The Dark Knight shatters sales record, moves 600,000 Blu-ray Discs on day one
By Darren Murph 
posted Dec 11th 2008 9:02AM
posted Dec 11th 2008 9:02AM
[Thanks, Geoff]
posted Dec 11th 2008 9:02AM
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That morning, I went to my local Wally World here in Northeast PA at 4am before work at 8 and there was only 3 bd left. I was surprised
Got this yesterday it's a great movie and a great disk. Picture and audio quality are great. There is slight EE in a few scenes but you'd be hard pressed to see it unless you were looking for it. What pleases me most is that when you play the disk the movie starts playing, at least in my European version. There is a little BD-J progress twirly and then it automatically plays the movie. No trailers, no menus, no nothing, just the movie. I wish Disney would get a clue and stop sticking trailers on the front of their movies.
I wish there was a menu. Trailers before a movie are inexcusable and annoying, but it's also annoying that the movie just starts. It takes my player about 1-2 minutes from power on to movie start...then randomly the movie starts. I then have to call up the menu (over the movie) and select TrueHD and whatever other features, which kind of ruins the mystique of a movie's opening scenes.
I'd rather select all my options from a menu, THEN start the movie.
I agree Mark. Start to the Movie was great. No fooling around with trailers. PQ/SQ was amazing. Very Deep BASS. Little to much for my girl who bitched everytime I watched it. Just had to get used to 35mm and IMax footage.
Blu like quality in my HD-DVD Nice!!
(Rented a Blu copy from my local Block Buster, Ripped it and Decrypted it using AnyDVD and burned it to a Double Layer DVD)
Whiners will disagree, but you just stole the movie. Congratulations on being a crook and bragging about it on the internet.
Congratulations for being a simple criminal and bragging about it. How low can one get?
It'd be even better if it didn't have some annoying audio glitches when it switches between TrueHD and Digital for the IMAX scenes.
Do the aspect ratio change for the IMAX scenes?
I haven't heard of any issues with Audio glitches concerning "switches between TrueHD and Digital for the IMAX scenes". Care to explain a bit more? I wonder if this affects only people who internally decode or people who pass through TrueHD to the receiver.
No audio glitches here. But the aspect ratio does change between the IMAX footage and the rest of the film. You don't really notice it unless you are specifically looking for it though.
TrueHD track is total madness. It was late last night, so I had no choice but to shut down my subwoofer, even at low volume levels.
"This is Madness!"
"No...This...Is...TRUEHD!"
::Kicks standard 5.1 sound into the death pit::
Hopefully if the studios see these kinds of sales numbers they will not become the typical fat cats and keep prices high. Instead they can see the possibilities of lowering prices and garnering even bigger numbers, especially on the non blockbuster releases.
So how many Iron man have been sold to date? What will be the next big title? Star Trek around 1 million in sales?
I wonder how many Blu discs are bought by accident, especially at places like grocery stores.
"These sandwiches look delicious! Hey, is that the Dark Knight? I should buy that!"
Two hours later...
"Why doesn't this work in my DVD player?!"
Unlike hd dud, the Blu-ray movies are significantly more recognizable. You failed at trolling.
How is that?
Blu-ray use a silly blue plastic strip of colour at the top and bottom whereas HD DVD used a silly red strip of colour.
Both rather sad ideas IMO.
You have a valid point. When I was renting the movie at BlockBusters, the sales woman asked me if I had a Blu-ray player, leading me to believe that a lot of renters have been mistakenly picking up a Blu-ray disc not know any better. I'm sure that same scenario is being played out for purchasers at grocery stores, etc.,
Or, the supermarket buyers could also be largely unaware of what Blu-ray Disc is, and they're buying the movie thinking it will work in their twelve-year-old Panasonic DVD players.
Odds are that if they bought a Panasonic DVD player TWELVE years ago, they would have a Blu-Ray player by now. Since they were early adopters and bought a DVD player when they first came out.
My local comic book shop (which happened to break street for TDK) usually only has DVDs in stock (they carry movies that would cater to the Sci-Fi/Comic book loving crowd). Yet for the Dark Knight, they had Blu-Rays in stock. This movie is going to be to Blu-Ray what the Matrix was for DVDs.
And cover for every copy says "only working in Blu-Ray Players/PS3s" so I wouldn't be too worried.
I thought the movie was amazing and I love seeing all these high blu-ray sales.
I honestly wonder how many people bought it for the movie and how many more bought it simply because it was Heath Ledgers last fully completed film.
Or the bought it because Ledger gave us the best performance of the decade, and possibly the best villain ever.
Jack did it better!
So hold on now.. can we at least ONCE get the numbers that are unified. So 600k units sold worldwide or in the States? I don't understand. How many DVDs were sold worldwide then? and were other numbers for titles like IronMan include worldwide sales or US?
I'm confused. I'm really slowing getting sick of pumping up numbers as they see fit just to show higher numbers. It was not questionable whether or not this movie would sell good but let's have numbers that are unified and not all over the place.
Well, Darren said a sixth of the 600,000 first-day sales in BD were in the UK, which leaves half a million copies cold in the U.S. and Canada combined.
All over the place? Hmm, I thought it was pretty clear. 3 million (DVD/BR) total world-wide, 600,000 of those were BR, and at least 107,000 were sold in the UK. This leaves about 500,000 for North America and the rest of the world.
Obviously a HD-DVD soore looser (as well as a troll)
This was supposed to be a reply to Seanny. Do not understand why it ended up at the end of the post list :-(
I wish they would have removed the mask from the rest of the movie and kept the whole thing in 16:9. It is a little stange to have the movie switch from 16:9 IMAX to 2.4:1 then back to 16:9. The IMAX footage is far superior to the rest of the movie and wow I got to use my whole TV.
Blah, blah, blah ruining director intent. 2.3:1 is superior to 16:9, you lose detail. I wonder how the cinema purists are feeling. Are they applauding the aspect ratio shifts?
Removing the mask adds more detail and more picture, just like the Iron Man deleted scenes where the mask is imposed over the initial cut. Then you see the final scene and notice peoples heads are cut off.
I think it would have been nice to have the proper 35mm transfer with seamless branching for the 70mm shots. Then there would be no EE to complain of, and still the choice of IMAX shots. Pick your poison. I can understand why it might have been a huge pain in the ass for WB to do it though. Seamlessly stiching parts of the IMAX theatrical release into the 35mm theatrical release could be pretty tricky.
I wonder when they'll get the nads to start telling people how sales are going at the 3, 6, 9 & 12mth point?
I'm not holding my breath.