No, he's the head of Home Entertainment. Exaggeration is one thing, but outright lying about sales figures would be suicidal if he wanted to keep his job. Anyone claiming he's lying would do well to show some sort of evidence. There's a difference between lying about figures and exagerating the effect you believe they'll have.

Seems Mike Dunn is saying he's seen a huge surge in BD sales around the week of the 24th Dec. This is presumably when many PS3s were unwrapped under christmas trees. Considering the near deafening silence from Universal and Paramount at this years CES this sort of change in the format war seems quite likely.

Mike Dunn is the same Fox PR person that said, before either the PS3 launched or Fox released a single title, that the HD format war was only happening in the press and that the PS3 was "already the next-gen" console winner.

Yea wait till people Learn that they can use their HD DVD add on with VISTA and on their PC which then can be connected to guess what an HDTV or LCD MONITOR that does 1080p with no need of a 360 and guess what becomes available in JAN 30 VISTA .....this war has just begun.

He's responsible for overseeing DVD production and distribution for his studio, so calling him a PR person is a little strange.

BTW here are some interesting quotes from studio's regarding Warner's proposed dual format disc -

Apparently he also said that he would never make a dual mode disc, though I didn't see a direct quote.

Here's another studio "PR person" :D asked about dual format discs-
He apparently ruled out production of dual discs as well, but again there's no direct quote.

Not really, you could call him a cheerleader and it wouldn't make any difference. He has been rambling off nonsensical qoutes since last summer. According to him, we should be seeing 10 million Blu-Ray players in 2007. Sony is only estimating around 6 million PS3 sales this year BTW, at best.

“Blu-ray will penetrate faster than DVD did, going from zero to 10 million households like a rocket. Once the delta between the two formats begins to widen like that early on, it becomes a Blu-ray no-brainer for the consumer.”

Burnt did he go out and survery all 400 ps3 owners ? did he get VIDEO LOGS , CHARTS actually Sales ? did he outline everything on his charts and show facts!!!

I can say today i sold 70,000 Blu-ray and i believe tomorrow i will do the same , but that is just an opinion based on theories "THEORIES" unless he can see into the future and if he can , then Why does fox continue to make Bombs at the Box office why are they even making AVP 2 if they are so all knowing and know what is going to happen in the next year.

That quote says nothing about 10million PS3s this year. I think Sony are estimating 6 million total sold by March.

I can only assume Alien vs Predator made enough money on DVD sales that they feel it's worth their while to make another one. Personally I thought the first one was junk, but I know some people like it.

There are organisations who closely monitor the sales of DVDs, BDs, TVs, and cornish pasties. If you're wealthy enough you can gain access to this data. And if you sell the product in question you will know not only how much you have produced but can learn from your distributors how much has been sold, to verify this data. If anyone has sales figures here it's Mike Dunn. Predictions about future growth is a form of economics, and involves estimating a variety of unknowns. Of course that means it's intrinsically inaccurate, but not neccessariy worthless (see Moore's Law). I'm more inclined to listen to the economists working for Fox than internet quarterbacks, for example.

Sorry I was looking at some of his various qoutes and making a logical argumentive statement using the various premises in front of me. I should have qouted them all. My bad. ;)

Anyway, Mike Dunn claimed to Videobusiness on 1/8 that the 3.5 to 1 sales ratio he gave out was "research" based on Blu-Ray selling 20% more than HD-dvd during the last week in December.

I would certainly hope they can sell more though considering the drought of HD-dvd titles coming in January.

It's hard to believe statements without actual sales numbers given to us, espesically when the company giving the information out is trying to sell the product they are talking about.

Thats how people wind up buying swamp land. :)

More News:

WB, HBO and New Line love the TotalHD disc idea. Go Figure all the Time Warner companies agree with each other!

Dual sided discs with full capacity for either format, can be replicated on any exsiting equipment, not much more expesnive than regular Hd disc.

The same features will be on both formats

Best Buy is heavily endorsing the TotalHD disc

HBO not announcing HD titles but will start their releases in the second half of 2007. Ditto New Line.

LOTR is being worked on now and will be available as a TotalHD disc .....

WB sees no end to format war

This statement intrigues me, since both BDs and HD DVDs require new lines for manufacturing, though HD DVD could theoretically re-tool DVD lines at greater expense. Not that flippers are really my cup of tea anyway...

I was thinking the same thing actually.

I think WB is trying to sell the idea to other studios so they are going to emphasize the discs not costing more the same way the BDA presented BD50 the last few years. That plus the various replicators are probably not going to want to buy any more lines for producing a new type of HD disc. In the end not only is WB selling an idea to try and bring the various companies to the same place to push the market, but they are psuhing a disc they now have patents in.

WB has done all of their testing with Cinram's help BTW.

Naive much?

All these I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I? posts are so annoying.

Certainly, the growth on the week prior to the 24th is going to continue at the same pace forever. After all, it's not like there was some major event the following week that might've led people to buy more merchandise.

WB is probably dead right on this one. Well, if they move fully to Total HD I can deal with it, but I hope it doesn't mean a big jump in price for HD movies. I like getting the Warner titles for $17.99 at Amazon.

Let's drop the whole Mike Dunn thing.

It's clearly a wasted effort on all sides. If someone wants to take his word as gospel, go for it. If you don't, whatever. Both sides have made their points. No one's going to convince anyone of anything else, so believe what you want.

Of course they are, they can charge more :D...

Word from Meridian about CES:

Meridian refutes HD DVD hardware announcement

And still...no word from Dreamworks? And why is New Line still sitting it out for the first half of the year? Send out even the Austin Powers movies (which will look great in HD) and I'll be happy...no one expects Lord of the Rings by March '07, but come on.

And in regards to that statement about LOTR being available on Total HD, does anyone think that this will be the only way in which it will be available? No separate HD DVD and Blu-Ray versions (as I suppose that is the point of the THD discs)? Normally I'm not a packaging stickler, but boy, those are tacky.

I guess my main question is: when Warner starts bringing out the THD discs, will they no longer release separate HD DVD and Blu-Ray versions? Is this the future for ALL Warner HD discs? Or is it too early to tell?

And I have to say, in my opinion, no movement from Dreamworks or New Line is far more disappointing than a lack of a huge list from WB or Universal, in terms of CES.

It seems like Blu-Ray really showed more at this CES. I thought the consumers liked HD-DVD more....who knows. I guess I'll eventually need a new TV and I'll be happy (since I have both a PS3 and 360 HD-DVD, but currently the PS3 is on my smaller HDMI enabled TV)

Are these not mutually exclusive?

The announcement of Total Hi Def discs is disconcerting. It translates to even higher prices for us consumers. I read somewhere that Warner will not charge other studios any royalties to create THDs for their own movies, perhaps to keep costs down. Nevertheless, I certainly hope this doesn't become the norm for HD content.

I would buy a THD movie only if:
1) A movie I had to have was made available only in this format; and/or,
2) The product was priced <$30.

To wit, I would only buy it if it was the same price as the HD counterpart. I see no reason to otherwise. The future is most likely dual format players, so I won't be stuck with useless media.