BuckNaked2k

Week ending 4/9/2011:

Iron_Giant

The number to look at is the Dollar amount:
Week before - $47.95 Million
This week - $46.06 Million

I do not know how much the Avatar week was last year, but this an impressive number for two weeks in a row.

If BR does $40million a week over the next year - Total 2.08 Billion (That is a very large number)


If these number continue, the BR and DVD lines will be intersecting. Each of the formats will be making the same amount of $$$. But, DVD is out selling BR by numbers of disks sold, the price of the DVDs are a great deal lower than BR. Many of the "older" DVD titles are running at $5 to $8, while older BRs are $9 to $20. So, DVD has to sell a ton more to make that larger of a number.

BR is a much more profitable media than DVD is to the Studios.

BR is a HUGE success and will only become more successfully over the next few years - when it will be outselling DVD.

Gizmo

Avatar week has not even come up yet.

Not really. Not when it did 1.65 Billion (HMM Total) in 2010. A $500 million increase while DVD will likely drop Billions is not a good thing - especially with BDs higher price per title.


No, it isn't. 4,000 titles for a 5 year old format that still needs to cram a DVD inside the case and is quickly lose shelf space (Optical Disc as a whole) in retailers is not a huge success. It's why people like Bob Iger call Blu-ray sales "sobering", and studios like Paramount, Sony and Disney release 10-20 catalog titles a year. You're of course welcome to your opinion, but no one thinks Blu-ray is a huge success. It was suppose to be the successor to DVD (that or HD DVD), but with the current amount of BD players in homes, and the amount of discs sold...it just shows that consumers are not buying anywhere near what they used to and are finding other things to do with their time and money (Internet, Netflix, etc.)

Blu-ray will likely never outsell DVD. If it does, that means DVD has hit rock freakin' bottom and every studio would be shitting gigantic bricks. As it stands, retailers are likely going to shrink OD space even more to make room for much more profitable items that are selling, like Tablets. Blu-ray is already not doing as good Year over Year as Blu-ray did last year (compared to 2009), and thats with 8-10 million more BD Players in homes. Consumers are not buying discs.

davidh777

Correct, Avatar was 4/22/10, which means it will factor into this week's numbers. Having Potter 7A come out last Friday will help somewhat because more sales will spill into this week than it would have with a Tuesday release, but it's not an Avatar and this week's comparison should be a big negative hit.

Again correct. A lot of Blu-ray's gains are cannibalization because of the heavy promotion of combo packs, which count in the BD column. The optical-media market is bleeding heavily, and BD is a band-aid that is only partially slowing the flow.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I'm not so sure about the tablets part.

For the sake of argument, we'll say tablets are selling like crazy. The difference between something like that and movies is that people aren't going to keep coming back every week for a new tablet.

davidh777

^True, but the profit per square foot is probably still better than TVs and washing machines

orangerunner

The whole video industry has been at a crossroads for a while now. I think overall we'll see the continuing trend of optical discs losing ground.

I feel the two formats are hurting each others sales as well. Many people will hesitate buying a DVD because of Blu-ray and yet don't want to buy Blu-ray because of the higher price.

Solution? Hold off purchasing altogether until the price of the Blu-ray comes down further as we saw with DVDs in the past. People are also much more selective after all the impulse spending that went on with DVD.

The other alternative for people is, of course, the convenience and low cost of Netflix, Redbox etc.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

Solution, DVD/Blu-ray combos.

orangerunner

3D Combo $39.95
Combo $29.95
Blu-ray $24.95
DVD $18.95

The $21 price spread doesn't make it much easier. If combos were really the winning formula, this thread would have been irrelevant long ago.

wz42

Yeah right...

I'm considering cancelling a pre-order for June from Amazon since they only only put out a BR/DVD combo edition.

I don't want their stinkin' BR and since a $25 max DVD title is at $35 pre-order for the combo I may walk.

Only bright side is that, if I do cancel, I could see alot of "jewel case" used copies of both DVD and BR showing up cheap on Amazon Marketplace.

Gizmo

I think eventually, most studios will release only a DVD/Blu-ray pack and just forget about the DVD-Only edition (until x amount of time later - let's say 6 months for bargain bin reasons). Why? Blu-ray's take up less shelf space because the cases are smaller and thinner, they can pack more in a box, and because of weight, it's cheaper to ship. Retailers likely can make the same - if not more - profit on a $22 DVD/BD Combo vs a $15 DVD only edition and for studios it might 'force' consumers to get a Blu-ray player if they have all these extra discs.

As Optical Discs (DVD and Blu-ray) continues to slide in sales to the amount of billions each year, retailers will reduce space to them. You don't give more space - or keep it the same - for a product that's dropping in sales. You give it to the ones that are growing, like tablets and cell phones.

The kids over at Blu-ray.com can cheer all they want for the awesome % that Tron: Legacy did on Blu-ray, but it did so because DVD sales are slipping so damn fast. The simple fact is, even if the same amount of people who bought Tron: Legacy on Blu-ray did so for (just an example) Iron Man 2 last year, DVD sales fell so bad that the % the BD title got will be higher. As DVD slide, Blu-ray has no where to go but up. Plus, it caters exactly to the PS3 demographic regardless of how good the movie is.

It's a scary world for Blu-ray. The kids think %'s mean Blu-ray is doing good, but it's only going to be up about 20% YoY from last year, and that's with an additional 8-10 million BD players sold in 2010. That's not going to be enough to offset DVDs decline this year which already looks like it will be massive (especially with no Avatar to prop either DVD or Blu-ray up).

Gizmo

What title? Sounds like it might be Blue Underground or one of those horror releases.

wz42

Louie Season 1. Two copies on the pre-order - BD packaging with DVD incl and DVD packaging with BR incl - both around the same price.

orangerunner

I've been to video stores where they are selling their used BDs for $9.99, buy one get two free ($3.33 each) and they're still not flying off shelves.

The same things are still haunting the Blu-ray format as they did several years ago.

Yes, Blu-ray is technically superior but the discs are still expensive relative to their DVD counterparts, recordable Blu-ray is still commercially unavailable at a reasonable cost.

Blu-ray still hasn't really become the standard in new computer towers.

Blu-ray portable players are scarce or considered irelevant on a 9" screen.

Blu-ray is still not really financially feasible for pressing/burning small, independant films, travel videos, corporate, educational videos etc.

For many of these applications the technology has moved onto memory sticks or strreaming so making use of a Blu-ray is not even necessary.

It's just my opinion but I think many consumers just feel Blu-ray is a temporary technology bridge that isn't worth heavily investing time, money and energy into a home library of more titles that one already has on DVD.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

ISPs putting caps on usage are helping to combat streaming, that is of course, unless you're doing it through the ISP.

The prices and deals of used movies don't necessarily mean they'll sell. It's what's offered that matters. Wal-Mart has tons new DVDs for around $5. That doesn't mean they're worth buying.

Gizmo

The current caps are pretty generous. Netflix has already created 'lower' streams for Canada to help reduce bandwidth, which I'm sure will hit the US soon enough.

Unless the home consumer is watching tons of Movie, the caps won't make much of a difference. For me, if it ever becomes a problem, I'll just connect to one of my many neighbors un-secured WiFi access points.

orangerunner

What is "worth buying" is subjective of course. The titles offered at that $3.33 were Knowing, Valkerye, Last House on the Left, Friday the 13th, The International, My Bloody Valentine, Duplicity etc.

Generally speaking DVDs, if cheap enough, would be able to sell any title at that price. It was odd to see BRs not seeming to have that same ability to move titles.

Gizmo

DVD has a larger base of possible consumers. Blu-ray's is much, much smaller.

Iron_Giant

Impressive BR sales and DVD sales:



I do not know what titles were on sale last year, but the numbers are BIG compared to last year!

Harry Potter (New and Catalog Titles) really made a big splash in Both Formats.

It will be interesting to see the numbers over the next month or so, not to many titles coming out that I want to buy. Star Wars seems like my next big purchase, other new/old titles are just not making me want to open my wallet to buy.

Is this the 1st week BR has gone over the $50million mark?

Gizmo

Last year same week was pathetic. That's why.

And let's finish this off with...

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/ente...9-percent.html

dsa_shea

Me like Blu-rays. They sell Blu-Rays. Me keep buying Blu-Rays. I could care less about numbers.

Iron_Giant

Best write up I have ever seen on the DVD/BR Sales Stats over the past few years, and a comparison of the past two "Harry Potter" releases (Half Blood P and Deathly H P1).

http://forum.digital-digest.com/show...965#post588965

-So Blu-ray market share broke through yet another barrier, this time the 27% mark, making it the third week in a row that a record has been set.

-For one, Deathly Hallows had a Blu-ray market share of nearly 46%, whereas Half-Blood Prince only managed 24.46%. Apart from the growth of Blu-ray, there are other reasons for this result, explained by our new staff reporter Anne in this article (the gist of it is that, the best edition this time is definitely the combo version, and that the fully featured DVD-only edition was not even available for general release).

-So did Warner's tactic of not releasing a fully featured DVD (of Harry Potter and the Deathly H P1) edition backfire, with DVD owners only splashing out on the cheaper single disc edition, and thus lowering DVD and total revenue?

-Blu-ray's market share more than doubled, going from 13.22% to a record 27.15% (a growth of 105.37%).

orangerunner

I wish they would use numbers of units sold rather than revenue generated to measure the increase or declines in sales.

But, like the weekend box office numbers, they're designed to make the success of the product look better (or worse) than it really is.

Iron_Giant

Considering last year was the Avatar Release week, the number are not so bad.

After "Green Hornet" comes out, there are not a ton of big BR sales titles coming out to push the market. BTW, I am NOT picking up GH, saw it in the Theater, fun but nothing I will watch over and over again.

Titles like "Drive Angry" are coming out, but it will not sell as much as GH. Animated movie like "Gnomeo and Juliet" will also be on sale in a few weeks, but I do not see it as a huge BR pusher.

So, the DVD share should increase and BR decrease (20 to 21 percent, if not lower). But,when the Nov/Dec sales hit with the movies from this summer, the BR percent is going to be huge.

I went to BestBuy the yesterday with my $50 gift card, but could not find anything I wanted to purchase, I have already bought everything I want at this time (or I go it for my Birthday).

The next movie I see picking up on BR is "True Grit" on June 7th, then nothing after that until Aug or Sept.

I bet when the number go down, the media is going to announce how the DVD/BR market is dead. When the problem is really that Hollywood is not putting out titles we want to buy and we have already picked old release we want. Except for Star Wars, Indiana Jones...

Alan Smithee

Just like the music/CD market...