Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending October 26th, 2008
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Nov 1st 2008 7:31PM
posted Nov 1st 2008 7:31PM
Who'd a thought that The Incredible Hulk would sell so well? We sure didn't, as we predicted sales to be down more than 1.26 percent, on this week's Nielsen VideoScan chart courtesy of Home Media Magazine. Thanks to the Hulk, Blu-ray managed to net $17.71 million this week, which makes October the biggest month in history. In fact, consumers spent $76.86 million in October alone, which is more than all of August and September combined -- it will be very interesting to see if Blu-ray can keep this up through the last two months of the year though. For whatever reason the green monster was a hotter seller on Blu-ray than DVD, as it outsold Indiana by about 4:1, which is about twice as much as the DVD version managed against the same competition. This showed up on the Blu-ray title share chart, as the Hulk stole over 18 percent away from its DVD version, which to our memory is the best of any day-and-date title ever. The fun is over next week though, as there are only so many comic book movies around, and the next one isn't due for about a month. But when the latest Batman does hit the shelves, watch out, as it should easily outsell every Blu-ray title to date including the mighty Iron Man.
Actually I kinda like the hulk better than Indiana Jones. I thought it was gonna suck as much as the first one but this one was really good.
What happened to this declining economy thing?
Blu-ray spending up - can't be bad.
What were the big titles in August and September, because for the life of me I nothing comes to mind as BIG (like Iron Man big).
Influx of releases that appeal to the PS3 demographic. That's all.
Transformers was the only big selling title.
You could argue that movie sales being up indicates a bad economy because people are looking for cheap entertainment. Even if you pay $30 for a blu-ray movie, that $30 is a relatively cheap way of getting 2 hours of entertainment for an entire family. Maybe more people are willing to wait until the movie comes out on disk and pay $30 (although probably less unless you don't shop around) rather than paying $32 for 4 tickets plus another $20 on snacks that you can have at home for about $4.
It's funny but I feel like I'm seeing more and more deals on the players. I wonder if that might have anything to do with this... Beyond that, the Incredible Hulk was actually a pretty good movie and one I anticipated to look really good in HD. I saw it in the theater but could imagine I'd want in my collection if I were trying to have content around to show off the clarity of CGI heavy films.
Speaking of which, why no anticipatory love for Wall-E on Nov. 18?
I never got around to watching The Incredible Hulk, but I plan to rent the dvd soon. My dvd money is being saved for Get Smart right now, that movie is funny as heck!!
Is heck more or less funny than hell? And how funny is hell in the first place.
Blu-ray incresead from the usual 10 million spent to 16~17 million spent. GO BLU!