Top 10 HDM sellers info (per Grubert)

1. Saw IV (BD) 100.00
2. The Game Plan (BD) 70.83
3. 3:10 to Yuma (BD) 48.21
4. PotC At World's End (BD) 36.35
5. Good Luck Chuck (BD) 35.58
6. 300 (BD) 34.51
7. Planet Earth (BD) 32.49
8. Ratatouille (BD) 26.03
9. War (BD) 23.05
10. Superbad (BD) 22.63

All Blu

300 HD DVD 4.75
Planet Earth HD DVD 2.25

Sorry, but you believed wrong. We have last weeks Nielsen #s and Planet Earth on Blu-ray outsold the HD DVD version by 14.44:1. So for every 1 copy of Planet Earth HD DVD sold, 14.5 copies of the blu-ray were sold.

I wouldn't doubt if Planet Earth on BD has already passed the hd-dvd version by now with the way its been selling.

Just for clarification, are you suggesting that this in any way disproves what Gizmo said?

Yes, it clearly does. Gizmo said the title sold better on HD than Blu-ray. Here is proof that it no longer does.

My feeling is that what Gizmo and wewantflair are discussing is meaningless. A better question might be "Is Warner losing or gaining sales HMD sales on Planet Earth based on their decision"? If every lost HD sale results in 1.2 extra Blu-ray sales, then releasing on both formats could be considered a mistake.

Please re-read what I wrote

That was a few days ago, before these Nielsens came out. Did Blu-ray finally surpass the HD DVD version? Maybe, but we don't know for sure. Just because the Nielsens its 32% Blu vs. 3% Red does not mean it sold thousands upon thousands last week. Its out of 100% of a small market where the 100% title may have only sold 10k copies total. Kinda hard to judge it when the numbers are already very low as-is. The Game Plan was at 70%...LOL. People actually bought that movie?

Take a look at the SI numbers...have they moved at all in the past few weeks? The sales on HDM are so low right now.

Take a look at this one from 2 months ago:

Blu-ray has moved up 3 points SI in the past 2 months, even after the Warner announcement.

You are also assuming everyone who has an HD DVD player went out and bought a Blu-ray player therefore no one would EVER buy a HD DVD movie vs. a Blu-ray one if they had a choice. By Warner going Blu (vs neutral) they will be losing out of sales regardless. Some people will never buy Blu-ray, and some people may simply drop out of HDM altogether. Its not like it costs more to make an HD DVD vs a Blu-ray.

It really does not matter. In Warner, Fox and Paramounts (other studios I'm sure, its just hush hush) case, they received enough "incentives" in the past few months where selling on either format really means nothing. They get paid regardless if a copy of a movie sells or not

It was a valiant attempt at deflection, but alas, it does not even address what Gizmo said. I'm not claiming that the overall sales of Planet Earth on HD DVD won't be surpassed (I believe it's a matter of weeks, if it hasn't happened already) but it it's really disturbing when otherwise intelligent and valuable contributors lose all sense of logic and reason when discussing these formats. The figure Quepaso posted (surprise!) does not even begin to address what Gizmo stated.

Furthermore, discussion of ratios relative to HD DVD does little - nothing, actually - to imply additional BD sales success. Incidentally, as the NPD numbers pointed out, the huge dropoff in HD DVD player sales hasn't resulted in a corresponding spike in BD player sales. Will this change? Hopefully. But let's not pretend it has until it actually does.

Since we don't have recent absolute software sales numbers (only ratios, and with the crashing and burning of HD DVD, these are becoming less and less useful), we cannot accurately assess BD progress since the WB move.

Back on topic, I'd kill for Farscape on Blu-Ray, even though my Starburst sets are nice.

What you failed to mention is that BD gained two points in the SI category AFTER the Warner decision which leads me to believe that BD is definitely growing and these aren't just low amounts anymore.

You failed to mention Blu-ray gained 2 Points in 3 weeks in which HD DVD has had the following titles released:

* Channels (Vanguard Cinema)
* Method Man: Live from the Sunset Strip (Music Distribution)
January 15, 2008
* The Ten (City Lights)
January 08, 2008
* Mobsters (Universal)
* The Pianist (Universal)
* The Road to Bali/The Road to Rio (BCI)
* White Noise (Universal)
* White Noise 2 (Universal)
* Zodiac: Director's Cut

Besides Zodiac (a year old DVD movie), nothing on the list is something more then a handful of people would actually buy. There have been several big Blu-ray releases since the Warner announcement (Saw IV, Good Luck Chuck, Mr. Woodcock, The Game Plan) as well as several decent catalog titles as well. Did you, or anyone, really expect HD DVD to pull anymore then 20% when they are not releasing anything? I certainly did not, and I doubt Universal/Paramount did either. The only trend I see going on is releasing Day and Date titles = sales. Something HD DVD has yet to master

Well, Saw IV may have somewhat of a following (at least among the torture genre fans), but I don't know that I would consider Good Luck Chuck or Mr Woodcock to be even close to big sellers.

Good Luck Chuck had more visitors at Box Office Mojo rate it an 'F' than an 'A', and at Rotten Tomatoes, it garnered a meager 3% from film critics, and only a 32% from film goers. Mr. Woodcock fared no better at either site, both among professional critics and film goers. I just don't see that many people rushing out to buy either of those movies, even on DVD, let alone on Blu-ray. In fact I would bet that the sales of Zodiac on HD DVD beat these two discs combined.

I suppose that The Game Plan could account for some of the Blu-ray advantage. It was a harmless, fun family movie, and I may even buy it on BD at some point. But believing that there are enough families ready to plunk down that much money for a disc that will be primarily watched by the kids just doesn't seem realistic to me. Not when the DVD would be "good enough" in this case, and it was available for half the price of the BD on release day.

I don't think that's a glaring omission in the original post or anything, especially since any true apples-to-apples weeks are probably a thing of the past.

If HD DVD can't or won't release much of anything worthwhile, that's a failing for that format and shouldn't require an asterisk when the numbers skew heavily towards Blu-ray's direction.

I'm not trying to turn this into a "versus" thread because I really couldn't care less about which format is selling better -- I'm just interested in getting the movies I like, and HD DVD just has seemingly no interest in software. It's all cheap players! cheap players! cheap players!, regardless whether or not those people buying the cheap players are left with much of anything to watch.

Even the most staunch supporters of HD DVD have to agree with this. They are fading.

However, HD DVD fading sure isn't having a huge impact on HDM adoption of BD. It seems like most HD DVD owners are just walking away from buying anything new. If people were switching, then, as Gizmo said, we'd see that "since inception" ticker moving a lot faster.

Again, these numbers are meaningless ratios if we don't know the hard numbers behind the ratios. 250000 units of Saw 4 sold gives the chart a completely different meaning than if 2500 units sold.

Nice number, but again, if they sold 32 copies to HD DVD's 2, is that really a "victory?" It means nothing without the number of discs sold.

If Planet Earth is still in the top ten, then that means that HDM, both HD DVD and BD, are a failure. Sales of the top titles must be puny for such an expensive set to still be registering in the top ten so long after its release.
I'll bet we see Lost, S3 on there next week, and it would be a further sign of trouble. If one online retailer marking something down has such a huge impact in sales rankings, then that tells me that this stuff is just not selling.

Can someone tell me what these numbers means? Saw IV only sold 100 copies?

Nielsen stopped printing absolute sales numbers because they were so depressingly low.

Now everything is done by percentages, relative to the top selling title. Whatever the best selling title was that week, it's given 100%...Saw IV, in this case. The Game Plan at #2 has 70.83, which means it sold 70.83% as many copies as Saw IV, 3:10 to Yuma sold 48.21% as many as Saw IV, and on down the line.

"In the week since the studio's surprise early-January announcement that after May it will support only the rival Blu-ray Disc format, sales of HD DVD players ground to a virtual halt, giving Blu-ray hardware a whopping 93 percent sales advantage, according to data from the NPD Group."

"According to raw retail data collected by NPD, consumers bought just 1,758 HD DVD players the week of January 12, down from 14,558 players the week before. In contrast, consumers bought 21,770 Blu-ray Disc machines, up from 15,257 the previous week."

Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080124/media_nm/bluray_dc

That info is pretty old, and many attribute the bump to the fact that at least three manufacturers were bundling BD players with HDTVs during that time period.

IIRC, BD SA sales sort of flattened out the next week.

One week's worth of sales don't mean much in the larger picture, and frankly I think it's piss poor journalism to not wait and use a quarter's or at least on month's sales to base a report on. The problem with this is that I've seen this information passed on in a news segment here in Sacto. Consumers who haven't been keeping track of this whole thing watch that and make a snap decision on 30 seconds of slanted information.

This is a fantastic post.

We need more titles HD DVD! Give us something...please!

I'm not willing to declare BD the victor yet and i will continue to buy on both formats if the titles are available. Right now, BD is giving the consumer more titles to choose from each week while HD DVD is just sitting there dropping player costs. If Universal and Paramount are such huge supporters of HD DVD, they need to get off their collective asses and get us some titles. Day and dates, catalogs, whatever...

I too agree with Adam's statement. It's kind of a self-defeating argument when you bring up the fact that your camp has not released anything worth a darn since Christmas and that's why you are getting slaughtered in terms of sales. I, for one, do not believe Toshiba would be using that argument at least. Because it's kind of an embarrassing admission.

I am, however, as a BD player owner only very frustrated in Paramount's upcoming slate. Out of all the studios releasing HDM, their slate looks the best to me by a mile. First off, Zodiac and There Will Be Blood were two of my three favorite films of 2007 (No Country for Old Men was number one for me, which we luckily get on Blu). Then right up there in the mix is Sweeney Todd, which they just announced for April. Beowulf was an enjoyable film that I would pick up were it on BD simply because it should look pretty good in high def. And then Atonement (and I believe Cloverfield) are two more heavy hitters that would likely get day & date HD DVD releases.

Universal? I could care less right now. But I really wish Paramount would go neutral.

This is of course entirely dependant on personal taste. Of Saw IV, Good Luck Chuck, Mr. Woodcock, and The Game Plan, there is not a single title there that I would even watch for free, much less ever pay for. Meanwhile, Zodiac and The Pianist have happily been added to my collection.

What everyone continues to ignore is the fact that January is traditionally a poor sales period all around. Universal, Paramount, and Warner sat out January last year, and they did so again this year, because they know that nothing much sells in January. Consequently, they released nothing of significance and thus made no sales. They're holding their good releases for more active months, where they will sell more copies of movies like Beowulf, There Will Be Blood, and Sweeney Todd than they ever would have in January

Meanwhile, during both years, the Blu-ray studios have taken advantage of this scheduled lull by dumping out a handful of marginal-interest titles that they don't really care about but know will move a moderate number of copies. Since High-Def sales numbers are only given in percentages, any small movement on the Blu-ray front will look like a landslide victory over the inertia on the HD DVD front. And that's exactly what happened. "Wow, a 90:10 victory!" everyone says. Sure, but how many units really comprised that 90%?

I'm not saying that HD DVD will ever overcome Blu-ray sales numbers at this point, but I don't believe that the numbers we saw in January are at all indicative of the long-term business strategy for either side.

There may just be too many new Blu-ray/HD DVD owners that simply don't remember last year at all. There were only a handful of titles released on HD DVD between January and March, with Happy Feet, a neutral title, being the only notable one for HD DVD. This yeat at least they have a few decent hits coming up (American Gangster, Bee Movie).

Oh, I understand that January is a slow month, but I just find it frustrating that HD DVD is determined to keep sitting on its hands. If Universal is going to pull out obscure catalog titles, why not pull out worthwhile obscure catalog titles? Why isn't Paramount doing much of anything at all? I admittedly haven't been going nuts over Blu-ray's release slate either recently, but they do have a pretty diverse selection of titles, and there are some fairly noteworthy catalog releases in there with the day-and-date stuff.

I just think back to when Paramount went HD DVD exclusive. The Blu-ray camp responded almost immediately by announcing the end of Fox's hiatus and boasting about a really aggressive release slate for the rest of the year. Admittedly, a lot of those titles still haven't materialized all these months later, but at least they did something.

How did HD DVD respond when Warner went Blu-ray exclusive? They cancelled a press event. That's it. I realize that they were caught off-guard, but the HD DVD camp still hasn't come up with anything to spark any real interest -- just the same one-pronged "...but we have cheaper players" attack they've been using for right at two years now. HD DVD: do or say something to excite me about your format. As it is, I almost feel abandoned. Since I already own an HD DVD player, I'm persona non grata to their camp. It's like the old South Park joke -- Step one: cheap players. Step three: profit! -- without ever bothering to figure out the step in the middle.

Even this past November and December only had a handful of HD DVD exclusives that really caught my eye. I know that sort of thing is highly subjective, but HD DVD isn't doing anything to excite me. That's why I haven't considered this to be a format war for a while now. A "war" requires two competing factions, but only Blu-ray seems to be putting up a fight. I'd love to be excited about HD DVD again, but I need more than polite and vaguely reassuring press releases for that to happen.

FWIW, there were quite a few more HD DVD titles that I was interested in this time last year than we're seeing now, even if a lot of those didn't exactly light up the sales charts.

HD-DVD's got some pretty good ones coming out in the next 2-3 months... American Gangster, Into the Wild, There Will Be Blood, Beowulf, Sweeney, etc... Nothing in BD's releases are really exciting me for the first half of the yr... sure I'll grab Gone Baby Gone and No Country... and there's some catalogue dumps by Fox along the way (half of which might actually come out).... but that's about it.

I am disappointed that Paramount isn't releasing any catralog titles. Some might say they're waiting ot go Blu so why release until then. And maybe they are going Blu, but they still can release stuff. It's not like releasing whatever movie now will hurt sales down the road. Release say Gladiator on HD DVD now, go Blu in 6 months, release Gladiator again on Blu. Make even more money, and maybe even pick-up a few double dips. It's not like releasing on HD DVD will kill futur eBlu Ray releases.

It does appear as if Paramount and Universal are sitting on their asses. Maybe they want HD DVD to get such disgusting numbers so then in April or so, they can announce their amazing stats which show "our consumers overwhelmingly prefer Blu-ray".