If a vacuum cleaner salesman tells me that he sold 100 vaccum cleaners, I may not know the methodology by which he came to that total, but at least he's given me a hard number. If that salesman tells me that "I sold 10% as many vacuum cleaners as I did washing machines", and when asked how many washing machines he sold says, "Somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000, wink wink nudge nudge", then he is obviously trying to distract and mislead with the specific intention of preventing me from figuring out how many units he sold.

In such a scenario, none of his numbers can be considered reliable. Yet many in this thread are yelling, "Wow! That clearly means he sold 1,000 vacuum cleaners! That's fantastic!"

You might have made that clearer in your original post, as the tone of it certainly suggested otherwise.

The problem with your "hard number" example is that it is also meaningless without additional context. It does not tell you how the sales of vacuum cleaners relates to the overall appliance industry. Even telling you that this week he sold 100, but last week he sold 120, does not provide anything of much use. The fact that the hard number changed from week to week gives you no indication of whether that might be part of a larger industry trend, and isolated incident, or reason for concern over the future of vacuum cleaner sales. It is only a data point.

Percentages can give some of that kind of insight, if presented and interpreted properly.

I would question how large the segment of the BD-purchasing public is that falls into that category, though. Since most are still early adopters, I would guess that they would be more likely to wait at least a while, in hopes that a Blu-ray version of a movie might be released. I know I have done that for many titles lately.

You're right. Percentages can give us that insight if done properly.

But they are not doing it properly. At the very least they should tell us how many copies the #1 Blu-ray sold. That will make the rest of the chart exponentially clearer.

There is no need to release just the percentages (without raw numbers) unless they are trying to hide from something. This is just another deceptive reporting tactic, and no one should be defending them unless ...

But that still doesn't give any context to the numbers. All it tells you is how many BDs were sold, and what the breakdown was between different titles. It doesn't tell how those numbers trend, relative to any other segment of the industry.

Lee Harvey Oswald was the only shooter & the US did land on the moon.

...They love Blu-ray with all their heart.

Nope, sorry. But thank you for playing. Next?

Right... Who was defending the BD numbers that were clearly wrong?

No one, that I'm aware of. I certainly wasn't. I was defending the logic of not jumping to the conclusion that any one set of numbers is any more or less accurate than any other, simply based on it matching personal assumptions and predispositions. But, that seems to have been lost on too many people, who take anything that questions the process used to reach their own conclusions as an attempt to defend other conclusions.

That's quite a funny post coming from someone who probably has an HD DVD tattoo.

But once you have the numbers, you have values that you can use to find the trends and compare them to other data to compare trends.

I have no problems with the report as is ... IF we can also get the raw numbers next to them. If we have to pick one of the two, then I would definitely want the raw numbers. When we get the raw numbers, then we can put the numbers into context by comparing them to the raw numbers of the DVD sales. It's a shame that we can't have a report like this for Blu-ray as well.

True. Unfortunately, there are quite a few people in this forum that like to jump on anything that can be spun as negative for Blu-ray, and throw it in everyone's face at every opportunity. For example, if there were raw numbers showing even a slight week-to-week decline in Blu-ray sales, we would see at least half a dozen reports of how badly Blu-ray sales sucked, how it's all because of exorbitantly high prices and pathetic BDA marketing efforts, and things had better change by next week or the format is doomed.

Never mind the fact that those numbers, put in context, could still be quite good as a percentage of overall home entertainment software sales.

I fully agree. A report like that would be awesome. Was there anything with that level of detail available for DVD during its infancy?

What you're saying is that it's impossible to ever know anything for certain in this world, and so it's better if they just lie to us, because at least then we know they're lying, which in turn makes them more honest than if they'd told us something that we couldn't tell whether it was a lie or not.

Is that it?

Yes, raw numbers for DVD sales were available in industry publications from the format's infancy. The DVD Forum never attempted to hide their sales numbers. They had no need to.

This is a perfect example of what is wrong with this whole issue. First, you jump to the conclusion that "we" are being lied to, and then you assume that I am supporting such actions. I refuse to fall for such childish baiting attempts, so I will not respond further.

No one has been defending the numbers, if you could find a post where the numbers were explicitly defended as accurate please feel free to post. What I and others have been pointing out is that the percentage system used by the studios is the only comparative tool we have at this point to track the progression of the two formats. The rest of the comments on this thread are as much of a defending as are your posts from the week prior to last.

Pro-B

I must be missing the point of your post above as I don't know what the industry might be hiding. And I wonder. And rather have you tell us what is it that you know the issue at hand is instead of leaving open-comments suggesting that anyone who might be interpreting the percentage system differently is a fanboy. Claiming that the system is meaningless just doesn't cut it, it may not be perfect but it does allow us to monitor how the formats evolve.

Also, what possible negative effect could a sales chart with raw numbers have for the future of the format? What indicative trend could be derived from the numbers when the majors are yet to be fully represented on the market? I would like to hear what you think the case is since you repeatedly left your posts open as to suggest that there is an obvious reason all but a few DVDTALKers can see. If anything, you will be speculating just as you accuse the studios are at the moment with the only difference being that they do have access to their sales numbers while you don't.

Pro-B

did you not read that site?

in other words, they're guessing. or at best "guestimating". figures for dvd are not released as standard in the industry, as demonstrated by the disparity between the rambo totals from the studio and this numbers site (of which i was previously unaware).

And there are just as many Blu-Ray crusaders that instantaneously attack and gang up on anyone who has ANYTHING critical to say about the format.

I LVE the tactic of trying to put the group you support in the "oppressed maligned category." Works well for the conservative pundits.

what happened is that the vacuum salesman gave you a hard number, but that someone else (who had not been previously heard of) came up with a different number. some have revealed their bias by believing this new number without question. neither figure is trustworthy. neither would the vacuum salesman's total have been trustworthy if it had been the only figure offered up. without methodology it's impossible to know what the criteria behind these totals is.

in simple terms, the studio is in the best possible position to know the actual sales totals, but their reporting may be compromised by a desire to portray themselves in a possitive light. while the impartial observer (numbers.com, etc) probably doesn't have an axe to grind, but they also have difficulty finding sources for the true quantities of dvds sold, so they "interpolate" data from a variety of sources through a model they've developed, meaning their figures may well be inaccurate.

Setting aside the sales reporting method...

Isn't the fact that Cloverfield sold out of almost every retailer and e-tailer a good sign? (Other than consumers getting irritated that they couldn't find it.)

It shows that sales exceeded what Paramount and many retailers thought it would sell.

Blu Ray sales are moving upward. The only debate is how quickly. With the numbers that the big hits put up I'd say that the future of Blu Ray looks solid. A year from now the Blu Ray market's going to look even more solid - and may actually start getting some people excited about the future of the format.