???

The end of April, the movie sold around 4K copies. This past week it sold 50K?

I am going by the numbers that Grubert extrapolated.

I looked at the numbers, and they looked off to me, at least compared to last month's, but I KNEW someone would say "see, you give numbers and they aren't satisfied."

Let me rephrase, I want ACCURATE numbers, not percentages. If these numbers are accurate then that is great.

BTW, I am NOT slighting Grubert in any way here. He took the information he had and did the math, and it is sound. I just wonder how the same title sold more than 10X what it did a few weeks ago.

Now, if this were next week's chart, after PS3 get MGS4 where system sales will be through the roof, I would understand.

Hence why I asked you to provide a source that puts some credence in your doubts that the numbers aren't accurate. Coming in here asking for accurate numbers when you have numbers but you don't think they are accurate means zero.

Sure you are. If you think that selling 50K of 300 is a stretch then perhaps you have data that disproves what Grubert posted. Going by what previous weeks had in terms of sales does not support your argument.

You asked for numbers now you have numbers. If you wish to question their validity offer a different source and let's talk about stretches. I am sure Grubert will be happy to assist any concerns there might be with the current sales data.

Pro-B

Golden Compass also shot up 20k copies from a few weeks ago with no sales? Over American selling 10k more? Some things simply do not make any sense.

Considering the sales lately, I don't find the numbers too hard to buy into. There were a lot of Buy 2 for $30 sales, BOGOs, B2G1s, etc; For 300 and Blade Runner, at least, it makes sense.

Until we get ALL of the raw numbers, I don't think it's a stretch to call anything they give us a stretch. It's not like the studios never overestimate (a.k.a. lie) about box office or movie sales figures.

Again, why are they hiding behind this 100% crap? (I think we all already know the answer to this one.)

Thanks. Of course, if Lionsgate inflated its Rambo DVD sales figures to begin with, then all other figures would be flawed.

NO, I am not. If once source is wrong either now, or when the calculations were made last month, it can skew the numbers.

Why don't you tell us what is so special about the month of May that caused sales of a catalog title to jump 1000%?

Precisely. This is why the percentage system is flawed.

FWIW, I have a great deal of respect for you not being content to hide behind these percentages, and making the effort to put real numbers to them.

What Grubert is doing is a mathematical extrapolation of the figures: it does not mean that they are not correct, but only that the figures are not exact (because they are a mathematical estimate). So by nature they are "stretched" or flawed, but they should represent a fairly close "guess".
And do these figures represent the amount sold to stores, or to people?

No one is doubting Grubert's methodology; he explained the logic, and it is sound. We are just pointing out that when looking at the last set of "hard" numbers (and who is to say those were correct), a dichotomy becomes evident.

That is, when a year-old catalog title goes from 4,200 units sold to 47,300 in one month, with no earth shattering developments (like a $99 player, for instance), a reasonable person may conclude that something does not necessarily add up, even if he unable to cite a source every time.

But a reasonable person doesn't automatically conclude that set A is correct and set B is incorrect, as many have done here. There is disparity, but insufficient evidence to draw any conclusion as to which set is an accurate representation of reality, or whether other, unconsidered factors have contributed to the difference.

It seems likely that preconceptions and personal bias are leading some to jump to the conclusion that only the results of Grubert's calculations are flawed.

If they'd just provide actual numbers instead of these silly percentages, that'd clear up a lot of questions.

<small>(Admittedly, though, I really couldn't care less about sales, although I always want things I like to succeed. Other than that, the specifics aren't important to me.)</small>

Exactly. If you read my entire quote you will see that was the point I was trying to make.

Actually, I did read all of it (before I quoted all of it), but I don't see that. It seemed to me as if you were justifying people in jumping to the conclusion that Grubert's numbers were wrong and the previous "raw" numbers were right, despite the lack of any proof of such conclusion.

That was the point I was trying to make.

Of course, a studio has nothing to gain from underreporting numbers, but quite a bit to gain from inferring numbers are higher than they really are. It doesn't take much to connect the dots here.

Rambo Blu-ray sold at least 16 copies though, right?

Such as?

But the industry has never had a solid system of reporting ALL disc sales. In fact, even when VideoScan used to provide a complete sales list to Billboard the numbers were curved and excluding particular retailers (I don't recall the name but it was a Capitol Records official for example that introduced the current, admittedly inefficiently designed, model they use to track CD sales). The adult industry for example did not even have a centralized system in place until the late 90s. The bulk of the studios did not report sales at all, some still don't.

So, to speculate that the studios are hiding behind a percentage chart is just naive, if not worse.

Pro-B

This is why the level of discourse is so low in these threads. Why do you suppose companies would benefit from a perceived stronger hold of the marketplace than they actually have? Just off the top of my head:

- Stronger media/public perception of their franchise (Rambo)
- More impressive view of their brand as a whole (Lionsgate)
- Coverage in the news spurs additional sales (this discussion has, in fact, sold at least one copy of Rambo on Blu Ray, as I have finally remembered to bite the bullet)
- Increase future retail buys of LG products

And so on. Imagine any reason LG had to release the initial press release...if the public perception of the numbers is greater than what the release says, then amplify those reasons.

First of all, NO ONE has said that Grubert's numbers are wrong. His methodology and arithmetic is spot-on. Stop trying to make everything into a fight. Stop acting like people are trying to smear the guy. Grubert himself recognizes that if he was provided with an inaccurate number that the whole thing is based on, then the numbers will be off.

Also, it is not just this number that is in question, it is this number compared to a number from three weeks ago. Somewhere, there is a number that is off.

This all just points to the fact that these companies hide behind percentages.

ETA: IIRC, Grubert did the legwork and came up with both sets of figures. So by your estimations, both numbers are Grubert's.

That's why I assume they use percentages, because they don't know the actual numbers. They probably get values from only certain resellers, and they base their percentages on those numbers instead of trying to estimate actual numbers based on what they distributed to other resellers. I suppose they could estimate actual numbers by saying the resellers they poll sold x% of the discs they received, and assume that rate to all discs they distributed.

In order for public perception to be a motivating factor, the general public would have to actually care about (and read) the numbers, which they don't. The only people who generally read them are geeks like us and those in the industry.

As far as spurring additional retail buys, I would suspect that most retailers are going to go more off what they have actually sold than what someone else tells them they have sold, when determining reorder levels.

The fact is, I don't see anyone who really benefits from artificially inflating these types of numbers. If we were talking about box office receipts, where public perception is often manipulated by deliberate misreporting, that would be different. But I have never known anyone who went out and bought a DVD because they read in a trade newspaper that it had old X number of copies last week.

If you will notice, nowhere in any of my posts did I accuse anyone of claiming that Grubert's math or methodology was suspect, only the final numbers (which are, obviously, dependent on the numbers he had to work with in the first place).

My point was, and still is, that many of you are jumping to the conclusion that the numbers for this week are wrong/over-inflated (taking Grubert completely out of the picture, if that makes it easier to understand), and that the previous numbers were right. There isn't enough evidence to support that conclusion.

Well, what I'm reading is that ALL numbers may be wrong/inflated, and that last week's numbers may be especially off. Given the history of the sales figures that we've been getting, this is hardly a stretch (to think otherwise would be naive ).

I understand the love of Blu-ray by certain people, but I don't understand anyone trying to defend the retarded percentage system. It's obvious that BDA/studios are embarassed by the raw numbers and that the best way was to hide behind some sleazy marketing ploy. The only reason this is even tolerated by the industry is because Blu-ray is still a niche product (imagine if they did this with box office figures or even with CD sales figures ). I can see J6P eating this up, but I expect a lot more from DVDTalkers.

And the shareholders of these companies, of course. The last I checked, all of the major studios were still publicly traded companies whose reported and projected earnings will directly affect their stock prices. If a company's new product is perceived to be an endless money sinkhole, shareholders are liable to dump the stock. That's what happened to Toshiba, and is why their stock price rebounded immediately after they pulled out of the format war.

It is very much in the interest of all of these companies to create and maintain the public perception that their products are successful and on a steady upswing.

The fact that both sets of numbers were compiled by the same person with the same methodology and yet radically contradict each other demonstrates that the entire process is profoundly flawed and unreliable. This is not Grubert's fault. The problem is that he is missing significant pieces of critical information, and thus both sets of results he came up with are invalid. Neither set of numbers is "the right one". They're both wrong, and the companies don't want us to know what the correct numbers actually are. Now ask yourself why that would be.