big e

I'm sure that's a factor too. I know people who are impressed with hi-def, but just don't want to spend the money to upgrade their tvs and satellite/cable service.

Adam Tyner

Ever since the Blu-ray and HD DVD were first announced, that was always what I thought would be the biggest stumbling block. It's not a matter of cost or people being able to notice the improvements these formats offer -- it's getting them to care.

Year 4 of DVD would've been 2001. Shrek was the biggest seller of 2001: in around 4 weeks, it moved 5.5 million DVDs.

I'm not sure how many copies Avatar moved in that same time period, but at least at first, the DVDs were outselling the Blu-rays by about a 50% margin. I read that Avatar sold 6.2 million copies on Blu-ray after a few weeks (vs. 20 million DVDs!), but I think those are worldwide numbers while the Shrek numbers are just domestic...not apples to apples.

As those Avatar numbers suggest, Blu-ray definitely isn't consistently outperforming DVD yet. One more case may have just happened, though:

Mr. Cinema

No idea how accurate this is, but these were the top 10 sellers in 2001, according to a site called "Lee's Movie Info"

1 Shrek 8.00
2 Pearl Harbor 7.40
3 The Grinch 5.50
4 Planet Of The Apes 4.40
5 Cast Away 4.40
6 Star Wars 4.20
7 The Godfather 1.20
8 The Mummy Returns 5.30
9 Jurassic Park III 4.30
10 Snow White 4.00

The site has them in order of gross $. I only have # units listed.

Avatar is probably at around 3 million for BD. The Dark Knight is about 2.5 mil and Iron Man 2 will be at 2+ mil. Other than those 3, I don't think there's anything that's sold at least 2.

Snow White, Star Trek, Iron Man, Transformers: ROTF, Alice in Wonderland, and I believe The Hangover and Harry Potter 6 are all 1 million unit sellers. Are there any others?

And these are with roughly 20 million BD users in the US. Not sure how many DVD players had been sold by the end of 2001. Probably alot more.

Sub-Zero

When studios were first preparing to release Blu-ray (and HD-DVD), I think they failed to take into account how many people had just upgraded to DVD itself and were not going to upgrade again any time soon. And maybe even more importantly, studios really seemed to underestimate the "good enough" factor that a lot of people apparently have about DVD when they rushed their new hi-def products to market instead of waiting for more people to purchase an HDTV.

Also, I think if studios would have really been serious about having their next generation Blu-ray format really thrive, they simply would have not released two separate formats, but instead would have worked to have a single format from the beginning and avoided the hi-def format war.

Alan Smithee

The format war certainly delayed my getting into HD- I didn't get an HDTV or either format's player until after Blu-Ray had won, since I refused to buy 2 different players in order to be able to play every hi-def movie that came out. (I would've been satisfied at least if the dual-format players had improved.)

Funny thing is I now have almost every HD-DVD title that came out in the US, since I've been able to get them so cheaply. After HD-DVD surrendered I got a player for 70 bucks which included a total of 7 free movies with the mail-in offer (and I don't mind having a separate player for those, since there aren't going to be any more new movies issued on it. I also have an LG BH200 that I scored cheap last month, but it's a piece of junk. I only kept it because it's region-selectable for Blu-Ray discs.)

Gizmo

BH200 a piece of junk? It has some issues playing a few titles, but today's players are not all roses either. Even my $300 BD590 takes 2 minutes to load a freaking Fox BD (black screen of boring).

orangerunner

The "good enough" factor is a biggie. Even if the economy was still strong I don't think Blu-ray would be doing that much better.

VHS came out in the late 1970s and had a good 20 year run before the electronics industry introduced a format that really improved on VHS.

It was only 2003 (I think) when DVD finally outsold VHS and then three years after that the HD formats were introduced. Blu-ray was too soon for the average consumer and too late as a cutting-edge format.

Even with the introduction of HDTVs, it didn't really help because many consumers think everything on their HDTV is automatically HD. In a sense they're right because when they hooked up their DVD player to the HDTV, the picture looked better than it did on their CRT TV. People were already happy with the new results, did they feel the need to upgrade further with Blu-ray? Most didn't.

BuckNaked2k

^ This goes along with the argument that Blu-ray was not transformative enough as a new format. Going from VHS to DVD was better on a scale of several orders of magnitude. DVD was non-mechanical, digital, laser-read, thin, sexy, and had things like chapter stops and a menu screen. Blu-ray is an incremental improvement over DVD, essentially "DVD on steroids". For many, this isn't reason enough to upgrade.

PopcornTreeCt

It also takes longer to load than DVD, sometimes won't play on your player without a firmware update, and costs on average about $10 more... all that for better A/V quality? Meh.

Anubis2005X

Depends on what you're used to. DVD looks like someone smeared vaseline all over the screen now. And upconversion is essentially a joke, at least in my eyes, barely makes any difference...

Coral

There is one problem that makes comparing both formats in the first 4 years NOT an apples-to-apples comparison. DVD had an uphill battle of getting people to adopt a format that was a) considerably different than VHS (and couldn't record) and b) trying to change way people consumed movies.

When DVD was released, people were used to renting VHS movies, most didn't buy them - and when they did it was usually a "previously viewed" copy that a rental store was getting rid of. It was a total attitude shift for consumers to buy movies when they were used to renting. It takes some time for consumers to buy into the concept of purchasing movies.

By the time BD was released, purchasing movies was already a standard practice among consumers - so BD had the luxury of not having to change the consumers movie consumption habits. The consumers were ready to purchase BD titles. Of course, consumers are now being much more selective in what they purchase on BD as many regret the gorging they did with DVD and how they've built an un-needed massive collection of movies.

Josh-da-man

I don't really see blu-ray as being a completely different format since it's fully backward compatible with DVD. It's more like enhanced DVD... the players will still play of the existing DVDs as well as the new blu-ray discs, so getting into blu-ray isn't the same as adopting a whole new format like VHS-to-DVD or LD-to-DVD.

It's a win-win situation. I can still enjoy my DVDs while slowly building a library of blu-rays.

The Reaper

I've got 3 Blu-ray players now, a Sony, Panasonic, and LG, and they all still pale in comparison to my HD DVD players in terms of upconverting. Hell, I think watching dvds on blu makes them look worse than watching on a regular sdtv.

Alan Smithee

My issue with the BH200 is that it can't display 4x3 material on HD or standard DVDs properly- it's stretched to 16x9, and at least hooked up with HDMI on my system I can't even manually switch it. It seems like it'd be a great player if not for that issue, but that's something I just can't put up with as I'm very anal about stuff displaying in the proper format (my other players do that automatically.) I'm really glad I didn't count on it being my main player.

Anyways, I'd thought for a while that dual-format players would become the norm, like there are now drives that take both the + and - recordable discs. Still disappointed Toshiba started making Blu-Ray players with no HD-DVD compatibility.

nothingfails

I must disagree about the catalog discussion.

Catalog titles, NOT new titles are what caused me to upgrade.

This fall I am planning on getting Alien Anthology, Back To The Future Trilogy (Universal!), Psycho (Universal!), The Sound Of Music and Rocky Horror Picture Show, all are heavily promoted and all of which are catalog. Plus next year we're getting Star Wars and I'm already hearing buzz that we're getting Indiana Jones in 2011 as well.

Universal just came out with all those announcements for catalog titles, don't see the fears.

BuckNaked2k

Week ending 10/3:

Sub-Zero

I think that is the biggest obstacle Blu-ray is facing. It is not different enough from current DVDs for the "average consumer" to really justify upgrading to Blu-ray. Compared to VHS, DVD was a revolutionary product. However, as you stated yourself, Blu-ray is more of an evolutionary product, which makes it more difficult to get people excited to upgrade again.

In addition, the rate that technology is improving also makes it more difficult to convince people to upgrade all the time. Now that Blu-ray 3D is here, "standard" Blu-ray is no longer state-of-the-art technology, but is instead now an inferior product considering people have to buy yet another new TV and Blu-ray player and possibly new receiver to be able to play all titles that will be released on Blu-ray (I wonder how long until studios stop releasing special features on regular Blu-ray and instead only include them on Blu-ray 3D products?). And this probably makes a lot of people wonder if Blu-ray, which already had a major hardware upgrade this early in its life span, will be worth investing in if it could become outdated so quickly?

Gizmo

Very ouch. It sold more copies on BD yet only mustered a 18%. Looks like owners just bought that movie and ignored everything else.

BuckNaked2k

The #2 selling Blu-ray, Get Him to the Greek, did about 7% of what IM2 did:

Top 20 Blu

BuckNaked2k

Week ending 10/10:

BuckNaked2k

Week ending 10/17:

Sub-Zero

Does anyone know if Iron Man 2 was mostly responsible for the increased Blu-ray sales?

Gizmo

That and Beauty and the Beast. ALL of Beauty and the Beast sales (Blu-ray AND DVD SKU) counted towards Blu-ray.

BuckNaked2k

Yes, that's correct, but the B&TB effect was more pronounced the previous week at 21%.

Sub-Zero

Thanks GizmoDVD and BuckNaked2k for the information. I actually forgot about Beauty and the Beast being released, so thanks for clearing that up.