Hopefully this new data puts to rest "the war is over" mentality. Volumes are so low, the war hasn't even started yet.

Just glancing over the individual title table, it does appear that catalog titles seem to do a bit better on HDDVD than BD (all the Superman films, MI box set, Corpse Bride, SPace Cowboys, etc). Of course, when it is 900 to 300, "better" takes on a new meaning.

They counted the PS3 would be my guess.

What? I don't know what "counted the PS3" means. Sorry.

Are you saying that Nielsen can somehow work out if a BD movie buyer owns a standalone or a PS3.

Tell us more please. This sounds interesting. :rolleyes:

BTW both Disney and Sony base their numbers on numbers from Nielsen. Disney, however, refer to 'Nielsen Entertainment' not Nielsen VideoScan.

I'll go out on a limb and say that Disney numbers were extrapolated for the whole market and Sony's were not. So there!

Anyway, good news for Blu-ray who sold over 80,000 in the week ending April 1. Good news for HD DVD who bounced back after a torrid few weeks with sales over 42,000.

I'm sticking with my original start numbers of BD: 355,698 and HD DVD: 555,778.

With these numbers I'm close to what Disney reported. I'm happy with that. :)

Yes, its called a keyboard. :D

You mean use it to write a program ? ;)

If you have Adobe Acrobat Professional, you can select, copy and paste like any other application if the PDF was sourced from softcopy.

I use Professional, so I'll offer any assistance I can.

The problem is the columns are separated by a simple space. So you can't easily import the table.

edit : I imported the data by exporting to text file - doing a bit of massaging.

And here's my version of events in pictorial form.

http://75.126.103.40/images/guy05/Nielsenapr1chart.jpg

Now I feel really special. There's a few titles in there that sold less than 100 disks, and I have them all !!!. :D

The list was YTD 2007, and red SR sales dropped off rapidly in 2007, that explains the missing red SR in the list.

Has anyone tried to explain the huge dip? Like one data source failing beginning Feb 25th that wasn't corrected until Mar 18? Let's see.. 40% of sales are accounted for, and one data source accounts for about 1/2 of those. Hmmm. Who would that be?

Edit: more than half. Good sample

Now I feel really special. There's a few titles in there that sold less than 100 disks, and I have them all !!!. :D

Indeed, I sometimes think the folks on this forum are the only thing keeping the entire Hi Def DVD industry afloat. ;)

Has anyone tried to explain the huge dip? Like one data source failing beginning Feb 25th that wasn't corrected until Mar 18? Let's see.. 40% of sales are accounted for, and one data source accounts for about 1/2 of those. Hmmm. Who would that be?

Edit: more than half. Good sample

Here's the stats for titles released on both formats in Feb & March.

Date / BD /HD DVD

Feb 6th / 6 / 1
Feb 13th / 13 / 2
Feb 20th / 4 / 1
Feb 27th / 4 / 3
Mar 6th / 0 / 0
Mar 13th / 4 / 0
Mar 20th / 5 / 0
Mar 27th / 6 / 4

See the big dip on the chart? See the zero release week? We have a match!

Keep in mind the above dates are TUESDAYS and the Nielsen week end day is a SUNDAY. In case anyone wondered why the dates are not exact matches.

That week BD fell 50% and HD DVD fell 80%. The following 'zero' weeks for HD DVD remained poor while Blu-ray shot up helped by Casino Royale and a few other new releases.

Why was that Mar 6 week so bad? Dual format owners did not go shopping atall. In the next few weeks they did go to pick up the new BD releases and while they were there maybe they picked up a few old HD DVD titles at the same time.

Makes sense to me.

Hopefully this new data puts to rest "the war is over" mentality. Volumes are so low, the war hasn't even started yet.

Just glancing over the individual title table, it does appear that catalog titles seem to do a bit better on HDDVD than BD (all the Superman films, MI box set, Corpse Bride, SPace Cowboys, etc). Of course, when it is 900 to 300, "better" takes on a new meaning.

Actually, of the catalog releases listed that were released last year, HD DVD has the "overall" sales, but Blu-Ray leads the YTD sales on the catalog titles... which if that should continue will allow Blu-Ray to catch up with those sales.

Some catalog titles like "Bullitt" sold more on HD DVD, but by a small enough margin to discount the Blu-Ray owners don't buy catalog titles argument.

"Babel" sold over 2,000 more copies on Blu-Ray than it did HD DVD... as did all "neutral" day and date titles THIS YEAR... yet is a title that most people said wouldn't interest the "PS3 crowd."

BTW, some people here seem to say that that these numbers are really bad for HD media in general, but I find them very impressive myself... as I wouldn't have expected them to be so high at this time...

Also, did anyone else get a kick out of "The Princess Bride" selling "2 copies" and "Happy Feet" selling 1 copy on HD DVD.

~Alan

Here's the stats for titles released on both formats in Feb & March.

Date / BD /HD DVD

Feb 6th / 6 / 1
Feb 13th / 13 / 2
Feb 20th / 4 / 1
Feb 27th / 4 / 3
Mar 6th / 0 / 0
Mar 13th / 4 / 0
Mar 20th / 5 / 0
Mar 27th / 6 / 4

See the big dip on the chart? See the zero release week? We have a match!

Keep in mind the above dates are TUESDAYS and the Nielsen week end day is a SUNDAY. In case anyone wondered why the dates are not exact matches.

That week BD fell 50% and HD DVD fell 80%. The following 'zero' weeks for HD DVD remained poor while Blu-ray shot up helped by Casino Royale and a few other new releases.

Why was that Mar 6 week so bad? Dual format owners did not go shopping atall. In the next few weeks they did go to pick up the new BD releases and while they were there maybe they picked up a few old HD DVD titles at the same time.

Makes sense to me.
Occam's razor. Mine is simpler.

Occam's razor. Mine is simpler.

"Other things being equal"
The other things in question are the evidential support for the theory. A simpler but less correct theory should not be preferred over a more complex but more correct one.

Want to back your 'simple' theory up with something less vague?

Actually, of the catalog releases listed that were released last year, HD DVD has the "overall" sales, but Blu-Ray leads the YTD sales on the catalog titles... which if that should continue will allow Blu-Ray to catch up with those sales.

Some catalog titles like "Bullitt" sold more on HD DVD, but by a small enough margin to discount the Blu-Ray owners don't buy catalog titles argument.

"Babel" sold over 2,000 more copies on Blu-Ray than it did HD DVD... as did all "neutral" day and date titles THIS YEAR... yet is a title that most people said wouldn't interest the "PS3 crowd."

BTW, some people here seem to say that that these numbers are really bad for HD media in general, but I find them very impressive myself... as I wouldn't have expected them to be so high at this time...

Also, did anyone else get a kick out of "The Princess Bride" selling "2 copies" and "Happy Feet" selling 1 copy on HD DVD.

~Alan

I agree that there does appear to be some sort of PS3 catch-up effect. However, it took 1.5 million PS3's 700 more (compared to HD-DVD) copies of Blazing Saddles or 850 more copies of Tomb Raider.

It makes one question how much Blu-ray is gaining by having an install base of around 5X more hardware, when compared to HD-DVD. And if, as Paramount predicts, the hardware of both formats is on a level playing field by Christmas, what will disc sales look like by then.

In light of the low volumes for many of these titles, I'm now very curious what effect the Circuit City sale will have on the numbers, since the "free" discs actually rang up at a slightly discounted retail price (the hardware rang up much cheaper), and would appear to count as sales.

For example, if most people got Batman Begins, it could be enough to put that disc into the #1 HD disc position.

Now BB will be running the same promotion next week, and they have 2X the number of stores. Hopefully it goes as well as the CC sale appears to have went. I was told today that my local CC sold out of 2 shipments of the A2, supposedly around 30-40 players according to the sales guy. If my local store is any indication, Toshiba may have sold 25k players just this week, which means 100k discs that appear will count as sales!

I am anxiously awaiting the Nielsen numbers to see if they reflect a 3:1 ratio for HD-DVD this past week. If Best Buy takes a similar approach (ring up the "free" discs as sales), the HD-DVD should have at least two very good back-to back weeks.

Here is the top 25 Since Inception.

http://img353.imageshack.us/img353/3290/top25pb4.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Edit : Hopefully got it right this time :)

I agree that there does appear to be some sort of PS3 catch-up effect. However, it took 1.5 million PS3's 700 more (compared to HD-DVD) copies of Blazing Saddles or 850 more copies of Tomb Raider.

True, but I have an HD-A2 and I don't own "Blazing Saddles" or "Tomb Raider." Although, in HD DVD's defense, those two titles can be had for free via Toshiba's "3 Free HD DVDs" or their current "5 Free HD DVDs" deal.

It makes one question how much Blu-ray is gaining by having an install base of around 5X more hardware, when compared to HD-DVD. And if, as Paramount predicts, the hardware of both formats is on a level playing field by Christmas, what will disc sales look like by then.

Well, I'd say quite a bit from looking at the sales chart today.

I didn't know that Paramount predicted that, but I'm not sure I see that happening...

~Alan

so hd-dvd brings out its best title (children of men) for probably the rest of the year

I'm kinda thinkin' Matrix will sell a few more copies than COM.

so hd-dvd brings out its best title (children of men) for probably the rest of the year, and they can barely sell 1 disc for every 2 that blu-ray sells in a week that saw little for blu-ray being released...

i hear a fat lady starting to sing...

Then tell her to shut up and roll off of you... :D

I don't see how your current prediciment has anything to do with HD-DVD and BD sales.

True, but I have an HD-A2 and I don't own "Blazing Saddles" or "Tomb Raider." Although, in HD DVD's defense, those two titles can be had for free via Toshiba's "3 Free HD DVDs" or their current "5 Free HD DVDs" deal.



Well, I'd say quite a bit from looking at the sales chart today.

I didn't know that Paramount predicted that, but I'm not sure I see that happening...

~Alan

How can you say it is gaining quite a bit? Do you really think gaining 20k discs is "quite a bit"? When one format gains the acceptance of the general public, the format should easily be able to move a million discs a month. 20k is not even a blip on the radar when you get to mass consumer levels. The US sells 60 million DVD's a month. When HD optical gets to 10% of that level, these micro-gains that we are discussing will become irrelevant. In the big picture, 20k is rounding error.

I think the "PS3 Effect" would only have proven relevant if it resulted in deltas of 100-150k per month. To me, that level would be "quite a bit".

Then tell her to shut up and roll off of you... :D

I don't see how your current prediciment has anything to do with HD-DVD and BD sales.

:D

Here is the top 25 Since Inception.

http://img354.imageshack.us/img354/544/top25sg9.gif (http://imageshack.us)


More than a little underwhelming isn't?

Here is the top 25 Since Inception

Cool. Where did that come from?

That's as of March 18, isn't it?

Gary

I have some questions

1. Do some of the nerds here ever actually watch a movie? or take a shower? Since they seem to fight, bicker, and post graphs 24/7

2. How much $ is MS making from Excel usage with charts, graphs, etc?

As an owner of a PS3 and 360 add on, I am pleased to say I was right about everything, all my movies occupy each slot of the 25 :D

I'm kinda thinkin' Matrix will sell a few more copies than COM.

first off, probably not, its an expensive box set of an old catalog title, of which the last 2 movies were pretty much universally panned.

second, matrix will sell a ton more copies than the hd-dvd when it is released later on blu-ray. if any movie targets the ps3 demographic, its the first matrix film.

children of men is the one true hd-dvd exclusive movie that is a new release (released in theaters in the last year) that should have spiked sales, and it barely had an effect. blu-ray still steamrolled over it with no big releases. if hot new releases can't save hd-dvd, what can?

And the winner is.......


SD DVD :p

And the winner is.......


SD DVD :p By a long shot. :(

children of men is the one true hd-dvd exclusive movie that is a new release (released in theaters in the last year) that should have spiked sales, and it barely had an effect. blu-ray still steamrolled over it with no big releases

Like Happy Feet, Pursuit Of Happiness, residue sales of Rocky Balboa and Eragon, released the week before, and Casino Royale, by now probably the biggest selling HD title so far,released two weeks before..

okay then!

My intelligence is starting to feel insulted by some posts on this board....

Interesting. There are 3 common titles. The 2007 YTD numbers are
Departed BD 38,993 HD 23,454
Superman Returns BD 13,066 HD 6,155
MI3 BD 7,465 HD 4,732

How can you say it is gaining quite a bit? Do you really think gaining 20k discs is "quite a bit"?

Yes, I do! Those discs allow them to outsell HD DVD.

When one format gains the acceptance of the general public, the format should easily be able to move a million discs a month.

Yes, but we're not there yet. I don't see either format gaining the acceptance of the general public until AFTER the war is already decided.

20k is not even a blip on the radar when you get to mass consumer levels. The US sells 60 million DVD's a month. When HD optical gets to 10% of that level, these micro-gains that we are discussing will become irrelevant. In the big picture, 20k is rounding error.

Neither format will even come close to 60 million DVDs a month for at least several years... if then.

I think the "PS3 Effect" would only have proven relevant if it resulted in deltas of 100-150k per month. To me, that level would be "quite a bit".

A few short months ago, I didn't expect Blu-Ray to outsell any title on HD DVD PERIOD!! I guess that's why I consider these numbers "quite a bit..."

Back in the early days of DVD, you would have been a lot of fun. The US sells (insert number here) VHS movies a month...

~Alan

Here is the excel file with all the sales numbers ...

Ever wondered why Fox isn't bringing on more titles. Is it BD+ or this ;)

http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/7683/foxdm6.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Only 5 titles crossed 5K ...

Some are wondering where I'm getting these numbers from. In Bill Hunt's website there is a pdf - which is Sony's analysis of 18th March Videoscan data. It has all the numbers. I imported the numbers to excel ...


Here is the link ...

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents

and the link to the SPHE report

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/files/sonyhdreport031807.zip

There is so much there to read. It looks like our assumption on ratio for the '07 Initial numbers is right on the mark - 297K BD and 462K for HD - 64%.

BTW, avg sales per title is about equal - 4,485 vs 4,467. Now does anyone want to say why on avg they are not making much money ? :D

Maybe if the morons at Fox would lower the prices of catalog titles to $29.99 and sell their new releases for $34.99 then they'd sell a lot more. I know there's several Fox titles I want but I'm not paying that kind of prices. I'll wait for a sale.

Fox has been the most dissapointing studio of all the formats. They think that offering 25gb discs with Mpeg2 and no extras and hoing people will bite at $39.99. Sorry, but we're not that dumb!

Sony is kicking their ass right now. IMO, Sony is 3rd behind Disney and Universal for offering the best HD.

Ever wondered why Fox isn't bringing on more titles. Is it BD+ or this ;)


Okay, Fess up. Who bought the one copy of Commando? :D

Maybe if the morons at Fox would lower the prices of catalog titles to $29.99 and sell their new releases for $34.99 then they'd sell a lot more. I know there's several Fox titles I want but I'm not paying that kind of prices. I'll wait for a sale.

Fox has been the most dissapointing studio of all the formats. They think that offering 25gb discs with Mpeg2 and no extras and hoing people will bite at $39.99. Sorry, but we're not that dumb!

Sony is kicking their ass right now. IMO, Sony is 3rd behind Disney and Universal for offering the best HD.

I tend to agree, I enjoy what Sony, Disney, and Universal has been cranking out for the most part.

What the fark is Fox doing? They need to make nice, and put out a pristine Aliens box o fun!

blu-ray is selling a good 300k a month,...

BD has barely gone above 200K in any month - including March.

Can you tell us your background and where you work ?

Tripton,

Do you actually read what you write? So, your first sentence says that there is no way the Matrix is going to sell, because it is a box set and it is old.

But, in the next sentence, you say because it is on BD it will sell a ton of copies, just because of the PS3?

Hmmmmmm. The logic of a fanboy in action.

Again, I have to ask, do you really read what you write? Where do you get 300K a month. Sony said they sold a little less than 550K for 2.5 months. You want to do the math or should I

I think I will, since well, you know. So, that works out to be 220K units a month.

I hope you are enjoying the paycheck.

i said it wont sell that many on hd-dvd. then i said it will sell more on blu-ray when it comes out later than it did on hd-dvd. these two statements fit together. you need to work on your reading comprehension, maybe?

and the 300k figure? thats from a little source called NIELSEN thats posted all over this thread. only about 10 times every page. take a deep breath. you'll recover.

Remember this from Disney?

http://75.126.103.40/images/guy01/disneygraphqj8.gif

Where did they get 279,000 units for BD and 135,000 units for HD DVD??



May be Jan was a projected number ? Their earlier figures seem to be ok with Sony numbers ...

BD has barely gone above 200K in any month - including March.

Can you tell us your background and where you work ?

i work for sony blu ray incorporated, of course. :rolleyes:

Ever wondered why Fox isn't bringing on more titles. Is it BD+ or this ;)

Only 5 titles crossed 5K ...
Yeah, I think Fox realized what a lot of people have been saying. Most catalog titles just don't sell that well. The new releases are where the money (what there is of it anyway) is at.

I like how it shows a few copies of Eragon sold before the release date. I'm kind of surprised only 5 copies got out.

BD has barely gone above 200K in any month - including March.

Can you tell us your background and where you work ?

That guy just showed up out of nowhere last month and has been thread crapping his BR propaganda ever since in all BR/HD forums. Sorry, but obvious PR fanboys like him should be suspended.

Yeah, I think Fox realized what a lot of people have been saying. Most catalog titles just don't sell that well. The new releases are where the money (what there is of it anyway) is at.

I like how it shows a few copies of Eragon sold before the release date. I'm kind of surprised only 5 copies got out.

I hate this catalog debate.

What are the rules?

When is it considered catalog? 2 years?,5 years?, 10 years?

Fifth Element is Catalog no? Why is it being re issued? I thought catalog does not sell?

Come on folks, either it sells or it does not. I feel it is popular, and people want it.

Reason I went dual format was so I can access the good catalog stuff from Universal, and get some of the biggies on BD like POTC.

Ever wondered why Fox isn't bringing on more titles. Is it BD+ or this ;)

http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/7683/foxdm6.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Only 5 titles crossed 5K ...


Think of the work required to reauthor, get barcodes assigned, market, etc. and then sell less than 400 copies of a release. It would almost seem like a waste of time.

Also, everyone kept tossing around manufacturing costs of the two formats and saying that porn could do one as cheaply as the other. If the porn companies had access to this info, then they might have been looking at pressings of 1000 discs or less. All the fees and setup costs, shared amongst 1000 discs, could make a signifigant difference. Even if BD was $2000 more, that would be $2 per disc. Considering a $30 porn disc sells to the retailer for around $15. Then the studio only makes $15 per disc minus distribution costs, costs to author the disc, cost to market, and perhaps even cost to make (if it is exclusive to hi-def). An extra $2 per disc could obliterate most of their profit. These types of volumes from major studios makes Joone's claims look more reasonable to me.

I hate this catalog debate.

What are the rules?

When is it considered catalog? 2 years?,5 years?, 10 years?

Fifth Element is Catalog no? Why is it being re issued? I thought catalog does not sell?

Come on folks, either it sells or it does not. I feel it is popular, and people want it.

Reason I went dual format was so I can access the good catalog stuff from Universal, and get some of the biggies on BD like POTC.

I think Universal considers a title to become "catalog" after one year. However, there is catalog (a film like SPiderman 1) and then there is catalog (a film like Grand Prix).

Could it be that N/V is accepting data from Sony that says the included TN were "sold"? Part of their Hydra project?From what paidgeek said the Hydra project was just a recommendation on a slide to advocate Blu-ray on forums. Something that I think the other side in this format war started doing long ago. I am beginning to think that there has been more than a bit of exaggeration to make this into an issue to use against Blu-ray. Pathetic, but rather predictable.


This thread is about the discussion comparing sales number of each format - based on Videoscan/Nielsen. For weeks you have clearly made it about the two formats, quite pointedly, so try not to take false umbrage at a related discussion which indicates the numbers may be shifting.rdjam, I am quite willing to accept changes in sales ratios between Blu-ray and HD DVD since of course that will happen over time. Universal is putting a lot of weight behind HD DVD in the next few months, Toshiba has very recently reduced their HD DVD player prices, and Fox has delayed many of the titles they were planning to release on Blu-ray. I think that HD DVD will do better over the next few months but I think it is nothing more than FUD to constantly claim the imminent collapse of Blu-ray sales. That is neither wanted or appreciated by most of the posters on this thread.


N/V numbers have always been the most "sympathetic" to the BR format in comparisons,rdjam, if you don't like them than point us to another source of weekly HD sales numbers that comes close to it in sample size. There is Amazon of course but it represents a smaller sample size than Nielsen does. No offense but maybe reality has just been kinder to Blu-ray in the last few months.


Richard, at no point have I ignored the BR sale rdjam, in your original post you didn't mention it at all, which was rather important in explaining those graphs you posted. Other posters had to mention it first.


Here is the top 25 Since Inception.Fascinating graph, but technically it is the top 24.

I think Universal considers a title to become "catalog" after one year. However, there is catalog (a film like SPiderman 1) and then there is catalog (a film like Grand Prix).

If thats the case, then we have Batman Begins, Fifth Element,Blackhawk Down, etc. etc. So as I figured, catalog titles sell fine.

Now we can debate about GREAT ones versus CRAP, but people cant say catalog does not sell . I know for a fact that titles like Matrix,Spiderman 1,Star Wars, Jurassic Park would sell great on Hi Def.

I think the people that actually say catalog does not matter are too caught up in bitter partisan crud. There will always be more catalog titles than the latest and greatest anyway, so how can it not matter?

From what paidgeek said the Hydra project was just a recommendation on a slide to advocate Blu-ray on forums. Something that I think the other side in this format war started doing long ago. I am beginning to think that there has been more than a bit of exaggeration to make this into an issue to use against Blu-ray. Pathetic, but rather predictable..

Come on Richard, SONY made it an issue by even coming up with the "Hydra project". Classic rookie tactic of trying to deflect it by attacking the people calling Sony out.

No HYDRA, and you would not even be having this particular discussion. Lay the blame were it belongs.

Fascinating graph, but technically it is the top 24.

Thanks, corrected. I think I got it wrong some 5 times :mad:

If thats the case, then we have Batman Begins, Fifth Element,Blackhawk Down, etc. etc. So as I figured, catalog titles sell fine.

Now we can debate about GREAT ones versus CRAP, but people cant say catalog does not sell . I know for a fact that titles like Matrix,Spiderman 1,Star Wars, Jurassic Park would sell great on Hi Def.

I think the people that actually say catalog does not matter are too caught up in bitter partisan crud. There will always be more catalog titles than the latest and greatest anyway, so how can it not matter?

I think you have to break "catalog" titles down into sub-catagories. You can't just lump them together. Obviously, the older the film, the harder the sell (especially in HD, when that older film often still looks fairly crappy compared to new releases).

I think they would have to be broken out like 1-2, 3-5,5-10,10-20 years, etc. Then you might find some legitimate trends in old vs. new releases.

I think you have to break "catalog" titles down into sub-catagories. You can't just lump them together. Obviously, the older the film, the harder the sell (especially in HD, when that older film often still looks fairly crappy compared to new releases).

I think they would have to be broken out like 1-2, 3-5,5-10,10-20 years, etc. Then you might find some legitimate trends in old vs. new releases.

Yes, a breakdown would be interesting. While Jurassic Park is catalog, I'm sure Gone with the Wind is REALL REALLY catalog LOL

If thats the case, then we have Batman Begins, Fifth Element,Blackhawk Down, etc. etc. So as I figured, catalog titles sell fine.

Now we can debate about GREAT ones versus CRAP, but people cant say catalog does not sell . I know for a fact that titles like Matrix,Spiderman 1,Star Wars, Jurassic Park would sell great on Hi Def.

I think the people that actually say catalog does not matter are too caught up in bitter partisan crud. There will always be more catalog titles than the latest and greatest anyway, so how can it not matter?
I said most catalog titles in my original post. Of course there will always be exceptions like your big blockbusters and the titles that get billed as having amazing PQ, such as some of your examples. I guess when I think of "catalog titles", I'm thinking of films that are several years old and weren't big hits. I completely agree that Matrix, Spider-man, Star Wars and Jurassic Park will sell. But what is the percentage of those films compared to the rest that are put out and what kind of profit or loss do the studios see on those that don't do well?

Come on Richard, SONY made it an issue by even coming up with the "Hydra project".Urza, but what do you really know about Phase Hydra? From what paidgeek said (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10224064&&#post10224064) it sounds to me like it was the name of a presentation encouraging more Blu-ray advocates on forums. It was not an official BDA program, it certainly didn't advocate anything unethical, and it is something that we have seen the HD DVD side doing for years. So tell me what exactly Sony did wrong. I would love to hear a good detailed explanation not based on rumor or personal opinion.


Classic case of trying to deflect it by attacking the people calling Sony out.No, just shining some light in the darkness.


No HYDRA, and you would not even be having this particular discussion. Lay the blame were it belongs.Blame for what? All I see is a lot of people jumping to conclusions without any evidence based on their own personal opinions.

So did HM release the numbers today? There was a 2:1 ratio posted but I'll wait for icemage's numbers to finalize it.

tripton,

said it wont sell that many on hd-dvd. then i said it will sell more on blu-ray when it comes out later than it did on hd-dvd. these two statements fit together. you need to work on your reading comprehension, maybe?

You said it wouldnt sell on HD because (and I quoted you) it was an older catalog movie and the 2nd two suck. Those were the two reasons you gave for why it wouldnt sell on HD DVD.

Then you said that it WOULD sell on BD (even though it was still a catalog title, and the 2nd two movies still sucked) because of the PS3 demographic.

Again, you need to read what you write.

As to the 300K issue, paste a link showing that BD sold over 300K for several months. I did the math for you, and according to Sony, it comes to about 220K per month. That is not a "good 300K" as you put it.

richard,

and it is something that we have seen the HD DVD side doing for years

that would be an interesting feat, since HD DVD hastnt been around for "years".

i work for sony blu ray incorporated, of course. :rolleyes:

Anyway I've reported you to mods.

So did HM release the numbers today? There was a 2:1 ratio posted but I'll wait for icemage's numbers to finalize it.

Depending on what ratios I use, I get all kinds of ratios. For eg. if I use Sony bumbers till Mar 18 - but HMM numbers for 25th and 1st - I get a higher ratio.

that would be an interesting feat, since HD DVD hastnt been around for "years".Good try, but I was talking about advocating HD DVD on internet forums. Trust me I know since I used to debate with Amir on issues concerning Blu-ray, HD DVD, and MPEG-4 AVC back than.

Here is the top 25 Since Inception.

http://img353.imageshack.us/img353/3290/top25pb4.gif (http://imageshack.us)

My God, look how few Universal movies are in the Top 25 (#13, #23 and #25). And ironically Universal's best-selling title, Serenity, is the movie with the 2nd smallest box office take of all the movies listed in the Top 25 list (House of Flying Daggers is the movie with the least box office mojo in the Top 25). Where's King Kong, still regarded as the show-off disc for the HD-DVD format? :confused: I know it comes packed with the 360 add-on but there should be enough owners of stand-alone decks shopping for show-off movies to fuel at least a modicum of interest in "KK." For a studio exclusive to HD-DVD Universal seems to get most of its HD sales from middle-of-the-list catalog movies selling 3/5,000+copies, which seems to be working better than the downright embarassing sales of Fox's bottom-of-the-list catalog titles on BD.

Neither of these studios can consider their current HD strategies success stories, but Universal seems to be doing a little bit better overall. Too bad the studio is dry on big box office hits, which pretty much shuts it out of having best-selling HD-DVD discs in the sales charts.

The median sales number is roughly 2,700 for BD and 2,800 for HD DVD. That should give a pause to anyone interested in the longevity of HiDef DVDs.

King Kong is 45th on the list - and the third highest BO grosser.

Edit : corrected median numbers.

King Kong is 45th on the list - and the third highest BO grosser.

:eek: :eek: :eek: But since one "KK" came packed with every HD-DVD add-on (I know it doesn't count as a sale) you could argue that, along with the freebie Casino Royale (Europe) and Talladega Nights (USA) Blu-rays, these discs did achieve penetration into the HD market as demo material packed with their respective videogame/attachment systems. Maybe "Kong" was Universal's sacrifice to the HD-DVD cause and the studio accepted a smaller-than-usual fee from MS for packing it with the add-on to have the sale (instead of releasing it exclusively to retail and risk people remembering why they hated the movie so much in the first place, great visuals and killer transfer notwithstanding).

An interesting look at the fate of top 25 movies by Box Office receipts.

http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/4558/top25bouh7.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Note : Less than 1K for Planet of the apes and Chicago.

Depending on what ratios I use, I get all kinds of ratios. For eg. if I use Sony bumbers till Mar 18 - but HMM numbers for 25th and 1st - I get a higher ratio.

I would suggest using one set of numbers from one source (e.g. HMM) as you then minimize statistical errors (or at least separate the trend data by source). By using 2 different sources you risk the chance that the trends would be obscured because of statistical differences (sampling errors for example) between the two sources.

I would suggest using one set of numbers from one source (e.g. HMM) as you then minimize statistical errors (or at least separate the trend data by source). By using 2 different sources you risk the chance that the trends would be obscured because of statistical differences (sampling errors for example) between the two sources.

Well, that is not strictly correct - since the ratios use First Alert only for the latest week - but complete data for the rest.

Yes, but we can use the real numbers as an indicator of how much error we can expect to see in the future projections (since I doubt we're going to see such a detailed report again for a while).

Here ...

http://img364.imageshack.us/img364/6825/nielsenestgo2.gif (http://imageshack.us)

natarj, just out of curiosity, could you check where the following movies ranked in the sales charts and how many units they moved? I can't open the zip file so I can't see the whole chart at once:

-The Descent (BD);

-Lady in the Water (BD, HD-DVD);

-Miami Vice (HD-DVD);

-Fearless (HD-DVD);

-Mutiny on the Bounty, The Dirty Dozen, Casablanca, Grand Prix, Robin Hood and Forbidden Planet (HD-DVD; BD and HD-DVD for "Dirty Dozen");

-Clerks 2 (HD-DVD) and any other Weinstein Co. movie (Lucky Number Slevin, Matador, Scary Movie 4, that movie with Jennifer Aniston, etc.);

-Superman: The Movie and Superman 2: The Richard Donner Cut (BD, HD-DVD... interesting comparison);

-The Searchers (BD, HD-DVD);

-Unforgiven (BD, HD-DVD).

Thanks in advance! :)

Nataraj,

I am unable to use your Excel file as I have Office 2003 at work. Thanks for all your work on this thread though.

For anyone having a similar issue, I was able to export the whole Sony report.
I also broke it off into just the Next Gen sales (pages 16-19).

If you have trouble downloading, right click on file and select "Save Target As..."

This is all taken from Sony's Nielsen-Videoscan report.

8 WKS = Disc sales in title's first 8 Weeks of release.
SI-3/18 = Total disc sales from release date through 3/18/07.


TITLE TYPE MSRP RELEASE DATE STUDIO 8 WKS SI-3/18
ANT BULLY BRY $34.99 11/28/2006 WHV 245 388
ANT BULLY HDD $39.99 11/28/2006 WHV 499 625

ARCHITECT BRY $34.98 12/5/2006 MGPE 46 98
ARCHITECT HDD $34.98 12/5/2006 MGPE 33 105

AUSTRALIA RVLD BRY $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 248
AUSTRALIA RVLD HDD $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 115

BABEL BRY $39.99 2/20/2007 PARA 8,610
BABEL HDD $39.99 2/20/2007 PARA 6,422

BEERFEST-UNRTD BRY $28.99 1/30/2007 WHV 2,728
BEERFEST-UNRTD HDD $28.99 1/30/2007 WHV 1,547

BLACK RAIN BRY $29.99 1/23/2007 PARA 669
BLACK RAIN HDD $29.99 1/23/2007 PARA 619

BRAZIL REVEALED BRY $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 190
BRAZIL REVEALED HDD $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 122

BULLITT BRY $28.98 2/27/2007 WHV 432
BULLITT HDD $28.98 2/27/2007 WHV 508

CHINA REVEALED BRY $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 299
CHINA REVEALED HDD $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 186

CHRISTMAS STORY BRY $28.99 12/5/2006 WHV 359 430
CHRISTMAS STORY HDD $28.99 12/5/2006 WHV 1,050 1,106

CHRISTMAS VAC. BRY $28.99 12/5/2006 WHV 404 498
CHRISTMAS VAC. HDD $28.99 12/5/2006 WHV 1,085 1,156

DEPARTED BRY $34.99 2/13/2007 WHV 38,993
DEPARTED HDD $39.99 2/13/2007 WHV 23,454

GETAWAY BRY $28.98 2/27/2007 WHV 224
GETAWAY HDD $28.98 2/27/2007 WHV 267

ITALY REVEALED BRY $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 332
ITALY REVEALED HDD $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 182

LADY IN WATER BRY $34.99 12/19/2006 WHV 1,697 2,193
LADY IN WATER HDD $39.99 12/19/2006 WHV 1,809 2,091

LAKE HOUSE BRY $34.99 9/26/2006 WHV 513 2,288
LAKE HOUSE HDD $39.99 9/26/2006 WHV 882 1,799

MI-3 BRY $39.99 10/30/2006 PARA 8,726 17,400
MI-3 HDD $39.99 10/30/2006 PARA 12,128 17,537

NACHO LIBRE BRY $29.99 11/7/2006 PARA 3,560 5,651
NACHO LIBRE HDD $39.99 11/7/2006 PARA 3,667 4,745

REDS BRY $36.99 11/7/2006 PARA 417 887
REDS HDD $36.99 11/7/2006 PARA 869 1,239

SCOOBY-DOO BRY $28.99 1/16/2007 WHV 287 309
SCOOBY-DOO HDD $28.99 1/16/2007 WHV 324 340

SOPRANOS-S6 V1 BRY $129.95 12/19/2006 HBO 763 977
SOPRANOS-S6 V1 HDD $129.92 12/19/2006 HBO 873 1,038

SUPERMAN-MOVIE BRY $28.99 11/28/2006 WHV 1,862 2,893
SUPERMAN-MOVIE HDD $28.99 11/28/2006 WHV 3,973 4,942

SUPERMAN 2 BRY $28.99 11/28/2006 WHV 1,956 3,237
SUPERMAN 2 HDD $28.99 11/28/2006 WHV 4,471 5,649

SUPERMAN RETRNS BRY $34.99 11/28/2006 WHV 22,582 30,845
SUPERMAN RETRNS HDD $39.99 11/28/2006 WHV 24,706 28,440

ULTMT MISSIONS BRY $99.99 10/30/2006 PARA 2,348 5,511
ULTMT MISSIONS HDD $99.99 10/30/2006 PARA 4,729 6,823

UNDER SEIGE HDD $28.99 10/31/2006 WHV 1,001 1,645
UNDER SIEGE BRY $28.99 10/31/2006 WHV 573 1,473

WICKER MAN-2006 BRY $28.99 1/30/2007 WHV 1,469
WICKER MAN-2006 HDD $28.99 1/30/2007 WHV 1,025

WD FSTST INDIAN BRY $29.98 1/25/2007 MGPE 336
WD FSTST INDIAN HDD $29.98 1/25/2007 MGPE 344

WORLD TRADE CTR BRY $39.99 12/12/2006 PARA 7,589 9,338
WORLD TRADE CTR HDD $39.99 12/12/2006 PARA 7,144 8,349

This is all taken from Sony's Nielsen-Videoscan report.

8 WKS = Disc sales in title's first 8 Weeks of release.
SI-3/18 = Total disc sales from release date through 3/18/07.


TITLE TYPE MSRP RELEASE DATE STUDIO 8 WKS SI-3/18
16 BLOCKS BRY $34.99 10/10/2006 WHV 407 2,320
16 BLOCKS HDD $39.99 6/13/2006 WHV 1,187 2,894

AEON FLUX BRY $29.99 10/10/2006 PARA 1,004 5,617
AEON FLUX HDD $29.99 8/8/2006 PARA 1,966 6,761

BLAZING SADDLES BRY $28.99 9/5/2006 WHV 409 3,298
BLAZING SADDLES HDD $28.99 5/23/2006 WHV 992 4,138

CHRONOS BRY $24.98 5/23/2006 GHIL 375
CHRONOS HDD $24.98 3/28/2006 GHIL 869

FOUR BROTHERS BRY $29.99 9/26/2006 PARA 400 3,119
FOUR BROTHERS HDD $29.99 7/25/2006 PARA 713 3,238

FUGITIVE BRY $28.99 9/26/2006 WHV 386 2,363
FUGITIVE HDD $28.99 5/23/2006 WHV 1,234 4,446

FULL METAL JKT BRY $28.99 9/5/2006 WHV 633 7,156
FULL METAL JKT HDD $28.99 5/23/2006 WHV 1,132 7,949

GOODFELLAS BRY $28.99 1/16/2007 WHV 5,850 6,412
GOODFELLAS HDD $28.99 5/2/2006 WHV 1,913 17,504

GD NGHT/GD LUCK BRY $28.99 8/15/2006 WHV 222 1,704
GD NGHT/GD LUCK HDD $39.99 8/22/2006 WHV 524 1,561

HOUSE OF WAX BRY $28.99 9/26/2006 WHV 209 955
HOUSE OF WAX HDD $28.99 9/12/2006 WHV 608 1,373

ITALIAN JOB BRY $29.99 10/24/2006 PARA 1,452 6,410
ITALIAN JOB HDD $29.99 8/8/2006 PARA 1,469 5,989

KSS KSS BNG BNG BRY $34.99 8/1/2006 WHV 339 2,264
KSS KSS BNG BNG HDD $39.99 6/20/2006 WHV 964 2,769

LR CRFT-TMB RDR BRY $29.99 9/26/2006 PARA 365 2,888
LR CRFT-TMB RDR HDD $29.99 7/25/2006 PARA 1,359 3,620

LAST SAMURAI BRY $28.99 11/14/2006 WHV 1,958 5,847
LAST SAMURAI HDD $28.98 4/18/2006 WHV 3,289 15,799

LETHAL WEAPON BRY $0.00 9/5/2006 WHV 312 1,721
LETHAL WEAPON HDD $28.99 6/27/2006 WHV 934 2,388

LETHAL WEAPON 2 BRY $28.99 9/26/2006 WHV 254 1,234
LETHAL WEAPON 2 HDD $28.99 9/12/2006 WHV 805 1,697

MNCHRN CNDIDTE BRY $29.99 1/23/2007 PARA 621
MNCHRN CNDIDTE HDD $29.99 7/18/2006 PARA 478 1,581

MILLION $ BABY BRY $28.99 11/14/2006 WHV 587 1,333
MILLION $ BABY HDD $28.98 4/18/2006 WHV 1,156 3,498

PHNTM OF OPERA BRY $28.99 10/31/2006 WHV 1,423 4,124
PHNTM OF OPERA HDD $28.98 4/18/2006 WHV 2,108 10,518

RUMOR HAS IT BRY $34.99 8/1/2006 WHV 313 1,473
RUMOR HAS IT HDD $39.99 5/9/2006 WHV 1,007 2,121

SAHARA BRY $29.99 10/24/2006 PARA 872 3,381
SAHARA HDD $29.99 7/25/2006 PARA 1,816 5,145

SEARCHERS BRY $28.99 10/31/2006 WHV 532 1,461
SEARCHERS HDD $28.99 8/22/2006 WHV 922 2,838

SKY CPTN/WORLD BRY $29.99 9/26/2006 PARA 274 1,722
SKY CPTN/WORLD HDD $29.99 7/25/2006 PARA 1,214 3,508

SLEEPY HOLLOW BRY $29.99 9/26/2006 PARA 936 5,449
SLEEPY HOLLOW HDD $29.99 7/25/2006 PARA 1,739 4,672

SPACE COWBOYS BRY $28.99 9/26/2006 WHV 317 1,601
SPACE COWBOYS HDD $28.99 9/12/2006 WHV 913 1,962

SWORDFISH BRY $28.99 9/26/2006 WHV 578 5,026
SWORDFISH HDD $28.99 5/2/2006 WHV 1,885 9,781

SYRIANA BRY $34.99 10/10/2006 WHV 482 3,403
SYRIANA HDD $34.99 6/20/2006 WHV 1,797 4,817

TM BRTN CRP BRD BRY $28.99 9/26/2006 WHV 779 4,982
TM BRTN CRP BRD HDD $28.99 10/10/2006 WHV 2,557 5,228

TRAINING DAY BRY $28.99 8/1/2006 WHV 488 4,899
TRAINING DAY HDD $28.99 5/9/2006 WHV 1,381 10,714

U2-RATTLE & HUM BRY $34.99 10/10/2006 PARA 336 2,665
U2-RATTLE & HUM HDD $29.99 8/8/2006 PARA 430 2,441

UNFORGIVEN BRY $28.99 10/31/2006 WHV 1,282 4,336
UNFORGIVEN HDD $28.99 5/23/2006 WHV 1,220 6,785

WE WERE SLDRS BRY $29.99 1/23/2007 PARA 3,706
WE WERE SLDRS HDD $29.99 7/25/2006 PARA 1,110 5,615

hey look, another hd-dvd fanboy who would rather hd discs fail than blu-ray win. logical!

It's a common theme.

Extreme HD DVD supporter: "I know HD DVD can't win so let's destroy both formats"

Fortunately there are more reasonable HD DVD voices who recognise that for HD disc to survive then there ultimately has to be one format.

The retailers certainly know that 2 HD formats is bad for sales:

“It makes it impossible to get behind one format and introduces so many problems,"
Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson
http://www.tvpredictions.com/bestbuydisaster070506.htm

May be Jan was a projected number ? Their earlier figures seem to be ok with Sony numbers ...

http://75.126.103.40/images/guy01/disneygraphqj8.gif

The Disney ad. was published in March. Why would they need to 'project' for January?

It's a very strange looking projection anyway.

The Disney Vs Sony numbers seem alternately close then way off:

Oct 06 - 1%
Nov 06 - 78%
Dec 06 - 5%
Jan 07 - 46%

Diff over 4 months - 29%

Okay, Fess up. Who bought the one copy of Commando? :D

Nobody should have bought a copy. It was postponed by Fox and currently has no new release date.

This is all taken from Sony's Nielsen-Videoscan report.

8 WKS = Disc sales in title's first 8 Weeks of release.
SI-3/18 = Total disc sales from release date through 3/18/07.


TITLE TYPE MSRP RELEASE DATE STUDIO 8 WKS SI-3/18
ANT BULLY BRY $34.99 11/28/2006 WHV 245 388
ANT BULLY HDD $39.99 11/28/2006 WHV 499 625

ARCHITECT BRY $34.98 12/5/2006 MGPE 46 98
ARCHITECT HDD $34.98 12/5/2006 MGPE 33 105

AUSTRALIA RVLD BRY $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 248
AUSTRALIA RVLD HDD $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 115

BABEL BRY $39.99 2/20/2007 PARA 8,610
BABEL HDD $39.99 2/20/2007 PARA 6,422

BEERFEST-UNRTD BRY $28.99 1/30/2007 WHV 2,728
BEERFEST-UNRTD HDD $28.99 1/30/2007 WHV 1,547

BLACK RAIN BRY $29.99 1/23/2007 PARA 669
BLACK RAIN HDD $29.99 1/23/2007 PARA 619

BRAZIL REVEALED BRY $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 190
BRAZIL REVEALED HDD $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 122

BULLITT BRY $28.98 2/27/2007 WHV 432
BULLITT HDD $28.98 2/27/2007 WHV 508

CHINA REVEALED BRY $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 299
CHINA REVEALED HDD $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 186

CHRISTMAS STORY BRY $28.99 12/5/2006 WHV 359 430
CHRISTMAS STORY HDD $28.99 12/5/2006 WHV 1,050 1,106

CHRISTMAS VAC. BRY $28.99 12/5/2006 WHV 404 498
CHRISTMAS VAC. HDD $28.99 12/5/2006 WHV 1,085 1,156

DEPARTED BRY $34.99 2/13/2007 WHV 38,993
DEPARTED HDD $39.99 2/13/2007 WHV 23,454

GETAWAY BRY $28.98 2/27/2007 WHV 224
GETAWAY HDD $28.98 2/27/2007 WHV 267

ITALY REVEALED BRY $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 332
ITALY REVEALED HDD $24.99 1/30/2007 IMAG 182

LADY IN WATER BRY $34.99 12/19/2006 WHV 1,697 2,193
LADY IN WATER HDD $39.99 12/19/2006 WHV 1,809 2,091

LAKE HOUSE BRY $34.99 9/26/2006 WHV 513 2,288
LAKE HOUSE HDD $39.99 9/26/2006 WHV 882 1,799

MI-3 BRY $39.99 10/30/2006 PARA 8,726 17,400
MI-3 HDD $39.99 10/30/2006 PARA 12,128 17,537

NACHO LIBRE BRY $29.99 11/7/2006 PARA 3,560 5,651
NACHO LIBRE HDD $39.99 11/7/2006 PARA 3,667 4,745

REDS BRY $36.99 11/7/2006 PARA 417 887
REDS HDD $36.99 11/7/2006 PARA 869 1,239

SCOOBY-DOO BRY $28.99 1/16/2007 WHV 287 309
SCOOBY-DOO HDD $28.99 1/16/2007 WHV 324 340

SOPRANOS-S6 V1 BRY $129.95 12/19/2006 HBO 763 977
SOPRANOS-S6 V1 HDD $129.92 12/19/2006 HBO 873 1,038

SUPERMAN-MOVIE BRY $28.99 11/28/2006 WHV 1,862 2,893
SUPERMAN-MOVIE HDD $28.99 11/28/2006 WHV 3,973 4,942

SUPERMAN 2 BRY $28.99 11/28/2006 WHV 1,956 3,237
SUPERMAN 2 HDD $28.99 11/28/2006 WHV 4,471 5,649

SUPERMAN RETRNS BRY $34.99 11/28/2006 WHV 22,582 30,845
SUPERMAN RETRNS HDD $39.99 11/28/2006 WHV 24,706 28,440

ULTMT MISSIONS BRY $99.99 10/30/2006 PARA 2,348 5,511
ULTMT MISSIONS HDD $99.99 10/30/2006 PARA 4,729 6,823

UNDER SEIGE HDD $28.99 10/31/2006 WHV 1,001 1,645
UNDER SIEGE BRY $28.99 10/31/2006 WHV 573 1,473

WICKER MAN-2006 BRY $28.99 1/30/2007 WHV 1,469
WICKER MAN-2006 HDD $28.99 1/30/2007 WHV 1,025

WD FSTST INDIAN BRY $29.98 1/25/2007 MGPE 336
WD FSTST INDIAN HDD $29.98 1/25/2007 MGPE 344

WORLD TRADE CTR BRY $39.99 12/12/2006 PARA 7,589 9,338
WORLD TRADE CTR HDD $39.99 12/12/2006 PARA 7,144 8,349

These are incredibly small numbers. I can't believe that only ~1000 copies of Ant Bully have been sold across all high def formats...

Another blast from the past:

Refering to HD disc sales in February 2007:

Consumers bought around 250,000 units of Blu-ray movies during the month, compared to the estimated 125,000 units of HD DVD movies, according to industry sources.

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6422898.html

In the Sony/Nielsen report we have BD: 205,646 and HD DVD: 97,618

Here is the top 25 Since Inception.

http://img353.imageshack.us/img353/3290/top25pb4.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Edit : Hopefully got it right this time :)

I have a feeling that titles releases last year, like SR (both) Troy & Batman (HD only) are a good indicator of new sales, since they are high profile enough to warrant a repurchase by a visible portion (my theory is a large majority of new owners, since there's very few titles in total) of new players.

The PS3 effect clearly did something to SR to skew it for 2007, but if we want to gague total new player sales in units, they might correlate well to monthly/weekly sales of these titles.

Correct. 10,346 is for the #13 spot. The #25 spot could be 9,800. HD-DVD could hold 90% of the #25-#100 spots (with #100 selling 8k copies), with a mix of blue and red after. This list doesn't prove that BD is putting a smack down on HD-DVD. Sony is the source and they filtered out enough info to slant the conclusions their way. If Sony also domintaed the #25-#50 spot, don't you think they would have released that too? More than likely HD-DVD dominates the majority of the next slots after #25. Agree. This goes with Kosty's principles of reading press releases.

Its often more important what is not said than what is said.

Since this is a PR related leakage of the Nielson data, it makes sense that it would go as far as it supports the case being made.

Its highly laikely that the next spots in the list were not as supportive of Sony's argument, and hence they were not released. Hence its highly probably that HD DVD was better in the next set of data. Otherwise Sony would have released that data also.

I am surprised on one is discussing the Sony/Videoscan report with "real" numbers that you can download from Bill Hunts site, which does confirm some of the numbers from the linked article in this thread.

I am sure the BD fans will spin this as BD stomping, but to me it shows how poorly all the media are selling, when the top sellng BD title (as of March 18) only sold 39K copies. That report confirms all the numbers we are talking about are the actual collected numbers in the N/V database and have not been scaled up to represent the entire market.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/files/sonyhdreport031807.zip

It also show there is not a heck of a lot of real number differnce between the baest sellers and the vast majority of other releases. It also carries through the period only through mid March and we know the PS3 and lack of HD DVD titles effects on that last period.

It also confirms the excellent work done buy the spreadsheet artists on this thread.

It's a common theme.

Extreme HD DVD supporter: "I know HD DVD can't win so let's destroy both formats"

Fortunately there are more reasonable HD DVD voices who recognise that for HD disc to survive then there ultimately has to be one format.

The retailers certainly know that 2 HD formats is bad for sales:


Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson
http://www.tvpredictions.com/bestbuydisaster070506.htm


Obviously BB's approach of pushing BD over HD DVD in a big way isn't working. So how about seeing what happens when you push HD DVD over BD. Looks like despite the best attempts of the BD group and miliions of hardware we are pretty much at a stalemate now - with some edge to BD (but largely irrelevant in the big picture).

I guess it's time for BB to carry HD DVD titles in a timely manner and put up a few demos...

Obviously BB's approach of pushing BD over HD DVD in a big way isn't working. So how about seeing what happens when you push HD DVD over BD. Looks like despite the best attempts of the BD group and miliions of hardware we are pretty much at a stalemate now - with some edge to BD (but largely irrelevant in the big picture).

I guess it's time for BB to carry HD DVD titles in a timely manner and put up a few demos...

For a stalemate it has to be comparable weeky sales, and we are closer but still far from parity, so who is going to 'push' hd over bd? :D

HD DVD was ahead by 2:1 for many months, I doubt we'd see parity again even when we get to May22nd. Matrix will sell a lot of disks, but there are other movies released that week.

It could well be that we stay in this range of ratio for the rest of 2007 except the unit growths are small. What do you propose is the 'correct' thing to do come 2008 when the ratio stays at roughly 2:1 and units are not much more than today?

Hopefully this new data puts to rest "the war is over" mentality. Volumes are so low, the war hasn't even started yet.

Just glancing over the individual title table, it does appear that catalog titles seem to do a bit better on HDDVD than BD (all the Superman films, MI box set, Corpse Bride, SPace Cowboys, etc). Of course, when it is 900 to 300, "better" takes on a new meaning. Even if you say actual volumes are 5x what N/V is capturing, the sales are still small. :o

But there is a order of magnitude check. We have at least some guidelines on minimum and maximum HD DVD player sales.

The data set given on the Sony N/V pdf shows 249.451 HD DVD disc sales YTD and 712,013 SI.

If we assume there are at least 150,000 to 250,000 stand alone and Xbox 360 HD DVD add ons sold, that pdf is showing LESS than 1 HD DVD disc sold per standalone player sold. YTD :eek:

That's seems to be low, but possible

Its very probable, almost a certainty that each HD DVD of Blu-ray player sold gets at least 2 HD movies sold along with it. That's historical and I've confirmed through a several retailers including (regional CC and VE) that its much higher than that. If you assumed that virtually no older HD DVD owner bought a movie this year for the first 10 weeks, it may be possible)

So in the case of HD DVD, this dataset is missing in some major degree a lot of HD DVD sales, and is probably missing to some degree a lot of Blu-ray sales also. And if you think a lot of HD DVD player sales may have come through from to date non N/V retailers their is a possiblilty of a major HD DVD undercount here. PS3 sales have mostly been through N/V tracked major retailers, but there still must be some degree of undercount there also.


But if you look at the SI numbers, the figures look more accurate. The pdf shows 712,013 SI through Mar 18th. Even so, These N/V numbers by themselves are showing LESS than a 4 to 1 attach rate for HD DVD players

Assume thats 40% of sales so that the total is 1,780,032 disc sales projected. Assume something like 200,000 average standalone players and you get a 8.9 or so to one attach rate or higher (knowing more players available each month). That seems to be a reasonable order of magnitude.

Even if you say their 40% of sales that still only a lifetime 8.9 to 1 attach rate for HD DVD players and Xbox add ons.

These figures are seemto be dramatically undercounting HD DVD sales volumes probably because a lot of player sales are going through non N/V outlets.

Can anyone see where a significant undercount may be also happening to the Blu-ray numbers?

I hate to be a downer, but looking at the figures, what's going on with the PS3? For as many PS3 units that got sold, I would have thought BD movies would be flying off the shelf, and that every PS3 owner would at least buy a few.

Still shows me its a small market for HD in general.

Honestly those numbers are just pathetic. We have over a million bluray(ps3) players in the market place and they can't even beat the sales of some crappy next gen games. Especially disappointed in those CR numbers.

These numbers only prove that people don't care for hd movies or can't see any benefit in them currently.

Here's the stats for titles released on both formats in Feb & March.

Date / BD /HD DVD

Feb 6th / 6 / 1
Feb 13th / 13 / 2
Feb 20th / 4 / 1
Feb 27th / 4 / 3
Mar 6th / 0 / 0
Mar 13th / 4 / 0
Mar 20th / 5 / 0
Mar 27th / 6 / 4

See the big dip on the chart? See the zero release week? We have a match!

Keep in mind the above dates are TUESDAYS and the Nielsen week end day is a SUNDAY. In case anyone wondered why the dates are not exact matches.

That week BD fell 50% and HD DVD fell 80%. The following 'zero' weeks for HD DVD remained poor while Blu-ray shot up helped by Casino Royale and a few other new releases.

Why was that Mar 6 week so bad? Dual format owners did not go shopping atall. In the next few weeks they did go to pick up the new BD releases and while they were there maybe they picked up a few old HD DVD titles at the same time.

Makes sense to me.

And here's my version of events in pictorial form.

http://75.126.103.40/images/guy05/Nielsenapr1chart.jpg So the moral of the story is if you want to sell HD discs you must release for sale some HD discs?

And the format that releases more, sells more?

How shocking! :D

Here's the stats for titles released on both formats in Feb & March.

Date / BD /HD DVD

Feb 6th / 6 / 1
Feb 13th / 13 / 2
Feb 20th / 4 / 1
Feb 27th / 4 / 3
Mar 6th / 0 / 0
Mar 13th / 4 / 0
Mar 20th / 5 / 0
Mar 27th / 6 / 4

See the big dip on the chart? See the zero release week? We have a match!

Keep in mind the above dates are TUESDAYS and the Nielsen week end day is a SUNDAY. In case anyone wondered why the dates are not exact matches.

That week BD fell 50% and HD DVD fell 80%. The following 'zero' weeks for HD DVD remained poor while Blu-ray shot up helped by Casino Royale and a few other new releases.

Why was that Mar 6 week so bad? Dual format owners did not go shopping atall. In the next few weeks they did go to pick up the new BD releases and while they were there maybe they picked up a few old HD DVD titles at the same time.

Makes sense to me.
I can buy this based on nataraj's revised graph (post 4064). The other graph has a near complete drop-out that reeks of reporting error.

I hate to be a downer, but looking at the figures, what's going on with the PS3? For as many PS3 units that got sold, I would have thought BD movies would be flying off the shelf, and that every PS3 owner would at least buy a few.

Still shows me its a small market for HD in general. I think the N/V report is also undercounting the Blu-ray disc sales.

Or else over a million PS3s are not selling even a 1000 copies of some Blu-ray discs. That doesn't sound right.

I really like seeing the numbers, but this is still single-sourcing. Asking Sony is like asking the White House about WMD. N/V is only reporting part of what's happening, and we don't really know what part. Since it is only part, there could be a bias on the data from there. Might explain some of the rediculously low sale numbers.

I really like seeing the numbers, but this is still single-sourcing. Asking Sony is like asking the White House about WMD. N/V is only reporting part of what's happening, and we don't really know what part. Since it is only part, there could be a bias on the data from there. Might explain some of the rediculously low sale numbers. Yeah, but there is the complete N/V data set. Its true the YTD only stops at 25 titles, but the complete data is there.

This smells to me like data Sony requested for internal reasons, but liked it well enough to hand deliver to Bill Hunt and others becuase they say it helped their case.

Of course, the data ends on March 18th before any substantial HD DVD 2007 releases, so it tells a good Blu-ray stroy, but I think its the exact complete N/V data to date until March 18th. It just shows that there is not a hell of a lot of difference in the sales rates of a lot of these titles, the numbers are so small in absolute terms, no matter what the ratios are.

That being said the N/V biases and market coverage thoughts discussions are till valid.

I hate to be a downer, but looking at the figures, what's going on with the PS3? For as many PS3 units that got sold, I would have thought BD movies would be flying off the shelf, and that every PS3 owner would at least buy a few.

Still shows me its a small market for HD in general. The low rate may also show why HD DVD , Toshiba Microsoft universla Warner Paramount are not giving up on HD DVD at this point. If both Blu-ray and HD DVD absolute volumes are low, but better than DVD at this point in their lifecycles, there is no panic as the war is hardly over based on these absolute numbers.

The use of ratios tend to exagerate their absolute significance. And things may very well change or become more accurate as the volumes increase. :)

I hate to be a downer, but looking at the figures, what's going on with the PS3? For as many PS3 units that got sold, I would have thought BD movies would be flying off the shelf, and that every PS3 owner would at least buy a few.

That's not true, even from personal experience...the vast majority of people do not buy DVDs as well, but rent them, and out of all the PS3 people I know in the office (there are 5 owners out of 20+ people) only I BUY titles...the rest just TRY to rent from blockbuster or netflix.

Well, the fact that a lot of people prefer to rent should hit both camps equally "hard", and also, I would think Rental figures would be just as interesting as how many copies of a title is sold.

Obviously BB's approach of pushing BD over HD DVD in a big way isn't working.

Who says? You? We're only 3 months into 2007, and Blu-ray is consistently outselling HD-DVD from 2:1 to 5:1 every week, when it was way behind in 2006. I'd say it's working. But again, i think it would be alot better if HD-DVD got niched permanently and people would not have to worry about a format-war going on...

Well, the fact that a lot of people prefer to rent should hit both camps equally "hard", and also, I would think Rental figures would be just as interesting as how many copies of a title is sold.

Remember, the vast majority of PS3 owners are not hard-core enthusiasts like yourselves, and from indications, many AV people here already embraced HD-DVD in 2006...anyways, i'm tuning out cause we're flooding this thread with off-topic talk...i'll just wait for icemage and his spreadssheet...

I really like seeing the numbers, but this is still single-sourcing. Asking Sony is like asking the White House about WMD. N/V is only reporting part of what's happening, and we don't really know what part. Since it is only part, there could be a bias on the data from there. Might explain some of the rediculously low sale numbers.

But I trust N/V on HD sales more than I would ever trust the CIA on WMD in Iraq ;)

[QUOTE=plazman]Obviously BB's approach of pushing BD over HD DVD in a big way isn't working. So how about seeing what happens when you push HD DVD over BD. Looks like despite the best attempts of the BD group and miliions of hardware we are pretty much at a stalemate now - with some edge to BD (but largely irrelevant in the big picture).

Minneapolis-based Best Buy reported an 18.5 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit.....


Apparently you haven't been reading the business pages lately....BB had a fantastic quarter on the backs of PS3 and expensive HT equipment sales... I am sure they'll keep doing what they are doing (not pushing HD DVD).

Wasn't it posted that the new HD DVD players have slim, $23 margins. Why would BB bother?

Accepting these numbers as accurate, the sales of all HD and BD discs is pathetic at this juncture. For anyone to claim any victory on the basis of these numbers, especially the BD camp considering how many PS3s they have sold is beyond me. This 'war" has a long ways to go. No wonder BB is returning thier unsold HD and BD stcok.

Wasn't it posted that the new HD DVD players have slim, $23 margins. Why would BB bother?
Speaking of $23....
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7944683&st=DVD+player&lp=3&type=product&cp=1&id=1152228812909

It makes one question how much Blu-ray is gaining by having an install base of around 5X more hardware, when compared to HD-DVD. And if, as Paramount predicts, the hardware of both formats is on a level playing field by Christmas, what will disc sales look like by then.You said that as if Paramount claimed that things would change from 5x more hardware to the same amount, but that isn't the case. Those 2 statements use different measuring methods, as the Paramount consultant only got to level by using 22% for the method of counting PS3s. Using his method, the 1.35 million PS3s that vgcharts.org reports for the Americas would count as less than 300k. We've seen one report that the XBOX360 add-on had sold 112k through I believe the end of January. A Toshiba rep claimed 200k just for their units according to Kosty maybe a couple of weeks ago. If that was true, then that should have put them at over 320k even before the CC sale, which would have put that against about 300k PS3s plus however many standalones Blu-ray sold, using the Paramount consultant method.

--Darin

Minneapolis-based Best Buy reported an 18.5 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit.....


Apparently you haven't been reading the business pages lately....BB had a fantastic quarter on the backs of PS3 and expensive HT equipment sales... I am sure they'll keep doing what they are doing (not pushing HD DVD).

http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=39255

Best Buy Company Incorporated and Circuit City Stores Incorporated have both reported high demand for Windows Vista in their retail stores. In separate earnings statements, the two retail companies said that PCs with Vista preinstalled have been selling well since the January 30 release. However, while this drove sales of PCs and computer services up 10% at Best Buy, Circuit City was affected negatively because it did not keep enough Vista PCs in stock to meet customer demand.

http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=39255

You should quote from a more credible source, using a Windows enthusiast website as a source to say that Vista is the source of the world, life and everything is a bad idea. I would recommend the FT (or whichever US equivalent there is), or the WSJ. Any finance related newspaper will give a better view, and FYI it was HDTVs that pushed sales up because of the Superbowl being b/c in HD.

[QUOTE=plazman]Obviously BB's approach of pushing BD over HD DVD in a big way isn't working. So how about seeing what happens when you push HD DVD over BD. Looks like despite the best attempts of the BD group and miliions of hardware we are pretty much at a stalemate now - with some edge to BD (but largely irrelevant in the big picture).

Minneapolis-based Best Buy reported an 18.5 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit.....


Apparently you haven't been reading the business pages lately....BB had a fantastic quarter on the backs of PS3 and expensive HT equipment sales... I am sure they'll keep doing what they are doing (not pushing HD DVD).

Wasn't it posted that the new HD DVD players have slim, $23 margins. Why would BB bother?
The Magnolias around me have A2s in the theaters, not PS3s. :(

Speaking of $23....
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7944683&st=DVD+player&lp=3&type=product&cp=1&id=1152228812909
What do you think the profit on that is? :D

You should quote from a more credible source ....

Its not my problem if you have a prejudice against MS ...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130395-pg,1/article.html

How come you didn't ask bland to show links from WSJ saying "BB had a fantastic quarter on the backs of PS3 and expensive HT equipment sales" ?

Some other things I find interesting with the numbers.

- I've seen the fact that "Batman Begins" and "Serenity" have ranked as they have on Amazon given as proof of good sales for HD DVD players in 2007. Yet, according to that chart BB has sold less than 12.5k this year and Serenity less than 5k this year. Some of those would have been sold for the probably more than 100k HD DVD players sold in the last 2 months of 2006 (based on the HD DVD group's claims of 175k+ for 2006 and the 92k XBOX360 add-ons for 2006). If Kosty's contact was right about 200k Toshiba players (not counting the add-on) just a couple of weeks ago or so, that would indicate a lot of players sold this year and a lot more than I think would be likely if looking at the "Batman Begins" sales for this year.

- After all the work that I'm sure Warner put into "Casablanca" and what a great job they did (IMO), I'm disappointed to see how poorly sales have gone for it. I know it is old, but many people consider it one of the 10 best movies of all time.

- "Bubble" on Blu-ray doesn't seem to have even sold enough to pay for the AACS license for it, let alone other costs.

- I figured that the Weinsteins probably weren't doing that well for their HD offerings, and from looking at the list I think I was right.

--Darin

- After all the work that I'm sure Warner put into "Casablanca" and what a great job they did (IMO), I'm disappointed to see how poorly sales have gone for it. I know it is old, but many people consider it one of the 10 best movies of all time.


Indeed. Considering that early adopters were likely to be film buffs as well, it doesn't bode well for catalog sales of classics. Even some recent blockbusters have fared poorly.

Looking at the numbers - we shouldn't be surprised - if only day and date releases are in HiDef from now on. I don't see how it makes sense to go back and issue old catalog titles now.

Nataraj,

I am unable to use your Excel file as I have Office 2003 at work. Thanks for all your work on this thread though.

For anyone having a similar issue, I was able to export the whole Sony report.
I also broke it off into just the Next Gen sales (pages 16-19).

If you have trouble downloading, right click on file and select "Save Target As..."

I was thinking of putting out a csv file as well, but forgot.

On a side note - I apologise to all of the members who contribute to this thread regularly, I didn't mean to take the thread so OT.

mod

more and more reports received /posts deleted here

Move on please

Not sure how much significance this one has, but the only title I can think of with PiP on one release and not on another of the same movie is MI:3 (at least I think the HD DVD has PiP). If we look at the sales figures, they are:

MI:3
Total: Blu-ray 17400, HD DVD 17537
YTD: Blu-ray 7465, HD DVD 4732

MI:Ultimate Collections
Total: Blu-ray 5511, HD DVD 6823
YTD: Blu-ray 2752, HD DVD 1656

You should quote from a more credible source, using a Windows enthusiast website as a source to say that Vista is the source of the world, life and everything is a bad idea. I would recommend the FT (or whichever US equivalent there is), or the WSJ. Any finance related newspaper will give a better view, and FYI it was HDTVs that pushed sales up because of the Superbowl being b/c in HD.

The OP made it sound like the gain came on the back of the "PS3" and not on the back of HDTV's. I say the PS3 had very little to do with their profit margin. The Wii probably had just as much to do with it as the PS3.

Some other things I find interesting with the numbers.

- I've seen the fact that "Batman Begins" and "Serenity" have ranked as they have on Amazon given as proof of good sales for HD DVD players in 2007. Yet, according to that chart BB has sold less than 12.5k this year and Serenity less than 5k this year. Some of those would have been sold for the probably more than 100k HD DVD players sold in the last 2 months of 2006 (based on the HD DVD group's claims of 175k+ for 2006 and the 92k XBOX360 add-ons for 2006). If Kosty's contact was right about 200k Toshiba players (not counting the add-on) just a couple of weeks ago or so, that would indicate a lot of players sold this year and a lot more than I think would be likely if looking at the "Batman Begins" sales for this year.

- After all the work that I'm sure Warner put into "Casablanca" and what a great job they did (IMO), I'm disappointed to see how poorly sales have gone for it. I know it is old, but many people consider it one of the 10 best movies of all time.

- "Bubble" on Blu-ray doesn't seem to have even sold enough to pay for the AACS license for it, let alone other costs.

- I figured that the Weinsteins probably weren't doing that well for their HD offerings, and from looking at the list I think I was right.

--Darin

Keep in mind that Casablanca was one of the free titles you could choose. This may have curbed the sales of that title somewhat. I also don't think Casablanca is the type of movie that appeals to the Xbox 360 crowd.

Indeed. Considering that early adopters were likely to be film buffs as well, it doesn't bode well for catalog sales of classics. Even some recent blockbusters have fared poorly.

Looking at the numbers - we shouldn't be surprised - if only day and date releases are in HiDef from now on. I don't see how it makes sense to go back and issue old catalog titles now.

If that is the case, then why release anything in high def? Should the studios stick with DVD and abandon these formats completely? A big reason the studios wanted another format was to be able to resell their catalog titles. If that isn't feasible, then what is the incentive now to spend the time and money on these day and date high def releases, when all they are doing is (very slightly) cutting into the DVD sales?

Meanwhile, pirates are having a field day figuring out how to circumvent the copy protection on these high def releases. Again, where is the incentive to support high def?

Here is the chart showing our estimates and videoscan numbers. Our estimates are based on HMM first alert ratios.

http://img390.imageshack.us/img390/2641/nielsenhideffo4.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Keep in mind that Casablanca was one of the free titles you could choose.

That could have had a serious impact on casablance sales. Just like 360 add-on freebee of KingKong had a serious impact on KK sales.

- "Bubble" on Blu-ray doesn't seem to have even sold enough to pay for the AACS license for it, let alone other costs.

- I figured that the Weinsteins probably weren't doing that well for their HD offerings, and from looking at the list I think I was right.

--Darin
As far as the Magnolia titles, they don't have very good distribution channels, do they? In fact aren't they sold direct from the supplier? Can you even find these at Best Buy? It comes down to what Nielsen is and isn't tracking.

Up until this weekend (edit-this weekend didn't change anything either), the Weinsteins haven't done well at all with much of anything since forming their new company, so of course you would expect their high def releases to not perform well.

A big reason the studios wanted another format was to be able to resell their catalog titles.

We don't know if this is the case - just an assumption around here. Has anyone from any studio stated this ?

From what I've read, studios know well that only new releases can get them significant sales. Catalogs are going to be marginal revenue makers at best. Given that, I expect them to wait until a large base of potential buyers are there before releasing catalog titles.

Meanwhile, pirates are having a field day figuring out how to circumvent the copy protection on these high def releases. Again, where is the incentive to support high def?

One of the basic studio reasons is that they see dvd as a shrinking business. They want growth ... just all all companies on wall street. They hope to get better margins on HiDef.

[QUOTE=plazman]Obviously BB's approach of pushing BD over HD DVD in a big way isn't working. So how about seeing what happens when you push HD DVD over BD. Looks like despite the best attempts of the BD group and miliions of hardware we are pretty much at a stalemate now - with some edge to BD (but largely irrelevant in the big picture).

Minneapolis-based Best Buy reported an 18.5 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit.....


Apparently you haven't been reading the business pages lately....BB had a fantastic quarter on the backs of PS3 and expensive HT equipment sales... I am sure they'll keep doing what they are doing (not pushing HD DVD).

Wasn't it posted that the new HD DVD players have slim, $23 margins. Why would BB bother?

Oh, how much does Best Buy make from the sale of each PS3? Traditionally stores don't make much of anything on video game hardware sales.

We don't know if this is the case - just an assumption around here. Has anyone from any studio stated this ?

From what I've read, studios know well that only new releases can get them significant sales. Catalogs are going to be marginal revenue makers at best. Given that, I expect them to wait until a large base of potential buyers are there before releasing catalog titles.



One of the basic studio reasons is that they see dvd as a shrinking business. They want growth ... just all all companies on wall street. They hope to get better margins on HiDef.

And do you consider Fox's attempt to get those higher margins with its high list price to be in any way successful compared to what the other studios are doing? If they can't sell software at a higher price now, is the higher price going to be attractive to those people who buy into the format later, when the cheaper hardware is available? The hardware companies wanted better margins too. How's that working out?

I'm finding it very difficult to draw any major conclusions from all of these figures. Big day and date and more recent titles are selling best but what is driving the remainder of the sales, i don't know.

Saw 3 has sold 14,441 and you could partly expect the whole franchise to do okay based on that, yet Saw, widely regarded as the much better movie of the three, has only sold 3,781 and been out a lot longer. It could be an unwillingness to upgrade from DVD at this point for titles that people already have,

I expected 'Babel' to be close on both formats but BD is winning by over 2,000 units, although 8,610 and 6,422 is pretty poor for a recent best picture nominee.

Then there's the catalogue titles. 'Bullit' and 'The Getaway' have especially done badly. 'Casablanca' and 'Forbidden Planet' are nothing to write home about but one thing about those titles is that maybe Warner can consider them a being out there now for future consumption. They're good titles to have available to help sway some more discerning potential adopters. Then you have 'Goodfellas', a bona fide modern classic selling 17,504 on HD DVD, with the BD selling 6,412. It's only been on BD for two months but YTD sales are only 800 units apart. 'Training Day' HD DVD is beating BD slightly YTD but by roughly 6,000 overall.

I think the Fox/MGM pricing is doing damage mainly for the lesser catalogue titles and maybe the same for Universal on the combo catalogues such as `American Werewolf In London' and 'Brealkfast Club', which could be sparking their decision to reissue them as HD DVD only and dropping the price, as well as releasing future catalogue titles as HD DVD only.

The availability and marketing of the Magnolia titles can't be helping their cause and i don't think the current policy of Weinstein not going date and date is helping them either but their bigger titles such as 'Lucky Number Slevin' and 'Clerks II' haven't done that badly with respect to a lot of that list, and 'Clerks II' has outsold 'Jay And Silent Bob'.

Really, there are so many low title sales figure on that list and so many anomalies that it all looks rather a mess at the moment and adds more fuel to the fire of it being just the early days yet and this war still has a long way to go..

- After all the work that I'm sure Warner put into "Casablanca" and what a great job they did (IMO), I'm disappointed to see how poorly sales have gone for it. I know it is old, but many people consider it one of the 10 best movies of all time.


How many of the Warner titles aren't yet announced for BD because of poor sales on HD DVD?

Casablanca: 2336
Forbidden Planet: 1311 + 440 (ultimate)
The Adventures of Robin Hood: 2712

Those are three I was looking forward to purchasing. Is PiP used on any of them?

Gary

And do you consider Fox's attempt to get those higher margins with its high list price to be in any way successful compared to what the other studios are doing? If they can't sell software at a higher price now, is the higher price going to be attractive to those people who buy into the format later, when the cheaper hardware is available? The hardware companies wanted better margins too. How's that working out?

As I have posted many times earlier - there is an inherent contradiction here. Studios want higher margins - but MR clearly says the movie prices should be similar to DVD prices if the formats have to take off.

I think what is difficult for Studios (and content providers in general) to digest is that in this HD era they haven't made a buck out of HD - where as CE manufacturers have made billions on HDTVs. Same with MP3 players. It is kind of ironic that people here keep saying content is king.

How many of the Warner titles aren't yet announced for BD because of poor sales on HD DVD?

Casablanca: 2336
Forbidden Planet: 1311 + 440 (ultimate)
The Adventures of Robin Hood: 2712Who says those sales are "poor"? How are we determining this? How many sales would be "average", "good" or "great" for this market at this time?

As I have posted many times earlier - there is an inherent contradiction here. Studios want higher margins - but MR clearly says the movie prices should be similar to DVD prices if the formats have to take off.

I think what is difficult for Studios (and content providers in general) to digest is that in this HD era they haven't made a buck out of HD - where as CE manufacturers have made billions on HDTVs. Same with MP3 players. It is kind of ironic that people here keep saying content is king.

Good point.

The Disney Vs Sony numbers seem alternately close then way off:

Oct 06 - 1%
Nov 06 - 78%
Dec 06 - 5%
Jan 07 - 46%

Diff over 4 months - 29%

You are right. No idea where Disney got the numbers.

Neo,

For a stalemate it has to be comparable weeky sales, and we are closer but still far from parity, so who is going to 'push' hd over bd?

The point is that WEEKLY sales ratios dont mean much at this level. Heck BD outsold HD 4:1 for 1 week, and it looks like it is back down around 2:1.

so, if WEEKLY numbers mean what they say you mean, the BD is in trouble, because they lost their sizeable weekly lead.

We both know that isnt the case.

Neo,

What do you propose is the 'correct' thing to do come 2008 when the ratio stays at roughly 2:1 and units are not much more than today?

In the case you outlined, then the consumer will have spoken and they dont want
A) HD optical media at all and are happy with what they have, or B) they dont like two formats, and the companies better work out a deal.

Richard,

You said that Paidgeek said that the Hydra program was mentioned in a presentation and not a real program.

Actually what did you expect him to say? Oh yeah, we are doing this sleazy thing to win the hearts and minds of the buying public. If the situation were reveresd and Amir said what paidgeek said, they would be all over him.


Kosty,

The low rate may also show why HD DVD , Toshiba Microsoft universla Warner Paramount are not giving up on HD DVD at this point. If both Blu-ray and HD DVD absolute volumes are low, but better than DVD at this point in their lifecycles, there is no panic as the war is hardly over based on these absolute numbers.

Which is exactly what I have been saying for the last 3-4 weeks.

So the moral of the story is if you want to sell HD discs you must release for sale some HD discs?

And the format that releases more, sells more?

How shocking! :D
Gee. Kinda' sounds like that whole "content is king" argument, doesn't it. ;)

There have been some debates about how much titles are selling in each of the formats they were released in. This is using the figures pasted earlier by huntaar.

Warner was indeed correct in saying they sell roughly the same on both formats. If anything they have sold better on HD DVD.

http://img457.imageshack.us/img457/6510/nielsenneutwg5.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Warner was indeed correct in saying they sell roughly the same on both formats. If anything they have sold better on HD DVD.
Which actually makes a lot of sense as HD DVD has fewer studios to compete with.

Gee. Kinda' sounds like that whole "content is king" argument, doesn't it. ;)

No. It says content is important - just like price is important.

I think the best anology is the area of a rectangle. One side represents content and the other (inverse) of price.

Speaking of $23....
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7944683&st=DVD+player&lp=3&type=product&cp=1&id=1152228812909

I wonder if they'd try to sell you $80 Monster Cables to go with that?

Which actually makes a lot of sense as HD DVD has fewer studios to compete with.

I'd not draw that conclusion.

After all studios directly don't compete. Titles compete and since the number of releases are roughly same - that shouldn't matter.

Warner was indeed correct in saying they sell roughly the same on both formats. If anything they have sold better on HD DVD.Yep, I think as at least one of us pointed out, they could say they've sold about roughly the same on both, while talking about since inception and still have it be that they aren't selling at roughly the same rate. Looking at the data, it looks to me like YTD sales for individual titles from WHV tend to skew towards Blu-ray. Much as I had heard from behind the scenes that since the PS3 launch WHV titles were tending to sell better on Blu-ray than HD DVD .

--Darin

Looking at the data, it looks to me like YTD sales for individual titles from WHV tend to skew towards Blu-ray. Much as I had heard from behind the scenes that since the PS3 launch WHV titles were tending to sell better on Blu-ray than HD DVD .

That's what I found the most interesting in the report. The YTD numbers for movies out in both formats clearly favor Blu-ray and if it continues like this it will only be a matter of time before Blu-ray starts overturning the SI numbers on a title by title basis just as they've done for the total SI.

That's what I found the most interesting in the report. The YTD numbers for movies out in both formats clearly favor Blu-ray and if it continues like this it will only be a matter of time before Blu-ray starts overturning the SI numbers on a title by title basis just as they've done for the total SI.

Ohh, get fracking real! For some titles the difference between the HD-DVD and BD units sold is a few hundred/thousand units. When Warner can't sell more than a couple of hundred units of Ant Bully, The Getaway or Bullit (sometimes the combined number of BD and HD-DVD units of a movie sold don't come close to breaking 1,000) the shame should be on both formats, but particularly on BD since it boasts the most machines with playback capability on the market. Neither format is showing the strength to merit celebration, let alone any declaration of outright superiority over the other. They're both embarassing!

Ohh, get fracking real! For some titles the difference between the HD-DVD and BD units sold is a few hundred/thousand units.
The point I was trying to make is actually that the current SI numbers for titles mean little (YTD is in my opinion much more interesting), but I guess we actually agree on that.

I hope someone can answer this question for me.

Why are people arguing numbers when we dont know what the true numbers are?
Does Nielsen have all the numbers?

This is pointless -----> movie A sold 6534 and movie B sold 7689 titles.

The end product is that Studios are making money end of story. If they werent making money they would not be releasing movies.

Just a thought

To me it looks like the saturation of sales per title is the same for both formats. Titles released last year sold more on HD DVD last year and more on BD this year. Titles released this year sold about the same for both - as far as WHV is concerned. That's the plain truth. So, it doesn't make sense for people who bought the title in 2006 to also buy it in 2007!

It's almost funny to read certain BD supporters use this data to show that the PS3 is causing a tidal wave of demand in favor of BD. Studios care about how many titles were sold on each format. That's it. That data shows that for WHV both formats are doing about even business.

No. It says content is important - just like price is important.

I think the best anology is the area of a rectangle. One side represents content and the other (inverse) of price.
Agreed.

Good analogy. :)

So content would be the long side then?

J/K :D

I'd not draw that conclusion.

After all studios directly don't compete. Titles compete and since the number of releases are roughly same - that shouldn't matter.
Disagree for a number of reasons. Since we have two formats, each format has its own set of exclusives which cannot (besides neutral owners) compete against each other, or did you forget that. ;)

Also, there is quality of the titles ala blockbusters, new releases and such. The neutrals have a tougher go at it in that department in the BD market.

If neutrals have a harder time doing well in BD, how come Fox has such a hard time selling on BD? or for that matter Universal on HD DVD. From what it looks like WHV titles are doing relatively better on both formats.

Also, avg. sales per titles seem to be prety even for both formats. That says both formats on avg. generate the same sales for each title released. So if you're a studio you may as well release on both. There is no indication that a movie released on one format will sell much better than the other. That is something WHV has been trying to get across. These numbers show that, if nothing else.....

Who says those sales are "poor"? How are we determining this? How many sales would be "average", "good" or "great" for this market at this time?

Good question. I wasn't saying the examples I gave were "poor" or not. Only Warner insiders could comment on that.

But, I gave three random titles that were of interest to me, that haven't been caught up on Blu-ray yet. I don't think they had IME. The encodings exist. So, why haven't they been at least announced for BD?

Gary

how come Fox has such a hard time selling on BD? or for that matter Universal on HD DVD.

Probably because they are both more expensive than Warner. Plus Warner has been releasing more "desirable" titles.

Exactly! It's about the quality of titles. Desireable titles will sell on both formats....

The neutrals have a tougher go at it in that department in the BD market.

Why ?

Are you saying it is tougher to sell on BD compared to HD DVD ?

Why ?

Are you saying it is tougher to sell on BD compared to HD DVD ?

Choices, man. Choices.

Why ?

Are you saying it is tougher to sell on BD compared to HD DVD ?
Until HD DVD is dead and buried, yeah, like Slim said; choices.

J/K. Sorry. Just getting a bit bored with the whole thing.

The fact of the matter is, if the neutrals are doing equally well on either format, that is not stellar news for the exclusives. Again though, I think a reasonable person... AND studio could surmise that competition amongst studios providing more marketable material could be the reason why sales are only equal between the two. It still bodes well for BD. Even with more competition with more highly marketable titles, the neutrals still sell equally well in the BD format.

If you could... just... reach... a little farther... you might just grasp those straws.

How are those sales figures coming? Maybe next week, eh?

Hugs

Until HD DVD is dead and buried, yeah, like Slim said; choices.


Sorry still don't get it. If it is purely a format war thing, never mind. In this thread we tend to talk science/stats.

I see no reason why it is difficult for one major studio to sell compared to the other - irrespective of whether they are neutral or not.

ps : Are you saying that is because people of the choice of buying HD DVD or BD. That is only people with both formats and that ought to be a very small minority compared to Million(s) of PS3 owners ...

nataraj,

Sketcha was just kidding.

Indeed. Considering that early adopters were likely to be film buffs as well, it doesn't bode well for catalog sales of classics. Even some recent blockbusters have fared poorly.

Looking at the numbers - we shouldn't be surprised - if only day and date releases are in HiDef from now on. I don't see how it makes sense to go back and issue old catalog titles now.

I sound like a broken record, but I'm going to say it again. The early days of DVD provide the answers.

I got a DVD player in September of 1998 (a year and a half after DVD came out), and the majority of DVD releases were day-and-date titles... as these were the ones that sold more (in general). There would be a few token catalog titles from the studios thrown in each month to widen the appeal for someone to buy a DVD player... but they weren't really making that much money on them.

Heck, whenever stores started carrying DVD locally (Target was the first), only a couple of catalog titles were even on the shelf as most of it was taken up by newer films. These DVDs also sat over on a shelf near the video games.

I'm blabbering, but what I'm saying is, the studios look at catalog releases (this early in the game) as an investment for the future. If a person looks at a High-Def format and they see that they can get NEW HIT MOVIES as well as their favorites, it will most likely sell better than without these older films. A person might not buy all these catalog titles as they're being released, but they will probably pick up at least a couple of their FAVORITE movies... and may pick up some more later down the line as a lark. A good thing too is, these movies being released now will also get bigger sales later due to more people coming in. These new people coming in will also allow the format(s) to have a greater range of tastes in movies allowing these catalog titles to become more popular later. In fact, some of these films doing so poorly now may actually become more popular than some of the films more popular now.

That being said, 17 of my 22 Blu-Ray discs are catalog titles, and 21 of my 28 HD DVDs are as well. I've shifted to sole Blu-Ray support, but will keep my HD DVD player and collection... and while the current catalog title ratio is higher than the Day-and-Date collection on both, I plan on getting 14 D&D Blu-Ray titles over the next couple of months compared to 6 catalog titles currently announced.

~Alan

I sound like a broken record, but I'm going to say it again. The early days of DVD provide the answers.

I got a DVD player in September of 1998 (a year and a half after DVD came out), and the majority of DVD releases were day-and-date titles... as these were the ones that sold more (in general). There would be a few token catalog titles from the studios thrown in each month to widen the appeal for someone to buy a DVD player... but they weren't really making that much money on them.

Heck, whenever stores started carrying DVD locally (Target was the first), only a couple of catalog titles were even on the shelf as most of it was taken up by newer films. These DVDs also sat over on a shelf near the video games.

I'm blabbering, but what I'm saying is, the studios look at catalog releases (this early in the game) as an investment for the future. If a person looks at a High-Def format and they see that they can get NEW HIT MOVIES as well as their favorites, it will most likely sell better than without these older films. A person might not buy all these catalog titles as they're being released, but they will probably pick up at least a couple of their FAVORITE movies... and may pick up some more later down the line as a lark. A good thing too is, these movies being released now will also get bigger sales later due to more people coming in. These new people coming in will also allow the format(s) to have a greater range of tastes in movies allowing these catalog titles to become more popular later. In fact, some of these films doing so poorly now may actually become more popular than some of the films more popular now.

That being said, 17 of my 22 Blu-Ray discs are catalog titles, and 21 of my 28 HD DVDs are as well. I've shifted to sole Blu-Ray support, but will keep my HD DVD player and collection... and while the current catalog title ratio is higher than the Day-and-Date collection on both, I plan on getting 14 D&D Blu-Ray titles over the next couple of months compared to 6 catalog titles currently announced.

~Alan

I couldn't agree more. It's amazing how many folks here don't realise that the supposedly "pathetic" Hi-Def sales today are higher than DVD sales were at the same time in that format's life. Hi-Def is going to take off soon enough as more and more people have Hi-Def displays and hardware prices will come down even more (they are pretty low already compared to, again, early DVD days). It doesn't even matter if one format wins or hybrid players become the norm.

I couldn't agree more. It's amazing how many folks here don't realise that the supposedly "pathetic" Hi-Def sales today are higher than DVD sales were at the same time in that format's life.

I have seen this statement repeated over and over. The earliest sales data I can find is from 2000, or 3 years after DVD launch. Can you(or anyone) provide a link to sales data from 1997-1999?

I would like to see a graph comparing early DVD to current BD / HD DVD sales.

Thanks.

You said that as if Paramount claimed that things would change from 5x more hardware to the same amount, but that isn't the case. Those 2 statements use different measuring methods, as the Paramount consultant only got to level by using 22% for the method of counting PS3s. Using his method, the 1.35 million PS3s that vgcharts.org reports for the Americas would count as less than 300k. We've seen one report that the XBOX360 add-on had sold 112k through I believe the end of January. A Toshiba rep claimed 200k just for their units according to Kosty maybe a couple of weeks ago. If that was true, then that should have put them at over 320k even before the CC sale, which would have put that against about 300k PS3s plus however many standalones Blu-ray sold, using the Paramount consultant method.

--Darin I think your right on track here Darin.

I like the consultant's number that about 22% of PS3's to date are being used as Blu-ray disc players and I think the HD DVD and Xbox 360 drive numbers are in the ballpark.

That's why the joint releases are now starting to be even in sales and why HD DVD seems to be catching up again since HD DVD titles are starting to be released again.

Format war is far from over.

Some other things I find interesting with the numbers.

- I've seen the fact that "Batman Begins" and "Serenity" have ranked as they have on Amazon given as proof of good sales for HD DVD players in 2007. Yet, according to that chart BB has sold less than 12.5k this year and Serenity less than 5k this year. Some of those would have been sold for the probably more than 100k HD DVD players sold in the last 2 months of 2006 (based on the HD DVD group's claims of 175k+ for 2006 and the 92k XBOX360 add-ons for 2006). If Kosty's contact was right about 200k Toshiba players (not counting the add-on) just a couple of weeks ago or so, that would indicate a lot of players sold this year and a lot more than I think would be likely if looking at the "Batman Begins" sales for this year.

- After all the work that I'm sure Warner put into "Casablanca" and what a great job they did (IMO), I'm disappointed to see how poorly sales have gone for it. I know it is old, but many people consider it one of the 10 best movies of all time.

- "Bubble" on Blu-ray doesn't seem to have even sold enough to pay for the AACS license for it, let alone other costs.

- I figured that the Weinsteins probably weren't doing that well for their HD offerings, and from looking at the list I think I was right.

--Darin First thing to consider is that these software numbers are in the context of a relatively low number of players.

In the case here, those standalone numbers are steadily increasing. In the case of HD DVD , that might be 200,000 -270,000 units avalable to play them on.

Remember that these N/V disc sales numbers are probably capturing 40% of the market and may also miss a lot of the niche retailers. Its conceivable that theri figures are only a 25% market catch.

Serenity for example is showing 17755 SI Sales , with 4551 YTD. Assume a 40% catch rate for the N/V numbers you get 44,387 sold SI and 11377 sold YTD.


That could be as high as 1 out of 5 or 6 HD DVD owners have BOUGHT the disc.

If you assume the 11377 were bought by mostly new owners Jan 1 through Mar 18 and through those 10 or so weeks 100,000 HD DVD players were sold, that catalog title was bought by 11.3 % of new owners.

Batman Begins 34,313 SI and 12,225 N/V reported sales could represent 85,782 SI and 30,562 YTD sales. That could be as high as 1/3 of all HD DVD owners buying Batman Begins. Even if you take the raw N/V numbers of 34313, thats a nice percentage of 270,000 HD DVD owners to buy any one title.

The studios probably see the numbers as relative to the installed base, and with low replication and marketing costs there is a relatively low break even point for a new release. A catalog title like BB is showing constant legs after its release coincident with new player sales.

Both those disc sale numbers are a pretty good penetration rate into the total numbers of standalone players in the field. Scale the 270,000 HD DVD players up to 2.5 million with more availability and the numbers start looking better. The question to the studios may be how are sales scaling up with increased players sold.

Re: Casablanca 2333 reported sales SI through March 18.

That title may have even sold a lot more at a niche retailer like VE because and if the normal N/V market catch rate is 40% it may be only 25% for that title. so its possible that 10,000 units have been sold to date. That could be a 4% penetration rate to player sales, or 1/25 of all owners may have bought one. Again as HD DVD sells more copies, that may scale up wards.

Remember the N/V stats here don't cover the entire market, 1st quarter is traditionally slow in sales and that standalone player sales are increasing.

I've pointed out Darin Ps HD DVD examples, but the same principals apply to the Blu-ray sales as well.

Its also noticeable in the chart that their are a lot of titles that have substantial 2007 YTD sales for the 10 weeks reported for 2007 that show continued consistent sales. Most DVD sales do 80% or so of their business within 8 weeks of launch, for the HD DVD titles to be still selling at noticeable rates long after launch is a real positive indicator for the studios.

Indeed. Considering that early adopters were likely to be film buffs as well, it doesn't bode well for catalog sales of classics. Even some recent blockbusters have fared poorly.

Looking at the numbers - we shouldn't be surprised - if only day and date releases are in HiDef from now on. I don't see how it makes sense to go back and issue old catalog titles now. With zero marketing costs, catalog titles might cost little to release and have a really really low break even point.

Remember for the studios, a lot of those catalog titles generate zero income now.

Catalog titles might have a tiny cost to release. For HD DVD the replication cost might be low , for a 50,000 100,000 unit run, the VC-1 encode and the DVD port of extras might become routine for a staff of salaried compressionists. If those titles can be sold to new HD DVD player owners, whose ranks might increase 10 fold or higher in the next year or so, that could generate significant volumes of sales.

Right now the studios and retailers are still experimenting with pricing and we are not at the mass adoption stage. If prices drop to a lower price point that maximize revenues sales might increase dramatically.

A catalog release of a long dormant title, that was selling zip, with no marketing costs, and costs little to author and replicate can break even at ridiculously low volumes. If it sells more than the dormant DVD title, at a premium, it is in effect found money for the studios, with the possibility of continued sales as stand alone players gain penetration.

If a niche title can make money for a small content provider at 5,000 or 10,000 unit volume, it can make more money for a studio at the same or higher volume. Multiply that by year after year sales to new player owners as the players penetrate into the mass market and multiply that by 100's and 1000's of titles year after year, and you start talking real money.

Remember this is software that has one time authoring and other fixed charges and in volume low production costs. After a low amount of sales to break even, the rest is printing money. The catalog titles have an advantage of no marketing costs.

Just a order of magnitude WAG. Say 25,000 units sold of a catalog title sold for $20 over the course of a couple years. Thats 500,000 in revenue per title. Say the studio gets 50% of that revenue thats 250,000 per title. Take away 100,000 for authoring and replication thats still $150,000 profit per title at the 25,000 unit mark. Sell twice that for 50,000 units and you get almost $250,000 more profit for $400,000 . Sell 100,000 units and its more pure profit for $900,000 in studio revenue for $2,000,000 in sales. One or more nice hits generate profit enough to cover those ones that don't break even.

If that is the case, then why release anything in high def? Should the studios stick with DVD and abandon these formats completely? A big reason the studios wanted another format was to be able to resell their catalog titles. If that isn't feasible, then what is the incentive now to spend the time and money on these day and date high def releases, when all they are doing is (very slightly) cutting into the DVD sales?

Meanwhile, pirates are having a field day figuring out how to circumvent the copy protection on these high def releases. Again, where is the incentive to support high def? If most catalog sales are near zero now, and the studios can re-release them with no marketing costs and sell them on HD at a premium over bargin basement DVD prices, it does not take a lot of sales to make money on them and cover costs.

Make a $100,000 here, $50,000 there, multiply by hundreds of catalog titles and months and months of continued sales at a premium over DVD and that may add up to real money. It can be a nice supplement to the the transition of the HD sales of the new day and date releases.

Once a catalog title is remastered into HD, thats all for the costs. Its sales can last for years and continue generating income.

Remember as player costs come down, more players will sell and more of these catalog titles will sell. The entire released catalog list looks new to a new owner.

Over time that adds up.

We don't know if this is the case - just an assumption around here. Has anyone from any studio stated this ?

From what I've read, studios know well that only new releases can get them significant sales. Catalogs are going to be marginal revenue makers at best. Given that, I expect them to wait until a large base of potential buyers are there before releasing catalog titles.

One of the basic studio reasons is that they see dvd as a shrinking business. They want growth ... just all all companies on wall street. They hope to get better margins on HiDef. But there are hundreds more catalog titles that recent hot day and date titles.

A new hot blockbuster release can make money, but a box office dud can make money too. But there just are a lot more catalog titles out there, most generating virtually no volume in sales after 120 days. If those can be re-released in HD and rise from dormant to selling at a premium, then profits can add up in a hurry.

Has anyone from any studio stated this ?

Universal has stated very clearly that they are supporting HD DVD because they have said that it is the best format for their long list of older catalog titles.

Warner and Paramount executives have also stated re-sale of their existing catalog is a primary reason for the HD formats.

Fox and Sony have emphasized their recent box office sales and their newer released lists as reasons Blu-ray will sell more, but that begs the question of cannibalizing and sustituting for regular DVD sales.

Who says those sales are "poor"? How are we determining this? How many sales would be "average", "good" or "great" for this market at this time? I agree. (God I love it when I can say I agree with you Rob. ;) j/k)

Those figures again could be 25%-40% of actual sales and maybe even less. The studios know their might be 200,000 - 300,000 hardware units to support their purchase.

They may know they have kept prices high at this stage to test the market. They may also know that is sales are steady state constant they will ramp up as hardware sales increase.

The feedback that I have gotten from some people who know some of the studio discussions are that both Warner and Universal are quite pleased at the state of sales for their HD DVDs so far last year and this year.

I was told by several people who should know that virtually every HD DVD release from a major studio last year was profitable, even at ridiculous low volumes because of the the small production costs involved and the the tiny tiny break even points for sales. And looking at the pdf, those titles have continued to sell at a constant rate through the first 10 weeks of 2007.

heck Universal, knew it would not sell discs if they weren't releasing any. They have a more long term perspective than we have here.

the only ones impatient are the retailers and people around here. :D

I sound like a broken record, but I'm going to say it again. The early days of DVD provide the answers.

I got a DVD player in September of 1998 (a year and a half after DVD came out), and the majority of DVD releases were day-and-date titles... as these were the ones that sold more (in general). There would be a few token catalog titles from the studios thrown in each month to widen the appeal for someone to buy a DVD player... but they weren't really making that much money on them.

Heck, whenever stores started carrying DVD locally (Target was the first), only a couple of catalog titles were even on the shelf as most of it was taken up by newer films. These DVDs also sat over on a shelf near the video games.

I'm blabbering, but what I'm saying is, the studios look at catalog releases (this early in the game) as an investment for the future. If a person looks at a High-Def format and they see that they can get NEW HIT MOVIES as well as their favorites, it will most likely sell better than without these older films. A person might not buy all these catalog titles as they're being released, but they will probably pick up at least a couple of their FAVORITE movies... and may pick up some more later down the line as a lark. A good thing too is, these movies being released now will also get bigger sales later due to more people coming in. These new people coming in will also allow the format(s) to have a greater range of tastes in movies allowing these catalog titles to become more popular later. In fact, some of these films doing so poorly now may actually become more popular than some of the films more popular now.
That being said, 17 of my 22 Blu-Ray discs are catalog titles, and 21 of my 28 HD DVDs are as well. I've shifted to sole Blu-Ray support, but will keep my HD DVD player and collection... and while the current catalog title ratio is higher than the Day-and-Date collection on both, I plan on getting 14 D&D Blu-Ray titles over the next couple of months compared to 6 catalog titles currently announced.

~Alan

the studios look at catalog releases (this early in the game) as an investment for the future. If a person looks at a High-Def format and they see that they can get NEW HIT MOVIES as well as their favorites, it will most likely sell better than without these older films. A person might not buy all these catalog titles as they're being released, but they will probably pick up at least a couple of their FAVORITE movies... and may pick up some more later down the line as a lark.

Exactly.

Catalog releases now, do a couple things.

First, they show the format as being supported and viable and worth purchasing. If there is a critcal mass of titles available to support a purchase decision, tehn someone will buy the new player.

Secondly, as more new owners buy a new player, they buy some of the already released catalog, as the entire released list looks new to them.

Over time, the studios can adjust the price of the HD DVD catalog. Right now they are higher than they will be in the future. We are still in the price experimentation stage.

Sales of the catalog titles will continue in the future as retailers stock them more for impulse buying. Right now at my CC, I have to freaken search for the titles among the rest of the DVDs on the shelf. A my Wal-Mart and Target , they are in a consolidated location but all the ones I don't own, are priced much higher than the ones I already own. As retailer stocks increase and shelf space is allocated and prices drop, sales will increase.

But right now, players in the field volumes are so low still, that its not worth the retailers effort. That will change as prices drop.

Wow, lots of stuff to catch up on here. I've been rather busy the last few days, and am taking a trip out of town on Sunday so haven't had as much time as I'd have liked, but here's some quick responses:

Regarding why studios are releasing high definition at all:

Looking at the numbers we are seeing, it's quite plain that the studios are making little to no money on high definition discs of either type right now. Why do they continue?

Possible answer: Just as with DVD, the studios are aware that cultivating new revenue streams is a must. DVD is still a strong medium... but so was VHS when DVD was released. As more and more people purchase HDTVs, the amoung of satisfaction with DVD will decrease; add the flagging prices and market saturation factors, and you should be able to see why the studios are looking for a stronger source of revenue in the future.

To do so, the studios know they must seed the market. No new format can succeed and displace DVD without support from the studios, and they know you have to spend money to make money. That's really what this is all about, after all; we have people who want higher quality content and better movie experiences with growing demand, while studios are looking for a new way to sell consumers catalog releases (which cost them very little to remaster, as opposed to a new feature film).

Regarding neutral studios "chasing the money"
Unless anyone feels that a few thousand discs is going to pay for the production cost of those self-same discs, I find it difficult to believe that any studio is doing anything more than staying in the black, if not bleeding red ink. Exclusive studios on both sides aren't faring much worse, to be honest. The numbers are so low that I'm sure everyone is probably just shrugging their shoulders and writing the losses off as a business expense, aside from the handful of titles that have sold relatively well (The Departed, Casino Royale, Batman Begins).

Regarding whether any studio has any reason to change their stance:
The sales aren't very high for either side. Period. Even if Nielsen isn't capturing a majority of the market... the sales are too low. I don't buy the conjectures some have put forth that Nielsen/VideoScan isn't catching representative data. As such, there's no economic reason for any studio to switch sides right now. Moving from HD DVD to Blu-ray is not going to help their sales much. Doing the reverse would help them even less. Going neutral incurs additional costs which may or may not be recouped by additional sales.

The only thing that's going to shift the studios right now is what they believe will happen in the future. Current sales aren't going to do it, IMO.

What does this mean for the retailers?
I wish I knew for certain, but it's certainly not good. Unlike the studios, retailers have less of a reason to support new technology, except for hedging bets against their competition. It doesn't do to not have certain products if your competitors are selling it, if those products are selling reasonably well. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like high definition discs sell "reasonably well" yet, and the uncertainty of the format war isn't making retailer confidence levels any higher.

I have seen this statement repeated over and over. The earliest sales data I can find is from 2000, or 3 years after DVD launch. Can you(or anyone) provide a link to sales data from 1997-1999?

I would like to see a graph comparing early DVD to current BD / HD DVD sales.

Thanks.
I haven't found anything regarding SW sales, but the HW sales numbers in the first 3 years of DVD are amazingly close to the standalone High Definition sales expected in their first 3 years (not counting the PS3 or HD-DVD addon).

According to data at the Consumer Electronic Association (http://www.ce.org/Research/Sales_Stats/1219.asp), sales of DVD players in the first 4 years were:

1997 349,000 units
1998 1,107,000
1999 4,072,000
2000 8,499,000

At the CEA show in January the CEA released sales projections for stand-alone High Definition players of both formats combined. Their predicitions for HDTV sales over the last several years have been very accurate. They predict:

2006 300,000
2007 1,000,000
2008 4,200,000
2009 11,600,000

With hardware sales this close maybe software sales aren't too far off from what the studios expect.

Icemage.

How much do you thinks it costs a studio to ready 25,000 50,000 to 100,000 copies of a HD DVD or Blu-ray disc and distribute to retailers?

How much minimum profit can you assume they make on a disc shipped and sold to retail?

What do you think is their breakeven point on unit volume to cover the costs, if there are no marketing costs involved?

Once they have authored a title for HD DVD they can always repress fairly quickly and at little extra cost. Once pressed for HD those titles can sell now to a stream of new owners at a premium over DVD.

Last year, I was given information that most HD DVDs were being pressed in lots of 35,000 to 50,000 copies and Blu-ray (pre PS3) were being pressed in smaller lots of 10,000 - 15,000.BD25 discs. Back when there were 50 or 75 HD DVD titles out,several industry people told me that those titles all were "in the black" and had recovered their mastering and replication costs.

I've been shown that even with mandatory AACS the costs involved with encoding and replication the breakeven points are much lower than one might first think.

That may differ for premium catalog releases where outside restoration is need on top of the encoding, but for most releases, the cost to ready it for HD DVD release is much lower than one might first assume.

I think the real studio hesitation is/was the AACS crack and of letting HD digital copies out in the wild if they could be cracked.

In the case here, those standalone numbers are steadily increasing. In the case of HD DVD , that might be 200,000 -270,000 units avalable to play them on.What happened to the Toshiba guy saying 200k not even counting the add-ons? I believe the add-ons were already to 112k by the end of January by NPD, which would give much higher totals, and make these numbers look fairly bad IMO.
Remember that these N/V disc sales numbers are probably capturing 40% of the market and may also miss a lot of the niche retailers. Its conceivable that theri figures are only a 25% market catch.How do you figure 40% other than the one comment about that earlier in this thread? If they only caught 40% for "Casino Royale", that would mean it sold over 70k in the first week (and I don't believe the Sony report about more than 50k was until later). Looks like Sony should be claiming a couple of million Blu-ray movies sold if Nielsen only catches 40%.
If you assume the 11377 were bought by mostly new owners Jan 1 through Mar 18 and through those 10 or so weeks 100,000 HD DVD players were sold, that catalog title was bought by 11.3 % of new owners.You said "mostly, but then it looks like you did the math based on "bought by only new owners".
Batman Begins 34,313 SI and 12,225 N/V reported sales could represent 85,782 SI and 30,562 YTD sales. That could be as high as 1/3 of all HD DVD owners buying Batman Begins. Even if you take the raw N/V numbers of 34313, thats a nice percentage of 270,000 HD DVD owners to buy any one title.12.7% doesn't sound very good to me at all considering all the early adopters and sure seems a lot lower than ratios I've seen you discuss as likely for that title in the past. Remember when you were talking about people owning 20 discs per player (not even annualized) maybe last August because of a poll here, before the HD DVD group came out with their 8.4? If there were 50 titles out at that time (I would have to go count them to see how many there really were), then the average title should have been over 15% attach rate just for the 8.4, let alone their best selling title at that point which was also a launch title.

I think we should be able to figure out something about whether the Toshiba person's claim about 200k players even without the add-on maybe a couple of weeks ago was likely to be true as far as sales to end users, by looking at "Batman Begins" sales. For 2006, that shows 22,088 sold. Toshiba claimed 175k+ players counting all players (including the add-on) for North America. Not sure how many were outside of where these software sales are counted, but it is probably reasonably close in this case. Nielsen only capturing some percentage of the market should mostly cancel out if they are fairly representative.

22k/175k would mean about 12.6% for 2006 for BB. Higher with Nielsen only capturing some, but we should be able to use the 12.6%. We know that with close to 100k of those 175k+ sales coming in the last 2 months of the year, some of those 100k owners would have purchased BB in 2007. With 12,225 reported for 2007, even if all of those went to new owners and BB was purchased for new players at the same rate as players sold in 2006, that would only mean about 97k new players for those. I think that is probably on the high side. Even if only 3k of those 12,225 were for those 100k+ players purchased in the last 2 months of 2006, that would take that down to about 73k by March 18th. Yet 200k plus probably 130k add-ons would likely mean over 130k sold in NA this year through March 18th. So, was the 200k that you confirmed with a Toshiba person for just their players misleading, have attach rates for BB gone way down, or is there something else that would explain this?
Last year, I was given information that most HD DVDs were being pressed in lots of 35,000 to 50,000 copies ...That alone makes me question the reliability of that source. I would likely bet a new car that it wasn't true. If they pressed that many, then they wasted a lot of their companies money, given that sales of most titles look like they were well under 10k last year.

--Darin

I guess we can safely say, claims of the format war being over were greatly exaggerated. I can see from these numbers why none of the studios have budged from their initial positions.

If anything, it shows that a studio can expect to sell the same number of copies for similar titles on HD DVD v. BD. So, if we factor in difference in costs and cheaper HD DVD players, these number would indicate that HD DVD is looking like a much more viable format than BD. Now, I am curious why Sony would put out numbers and analysis that makes your competition look better than you. After all we all knew BD was outselling HD DVD 2:1 this year. But this latest report just shows that neutral studios were correct in their decision. Perhaps Sony now wants all studios to go neutral and let consumers decide the winning format - now I would support that as well :)

Wonder how Fox is tracking on their 70K titles a week with 50% growth that they predicted in Jan....

Sorry still don't get it.
And I don't think you're ever going to.

If it is purely a format war thing, never mind. In this thread we tend to talk science/stats.
It's not. We tend to mock what we don't understand, don't we.

No, I was merely attempting to find an answer to a question. Math is not always required for this endeavor.

I see no reason why it is difficult for one major studio to sell compared to the other - irrespective of whether they are neutral or not.
I know you don't. I'm O.K. with that.

ps : Are you saying that is because people of the choice of buying HD DVD or BD. That is only people with both formats and that ought to be a very small minority compared to Million(s) of PS3 owners ...
Now it's my turn. I didn't understand this statement. :confused:


Analogy:

I'm going to say it as simply as I can.

Take 10 people.

7 own Blu-ray

3 own HD DVD

A total of 100 titles have been released on each format.

Blu-ray has released twice as many new releases/blockbusters. Say 67 of them vs. only 33 for HD DVD

There are a greater number of Blu-ray player owners, but they also have more top sellers to choose from for software. Moderate sellers like "Space Cowboys' (just picked that from the list) have to compete with that on the Blu-ray side. There are fewer HD DVD owners, but also fewer big sellers to compete with.

This is one theory that attempts to explain the data. I'm sure you have your own.

I have seen this statement repeated over and over. The earliest sales data I can find is from 2000, or 3 years after DVD launch. Can you(or anyone) provide a link to sales data from 1997-1999?

I would like to see a graph comparing early DVD to current BD / HD DVD sales.

Thanks.

Here's the info. You can make your own graph. :D

1996 - In November, the first DVD players went on sale in Japan.

1997 - In March, the first DVD players went on sale in the U.S., with 349,482 players and 2 million discs sold by the end of the year. In April, Sony released its first commercial DVD player in the U.S., the model DVP-S7000. Sony's DVD plant in Terre Haute, Indiana, opened in the summer of 1997. The Digital Audio Disc Corporation (DADC) "was the first manufacturer of compact discs in the United States, recently celebrated the manufacture of its billionth compact disc and remains the largest CD manufacturing facility in the country today." (Sony press release 1/8/97)

1998 - 1,089,000 DVD players and 7,200,000 discs sold in the U.S.

1999 - Panasonic advertised the first DVD-audio player, the DVD-A10 for $1199, with 2-channel sound sampled at 192 kHz or 6-channel sound sampled at 96 kHz.

2000 - 8,500,000 DVD players sold in the U.S., raising the total sold since 1997 to 13,922,000.

Sketcha, as I have pointed out many times. That does not apear to be the case. IF it were harder to sell in BD v. HD DVD because of number of titles the data would have shown a flatter curve for BD - i.e. mediocre sales for many titles. v. a steeper curve for HD DVD with a sharper curve (since fewer titles to choose from so sales concentrated on a few). The data as presented by Sony shows just the opposite! It is HD DVD that has the 'much' flatter curve and hence shows greater 'effective' competition for consumers $$. BD on the other hand shows that majority of the sales are driven by very few titles.

I know you have a theory, but it doesn't reconcile with the data now. Does it?

Now, it pains me to see such great transfers as Casablanca sell so few units on either format (as Darrin says). Perhaps todays tastes have passed us by - at 33 I am probably an exception that bought into HD primarily for catalog titles, those movies I would never be able to see in HD in a theatre, rather than Casino Royale types. I guess studios will lose interest in catalog titles....


Not even the PS3 crowd seems to be buying many disks. Why? After all there is no danger of PS3 becoming an obsolete console, and BD titles bought will always play on it and Sony will support the hardware for years. OTOH, IF HD DVD went away, I can see Tosh not supporting these players - hence the hesitation of HD DVD owners not wanting to stock up on HD DVD disks. So logically, I would have expected PS3 attachment rates to be much higher than HD DVD, due to the associated risk.

But right now, players in the field volumes are so low still, that its not worth the retailers effort. That will change as prices drop.

Actually in the case of BR there is enough of a volume in players when PS3 is included, but it's compensated by low attach-rates, and retailers, even with their bias for one format or another, can't manage to shift the trend. I think the only way they will blow out of the niche market is when manufacturers bring the players prices down to let's say $299 in B&M stores or we start to see more universal players going for no more than $499.

Of course there is also the software prices catch-22. If studios expect to attract mass-market adoption by keeping HD software prices above $25 (B&M price), it's going to be a tough sale. Either way you look at it, universal players would be the answer for studios as well. That would allow them to keep prices a bit higher than SD releases and start converting the masses to HD by removing the format war fear from that market. Incertitude will keep most consumers at bay.

BD on the other hand shows that majority of the sales are driven by very few titles.
Actually, this perfectly proves my point. Where's the room for the neutrals and the commercially lesser titles?

Sorry I couldn't get to the rest. Gotta' go.

Kosty wrote
Last year, I was given information that most HD DVDs were being pressed in lots of 35,000 to 50,000 copies


35 000 disks * 75 titles = 2.6M disks
Yet with 175 titles, we are told HD DVD just recently cracked 1M sales.
Something is either very wrong with what you were told, or 1M sales is way off. If HD DVD had sold > 2.5M disks, I'm sure they'd be crowing about it (so would BD, if it were them).

How do you figure 40% --Darin

Originally Posted by Grubert msg #3449
"Thomas K. Arnold has replied:
Quote:
Since Nielsen only represents about 40% of the business the numbers have been bumped up accordingly and then cross checked with studios to ensure accuracy."

As such, there's no economic reason for any studio to switch sides right now.There is, for Universal. Sales would increase if consumers were told that one format has won. Universal switching to BD would kill HD DVD dead. Universal should do so now, for everyone's benefit, including their own.

Sketch, how does it prove your point when Warner has several titles on both format top selling list? It shows that neutrals have it good on either format, as long as the titles reflect the buying publics tastes.

Are you saying Warner would have sold even more than they did on BD IF not for competition from Disney and Sony and LG and Fox? If yes. Then it also makes the argument that someone like Fox that is doing very poorly by being exclusive to BD should give HD DVD a try ,)

Kosty wrote


35 000 disks * 75 titles = 2.6M disks
Yet with 175 titles, we are told HD DVD just recently cracked 1M sales.
Something is either very wrong with what you were told, or 1M sales is way off. If HD DVD had sold > 2.5M disks, I'm sure they'd be crowing about it (so would BD, if it were them).

He said "pressed," not shipped or sold. The majority of the discs are most likely being kept in warehouses.

~Alan

He also said 2006.
You think the distributors have been sitting on > 1.5M disks for the last 3+ months? His source used that as evidence they "were in the black". If they are sitting in a warehouse, not even shipped, I don't see how they can count towards revenue. From an accounting perspective they could be classified as an asset, but not revenue (to the best of my knowledge).

Analogy:

I'm going to say it as simply as I can.

Take 10 people.

7 own Blu-ray

3 own HD DVD

A total of 100 titles have been released on each format.

Blu-ray has released twice as many new releases/blockbusters. Say 67 of them vs. only 33 for HD DVD

There are a greater number of Blu-ray player owners, but they also have more top sellers to choose from for software. Moderate sellers like "Space Cowboys' (just picked that from the list) have to compete with that on the Blu-ray side. There are fewer HD DVD owners, but also fewer big sellers to compete with.

This is one theory that attempts to explain the data. I'm sure you have your own.

2:1 block busters in your example. 2:1 number of owners. Sorry, your theory has no legs.

Just a order of magnitude WAG. Say 25,000 units sold of a catalog title sold for $20 over the course of a couple years. Thats 500,000 in revenue per title. Say the studio gets 50% of that revenue thats 250,000 per title. Take away 100,000 for authoring and replication thats still $150,000 profit per title at the 25,000 unit mark. Sell twice that for 50,000 units and you get almost $250,000 more profit for $400,000 . Sell 100,000 units and its more pure profit for $900,000 in studio revenue for $2,000,000 in sales. One or more nice hits generate profit enough to cover those ones that don't break even.

What is the catalog only sold 3,000 movies (median for hd dvd is 2,850 or so) ?

Catalog sales are a slow trickle - so by the time that 3,000 goes to 25K - optical discs would be obsolete ;)

The problem with catalogs now is the retailers don't have shelf space to keep them. They will have to bought online.

And for those comparing VHS to DVD migration - remember your DVDs play quite well on HiDef players - unlike VHS on DVD.

Let me restate. There is a very very low probability of J6P replacing his catalog titles to get marginal PQ improvement on HiDef. The numbers prove my point - even early adopters aren't buying many catalog titles.

ps :

Catalog titles might have a tiny cost to release.

Not sure. Infact they can be costlier to produce if they don't have a 1080p master. We know newer titles have good masters - but older ones may not.

edit : Corrected median number.

I sound like a broken record, but I'm going to say it again. The early days of DVD provide the answers.

Sorry - wrong comparison. People would have picked up DVD to play them - since VHS doesn't play on DVD players. Not the case with HiDef DVD. Moreover for catalog (old) titles, the PQ improvement over DVD may be even more marginal.

I haven't found anything regarding SW sales, but the HW sales numbers in the first 3 years of DVD are amazingly close to the standalone High Definition sales expected in their first 3 years (not counting the PS3 or HD-DVD addon).

According to data at the Consumer Electronic Association (http://www.ce.org/Research/Sales_Stats/1219.asp), sales of DVD players in the first 4 years were:

1997 349,000 units
1998 1,107,000
1999 4,072,000
2000 8,499,000

At the CEA show in January the CEA released sales projections for stand-alone High Definition players of both formats combined. Their predicitions for HDTV sales over the last several years have been very accurate. They predict:

2006 300,000
2007 1,000,000
2008 4,200,000
2009 11,600,000

With hardware sales this close maybe software sales aren't too far off from what the studios expect.

Sorry, the numbers are off. The number of CE HiDef players sold in 2006 was close to 100K. Not 300K. (if you add 360 add-on that becomes 200K).

Chances of 1M players in 2007 (not counting PS3) is close to nil. In first 3 months the sales (my estimates) have been less than 100K.

Also, for DVD there was a sizable DVD-ROM market almost right from the start. I've no idea why we don't have inexpensive ROMs yet the HiDef.

There is, for Universal. Sales would increase if consumers were told that one format has won.

Partisan assumptions don't make good economic theory ;)

Here's the info. You can make your own graph. :D

1997 - In March, the first DVD players went on sale in the U.S., with 349,482 players and 2 million discs sold by the end of the year.

In 2006 - we had 100K CE players sold and about 1M movies.


1998 - 1,089,000 DVD players and 7,200,000 discs sold in the U.S.


As I've posted above - 1M CE players looks like a pipedream currently. We may be heading towards half of the title sales for 2007 (4M).

There is, for Universal. Sales would increase if consumers were told that one format has won. Universal switching to BD would kill HD DVD dead. Universal should do so now, for everyone's benefit, including their own.

Maybe Universal doesn't want to be at the mercy of another movie studio who dictates the market... If it wasn't for HD DVD, BR would be basking in 5th element transfers at $30 a pop being played on $1000 players still...

And for those comparing VHS to DVD migration - remember your DVDs play quite well on HiDef players - unlike VHS on DVD.

True, but even now, everybody I know still owns a VCR. Why was everybody replacing their catalog titles from VHS to DVD? PQ? Space? What?

There is a very very low probability of J6P replacing his catalog titles to get marginal PQ improvement on HiDef. The numbers prove my point - even early adopters aren't buying many catalog titles.

Yes, but the same thing happened with the VHS to DVD migration. The only difference is that the studios have seeded the market with MORE catalog titles than they released during those early times of DVD... granted some of that is due to Paramount and Fox releasing titles whereas they didn't during those early years of DVD.

~Alan

Alan,

True, but even now, everybody I know still owns a VCR. Why was everybody replacing their catalog titles from VHS to DVD? PQ? Space? What?

PQ, ease of use and for Disney type titles, so they dont wear out. We must have bought 2 or 3 Mary Poppins' tapes before the DVD came out.

DVD had a lot of advantages over VHS that HDM doesnt have over DVD. With HDM what you get is a better picture, and possibly better sound if you send it through a reasonable HT setup.

But face it, most people dont have a great sound system and simply listen through their TV. So the real advantage for HDM, for a lot of people, is better picture, and you have to have the TV to take advantage of it.

So the real advantage for HDM, for a lot of people, is better picture, and you have to have the TV to take advantage of it.

And most importantly the aptitude.

True, but even now, everybody I know still owns a VCR. Why was everybody replacing their catalog titles from VHS to DVD? PQ? Space? What?

Apart from points made by george, How many people are actively using it ? And ofcourse VHS wares out ... (and we now know dvd can scratch badly, but most of us really didn't know at that time).

Maybe Universal doesn't want to be at the mercy of another movie studio who dictates the market... If it wasn't for HD DVD, BR would be basking in 5th element transfers at $30 a pop being played on $1000 players still...

Oh please.

If it wasn't for Toshiba & Microsoft, I mean HD DVD, the industry at a whole would probably be a lot healthier since fence sitters waiting for the format war to end would have bought in. I have to laugh when HD DVD supporters bring up choice when they are at the mercy of a hardware & software monopoly. DVD was a unified format and did that mean player prices stayed sky high?

Last time I checked, Sony, Warner, Disney, Paramount, Lionsgate and Fox weren't dictating to each other. Universal is enjoying the perks of being a big fish in a small pool. Now that their home video & film divisions are in chaos, they literally can't afford to ignore the BD market.

Besides, for every Fifth Element or Flying Daggers there's a Spartacus or Traffic. :rolleyes:

If it wasn't for Toshiba & Microsoft, I mean HD DVD, the industry at a whole would probably be a lot healthier since fence sitters waiting for the format war to end would have bought in. I have to laugh when HD DVD supporters bring up choice when they are at the mercy of a hardware & software monopoly. DVD was a unified format and did that mean player prices stayed sky high?

You seem to have forgotten that the adoption rate, as publicized various times on this site is virtually identical as it was for dvd. Indeed, the prices of the players in the current mixed market have fallen much faster over the same period when sd came on the scene. So now where's your argument?

In the end, it may well be a single format will survive but the competitive process is far from being any more problematic than how dvd was introduced.

Oh please.


Can we take such talk to the general discussion thread ? Let us only talk numbers and their analysis here.

Oh please.

If it wasn't for Toshiba & Microsoft, I mean HD DVD, the industry at a whole would probably be a lot healthier since fence sitters waiting for the format war to end would have bought in. I have to laugh when HD DVD supporters bring up choice when they are at the mercy of a hardware & software monopoly. DVD was a unified format and did that mean player prices stayed sky high?

Last time I checked, Sony, Warner, Disney, Paramount, Lionsgate and Fox weren't dictating to each other.

I think you forgot about a format called DIVX at the time, of which your 2 favorite studios, Fox and Disney, were the most ardent supporters. Did you buy a DIVX Zenith player ?

Some people tend to think that it's all Universal's and Microsoft's fault when in reality Sony created a scission by sidestepping the DVD forum and creating the BDA in order to launch a new format from which they would reap more dividends. The fact remains that as a movie studio, a replication plants owner, and an electronics manufacturer, $ony is in a position to lead with BR, and that is a dumb move on other studios' part when looking at the long term implications. That is definitely a vertical monopoly...

As far as sales numbers are concerned, I beg to differ, the market would not be any healthier if BR had enjoyed no competition. I actually tend to believe that it would be quite the contrary and that prices would not have come down at the pace we're seeing today. If there's no competition, what is the rush to lower prices ? They could all be waiting for the sales numbers to slowly take off while starting to recoup their investment on R&D. Right now, they can't, and that's due to HD DVD being a pain in their arse, which is why they are in such a hurry to twist numbers left and right to put in people's minds that the format war is over.

The numbers we have are very hard to extrapolate from, because we don't have enough information to analyze the market, so depending on which side of the boat you float, it's easy to come up with different scenarios. Not only that, but some of the information we get is taken at face value when anybody with common sense knows full well some of these numbers are cooked.

Are you saying Warner would have sold even more than they did on BD IF not for competition from Disney and Sony and LG and Fox? If yes. Then it also makes the argument that someone like Fox that is doing very poorly by being exclusive to BD should give HD DVD a try ,)
Yep and yep.

You are one who is so fond of accurately describing the BD alliance as political. I'm not sure how Sony pulled it off or what could be in it for Fox, but clearly, being exclusive cannot possibly be as profitable (again, barring some unknown subsidy or payoff) in the short run, as not.

P.S. Of course Universal would garner the same benefit if they gave Blu-ray a try. ;)

2:1 block busters in your example. 2:1 number of owners. Sorry, your theory has no legs.
I disagree. Also, did you miss the title, "Analogy:?" I put that there just for you.

At least I've got you to come down from categorizing my theory as format-war rhetoric.

Baby steps.

PQ, ease of use and for Disney type titles, so they dont wear out. We must have bought 2 or 3 Mary Poppins' tapes before the DVD came out.

DVD had a lot of advantages over VHS that HDM doesnt have over DVD. With HDM what you get is a better picture, and possibly better sound if you send it through a reasonable HT setup.

But face it, most people dont have a great sound system and simply listen through their TV. So the real advantage for HDM, for a lot of people, is better picture, and you have to have the TV to take advantage of it.

I agree, most people I know listen to DVD's audio via their TV because their wives hate the idea of surround sound (I only know two people with surround sound)... so the audio probably won't sway many people.

HOWEVER, most of the people I got into DVD (and granted, most of the people I know got into it because I got them interested in it) did so because of the PQ... and I don't know a single one of them who got into it for the longevity of the format.

Also, I try on a regular basis to show off what a difference HD DVD makes compared to DVD on a regular SDTV by hooking up my HD-A2 to my 50-inch SDTV and on a "reference" title, the difference is night and day... so the whole "have to have the TV to take advantage of it" doesn't really hold much water. Several of them have stated they will convert to High-Def media once a format is chosen as the winner and prices have gone down. They only have SDTVs and have no intention of upgrading to HDTVs until they are forced to by a broken TV.

~Alan

Apart from points made by george, How many people are actively using it ? And ofcourse VHS wares out ... (and we now know dvd can scratch badly, but most of us really didn't know at that time).

You are correct regarding pre-packaged media. They usually only use the VCRs for recording stuff off of TV, watching home movies or to watch movies they've had for a while and have not bothered to purchase again on DVD... kids movies in particular...

~Alan

Several of them have stated they will convert to High-Def media once a format is chosen as the winner and prices have gone down.

~Alan
Personally, I believe these TWO points are BOTH an equal hindrance to mass adoption. However, I also believe there is a very real possibility that hybrids could become inexpensive enough before one of the formats yields. In this case both could survive side-by-side. As long as some form of HDM survives, I'm happy.

I think you forgot about a format called DIVX at the time, of which your 2 favorite studios, Fox and Disney, were the most ardent supporters. Did you buy a DIVX Zenith player ?

My favorite studio? I'm actually partial to Paramount & Warner. (Paramount also supported DIVX). Funny you should mention DIVX, a closed standard supported by one company (Circuit City) vs the rest of the industry, like Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Philips, etc.

Some people tend to think that it's all Universal's and Microsoft's fault when in reality Sony created a scission by sidestepping the DVD forum and creating the BDA in order to launch a new format from which they would reap more dividends.

Well for the tiny fact that this is untrue...
Sony approached the DVD-Forum, you know the group that couldn't even decide between DVD-R and DVD+R, and presented what they were developing. Companies like Pioneer, Matsushita (Panasonic, JVC), Philips, Samsung, Yamaha, Mitsubishi, Sharp all went "Great idea. We're in." Toshiba, chair of the DVD Forum and major patent holder, saw their future royalties and said "well, *we're* developing our AOD format" forcing the creation of the BDA because all the aformentioned companies couldn't get anything voted on.

The fact remains that as a movie studio, a replication plants owner, and an electronics manufacturer, $ony is in a position to lead with BR, and that is a dumb move on other studios' part when looking at the long term implications. That is definitely a vertical monopoly...

Such a "leet haxor" with your $ony. Just goes to show that an overwhelming hatred of the company is reason to support the competition, even when presented with overwhelming support from other companies like Panasonic (authoring, players, etc). I sure hope you don't play CDs, finding out that Sony (w Philips) created that format.

As far as sales numbers are concerned, I beg to differ, the market would not be any healthier if BR had enjoyed no competition. I actually tend to believe that it would be quite the contrary and that prices would not have come down at the pace we're seeing today. If there's no competition, what is the rush to lower prices ? They could all be waiting for the sales numbers to slowly take off while starting to recoup their investment on R&D. Right now, they can't, and that's due to HD DVD being a pain in their arse, which is why they are in such a hurry to twist numbers left and right to put in people's minds that the format war is over.

No competition? I beg to differ: there is a HUGE competitor. Standard DVD. Along with HDTV programming, On Demand, internet, etc. There's a lot of competiton for the consumer's entertainment dollar.

The numbers we have are very hard to extrapolate from, because we don't have enough information to analyze the market, so depending on which side of the boat you float, it's easy to come up with different scenarios. Not only that, but some of the information we get is taken at face value when anybody with common sense knows full well some of these numbers are cooked.

If anything, they are VERY conservative. Go into any big box retailer and see the folks in the HD media sections. A lot of PS3 owners buying movies. A LOT.

Some more data.

# of titles crossing SI sales of 5,000 : 56 & 46
# of titles crossing YTD sales of 5,000 : 31 & 7

Median SI Sale for BD & HD DVD : 2803 & 2838
Median YTD Sale for BD & HD DVD : 1485 & 844

And this graph gives the distribution of sales across titles.

http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/4453/salesbyrankbt2.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Sketcha, by your theory why should Universal risk the competition in BD when they can be safe in the less competitive world of HD DVD? Your point is that more competition makes studios sell less on avg. on BD v. HD DVD. So, by that logic clearly the advantage is for a studio that is stuck in the more competitive environment to switch to the less competitive one and not vise versa. Equilibrium will be achieved when all studios are neutral. Purely based on your theory :)

If you are a fence sitter waiting for a winner by all means wait it out. Just because there are fence sitters does not mean we force a format down peoples throats - a format that is based on suffocating security and is matching HD DVD prices through billions of $$ in subsidy and will most likely re coup it through higher prices later and/or lower cost output....

The market will pick a winner, no matter how long it takes. That is at the crux of the free market. People want to be safe in their own investment, but that is not the job of the market - to save your investment. The free market is survival of the fittest. If after spending billions of $$ and practically the entire CE and movie industry behind it. not to say BB, if BD cannot win outright - then IMO it isn't what consumers want. If neither format takes off, that's again the fault of neither being able prove their value. BB can try to force the issues by boycotting HD DVD, but it will hurt their own business....we will know by Q3 what consumers want. HD movies cannot and should not be driven by a narrow game console segment. If that is what BD is hoping for, BD will lose for sure. Gamers cannot win the battle for a movie format in the long term. Will not happen. IMO.

Alan Gordon: "Several of them have stated they will convert to High-Def media once a format is chosen as the winner and prices have gone down."

Sketcha: "Personally, I believe these TWO points are BOTH an equal hindrance to mass adoption. However, I also believe there is a very real possibility that hybrids could become inexpensive enough before one of the formats yields. In this case both could survive side-by-side. As long as some form of HDM survives, I'm happy."

Me: Both can survive, and when they do titles will become available in both formats. The shelves will be full of BD and HD instead of Full Screen and Widescreen. Not neat, but pragmatic.

P.S. we should be pushing this if we want HDM

One more chart to figure out correlation between releases and sales figures. Not very high.

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/1387/salesbyreleasefe2.gif (http://imageshack.us)

I've multiplied the releases by 5K to get a meaningful looking graph.

note : Only feature releases (i.e. special interest and documentary genre's have been removed)

I agree. (God I love it when I can say I agree with you Rob. ;) j/k)

Those figures again could be 25%-40% of actual sales and maybe even less. The studios know their might be 200,000 - 300,000 hardware units to support their purchase.

They may know they have kept prices high at this stage to test the market. They may also know that is sales are steady state constant they will ramp up as hardware sales increase.

The feedback that I have gotten from some people who know some of the studio discussions are that both Warner and Universal are quite pleased at the state of sales for their HD DVDs so far last year and this year.

I was told by several people who should know that virtually every HD DVD release from a major studio last year was profitable, even at ridiculous low volumes because of the the small production costs involved and the the tiny tiny break even points for sales. And looking at the pdf, those titles have continued to sell at a constant rate through the first 10 weeks of 2007.

heck Universal, knew it would not sell discs if they weren't releasing any. They have a more long term perspective than we have here.

the only ones impatient are the retailers and people around here. :D

It should be obvious that Universal is pleased. Each year, a breakdown of DVD sales is published by Video Business, and Universal typically catches 10-15% of the DVD market share for a year. So far on HD-DVD, Universal is catching 38%! I've always said this is why the have no interest in going Blu. If every studio published Blu, then Universal would stand to get their 10-15% share, just like they do with DVD. However, by staying neutral, they get 3-4X the market share.

That means to have equal sales on Blu-ray, Blu-ray would need to sell ~3-4X the volume of HD-DVD on a consistent basis, which it isn't doing.

So universal has no reason at all to go neutral yet. Probably the quickest way to get Universal to go neutral, is for all the BD exclusive studios to go neutral. If all BD studios go neutral, Universal market share goes back down to 10-15%, and they are forced to go Blu to make up for the drop.

I haven't found anything regarding SW sales, but the HW sales numbers in the first 3 years of DVD are amazingly close to the standalone High Definition sales expected in their first 3 years (not counting the PS3 or HD-DVD addon).

According to data at the Consumer Electronic Association (http://www.ce.org/Research/Sales_Stats/1219.asp), sales of DVD players in the first 4 years were:

1997 349,000 units
1998 1,107,000
1999 4,072,000
2000 8,499,000

At the CEA show in January the CEA released sales projections for stand-alone High Definition players of both formats combined. Their predicitions for HDTV sales over the last several years have been very accurate. They predict:

2006 300,000
2007 1,000,000
2008 4,200,000
2009 11,600,000

With hardware sales this close maybe software sales aren't too far off from what the studios expect.

He was asking for DVD software sales numbers for the first three years. The hardware sales numbers are available multiple places...

He wants some support to the theory that DVD sold at equal or lower volumes than Hi-def is currently selling. This has been stated a few times, but I've not seen any proof the statements reflect history.

The same sales vs releases - but this time by month. If someone wants to really see why HD DVD isn't doing very well compared to BD in 2007, this should give a clear indication.

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/7507/salesbyreleaseoq5.gif (http://imageshack.us)

I've multiplied the releases by 100K to get a meaningful looking graph.

note : Only feature releases (i.e. special interest and documentary genre's have been removed)

edit : I just realized the boundaries for the month for sales & release dates don't fully match.

Here's the info. You can make your own graph. :D

1996 - In November, the first DVD players went on sale in Japan.

1997 - In March, the first DVD players went on sale in the U.S., with 349,482 players and 2 million discs sold by the end of the year. In April, Sony released its first commercial DVD player in the U.S., the model DVP-S7000. Sony's DVD plant in Terre Haute, Indiana, opened in the summer of 1997. The Digital Audio Disc Corporation (DADC) "was the first manufacturer of compact discs in the United States, recently celebrated the manufacture of its billionth compact disc and remains the largest CD manufacturing facility in the country today." (Sony press release 1/8/97)

1998 - 1,089,000 DVD players and 7,200,000 discs sold in the U.S.

1999 - Panasonic advertised the first DVD-audio player, the DVD-A10 for $1199, with 2-channel sound sampled at 192 kHz or 6-channel sound sampled at 96 kHz.

2000 - 8,500,000 DVD players sold in the U.S., raising the total sold since 1997 to 13,922,000.

Doesn't this indicate that hi-def discs are underselling a bit from DVD levels. For hi-def to equal DVD, we would need 7.2 million disc sales in 2007 (BD+HD-DVD). As of March 18th (about 1/5 of the year), we have had 800k disc sales. To get to 7.2 million discs by the end of the year, won't monthly volumes almost need to double about every two months from here on out?

Where is the hardware growth to support this software growth coming from?

The numbers you provided seem to indicate that hi-def is greatly underselling DVD, when comparing their initial years. Even the first year in the US, Mar-Dec 1997. It says two million discs sold. HD-DVD+BD combined looked to have done less than 1 million.

True, but even now, everybody I know still owns a VCR. Why was everybody replacing their catalog titles from VHS to DVD? PQ? Space? What?



Yes, but the same thing happened with the VHS to DVD migration. The only difference is that the studios have seeded the market with MORE catalog titles than they released during those early times of DVD... granted some of that is due to Paramount and Fox releasing titles whereas they didn't during those early years of DVD.

~Alan

Tape failure. VHS tapes degrade...

Oh please.

If it wasn't for Toshiba & Microsoft, I mean HD DVD, the industry at a whole would probably be a lot healthier since fence sitters waiting for the format war to end would have bought in. I have to laugh when HD DVD supporters bring up choice when they are at the mercy of a hardware & software monopoly. DVD was a unified format and did that mean player prices stayed sky high?

Last time I checked, Sony, Warner, Disney, Paramount, Lionsgate and Fox weren't dictating to each other. Universal is enjoying the perks of being a big fish in a small pool. Now that their home video & film divisions are in chaos, they literally can't afford to ignore the BD market.

Besides, for every Fifth Element or Flying Daggers there's a Spartacus or Traffic. :rolleyes:


Don't you mean if it wasn't for Sony and Blu-ray. You know, the company that went against the decision of the DVD forum and decided to defect and release their own format...

Kosty wrote


35 000 disks * 75 titles = 2.6M disks
Yet with 175 titles, we are told HD DVD just recently cracked 1M sales.
Something is either very wrong with what you were told, or 1M sales is way off. If HD DVD had sold > 2.5M disks, I'm sure they'd be crowing about it (so would BD, if it were them). I said "pressed" (not sold) as in that was the size of the lots that were manufactured. That would make sense to me as those are the size of the smallest economical DVD runs for cheapest production.

I didn't say sold. The size of the pressings indicated to me that it was economical to produce in those lots, that HD DVD replication costs were similar to DVD pricing and that they eventually intended to sell that many and they had enough for mass distribution.

The smaller size Blu-ray pressings (last year) indicated at that time, that they cost more than DVDs, their were manufacturing issues and that they did not intend to sell that many last year. Obviously, on the Blu-ray side that may have changed and that later pressings are probably bigger and would be made anymore economical quantities.

omg from the look of the graphs .. BD is well possitioned to bury standard DVD in three-year :D

He also said 2006.
You think the distributors have been sitting on > 1.5M disks for the last 3+ months? His source used that as evidence they "were in the black". If they are sitting in a warehouse, not even shipped, I don't see how they can count towards revenue. From an accounting perspective they could be classified as an asset, but not revenue (to the best of my knowledge).

Its just like buying a printing run. Once you turn on the printing press it costs less to pop out extra copies. Its just the cost of the blanks. Setup is a major factor if you have high yields.

HD DVD yields for DL30 disks are very similar to DVD 9 yields. So it makes perfect sense once you start a production run to make the minimum quantity that yields the most economical production run or at least hits a cost point that is economical.

They can be used for years, and shipped when needed. I never said they were much of an accounting asset or revenue. They just probably did not cost much to produce or store, so its not a big deal to the studios. The average cost to produce a disc might be such and such, but the marginal cost to produce a few extra 20,000 or 30,000 might be far less than a buck a disc, so why not make the most economical run.

Blu-ray was differnt last year as yields were much lower, so it would not make as much sense to produce more than what was expected to sell.

There is, for Universal. Sales would increase if consumers were told that one format has won. Universal switching to BD would kill HD DVD dead. Universal should do so now, for everyone's benefit, including their own.

I disagree completely. As long as Universal continues to release in HD DVD, HD DVD will not die. HD DVD will still have 600 titles in the US and 1000 title worldwide by year end. Why, people buy BD because of studio support. One is in denial if he/she thinks otherwise. If however Disney, LG, Fox go neutral, BD will DIE !! I repeat, if that happens, BD WILL die ;)

My favorite studio? I'm actually partial to Paramount & Warner. (Paramount also supported DIVX). Funny you should mention DIVX, a closed standard supported by one company (Circuit City) vs the rest of the industry, like Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Philips, etc.

Wasn't your point that DVD was a unified format with no competition ?

Well for the tiny fact that this is untrue...
Sony approached the DVD-Forum, you know the group that couldn't even decide between DVD-R and DVD+R, and presented what they were developing. Companies like Pioneer, Matsushita (Panasonic, JVC), Philips, Samsung, Yamaha, Mitsubishi, Sharp all went "Great idea. We're in." Toshiba, chair of the DVD Forum and major patent holder, saw their future royalties and said "well, *we're* developing our AOD format" forcing the creation of the BDA because all the aformentioned companies couldn't get anything voted on.

That is how your story goes. However isn't the simple fact that Sony had forged alliances and already had developped a format even before bringing it to the DVD forum show a strong-arming tactic ? It was all about royalties, and Sony definitely wanted a grab of those. What the DVD forum did is say "no" to being forced into a new format where royalties scheme would shift the balance of power.

Such a "leet haxor" with your $ony. Just goes to show that an overwhelming hatred of the company is reason to support the competition, even when presented with overwhelming support from other companies like Panasonic (authoring, players, etc). I sure hope you don't play CDs, finding out that Sony (w Philips) created that format.

If it wasn't for their (and Fox's) arrogance, and their outright lies and deceiving attitude, I would have no problem with them. And if the $ sign bothers you, then get out this forum at once, 'cause it's all about the mighty dollar, isn't it ? As for playing CDs, these came out at a time where their attitude mentioned above wasn't what it is today. Problem is that they felt so cocky with their playstation success that they felt invicible. The bigger you are the harder the fall...

No competition? I beg to differ: there is a HUGE competitor. Standard DVD. Along with HDTV programming, On Demand, internet, etc. There's a lot of competiton for the consumer's entertainment dollar.

Wasn't aware SD was a next gen format. My bad. Didn't know either that you included every format under the sun regarding HD on optical media.

If anything, they are VERY conservative. Go into any big box retailer and see the folks in the HD media sections. A lot of PS3 owners buying movies. A LOT.

lol. We must be shopping in very different stores... Take pictures next time, for all of AVS Forum to see, I'm sure it will remind us all of the Yeti.

Doesn't this indicate that hi-def discs are underselling a bit from DVD levels. For hi-def to equal DVD, we would need 7.2 million disc sales in 2007 (BD+HD-DVD). As of March 18th (about 1/5 of the year), we have had 800k disc sales. To get to 7.2 million discs by the end of the year, won't monthly volumes almost need to double about every two months from here on out?

Where is the hardware growth to support this software growth coming from?

The numbers you provided seem to indicate that hi-def is greatly underselling DVD, when comparing their initial years. Even the first year in the US, Mar-Dec 1997. It says two million discs sold. HD-DVD+BD combined looked to have done less than 1 million.
I don't think it's realistic to expect HD disc sales to come close to those of DVD's in the same stages of their existence. Don't forget that in order to even use HD DVD or Blu-ray, an entirely different TV is needed whereas DVD offered a huge picture difference on the same TV people may have had for 15 years.

Sorry, the numbers are off. The number of CE HiDef players sold in 2006 was close to 100K. Not 300K. (if you add 360 add-on that becomes 200K).

Chances of 1M players in 2007 (not counting PS3) is close to nil. In first 3 months the sales (my estimates) have been less than 100K.

Also, for DVD there was a sizable DVD-ROM market almost right from the start. I've no idea why we don't have inexpensive ROMs yet the HiDef.

DVD was a release without a competing format.

Since there is now two formats competing for the same thing, a more accurate way to track units would be VHS + betamax units adoption compared to BD+HD. The VHS+Betamax fight was long and bloody, CE support were more balanced, but still tilted in JVC/panasonic's side then.

There were other factors at play for videotapes, tapes were more expensive, most studios did not make movies for tapes, Disney and others sued sony & betamax all the way to the supremes, the rentals and porn played a big part. Otoh, the VCRs could record TV channels, and that was new and may have moved more units. First units were extremely pricey measured in today's dolalrs, and the early units had heads that were problematic (easy to jam and needs cleaning).

Without a home video market outside of rentals (and massive copying of tapes by small neighborhood rental places, the unit sales tracking would be difficult for tapes, but player sales probably correlate well.

JQP were in uncharted waters then, but VCR adoption rates were definitely much slower than DVD even though people didn't have any historical context to base fence sitting on.

I disagree completely. As long as Universal continues to release in HD DVD, HD DVD will not die. HD DVD will still have 600 titles in the US and 1000 title worldwide by year end. Why, people buy BD because of studio support. One is in denial if he/she thinks otherwise. If however Disney, LG, Fox go neutral, BD will DIE !! I repeat, if that happens, BD WILL die ;)

Your signature speaks volumes about BD sales and the expense incurred to gets those sales. I think there is a lot to be said for the "bleeding scenario."

Blu-ray is absolutely tearing HDDVD apart in sales. HDDVD's market share is spiralling down the toilet. This is great news. The sooner HDDVD dies the better the chance for mainstream high-def penetration.

Blu-ray is absolutely tearing HDDVD apart in sales. HDDVD's market share is spiralling down the toilet. This is great news. The sooner HDDVD dies the better the chance for mainstream high-def penetration.

keep on dreaming because sometimes dreams come true ;)

DVD was a release without a competing format.

Since there is now two formats competing for the same thing, a more accurate way to track units would be VHS + betamax units adoption compared to BD+HD. The VHS+Betamax fight was long and bloody, CE support were more balanced, but still tilted in JVC/panasonic's side then.

There were other factors at play for videotapes, tapes were more expensive, most studios did not make movies for tapes, Disney and others sued sony & betamax all the way to the supremes, the rentals and porn played a big part. Otoh, the VCRs could record TV channels, and that was new and may have moved more units. First units were extremely pricey measured in today's dolalrs, and the early units had heads that were problematic (easy to jam and needs cleaning).

Without a home video market outside of rentals (and massive copying of tapes by small neighborhood rental places, the unit sales tracking would be difficult for tapes, but player sales probably correlate well.

JQP were in uncharted waters then, but VCR adoption rates were definitely much slower than DVD even though people didn't have any historical context to base fence sitting on.

Not true. VHS was a competing format still, and so was Divx. To a lesser extent, laserdisc was too.

To me it looks like the saturation of sales per title is the same for both formats. Titles released last year sold more on HD DVD last year and more on BD this year. Titles released this year sold about the same for both - as far as WHV is concerned. That's the plain truth. So, it doesn't make sense for people who bought the title in 2006 to also buy it in 2007!

It's almost funny to read certain BD supporters use this data to show that the PS3 is causing a tidal wave of demand in favor of BD. Studios care about how many titles were sold on each format. That's it. That data shows that for WHV both formats are doing about even business.
Your concept of 'even' sure has a very wide range. :D While catalog releases are very close (and very small in numbers, meaning WHV is losing money on almost all those catalog releases unless their authoring and mastering is subsidized, including employee salary for NRE), the ones that moved any significant volume like SR and Departed are not showing any parity at all, in fact, their delta is very big for YTD, and just still big for SI.

If Happy feet numbers are known, that could be close to parity, though at this point, we'd have to wait for the next batch of giant nielsen numbers that Sony was kind enough to release to know for sure.

In terms of tracking actual sales, this pdf of nielsen title sales data from sony is a goldmine.

Btw, anyone notice that the units are clearly marked Nielsen POS (point of sale), meaning they are only from Nielsen participating companies. The actual numbers are higher, though there is dispute on how to derive the predicted numbers. Walmart is a notable absentee. For DVD, the nielsen tracked sales represent 40% of total sales. For highdef this is not known.

If we take 2.5X, CR would be at 28K*2.5 for 5 days of sales (which is much higher than reported by Sony for 7 days). I wonder if we can use this tidbit to 'estimate' the actual total sales (1.5x?) though I doubt such estimates will hold for the extremely low unit volume titles since numbers that small are no longer statistically meaningful to extrapolate.

The bigger selling unit titles are probably going to be easier to estimate accurately, and fortunately, they are more materially useful to estimate total sales since it appears that only a handful of titles jad POS numbers more than 10K SI, or > 7K YTD/

Sketcha, by your theory why should Universal risk the competition in BD when they can be safe in the less competitive world of HD DVD? Your point is that more competition makes studios sell less on avg. on BD v. HD DVD. So, by that logic clearly the advantage is for a studio that is stuck in the more competitive environment to switch to the less competitive one and not vise versa. Equilibrium will be achieved when all studios are neutral. Purely based on your theory :)
Oh come now.

1. Universal would only be expanding it's base by going neutral just as any exclusive studio would.

2. My point is that the neutrals would be doing even better in BD if not for the added competition. Most people have only so much for a HiDef, monthly budget. The data that I initially responded to showed that the neutrals are roughly even on each format. Call it the PS3 factor or whatever, but in spite of stronger competition, neutrals still do equally well on Blu-ray.

And again I will say that there must be some, damn-good reason for ANY and ALL of the exclusive studios to remain as such.

Neo,

If we take 2.5X, CR would be at 28K*2.5 for 5 days of sales (which is much higher than reported by Sony for 7 days). I wonder if we can use this tidbit to 'estimate' the actual total sales (1.5x?) though I doubt such estimates will hold for the extremely low unit volume titles since numbers that small are no longer statistically meaningful to extrapolate.

You just said that we dont know what the capture rate is for HDM by Nielsen, so making extrapolations is rather pointless. It could be almost anything. The safest thing to assume is that they are simply higher than those reported.

I'm willing to bet the thought of Universal going neutral has the HD DVD supporters absolutely terrified.

If it doesn't really matter then why the fuss?

I'm willing to bet the thought of Universal going neutral has the HD DVD supporters absolutely terrified.

If it doesn't really matter then why the fuss?
Posts like yours pretty much destroy a very interesting thread that has actual people(not deranged ps3 kids) presenting interesting arguements.

Oh and i wouldn't like the one high-def format that is actually moving dedicated standalone players to die because some console kids are acting like they own the world..

Neo,



You just said that we dont know what the capture rate is for HDM by Nielsen, so making extrapolations is rather pointless. It could be almost anything. The safest thing to assume is that they are simply higher than those reported.
Yes, but we have 40% for DVDs, and we have the >>50K in 7 days for CR that sony gave, my point is that POS captures a percentage. For better selling titles, the ratio is something like 1.5x ~ 2.5X to get total disk sales, and while this cannot be used for individual small titles, when used for overall total for all disks or the bigger selling titles, this might work quite well.

I've been away for a few days. Has anyone posted a new chart incorporating the new sales ratio?

Your concept of 'even' sure has a very wide range. :D While catalog releases are very close (and very small in numbers, meaning WHV is losing money on almost all those catalog releases unless their authoring and mastering is subsidized, including employee salary for NRE), the ones that moved any significant volume like SR and Departed are not showing any parity at all, in fact, their delta is very big for YTD, and just still big for SI.

If Happy feet numbers are known, that could be close to parity, though at this point, we'd have to wait for the next batch of giant nielsen numbers that Sony was kind enough to release to know for sure.

In terms of tracking actual sales, this pdf of nielsen title sales data from sony is a goldmine.

Btw, anyone notice that the units are clearly marked Nielsen POS (point of sale), meaning they are only from Nielsen participating companies. The actual numbers are higher, though there is dispute on how to derive the predicted numbers. Walmart is a notable absentee. For DVD, the nielsen tracked sales represent 40% of total sales. For highdef this is not known.

If we take 2.5X, CR would be at 28K*2.5 for 5 days of sales (which is much higher than reported by Sony for 7 days). I wonder if we can use this tidbit to 'estimate' the actual total sales (1.5x?) though I doubt such estimates will hold for the extremely low unit volume titles since numbers that small are no longer statistically meaningful to extrapolate.

The bigger selling unit titles are probably going to be easier to estimate accurately, and fortunately, they are more materially useful to estimate total sales since it appears that only a handful of titles jad POS numbers more than 10K SI, or > 7K YTD/

Wow, I like how you start off talking about catalog titles, and then you refernece two films, BOTH NEW RELEASES, to try to counter the arguement about catalog releases.

I guess you don't get it...

All these Warner catalogue titles have done better on HD DVD than BD Since inception and have sold over 2,000 units. All these Warner catalogue titles have done better on HD DVD than BD Since inception and have sold over 2,000 units. SI figures first, then YTD:

UNFORGIVEN
HD: 6,785 / 1,653
BD: 4.336 / 2,696
TRAINING DAY
HD: 10,714 / 3,163
BD: 4,899 / 2,507
SWORDFISH
HD: 9,781 / 2,766
BD: 5,026 / 2,939
SUPERMAN THE MOVIE
HD: 4,942 / 1,471
BD: 2,893 / 1,524
SUPERMAN 2
HD: 5,649 / 1,827
BD: 3,237/ 1,911
SEARCHERS
HD: 2,828 / 823
BD: 1,461/ 837
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
HD: 10,518 / 2,136
BD: 4,124 / 2,391
MILLION DOLLAR BABY
HD: 3,498 / 610
BD: 1,333 / 847
LETHAL WEAPON
HD: 2,388 / 468
BD: 1,721 / 810
LAST SAMURAI
HD: 15,799 / 3,973
BD: 5,847 / 4,234
GOODFELLAS
HD: 17,504 / 5,604
BD: 6,412 / 6,412
FULL METAL JACKET
HD: 7,948 / 2,351
BD: 7,156 / 4,030
FUGITIVE
HD: 3,744 / 702
BD: 2,363 / 1,137
BLAZING SADDLES
HD: 4,138 / 827
BD: 3,289 / 1,578

It's true that most of them have done better YTD on BD but 7 out of the 14 have only sold more by around 200 copies or less, and one has sold more YTD on HD DVD. As Plazman pointed out earlier, why would people who've already bought it on HD DVD buy it again in 2007? We've talked about some of the poor sales overall, especially looking at overall sales of 200 or so for some titles, so why should a 200 difference in three and a half months of 2007 be regarded as anything significant? Finally, just by looking at this board, it's obvious that a number of people waited for the PS3 to come out for their main BD player, with some switching from HD DVD due to the CES fear induced by Universal's lack of announcements in Jan. We don't know how the sales have panned out over time, so while YTD figures on these can be seen as important, we actually have no idea when they were sold. It could even be that most were sold in early in the year when early adopters were still buying their PS3's and now the sales could be more even? Who knows? I think the SI figures on these are just as important as of now.

...It's true that most of them have done better YTD on BD ...

If its true that its done better YTD on BD, then at the current rate, ALL the titles will do better on BD eventually and thus SI. Your point is or will be moot by your own omission.

If its true that its done better YTD on BD, then at the current rate, ALL the titles will do better on BD eventually and thus SI. Your point is or will be moot by your own omission.

So you just chose to pick out the part that suits you then? so Goodfellas has sold 800 copies more YTD on BD in 3 1/2 nmonths as a new release but is still trailing HD DVD by over 11,000? Training Day has sold 500 molre on HD DVD YTD and 5,000 more overall? Phantom Of The Opera? BD Has sold 250 more YTD but trails HD DVD by over 6,000? You're saying that's an absoilute rate? So Phantom will catch up in 2 years then? Had a look at Last Samurai? Show some common sense...

I think both formats are good candidates to be the next HiDef format. (I couldn't care less which one wins, I just want one to do so, to end all the confusion).

However, the post you made (which I'm guessing was supposed to back up the HDDVD camp, pretty clearly shows that BluRay is on the march and is at this point looking to be the bigger format. As you mention, only 1 out of 14 titles sold more this year on HDDVD than BluRay.

There is no question HDDVD had a head-start with players out earlier than the BluRay camp, and overall, I think the war will still go on for a while (BluRay is not getting a lot more titles in the near future, plus Matrix is coming to HDDVD), but it is interesting to see the development on movies out on both formats.

Yes, the post is from an HD DVD standpoint but i'm far from a HDDVD zealot. I have an A1 and about 20 movies with some more on order. I won't consider upgrading that player until certain issues are resolved such as TL51 compatibility if it comes through. Likewise, i'm not even considering a BD player until the profile compatibility issues are resolved and i don't want a PS3. It's bad for my health. I'm self-employed and when i bought my PS2 on the day of release, i didn't do anything except play games for two months , which is very bad for business, haha..

My point is that with those catalogue titles especially, it's very hard to predict what the growth will be from here on. On the BD side i'm not expecting large growth in software sales from standalones for a while, so it's pretty much all about attracting PS3 owners and that's not looking great right now for the number of PS3's out there. I don't think we'll know much more until the end of this year at the earliest, which is counteracting the 'BD has won, HD DVD is dead' claims. I'm actually thinking that if there's a fully featured, good quality, well-priced universal player in a year's time, that could be where i am heading if there are no major studio movements by then, or if none of the independents that i buy a lot of DVD'S from have entered the market. The independents can be more important that people think. Titles like Anchor Bay's 'The Beyond' helped draw horror fans into DVD so never underestimate the legions of cult film fans worldwide.

I'm willing to bet the thought of Universal going neutral has the HD DVD supporters absolutely terrified.

If it doesn't really matter then why the fuss?

I'm willing to bet the thought of BR not crushing HD DVD has the BR supporters absolutely terrified.

If it doesn't really matter then why the fuss?

Here is the top 25 Since Inception.

http://img353.imageshack.us/img353/3290/top25pb4.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Edit : Hopefully got it right this time :) With all the gloom and doom in this thread about the low absolute numbers let me give some post Easter cheer and some good news in these numbers from the Sony N/V March 18th summary pdf.

In nataraj's top 25 list sold sorted by 2006 TD (ie Since Inception or 2006 To Date through March 18, 2007) the numbers show Departed at 38,993 sold thru 12,965 for Bourne Supremacy.

If you look at the entire data set you get some interesting thoughts. Stepping away from the individual disc sales figures.

Observations:

The total sales volume of the reported discs is 1,524,471 2006 TD.

Assuming a $25 average retail price that's $38,111,775 in sales.

If you assume a 40% N/V capture rate that a volume of 3,811,178 units @ $25 each that's a $ 95,279,438 gross of sales of HD discs thru March 18th, or before HD DVD starting selling titles this year.

In short, even with the pitiful numbers being reported in this report with a maximum of 38, 993 disc reported sold by N/V retailers, thats still a $30 - $96 million dollar business in the first startup year of the HD optical disc business.

If the standard N/V capture rate for DVD sales is 40% , its possible these figures for HD discs might be even lower (like even a 25% capture rate) so the real numbers might be $150 million or over for that first year.

The studios know, but have no incentive to share at this point.

If there are 348 titles on this list, and 1,519,791 discs sold and $37,994,775 in N/V reported revenues thats overall an average of 4,367 sold per title and @ $25 each, thats a total of $109,180 per title.

Consider that the studio may sell those discs for years as player sales keep increasing and distribution of titles becomes more widespread, it may already be seen that HD discs are profitable to author and replicate.

All this is before the start of major HD DVD titles for this year and before the start of any major Blu-ray or HD DVD player sales in the 2nd quarter or beyond.

If you break down the 348 titles, into categories based on sales unit volume, you have the following breakdown:
N/V x2.5(40% rate)

38,000 95,000 1
37,000 92,500
36,000 90,000
35,000 87,500
34,000 85,000 1
33,000 82,500
32,000 80,000
31,000 77,500
30,000 75,000 1
29,000 72,500
28,000 70,000 2
27,000 67,500
26,000 65,000
25,000 62,500
24,000 60,000
23,000 57,500 1
22,000 55,000
21,000 52,500 3
20,000 50,000 1
19,000 47,500 2
18,000 45,000
17,000 42,500 5
16,000 40,000 1
15,000 37,500 2
14,000 35,000 3
13,000 32,500 1
12,000 30,000 4
11,000 27,500 3
10,000 25,000 4
9,000 22,500 9
8,000 20,000 7
7,000 17,500 9
6,000 15,000 17
5,000 12,500 25
4,000 10,000 25
3,000 7,500 33
2,000 5,000 50
1,000 2,500 55
500 1,250 27
499 1,245 53

If Blu-ray was pressing discs in 10,000 unit volumes last year, we can assume that is a profitable run. One might reasonably conclude that a volume or 5,000 units sold at $25 each for a total revenue of $125,000 might be break even. If we assume that the N/V capture rate for HD titles is 40% then already all but 135 of the 348 titles are already making money.

I've been told that for catalog titles with no re-mastering and just the porting over of SD extras, the actual breakeven point is less than that.


And remember these titles are fresh sales to every new owner, and there are no other costs involved as their sales accumulate. For a catalog title, that has already been released on DVD, with dormant sales, this is found money for the studios.

Tape failure. VHS tapes degrade...

It's possible that that's a reason that people upgraded to DVD, but of all the people I know who upgraded to DVD, PQ & space (no clunky tapes) is the reasons for upgrading...

~Alan

One bit of good news that the studios can see from these numbers is the long legs of the sales period for these HD releases.

Typically, a normal DVD release does 80% of its sales volume in the first 8 weeks of release and then its sales drop off the charts. Catalog sales in general are tiny at this point in the DVD format lifestyle.

Just looking at the HD DVD numbers (since Blu-ray releases mostly are new) one thing that is clear and very good for the HD world is that most titles have extended sales periods where the released title is selling well past that 8 week window.

For a release to have legs, it could mean a couple things. First off, it means that the format is probably growing as new owners of players discover the already released catalog. Secondly it means that the studios realize that sales can continue through a longer period and as player penetration grows, the titles will continue to accumulate sales. Third it means that catalog titles can accumulate sales well after the 8 week day and release traditional sales window for DVD. It also means that the studios can reasonably expect more sales as the installed base of players grows and that the low volume of discs sold will change as the number of installed players in users homes accumulate.

the chart below shows the HD DVD sales data from the Sony N/V data thru March 18th of the HD DVD titles that sold more than 49% of their sales after the 8 week window. The percentage listed is the amount sold in the first eight weeks.

Sorted by Unit Sales Volume


1st8Wks 2006TD 8wk/TD (x1.25. or x2.50 to account for N/V capture rate)

12,395 34,313 36% 15,494 42,892 30,988 85,783 BATMAN BEGINS
3,597 17,755 20% 4,497 22,194 8,993 44,388 SERENITY
1,913 17,504 11% 2,392 21,880 4,783 43,760 GOODFELLAS
2,711 16,229 17% 3,389 20,287 6,778 40,573 TROY
3,289 15,799 21% 4,112 19,749 8,223 39,498 LAST SAMURAI
2,794 14,316 20% 3,493 17,895 6,985 35,790 APOLLO 13
2,172 12,965 17% 2,715 16,207 5,430 32,413 BOURNE SUPREMACY
5,425 12,184 45% 6,782 15,230 13,563 30,460 POLAR EXPRESS
1,381 10,714 13% 1,727 13,393 3,453 26,785 TRAINING DAY
2,108 10,518 20% 2,635 13,148 5,270 26,295 PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
1,974 9,826 20% 2,468 12,283 4,935 24,565 CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK
1,885 9,781 19% 2,357 12,227 4,713 24,453 SWORDFISH
4,153 9,508 44% 5,192 11,885 10,383 23,770 TOKYO DRIFT
2,422 8,456 29% 3,028 10,570 6,055 21,140 FAST AND THE FURIOUS
1,641 8,289 20% 2,052 10,362 4,103 20,723 CONSTANTINE
3,161 8,169 39% 3,952 10,212 7,903 20,423 TERMINATOR 3
1,132 7,949 14% 1,415 9,937 2,830 19,873 FULL METAL JACKET
2,193 7,741 28% 2,742 9,677 5,483 19,353 PITCH BLACK
800 7,526 11% 1,000 9,408 2,000 18,815 JARHEAD
1,818 7,439 24% 2,273 9,299 4,545 18,598 VAN HELSING
1,220 6,785 18% 1,525 8,482 3,050 16,963 UNFORGIVEN
1,966 6,761 29% 2,458 8,452 4,915 16,903 AEON FLUX
1,043 6,349 16% 1,304 7,937 2,608 15,873 CINDERELLA MAN
1,549 6,071 26% 1,937 7,589 3,873 15,178 FEAR/LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
1,469 5,989 25% 1,837 7,487 3,673 14,973 ITALIAN JOB
1,712 5,769 30% 2,140 7,212 4,280 14,423 U571
1,110 5,615 20% 1,388 7,019 2,775 14,038 WE WERE SOLDIERS
1,545 5,483 28% 1,932 6,854 3,863 13,708 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS
1,387 5,453 25% 1,734 6,817 3,468 13,633 PERFECT STORM
2,557 5,228 49% 3,197 6,535 6,393 13,070 TIM BURTONS CORPSE BRIDE
1,816 5,145 35% 2,270 6,432 4,540 12,863 SAHARA
2,190 5,101 43% 2,738 6,377 5,475 12,753 CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE
1,797 4,817 37% 2,247 6,022 4,493 12,043 SYRIANA
1,739 4,672 37% 2,174 5,840 4,348 11,680 SLEEPY HOLLOW
1,234 4,446 28% 1,543 5,558 3,085 11,115 FUGITIVE
1,512 4,410 34% 1,890 5,513 3,780 11,025 CLERKS 2
1,506 4,379 34% 1,883 5,474 3,765 10,948 DOOM
841 4,336 19% 1,052 5,420 2,103 10,840 ENTER THE DRAGON
1,150 4,160 28% 1,438 5,200 2,875 10,400 BACKDRAFT
992 4,138 24% 1,240 5,173 2,480 10,345 BLAZING SADDLES
666 3,957 17% 833 4,947 1,665 9,893 UNLEASHED
1,675 3,928 43% 2,094 4,910 4,188 9,820 12 MONKEYS
1,359 3,620 38% 1,699 4,525 3,398 9,050 LARA CROFT-TOMB RAIDER
1,393 3,579 39% 1,742 4,474 3,483 8,948 SEABISCUIT
887 3,552 25% 1,109 4,440 2,218 8,880 RUNDOWN
1,214 3,508 35% 1,518 4,385 3,035 8,770 SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD
890 3,499 25% 1,113 4,374 2,225 8,748 HAPPY GILMORE
1,156 3,498 33% 1,445 4,373 2,890 8,745 MILLION DOLLAR BABY
779 3,492 22% 974 4,365 1,948 8,730 FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
818 3,487 23% 1,023 4,359 2,045 8,718 CADDYSHACK
1,354 3,453 39% 1,693 4,317 3,385 8,633 ARMY OF DARKNESS
713 3,238 22% 892 4,048 1,783 8,095 FOUR BROTHERS
798 3,099 26% 998 3,874 1,995 7,748 RAY
620 2,993 21% 775 3,742 1,550 7,483 DUKES OF HAZZARD
1,187 2,894 41% 1,484 3,618 2,968 7,235 16 BLOCKS
1,222 2,839 43% 1,528 3,549 3,055 7,098 FIREWALL
922 2,838 32% 1,153 3,548 2,305 7,095 SEARCHERS
964 2,769 35% 1,205 3,462 2,410 6,923 KISS KISS BANG BANG
709 2,768 26% 887 3,460 1,773 6,920 ANIMAL HOUSE
865 2,742 32% 1,082 3,428 2,163 6,855 TRAFFIC
933 2,740 34% 1,167 3,425 2,333 6,850 SPY GAME
1,174 2,712 43% 1,468 3,390 2,935 6,780 ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD
1,138 2,649 43% 1,423 3,312 2,845 6,623 END OF DAYS
920 2,498 37% 1,150 3,123 2,300 6,245 DIRTY DOZEN
430 2,441 18% 538 3,052 1,075 6,103 U2-RATTLE AND HUM
866 2,431 36% 1,083 3,039 2,165 6,078 ASSAULT ON PRECINT 13
934 2,388 39% 1,168 2,985 2,335 5,970 LETHAL WEAPON
1,066 2,376 45% 1,333 2,970 2,665 5,940 WILLY WONKA
825 2,342 35% 1,032 2,928 2,063 5,855 RED DRAGON
881 2,177 40% 1,102 2,722 2,203 5,443 GRAND PRIX
782 2,122 37% 978 2,653 1,955 5,305 LAND OF THE DEAD
1,007 2,121 47% 1,259 2,652 2,518 5,303 RUMOR HAS IT
611 1,962 31% 764 2,453 1,528 4,905 DAZED AND CONFUSED
913 1,962 47% 1,142 2,453 2,283 4,905 SPACE COWBOYS
704 1,913 37% 880 2,392 1,760 4,783 BONE COLLECTOR
934 1,909 49% 1,168 2,387 2,335 4,773 OUT OF SIGHT
882 1,799 49% 1,103 2,249 2,205 4,498 LAKE HOUSE
805 1,697 47% 1,007 2,122 2,013 4,243 LETHAL WEAPON 2
478 1,581 30% 598 1,977 1,195 3,953 MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
524 1,561 34% 655 1,952 1,310 3,903 GOOD NIGHT/GOOD LUCK
621 1,475 42% 777 1,844 1,553 3,688 FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT/DV
608 1,373 44% 760 1,717 1,520 3,433 HOUSE OF WAX-2005
396 1,160 34% 495 1,450 990 2,900 ATL
537 1,156 46% 672 1,445 1,343 2,890 INTERPRETER
140 443 32% 175 554 350 1,108 MUSICARES PERSON OF YEAR
33 105 31% 42 132 83 263 ARCHITECT How to read the chart:

example:

1st8Wks 2006TD 8wk/TD (x1.25. or x2.50 to account for N/V capture rate) Title

12,395 34,313 36% 15,494 42,892 30,988 85,783 BATMAN BEGINS

As an example, Batman Begins shows a first 8 weeks sales of 12,395 units in the N/V data. It shows Since Inception total sales (2006 TD) of 34,313 units, and 36% of its sales were done in the first 8 weeks of release. If you scale up the sales numbers of the 8 week sales and SI numbers for a 80% capture rate (multiply x 1.25) you get 15,494 units sold in 8 weeks and 42,892 total sold. If you assume H/V only captures 40% then you have 30,988 sold in 8 weeks and 85,783 copies sold to date of that title.

Don't forget that in order to even use HD DVD or Blu-ray, an entirely different TV is needed whereas DVD offered a huge picture difference on the same TV people may have had for 15 years.

WRONG!! On a reference title ("The Scorpion King" for instance), HD DVD (and I assume Blu-Ray) can look day and night's difference on a regular SDTV. However, not all titles released in High-Def are of the same calibur, so it might not be worth it to everybody, but this whole different TV is needed argument is not true!!

I don't think it's realistic to expect HD disc sales to come close to those of DVD's in the same stages of their existence.

I agree with you here though. I do believe that HD disc sales could take a lot of DVD's market share, but I believe it will only happen once a winner has been chosen and a fair amount of time. I'd say 3 years before it gets to the point that it will take enough of DVD's business to see any change, and 5 years to make a considerable difference... but will never take ALL of DVDs business.

~Alan

Not true. VHS was a competing format still, and so was Divx. To a lesser extent, laserdisc was too.

Exactly!! Whenever I got DVD, most people were impressed with it, but stated they had no intention of switching to it from VHS... my, how times change! ;)

~Alan

I think both formats are good candidates to be the next HiDef format. (I couldn't care less which one wins, I just want one to do so, to end all the confusion).

AMEN!!!

However, the post you made (which I'm guessing was supposed to back up the HDDVD camp, pretty clearly shows that BluRay is on the march and is at this point looking to be the bigger format. As you mention, only 1 out of 14 titles sold more this year on HDDVD than BluRay.

I agree! Yes, HD DVD has sold more on titles released last year, but the titles released this year has shown Blu-Ray to be the format to beat. Let's not forget that the studios aren't really looking to how well they've sold in the past, but how well they COULD sell in the future... and Blu-Ray is showing the most future growth.

There is no question HDDVD had a head-start with players out earlier than the BluRay camp, and overall, I think the war will still go on for a while (BluRay is not getting a lot more titles in the near future, plus Matrix is coming to HDDVD), but it is interesting to see the development on movies out on both formats.

I personally think the war will be decided this year, but I now believe it will be 3Q or 4Q before the winner will be declared. I'm not saying it won't be HD DVD, but I do not feel that "The Matrix" will do HD DVD as big of sales as people hope it would. If Warner had released the titles seperately, I believe it would have, but the box set will hurt it.

~Alan

With all the gloom and doom in this thread about the low absolute numbers let me give some post Easter cheer and some good news in these numbers from the Sony N/V March 18th summary pdf.

In nataraj's top 25 list sold sorted by 2006 TD (ie Since Inception or 2006 To Date through March 18, 2007) the numbers show Departed at 38,993 sold thru 12,965 for Bourne Supremacy.

If you look at the entire data set you get some interesting thoughts. Stepping away from the individual disc sales figures.

Observations:

The total sales volume of the reported discs is 1,524,471 2006 TD.

Assuming a $25 average retail price that's $38,111,775 in sales.

If you assume a 40% N/V capture rate that a volume of 3,811,178 units @ $25 each that's a $ 95,279,438 gross of sales of HD discs thru March 18th, or before HD DVD starting selling titles this year.

In short, even with the pitiful numbers being reported in this report with a maximum of 38, 993 disc reported sold by N/V retailers, thats still a $30 - $96 million dollar business in the first startup year of the HD optical disc business.

If the standard N/V capture rate for DVD sales is 40% , its possible these figures for HD discs might be even lower (like even a 25% capture rate) so the real numbers might be $150 million or over for that first year.

The studios know, but have no incentive to share at this point.

If there are 348 titles on this list, and 1,519,791 discs sold and $37,994,775 in N/V reported revenues thats overall an average of 4,367 sold per title and @ $25 each, thats a total of $109,180 per title.

Consider that the studio may sell those discs for years as player sales keep increasing and distribution of titles becomes more widespread, it may already be seen that HD discs are profitable to author and replicate.

All this is before the start of major HD DVD titles for this year and before the start of any major Blu-ray or HD DVD player sales in the 2nd quarter or beyond.

If you break down the 348 titles, into categories based on sales unit volume, you have the following breakdown:
N/V x2.5(40% rate)

38,000 95,000 1
37,000 92,500
36,000 90,000
35,000 87,500
34,000 85,000 1
33,000 82,500
32,000 80,000
31,000 77,500
30,000 75,000 1
29,000 72,500
28,000 70,000 2
27,000 67,500
26,000 65,000
25,000 62,500
24,000 60,000
23,000 57,500 1
22,000 55,000
21,000 52,500 3
20,000 50,000 1
19,000 47,500 2
18,000 45,000
17,000 42,500 5
16,000 40,000 1
15,000 37,500 2
14,000 35,000 3
13,000 32,500 1
12,000 30,000 4
11,000 27,500 3
10,000 25,000 4
9,000 22,500 9
8,000 20,000 7
7,000 17,500 9
6,000 15,000 17
5,000 12,500 25
4,000 10,000 25
3,000 7,500 33
2,000 5,000 50
1,000 2,500 55
500 1,250 27
499 1,245 53

If Blu-ray was pressing discs in 10,000 unit volumes last year, we can assume that is a profitable run. One might reasonably conclude that a volume or 5,000 units sold at $25 each for a total revenue of $125,000 might be break even. If we assume that the N/V capture rate for HD titles is 40% then already all but 135 of the 348 titles are already making money.

I've been told that for catalog titles with no re-mastering and just the porting over of SD extras, the actual breakeven point is less than that.


And remember these titles are fresh sales to every new owner, and there are no other costs involved as their sales accumulate. For a catalog title, that has already been released on DVD, with dormant sales, this is found money for the studios.

What we shouldn't lose track of is that those numbers don't take into account the new releases that are starting to come again on HD DVD, so all this is till very much up in the air. Let's see what happens .

If you assume a 40% N/V capture rate ....

Unfortunately - that figure makes no sense at all.

Mar 18 SI for BD & HD DVD shows 846K and 712K. That is the week HMM reported - after increasing the figures to account for what Videoscan didn't cover - to 1M and 900K. That shows Videoscan covers not 40% but 80-85% of the market.

May be Grubert can contact HMM about it.

From a commonsense POV as well, 40% does not make sense. What retailers are selling rest of the movies - a huge 60% ?

Alan/wnorris & others,

The discussion around who will or will not upgrade to HiDef dvd (compared to DVD from VHS) is an interesting - even if beaten to death - topic. But it is OT in this thread. Can we move this to a new thread or to general discussion thread ? I've a lot of write about this - but don't want to use this thread for it.

Thanks.

Alan/wnorris & others,

The discussion around who will or will not upgrade to HiDef dvd (compared to DVD from VHS) is an interesting - even if beaten to death - topic. But it is OT in this thread. Can we move this to a new thread or to general discussion thread ? I've a lot of write about this - but don't want to use this thread for it.

I agree it's off-topic, though not as much as some discussions on this thread (which I would love to be strictly about the numbers). If you've got a lot to say, start a new thread... and I'll follow you there...

~Alan

I do not feel that "The Matrix" will do HD DVD as big of sales as people hope it would. If Warner had released the titles seperately, I believe it would have, but the box set will hurt it.

~Alan
Agreed.

Personally I don't think "The Matrix" trilogy will have a major effect either way.

Unfortunately - that figure makes no sense at all.

Mar 18 SI for BD & HD DVD shows 846K and 712K. That is the week HMM reported - after increasing the figures to account for what Videoscan didn't cover - to 1M and 900K. That shows Videoscan covers not 40% but 80-85% of the market.

May be Grubert can contact HMM about it.

From a commonsense POV as well, 40% does not make sense. What retailers are selling rest of the movies - a huge 60% ?

That shows Videoscan covers not 40% but 80-85% of the market. Or maybe HMM was just reporting the N/V numbers and shortcutting to say it was total market (instead SI as reported by N/V). Its a nuance that may be lost on some writers or in an article or Press Release.

For HD DVD a major source is the non- N/V channel of speciality A/V retailers that are selling HD DVD as niche audio/video shops. They have a large proportion of HD DVD sales to date and they are not N/V tracked. VE alone has thousands and thousands of HD DVD sales are there are dozens like him that have a portion of his voulme.

Wal- Mart does a huge portion of standard DVD sales (hence the 40% capture rate for H/V) and other Internet retailers probably have a larger proportion of HD DVD sales than DVD sales.

Those are short term issues now, and even if they may severely undercount HD DVD sales in the short term will tend to mean less and less as volumes increase and traditional sales channels begin to dominate mass market sales.

Also the first adopters are moree savy and may have chased sales prices through other non N/V outlets instead of paying full price at CC or BB.

Or maybe HMM was just reporting the N/V numbers and shortcutting to say it was total market (instead SI as reported by N/V). Its a nuance that may be lost on some writers or in an article or Press Release.

I don't think I understand the above ... can you explain ?

For HD DVD a major source is the non- N/V channel of speciality A/V retailers that are selling HD DVD as niche audio/video shops. They have a large proportion of HD DVD sales to date and they are not N/V tracked. VE alone has thousands and thousands of HD DVD sales are there are dozens like him that have a portion of his voulme.

Amazon seems to sell about 10%. I don't know how much specialty retailers sell or how many of them sell. I actually think the 4 free HD DVDs given by Toshiba is hurting the Videoscan numbers.


Also the first adopters are moree savy and may have chased sales prices through other non N/V outlets instead of paying full price at CC or BB.

That is definitely possible.

I agree with nataraj. By logic, Nielsen/VideoScan should be very close to representative, given the numbers we're seeing; certainly not off by 60%.

For instance: we have many, many accounts of Wal-Mart's non-presence for high definition (including in my own area), even from those of us who live in metropolitan areas who might be more likely to see these products on the shelf. I'm sure there are other venues selling discs, but does anyone believe they're outselling the retailers that Nielsen/VideoScan does cover?

I look at it this way: IF Nielsen/VideoScan is only representing as little as 40% of the market, why has neither the HD DVD PRG nor the BDA announced that they've sold through over 1 million discs officially, if only as an "estimate"?

---

I've had some requests for an updated spreadsheet, and rest assured it's coming. I need to tweak some columns and some code to incorporate the new known values, but I should have something usable by tonight for those who are following along in this discussion.

If we are to use the 40% number from N/V correctly, we need to know if it's 40% of sales or 40% of the retailers? I've seen it used both ways and sometimes interchangeably, but they are quite different.

It's quite possible that if they are talking about 40% of the retailers and have all the major ones and are missing the 60% of the smaller ones + walmart (which I think is quite likely scenario), that we could be looking at somewhere around 70-85% of the market sales actually captured, easily.

If Amazon, Target, Best Buy, Frys, Circuit City, etc. are all accounted for but the mom+pop shops, tons of websites and smaller regional chains aren't, then it's safe to say most of the market is reliably covered and we can't just multiply by some 2-2.5 number and get the real results (it would be much more complicated and we'd have no real way of figuring it out).

Clearly the numbers aren't the full volumes of sales, but it's very likely they aren't just 40% either -- so we're talking a multiplier somewhere between 1 and 2.5... likely closer to 1 (1.1-1.4 would be my guess).

I've had some requests for an updated spreadsheet, and rest assured it's coming. I need to tweak some columns and some code to incorporate the new known values, but I should have something usable by tonight for those who are following along in this discussion.

Thanks, Icemage!

Where's the quote from the analyst about the N/V coverage?

AFAIK , IIRC, that number referred to sales volume not number of retailers. But Wal-Mart/Sam's Club is a huge part of regular DVD sales. I think that it might be very reasonable to say that the N/V is only 40% of DVD sales if they are excluding Wal-Mart / Sam's Club numbers.

But as of now those outlets are probably selling little HD, but we can't be sure.

But the anecdotal Wal-Mart reports are all over the map. My local Wal-Mart has only 30 display slots each for HD DVD and Blu-ray, with no current players for sale.
But when asked the electronics manager checked and said he was surprised at the number of HD DVD and Blu-ray titles that had sold , been reordered and sold again, even though the shelf stockage looked kinda lean.

If my own modest Wal-Mart was silently selling hundreds of copies of HD DVD and Blu-ray and they weren't really trying, that could add up to a lot.

I look at it this way: IF Nielsen/VideoScan is only representing as little as 40% of the market, why has neither the HD DVD PRG nor the BDA announced that they've sold through over 1 million discs officially, if only as an "estimate"?

I think this is the biggest give-away. I don't think eaither side is shy about boasting ...

---

I've had some requests for an updated spreadsheet, and rest assured it's coming. I need to tweak some columns and some code to incorporate the new known values, but I should have something usable by tonight for those who are following along in this discussion.


thanx for spreadsheet !!

Marek

If we are to use the 40% number from N/V correctly, we need to know if it's 40% of sales or 40% of the retailers? I've seen it used both ways and sometimes interchangeably, but they are quite different.

It's quite possible that if they are talking about 40% of the retailers and have all the major ones and are missing the 60% of the smaller ones + walmart (which I think is quite likely scenario), that we could be looking at somewhere around 70-85% of the market sales actually captured, easily.

If Amazon, Target, Best Buy, Frys, Circuit City, etc. are all accounted for but the mom+pop shops, tons of websites and smaller regional chains aren't, then it's safe to say most of the market is reliably covered and we can't just multiply by some 2-2.5 number and get the real results (it would be much more complicated and we'd have no real way of figuring it out).

Clearly the numbers aren't the full volumes of sales, but it's very likely they aren't just 40% either -- so we're talking a multiplier somewhere between 1 and 2.5... likely closer to 1 (1.1-1.4 would be my guess). I just don't know.

It seems reasonable to me that for HD DVD, a lot of the initial disc sales are zlso coming form non N/V sources as a higher percentage of HD DVD players have been initially sold through non N/V retailers and sold to savvy enthusiast owners, who may be more prone to shop around and find places that aer not N/V tracked.

But that's offset to a degree that the largest non N/V retailer, Wal-MArt has just started to dabble in HD and does not have the overwhelming market presence that it has in DVD sales yet.


Can we find any studio or HD DVD PRG or BDA interview or press release sales number of a particular title that we could match with the sales data in this March 18th Nielson/Videoscan report?

If we had a studio saying they had sold (not shipped) a certain number of copies
in 2006 EOY or copies sold in a period close to March 18th, we made be able to find a multiplier that will allow us to convert the chart sales numbers as captured by N/V into real world numbers.

Unfortunately - that figure makes no sense at all.

Mar 18 SI for BD & HD DVD shows 846K and 712K. That is the week HMM reported - after increasing the figures to account for what Videoscan didn't cover - to 1M and 900K. That shows Videoscan covers not 40% but 80-85% of the market.

May be Grubert can contact HMM about it.

From a commonsense POV as well, 40% does not make sense. What retailers are selling rest of the movies - a huge 60% ?

If Wal*Mart are excluded then 80-85% is also unlikely. I agree that 40% is too low so I suggest a compromise - 60%. :)

Apparently, this is more or less the market coverage that NPD work on (they also exclude Wal*Mart).

Based on a 60% coverage by Nielsen I estimate approx 2.5 million HD discs have been sold in total (HD DVD + Blu-ray).