Gizmo

Another crash and burn week.

PopcornTreeCt

Well there's only so many movies. I don't mind re-buying the classics on Blu-ray as long as they're priced right.

Iron_Giant

We all knew this was coming, "What a drop in media sales".



It is going to look just as bad over the next few months, Bad in Theater = Bad on BR/DVD.

BR/DVD reflect the bad Boxoffice from about 3 to 4 months earlier.

Gizmo

Or that consumers don't care about the 4,000+ BD titles sitting on shelves/online. They didn't buy. Its BDs lowest week of the entire year.

davidh777

It's TV too. With the decline in scripted shows (as well as the other factors, including online watching etc.), that market is a ghost of what it used to be as well.

orangerunner

There are just too many other forms of free (or cheaper) entertainment out there competing for the public's attention.

There's music downloading, web surfing, checking email, 357 channels on TV, updating your Facebook account, Twitter, Youtube, Skype, selling on eBay, scanning Craigslist, PS3 games, farting around with your cell phone, adding posts on DVD Talk etc. and yet there are still only 24 hours in a day.

As well, I think the internet has really created a culture that movies and music should be free, near-free or "all you can watch" at a low price. No one wants to pay for it anymore.

The novelty of owning large collections of DVD/Blu-ray discs has simply worn out its need for the masses.

jackson walker

From Deadline.com:

DVD Disaster? Study Says Sales Plummeted In 2010, Contrary To Industry Report.

The bottom seems to have fallen out of the DVD market according to a startling report out this week from SNL Kagan. The research firm says that studio shipments of DVDs fell 43.8% to 226 million discs last year. Wholesale revenues fell about the same amount, 43.9%, to $4.47 billion.

http://www.deadline.com/2011/05/dvd-...dustry-report/

Iron_Giant

This year looks to be even worse, I am not sure if a DVD title will surpass the $100 million mark:

http://www.the-numbers.com/dvd/chart...y/thisweek.php

So far, Tangled is the only DVD that looks it may be able to surpass the $100 million mark, but it will have to have long legs to do it.

The summer flicks (Thor, Green L, Captain Amer...) will come on-sale during the Holiday rush, but these movies just beg to be viewed in BR. And BR will even be more popular by then and continue to slice away at the DVD "NEW" release pie.

Reasons:
1. BR eating up more and more of the "New" titles 1st few weeks sales
2. Lowing of the DVD price to get them to sale (lower the price, harder to surpass the $100 million mark)
3. Economy down
4. People not buying as much movies any more (Already own tons of movies, got bored...)
5. Combo backs (BR and DVD...)

I have only bought 2 or 3 DVDs over the past 2 1/2 years, but I have bought 100 BRs.

Prediction:
On average, New Action/Animated movies will be sold over 50% on BR one year from now. But, DVD Catalog titles will continue to be purchased at a cheap price and DVD overall will be outselling BR (by a small margin).

1 1/2 years from now, overall BR will be outselling DVDs.

BuckNaked2k

Week ending 5/7:

Gizmo

Down yet again with two new releases this week.

Iron_Giant

This could be the 1st year that a DVD title does not total over $100 million in sales.

http://www.the-numbers.com/dvd/chart...y/thisweek.php

Tangled - $86,774,555 (It has the best chance so far to pass the $100 million mark, it does have another 6 months to avg about $500 thousand a week.)



The really bad news for DVD, but good news for BR...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I - $68,612,089 sales in 40 days(It looks like there is no chance to hit the 100 mark.
This will be the 1st HP title to miss the mark.)
-The BR percentage for HP & the DH Part1 is suppose to be around 50% percent
-Since the price of BR is higher than DVD, the BR title must be making a chunk more $$$ than it's DVD cousin.



History Info:
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - $200,157,479 sales in just 20 days (and $221,421,546 in 3 1/2 years.)
-Now DVD sales are Off about 66% from 3 1/2 years ago.

True, other BRs do not have the same percentage as new (and old) HP movies, but it is a sign of things to come for our old friend "DVD".


After the Holiday season in 6 months, DVD sales are going to take another huge hit.

Alan Smithee

Well, it's obvious that regular DVDs are going to lose sales to Blu-Rays- ever since the HD formats came out I haven't bought a title on regular DVD that was available on Blu or HD-DVD.

BuckNaked2k

Week ending 5/14:



Week ending 5/21:



Week ending 5/28:

Iron_Giant

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/res...dvd-2012-24174

"Futuresource expects 2012 to be the year DVD revenue finally gives up its majority home entertainment stake to Blu-ray, and by 2014 DVD could be just 26% of home entertainment spending, with Blu-ray at 41%. TV-based VOD (18%) and online video (15%) will account for the rest. Futuresource pegs combined spending in those four categories at close to $25 billion by 2014."

Gizmo

Haha. No one believes that unless every new release is Blu-ray exclusive. Blu-ray is already showing signs of peaking.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

We've been hearing that same story for years.

The only thing like that that's gone on longer is hearing from linux users that this is going to be the year of the linux desktop.

DVD Polizei

Considering how much money is put into re-packaging and selling the same shit in a different toilet, they're getting what they sell. It's just too much too fast, and consumers are just overwhelmed. Just whe Blu-ray gets over 50% of the media market, I expect another format to be introduced. Just stick to one format, do it well, and it can last for decades. But no, we have quick-rich media moneyhounds doing an "In 'N' Out" in the media sector.

BuckNaked2k

It is widely believed by many industry insiders and tech gurus that Blu-ray will be the last physical format.

Coral

I'm not sure about that.

I can't see the physical media fully going away, and I don't see BD holding on forever as 5" discs have been outdated for a while. I think we'll see a solid-state format for movies, music and videogames down the road once costs come down. It'll be cheaper to "press", smaller, faster, more portable and will require less power and generate less heat to use.

BuckNaked2k

I don't know, you may be right. I've just read a lot of stuff here & there (tech blogs, etc.), that downloading is the quantum leap which will preclude the introduction of further physical formats. Gates and Jobs have also stated this, FWIW.

lizard

Perhaps I don't quite get your point, but I disagree that BD was just another marketing ploy and that DVD (or VHS) would have been good enough for decades if only those greedy movie studios and their cronies would just stick with it. For me, the plain fact is that BD is vastly superior to DVD. If that means that studios get to resell their catalogs, so what?

However, with BD we have reached the point of diminishing returns for home theater. Would a 4K format make much of a difference in PQ (let alone "improving" on lossless audio)? Perhaps you could see a difference but I doubt that I could. But DVD compared to BD? I'd have to be blind not to see and enjoy the improvement.

That's not to say that there might not be some sort of home holographic format someday that would be a significant technical improvement over flat or 3D high def as it currently exists. But until that day, I tend to agree with those who forecast that the convenience of downloading will supplant physical media for the most part. And that we collectors of media on BD will remain something of a niche market.

My 2¢.

BuckNaked2k

I posted this a few pages back, but your comment seems to bear it out:

Full Article

orangerunner

I think BD is a value-added improvement over DVD but the assumption that the masses would ditch all their DVDs and rebuy everything on Blu-ray was way off base.

Maybe Blu would be perceived as more successful if there were not so many inflated financial expectations surrounding it.

I don't feel Blu is "vastly" superior to DVD. It's a better picture (in most cases) but asthetically it looks the same and functions the same as DVD.

DVD had the advantage of truly being vastly superior to clunky VHS tapes that were full screen, two-channel stereo, noticeably grainy picture, they needed rewinding, no extras etc.


Visual and sound improvements are probably not going to be introduced for a while but how its delivered will certainly improve. Advancements in encoding will probably give us Blu quality but using less space than a current DVD.

lizard

I entirely agree with this.While your point that the improvement from video tapes to DVD was considerably greater than that from DVD to BD is valid, I maintain that the improvement in picture resolution and picture color on BD is huge for anyone with a decent high def display and sitting at an appropriate distance. Nevertheless, for an average consumer, who doesn't care about such things, there may not be much difference. There are numerous stories here of people who don't even have their displays properly set up and who zoom in on 4:3 and 2.35:1 material to get rid of the "black bars". Such people can't be expected to care about the improvements offered by BD versus DVD.

But for those of us who are home theater hobbyists, the improvements offered by BD are real and not just some ploy by studios to part us from our money by offering fake upgrades. Therefore, I take issue with the notion that BD is some sort of scam.That may well be so, but those advancements in encoding will likely be applied to downloads and streaming, as opposed to another physical format.

When the high def formats launched five years ago there was much discussion here of how successful they would be. Many, perhaps most, of us thought they would remain a niche and coexist with DVD for many years to come, eventually being supplanted by some sort of VOD. Five years later it seems to be going about as expected. For me, BD has been a bit more successful than I thought it would be five years ago. But even then I realized that the novelty of having an extensive movie library on disc had worn off. And that, I think, is the primary reason that disc sales have stopped growing and begun to decline.

orangerunner

I try to take the point of view of the greater public, which really defines whether a product is deemed a success. For the serious hobbyist, BD is a big step-up but for the average person DVD is still good enough.

I've mentioned it before but I think people are more emotionally attached to a DVD collection they have carefully amassed over ten years than they are with upgrading a single piece of hardware that was a one-time purchase.


With HDTVs coming out it made sense to offer movies in HD. I think when people upgrade to an HDTV, they are ecstatic to see their DVDs look better than ever and therefore it reduces the need to upgrade further to Blu, at least for titles they currently own.

I agree Blu-ray will probably be the last physical format but with better compression technology they will be able to deliver Blu-ray picture/sound quality while using minimal bandwidth for streaming/downloading.

With technology advancing so quickly, I think people don't mind buying the hardware but they don't want to invest too much into the software.

When you think about it, you can buy a Blu-ray player for about the same price as three or four new release Blu-ray discs. It doesn't take much for one's investment in the software to sky-rocket past the price paid for the hardware.