expect about the same results that week -- although not at this degree -- as there are some more great catalog catchup titles for Blu-ray that have been available on DVD for ages .
This continues to prove that nothing but WORTHY CONTENT is what is going to determine if Blu Ray succeeds or fails. Every other aspect of its potential success or failure is going to fall into place sooner or later. This upturn is on the weight of ONE title. You'll notice that any week when things are bad on either format, there weren't titles worth buying that week.
I'm curious as to HOW much MORE Transformers sold on BD than HD-DVD
I imagine the number s wouldn't be exactly be a pure comparison. Since HDDVD's demise, a number of former HDDVD owners who already owned Transformers probably didn't double dip. Then again, Blu-ray has had more time now to build up a larger base so that should offset the HDDVD owners. But frankly since it is not known how many double dipped, the comparison would just be folly.
First off, I whole heatedly agree that we are not likely to see Blu-Ray sales to be at 5% of DVD sales again this year and that's a good thing for everyone that wants to continue to see the quantity and quality (except for Fox releases as they do not have a quality control department) of Blu-Ray releases continue.
After the early reviews of Transformers started showing up indicating that most reviewers couldn't tell any difference in picture quality and that the lossless soundtrack was better, but probably not $25 better.
I've got both formats and have to agree with the reviewers. The soundtrack does have more punch on Blu, but not enough to make me want to double dip. After all, I needed to save my pennies so that I could upgrade Kill Bill from dvd to bd.
For future releases on Blu that were previously available (or are still available) on HD DVD, the rate of double dipping by people that already have said release on HD DVD will depend on the same factors as with Transformers.
When I see a title that I already have on HD DVD that's releasing on Blu, I have two sets of questions I ask.
Technical / Content
1. Is it a new transfer?
2. Is the picture quality visibly better?
3. Is the sound quality audibly better?
4. Are there any must have special features?
Fiscal
1. How much is it?
2. Is there anything else coming out on Blu that I really want and ...
a) Do not have on any format
b) Must upgrade from DVD
All that said, seeing Transformers sell as well as it has on Blu-Ray shouldn't be a surprise to anyone as it fits into the same target demographic as the typical PS3 owner.
This is very significant because Transformers on Blu Ray outsold the DVD this week two to one. It would have actually been number three on the list of sales if you put both BD and DVD on the same list, but listed BD and DVD as separate titles.
At the end of the month we should start to see things really heat up with Iron Man, since Transformers was a catalog title with a year delay between the DVD (and HD-DVD) release and the BD release.
of course the bd outsold the dvd copy... the dvd version has been out forever
I'm curious as to HOW much MORE Transformers sold on BD than HD-DVD
true.......but I still wanna know the numbers......not for anything other than curiosity tho.....
Being a BR owner I read this post just about every week - but to be honest it does not really tell me what interests me the most - more BR titles to watch. Certainly there are many factors that the studios take into consideration when they decide to release both catalog and new movies on BR and the timing of that release.
(1) One would think that the number/percentage of homes with a HD TV that have a BR player and if that percentage/number is increasing and at what rate. BR owners would hope that number/percentage is growing - though I believe we need sub $300 players to really kick start BR market penetration.
(2) Another factor the studios must be interested in is the market share of BR vs DVD and if that is growing and at what rate. What we have here each week is just a snap shot - we are not given a trend. I would guess that over the last number of months since BR became the standard that the average is around 10% (pure eyeball by me I have no idea how close that is). But even that 10% is not very interesting - the real question over time is is that market share growing/flat/declining. Again being a BR owner we would hope that not only is it growing but growing at a faster rate over time. My eye ball test is telling me that while it may be growing, it is not growing very fast.
My guess is the HW mfg's and Studios know the answer to those (and other) questions given their marketing budgets. We see new BR players being introduced and more BR titles so one would assume there must be positive trends influencing those decisions.
I suppose I could spend the time using Google and see if I get get lucky and find out that information - but alas there are better things to do, including bitching here about wanting more information than I am getting.
I would say the percentage of homes with HDTV that have BD player is lower. Those that waited did so to get low prices..people that spend $500-$700 on a tv are not going to spend $300 on a glorified DVD player. Those that get the $400 32"... no way.
You want to jump start the market get the price of a 2.0 BD player around $120...$150 if it comes with 2 or 3 movies.
This is the problem when you pay attention to percentages. The reality is the sale even with Transformers are low when you look at the total blu-ray players on the market. The format continues to do mediocre and the percentages are a mask for the products overall poor performance.
The Blu-ray supporters are also proud of pulling off a 12% market on a week which showed 4 weak new releases from DVD while having several stronger older releases for Blu-ray, last week wasn't a fair comparison to the market.
Blu gets large spikes when the titles are there. The challenge is smoothing out the periods between the spikes to be more consistent. I think that the run up to Christmas is very strong and some titles such as Iron Man & Dark Knight are going to sell insanely well.
Whoa... Blu-ray isn't dead yet?