Alan Smithee

5. Packaging is becoming half-assed, including the discontinuing of inserts and full-color disc labels in favor of plain monochrome labeling (and 2-sided discs with labeling only on one side.) A lot of sales from me have been lost because of those cardboard slipcovers shipped with no shrinkwrap on them- I refuse to buy those from stores that put price tags on them.

6. Some of us have tons of unwatched stuff that we bought during the 'boom' so we're buying stuff more selectively nowadays while we actually get around to WATCHING what we've already bought! (Though I still want to do my part to keep them in business!)

7. There haven't really been a lot of "must have" titles coming out lately.

d2cheer

Man can I relate to #6. Also looking at my collection there is no way I will ever watch all of the titles I already own again and basically they are not worth anything so I just keep them.

orangerunner

I agree with this point about not only DVD but with Blu-ray as well. The market has been saturated with almost every title you could want.

The catalogue Blu-ray versions are, for the most part, not coming up with any new (or at least interesting) extras that haven't already been released on DVD.

You have to remember that much of the sales numbers of DVDs are at prices that are a fraction of the what they would cost 6-7 years ago. What flew off the shelves for $21.99 in 2003 is now struggling in the $4.99 bin.

New releases are now the only real strong sellers and there might be maybe 2 or 3 decent titles each week.

Alan Smithee

The HD formats were one of the first things that got me to cut back on buying regular DVDs, and sort of still are. Even though I didn't have an HDTV when they came out, I wouldn't buy a movie on regular DVD if it was available on either HD format. Fast-forward to now- there's still a few old favorites I never got around to buying on DVD, but I don't want to buy them if I know they're going to be put out on Blu soon. Problem with that is I risk having the regular DVD just go out of print entirely with no Blu reissue, or else I do buy the regular DVD and then right after they announce a Blu release.

Before DVD was out I was buying laserdiscs, and until recently I just had a 4x3 standard-def TV so I didn't 'upgrade' a lot of laserdiscs to DVD as they still looked good enough. Now that I have an HDTV, I'd be open to re-buying a lot of my LD titles on Blu if they'd put them out.

Iron_Giant

I have not bought a single DVD over the past 18 months, that after I bought my first BR player.

In the past month, I have bought about 7 BR:
5 from a Pawn Shop
Glee S1
Robin Hood


In the next month of so:
Iron Man 2
Superman/Batman: Apocalypse
Beauty and the Beast (Someone borrowed my DVD copy, so I will buy on BR)
Predators
Toy Story 3 (Christmas gift to myself, tradiction with the family)


What has killed DVD buying for me:
-Buying a BR Player, why buy a DVD when I know I can be watching a better picture in BR.


Now I try my best to only buy BRs that I will watch over an over again.

At this time I have about 35 BRs and counting.

Total DVDs is about 400.

BuckNaked2k

Week ending 9/26:

PopcornTreeCt

I think the studios trying to push 3D early is going to backfire. It was when HD DVD and Blu-rays first started going that I think we all realized that all our DVDs weren't going to last forever. I think a lot of us secretly hoped that we would want to keep our 2000+ DVD collection well into retirement.

However, the advent of High Definition discs provided us the reality that the studios were really just trying to sucker us into re-purchasing all our favorite movies over and over again. We're not dumb. We figured it out.

Iron_Giant

Just another stat:

1. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Release Date = 12/11/2007
DVD Sold = 11,216,066
Dollars = $200,157,479

2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Release Date = December 8, 2009
DVD Sold = 7,674,899
Dollars = $103,617,299


Two years difference and the sales are off 32%. In another 2 years and the sales are another 32% off = 5,218,931 of DVD sales.

But, I think the difference will be much higher because of the 2010 year was skipped. The DVD sales of the next Harry Potter movie is going to be well below the 5 million mark, maybe under 4 million.

I say that by 2013 we could be seeing the true death of DVD. The sales number will just be too low to keep it up. I very large % of USA homes will have a BR player, so the switch will be fairly smooth.

BR Players are already in something like 20% of homes, and another 18 million to sold this year.

Hope the price of BR Disks come down in the year or two.

Josh-da-man

One difference between 2007 and 2009 is the recession.

The Harry Potter franchise could also be burning itself out as it winds down and the final book has been released.

doctorthodt

The box office numbers would suggest otherwise.

BuckNaked2k

...and the fan-base ages and loses interest.

Iron_Giant

We bought the last HP movie on BR for the 1st time, after this Christmas there will be more people in the same boat. More BR players and PS3 will be out there, and the BR 3D will help more people switch over. We are planning to buy a BR player so we can watch 3D movies and play 3D games.

They BR tide will be moving even stronger after Christmas, just like the DVD push did every year.

Gizmo

The Christmas push was said last year and the year before. Aside from a small Q1 boost (giftcards), things settled. And this year things are pretty flat. Having more BD players in homes does not seem to matter as three studios waved bye-bye to catalog on the format.

d2cheer

IMHO It is going to take one or a couple of studios to release their big blockbusters on Blu only to make any real waves. That way it forces people that want to own those big titles to go blu. BUT this has the potential to backfire big time.

dvd-4-life

What studio's have discontinued releasing blu-ray catalog titles?

Josh-da-man

It would probably to be easier to ask which studios are still releasing catalog titles regularly.

dvd-4-life

I have always said this is why Blu-ray won't catch on. The average and below average dvd collector simply won't double-dip thus the demand for catalog titles isn't there. I would buy them but not like I bought dvds. The big problem was that most of the blu-ray catalog releases were subpar movies to begin with. If people don't care about new movies released on blu-ray,the system won't survive.

Iron_Giant

Iron Man 2 - 52% of the sales (DVD/BR combined) came from BR. This is a record.

If you take the avg sales of BR/DVD sales, you will see that the BR % is alot higher than the 15%.

DVD sales come of older/cheaper DVD. BR sales come from NEW BR.

Gizmo

One title does not mean anything. Especially one that caters to the PS3 demographic who is the one buying these Action films. New films will always sell, it's the catalog that the studios want to re-sell over and over again. Iron Man 2 (1 disc BD) was the same price as the 1 disc DVD. The 3 disc BD (which came with a DVD) was only $2-$4 more depending where you bought it (or even less with Wal-Mart/Best Buy prices figured in for some).

15% is the average (and it's less then that, it's just the highest number the kids use to cheerlead the format, when DEG comes out it's always lower as Wal-Mart is not factored in who moves a ton of DVDs).

Blu-ray is still failing and the studios are far from thrilled that in year 5 only PS3 owners are buying titles. It's why 3 studios have a combined total of 4 catalog titles planned for the rest of Q4.

Iron_Giant

Everytime a "Big Action" (Batman, Iron Man, Transformers...) title comes out, it is selling more BR %'s than the one that came out before it. Little by little the DVD market is shrinking in this area.

I do not own a PS3 (Though I would love to buy one around Christmas time for 3D games and movies), but I have bought about 40 BR in the past 18 months. And I will be buying another 6 or 7 by years end (Predators and TS3 are the ones I am most looking forward to). I would buy more, but the selection is pretty bad this year.

DVD will still sell, but in the years ahead the percentage will be the older lower priced DVDs.

Gizmo

Because those films cater to the PS3 demographic who continues to buy those type of films. As more people buy the system, more people buy movies. And in Iron Man 2 (and Avatars case), they included a DVD to get consumers to pick the BD over the DVD.

You need to understand optical is on it's way out. Blu-ray is going to be the last optical format and will continue to sell side by side with DVD until both of them die. DVD will always have the upperhand with tens of thousands of more titles available, and every week more DVDs come out. Studios see Blu-ray as a 'new release' format, as catalogs are selling poorly and the price has to be cut so much that they are not turning much of a profit. They also had to saddle them with bonus DVD copies just to get retailers to carry them.

It's not a bad thing, Blu-ray will survive, but it won't be puppies and kittens like they thought. They shot themselves in the foot early.

big e

Haven't catalog titles always sold poorly on Blu-ray? Maybe a bulk of the general population that's buying into Blu-ray just doesn't think it's worth paying $20-25 to upgrade an old title they have on SD-DVD.

Anubis2005X

Coral

"Failing" may be too strong a word, but Blu-Ray is obviously nowhere near the success that Sony and the studios wanted and expected it to be. The format was supposed to account for 50% of movie sales by now, but we see it's fallen far from that goal.

A few titles that caters to the PS3 demographic means little to the overall success of the format.

DVD sales fall every year and Blu-Ray sales don't even come close to making up the difference.

Sub-Zero

What do you think the studios that promoted Blu-ray, especially early on, could have done differently to make it more of a successful product? Aside from the format war with HD-DVD, which obviously didn't do either format any good, does anyone think that marketing Blu-ray as a "premium product" may have actually hurt sales? I think that the "average" home movie watcher was not going to be easily convinced to upgrade again, considering so many had just recently made the switch from VHS to DVD itself.