Nielsen/VideoScan sales ratios and Top 5 [Text View] - Page 18

Kosty

04-09-07, 04:22 PM

Originally Posted by Icemage
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 ... Disagree here.

HD DVD side has been shy about boasting unless its been at a major trade show.

Blu-ray would be a a better position ot wait until the Nileson/Videoscan numbers reach 1 M and the ratio for Blu-ray to HD DVD sales is the highest it will get this quarter (probably after April 1 numbers)

About using anything other than N/V numbers. A lot of the sales are from joint studios, who may not have an incentive to squawk right now, and may not have given permission to the BDA or HD DVD to make a claim.

They also may not be concerned about the 1st quarter numbers and are waiting for some 2nd quarter results to show up.

The studios may also know there own numbers and have a good guess about the others based on the fact they have the multiplier for N/V capture rate, but they don't want to say and its not as simple as reporting a neutral "according to Nielson/Videoscan " number.

Maybe, after the flurry of BDA and Fox and Sony press about the 1st quarter numbers, they don't don't want to bring attention to recent sales numbers if it shows a HD DVD rebound. From a PR perspective they may prefer at this point to let the perception of Blu-ray's sales dominance stay in the air.

Even if they think its over $1 M discs sold, that's based on some estimates or calculation that is not as simple as reporting the N/V numbers.

from the pdf

Both Formats together

1,558,784 2006 TD (SI)
759,603 Annual 2006
799,181 YTD 2007 (thru March 18)

Blu-ray from N/V report

846,711 2006 TD (SI)
297,043 Annual 2006
549,731 YTD 2007 (thru March 18)

HD DVD from N/V report

712,013 2006 TD (SI)
462,564 Annual 2006
249,451 YTD 2007 (thru March 18)

If this was the N/V reported number from March 18th, (846,711 2006 TD (SI)) that will soon surpass 1 million sold according to the Nielson/Videoscan data set.

If I was the PR flack, I would wait until I saw a report that said "according to data collected from Nielson/ Videoscan Blu-ray Discs have now sold over 1 Million discs to consumers, already doubling sales from all of 2006" This milestone was reached much faster than with DVD .....yada yada....Blu-ray sales continue to surpass HD DVD sales at a 2.5 to 1 margin over HD DVD sales based on the April 1 sales data (last date before HD DVD releases kicked in)

That would be much stronger PR than shouting something based on your internal calculations.

Kosty

04-09-07, 04:24 PM

No, but let's not start saying Wal*Mart are some kind of HD stayaway. I can't speak for the B&M stores but online they are certainly selling HD disc with seperate sections for both Blu-ray and HD DVD:

BD: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=486963&fromPageCatId=4096&catNavId=4096

HD DVD: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=486303&fromPageCatId=486963&catNavId=4096

I would expect the B&M stores to also stock HD disc but clearly it's not at every location. That's a good catch. At my local Wal-Mart, they had a sign saying more HD movies could be ordered at Wal-mart.com along with the warning that you needed a Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD player to play these discs.

Wal-Mart . com or Sam's Club or maybe some other retailers not being N/V captured may be a missing source of sales.

AnthonyP

04-09-07, 04:49 PM

You seem to have forgotten that the adoption rate, as publicized various times on this site is virtually identical as it was for dvd.

HPforMe : Where did you see that rubish?

around 100k stand alone player at the end of 2006 vs 320k DVDE at the end of 97
around 1M movies (including PS3/360 add on) vs 2M DVDs

how are any numbers near what DVD did? they are no where near for both formats combined. And HD DVD/ BD have a major helping hand coming from the gaming side that DVD does not. If the add-on and PS3 were not around we would more or less be talking about 20k instead of 80k movies a week

Kosty

04-09-07, 04:56 PM

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??

Did they take Nielsen data and do their own extrapolation?

Looking at Sony's chart there's nowhere near this volume for BD in January - I make it less than 200,000 for the month.

Edit - found the actual number in Sony's report. Jan '07 = 191,386.

Difference with Disney = 87,614 (Disney are 46% higher than the Sony figure)Looking at Disney's numbers for 2006 YTD, they give from that chart

HD DVD 2006 sales from Disney Chart (in 1000's)

Apr 06 30 (assumed)
May 06 30 (assumed)
Jun 06 30 (assumed)
Jul 06 30
Aug 06 32
Sep 06 33
Oct 06 49
Nov 06 147
Dec 06 212

Total for HD DVD 593,000

Blu-ray 2006 sales from Disney Chart (in 1000's)

Apr 06 00 (assumed)
May 06 12 (assumed)
Jun 06 12 (assumed)
Jul 06 12 (assumed)
Aug 06 12
Sep 06 13
Oct 06 20
Nov 06 75
Dec 06 210

Total for Blu-ray 366,000
The N/V report shows Annual 2006 EOY numbers of 462,564 for HD DVD.
The N/V report shows Annual 2006 EOY numbers of 297,043 for Blu-ray.

If we compare the Disney numbers to the Sony released N/V report pdf numbers we get
2006 Sales Comparisons

Nielson Disney N/V / Disney

HD DVD 462,654 593,000 78.0%

Blu-ray 297,043 360,000 82.5% Showing a 78% - 82% capture rate for the Nielson/Videoscan data or an adjustment multiplier of 1.21 to 1.28, making 1.25 a nice round adjustment number that would assume a 80% capture rate.

Grubert

04-09-07, 04:59 PM

Initial post updated with information on the "Next Generation Disc Tracking Report".

nataraj

04-09-07, 05:03 PM

HD DVD side has been shy about boasting unless its been at a major trade show.

If 40% rate is correct, CES would have been the best for HD DVD to announce a sell-through of 1M.

Yes, BD has had a reason for delaying the announcement as much as possible. Yet, they won't announce 1M sales when their sales crosssed some 1.5M, right ?

Showing a 78% - 82% capture rate for the Nielson/Videoscan data or an adjustment multiplier of 1.21 to 1.28, making 1.25 a nice round adjustment number.

That is something that looks feasible to me.

wnorris

04-09-07, 05:15 PM

Disagree here.

HD DVD side has been shy about boasting unless its been at a major trade show.

Blu-ray would be a a better position ot wait until the Nileson/Videoscan numbers reach 1 M and the ratio for Blu-ray to HD DVD sales is the highest it will get this quarter (probably after April 1 numbers)

About using anything other than N/V numbers. A lot of the sales are from joint studios, who may not have an incentive to squawk right now, and may not have given permission to the BDA or HD DVD to make a claim.

They also may not be concerned about the 1st quarter numbers and are waiting for some 2nd quarter results to show up.

The studios may also know there own numbers and have a good guess about the others based on the fact they have the multiplier for N/V capture rate, but they don't want to say and its not as simple as reporting a neutral "according to Nielson/Videoscan " number.

Maybe, after the flurry of BDA and Fox and Sony press about the 1st quarter numbers, they don't don't want to bring attention to recent sales numbers if it shows a HD DVD rebound. From a PR perspective they may prefer at this point to let the perception of Blu-ray's sales dominance stay in the air.

Even if they think its over $1 M discs sold, that's based on some estimates or calculation that is not as simple as reporting the N/V numbers.

from the pdf

Both Formats together

1,558,784 2006 TD (SI)
759,603 Annual 2006
799,181 YTD 2007 (thru March 18)

Blu-ray from N/V report

846,711 2006 TD (SI)
297,043 Annual 2006
549,731 YTD 2007 (thru March 18)

HD DVD from N/V report

712,013 2006 TD (SI)
462,564 Annual 2006
249,451 YTD 2007 (thru March 18)

If this was the N/V reported number from March 18th, (846,711 2006 TD (SI)) that will soon surpass 1 million sold according to the Nielson/Videoscan data set.

If I was the PR flack, I would wait until I saw a report that said "according to data collected from Nielson/ Videoscan Blu-ray Discs have now sold over 1 Million discs to consumers, already doubling sales from all of 2006" This milestone was reached much faster than with DVD .....yada yada....Blu-ray sales continue to surpass HD DVD sales at a 2.5 to 1 margin over HD DVD sales based on the April 1 sales data (last date before HD DVD releases kicked in)

That would be much stronger PR than shouting something based on your internal calculations.

The problem is, the milestone wasn't reached faster. Between Mar-Dec (10 months) one year, DVD had sold 2 million discs. With BD alone, it will have taken Jun-Apr (11 months) to sell one million discs. That is more than 50% less than DVD.

Not to mention, such a release would be useless, as probably within 1 month, HD-DVD could issue a similar release stating 1 million discs sold. Do they really want to keep reminding the public that the format war, TD, is basically a draw? Won't a campaign of back and forth press releases just reinforce to the general public the need to wait before going hi-def?

I think the wise strategy for both companies would be to do as little as possible to promote any discussion of a format war. If studios were serious about ending the format war, they would all go neutral ASAP. Let consumers decide the war.

nataraj

04-09-07, 05:15 PM

- 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.

Interestingly, Casablanca was one of the top ownership titles in a poll here.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=775650&highlight=ownership+poll

200 people had Casablanca. That is 10% of what Nielsen reports.

According to this poll -

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=759575&page=1&pp=30&highlight=ownership (Ended by Feb)

BB (978) and KK (993) were the highest. BB shows SI of 34,313 and 2006 YTD of 22,088. Or about 5%.

AnthonyP

04-09-07, 05:16 PM

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.

Kosty, not to rain on your parade (we need more of them) but that is just normal, it is the difference between an emerging and an existing market.

i.e. let's say the number of new users go up 0k in market A and 20k for the same period in B. If 50% of people bought the title in A (and it is 60% that would like the title) then there is 10% of people that are interested in A, but in be there is the 10%+10k (50% of 20k). With B <<A that makes the numbers much more consistent and sustained

AnthonyP

04-09-07, 05:23 PM

No, but let's not start saying Wal*Mart are some kind of HD stayaway. I can't speak for the B&M stores but online they are certainly selling HD disc with seperate sections for both Blu-ray and HD DVD:

fozziwig: no one is saying that. IF someone is going with VS having 60% that leaves 40% for Walmart and the rest, that could be 30% for WM and 10% for the rest (there is not much else left after WM is removed). The problem is when people (like Kosty) start talking about VS tracking 25%, assuming (for the sake of argument) WM=50% and the rest 25% makes no sense when one sees that VS tracks Amazon, BB, CC.... and most other large well known retailers.

If WM has 40% of the DVD market (like WM seems to think) do they also have 40% of the HDOM market? That is why the “not all WM have HDOM” becomes important. There is also the fact that some of WM allure is the 5$ movies that don’t exist for HDOM

rto

04-09-07, 05:40 PM

Interestingly, Casablanca was one of the top ownership titles in a poll here.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=775650&highlight=ownership+poll

200 people had Casablanca. That is 10% of what Nielsen reports.

According to this poll -

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=759575&page=1&pp=30&highlight=ownership (Ended by Feb)

BB (978) and KK (993) were the highest. BB shows SI of 34,313 and 2006 YTD of 22,088. Or about 5%.

I imagine a large number of AVS members ( and perhaps many others ) picked Casablanca as one of their freebies. I did. I wonder how many of the other more popular choices that were available on that short list have low POS numbers, making it appear that there's little demand for them.

Kosty

04-09-07, 05:49 PM

I updated this with columns assuming a 80% Nielson/Videoscan capture rate and a 40% capture rate.

The most significant column is the XX% colum that shows the % amount of the since inception sales that was done in the first 8 weeks. The lower the number the better . Obviously the earlier discs are showing legs but the amount that are still selling copies in 2007 is also encouraging.

To me thats a strong indicator that hardware sales are driving software sales for these catalog titles and that new player owners see the entire released list as new ground.

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.

Kosty

04-09-07, 05:57 PM

Kosty, not to rain on your parade (we need more of them) but that is just normal, it is the difference between an emerging and an existing market.

i.e. let's say the number of new users go up 0k in market A and 20k for the same period in B. If 50% of people bought the title in A (and it is 60% that would like the title) then there is 10% of people that are interested in A, but in be there is the 10%+10k (50% of 20k). With B <<A that makes the numbers much more consistent and sustained

Not quite following you, but I agree that the sustained sales rate is normal in emerging markets.

But that's the point.

Its too early to panic about low sales numbers. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray trends are positive in increasing sales.

Its too early to say that the absolute numbers suck. If they are growing with new hardware sales, then its no so much a vapor lock because of the format war holding back disc sales, its a lack of players in the fielded play them on thats the problem.

HD DVD to me at this point has the solution to the problem. Drop the price of players as soon as possible to gain consumer penetration. The lower the price of players, the more shiny discs will be sold to feed them.

It is an emerging market, thats why I don't see any studios panicking at this point.

I think these sales and the breadth of them show that the disc sales, although small are broad based among catalog titles and are growing over time.

I'm sure the studios are more patient than we are here.

First format to $199 wins* ;) *(70% market share)

nataraj

04-09-07, 06:05 PM

I imagine a large number of AVS members ( and perhaps many others ) picked Casablanca as one of their freebies. I did. I wonder how many of the other more popular choices that were available on that short list have low POS numbers, making it appear that there's little demand for them.

Just for my info, is there a list of movies that Tosh gives away posted somewhere ? Also how long has this been going on ?

Kosty

04-09-07, 06:09 PM

fozziwig: no one is saying that. IF someone is going with VS having 60% that leaves 40% for Walmart and the rest, that could be 30% for WM and 10% for the rest (there is not much else left after WM is removed). The problem is when people (like Kosty) start talking about VS tracking 25%, assuming (for the sake of argument) WM=50% and the rest 25% makes no sense when one sees that VS tracks Amazon, BB, CC.... and most other large well known retailers.

If WM has 40% of the DVD market (like WM seems to think) do they also have 40% of the HDOM market? That is why the “not all WM have HDOM” becomes important. There is also the fact that some of WM allure is the 5$ movies that don’t exist for HDOM Just to be clear, I never said I think H/V is capturing 25% of HD DVD or Blu-ray sales. (edit: I did say 25% could be conceivable) Its as a minimum 40% which is what I think is possibly their DVD catch rate, and its probably closer to 80% than 40%.

But I don't think its over 80%, at least in the short term.

I also think that Wal-Mart share of the HD market is much lower than the DVD market. Its quite possible to me that Wal-Mart and its membership store Sam's Club and their online outlets have 40% of the DVD market because of the combination of new releases and bargin bin stuff. But I read that most Wal-Mart DVD volume is the new release day and date release stuff.

There still is an unknown amount now that is done by non H/V retailers, those are mostly HD DVD sales as most of the Blu-ray sales came from PS3's which were sold through traditionally captured N/V retailers.

As time goes on for these HD formats, the amount of sales captured by N/V retailers will increase, the Wal-Mart uncaptured sales will increase and the amount not captured being sold by non N/V captured retailers like VE and niche stores will become less significant.

edit:

I did say this earlier in a long post: I said it was conceivable. Didn't say that was my best estimate ;)
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 their 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. What I meant in that context that for some titles, N/V may only be catching that sales volume, like for Serenity and other eye candy titles that are purchased wit the player.

At this point I think its probable that Nielson/Videoscan is capturing somewhere between 40-80% of the HD market. Its probably closer to the higher capture rate than the lower one.

If we had some solid EOY 2006 sales figures for a few titles from the studios to compare with these N/V numbers we could be a bit more sure. :D

nataraj

04-09-07, 06:11 PM

I'm sure the studios are more patient than we are here.

I guess any studio "abandoning" HiDef for low sales will happen no earlier than '09.

BTW, have you heard anything about acknowledgement from studios that prices need to drop on movies ?

Kosty

04-09-07, 06:12 PM

Just for my info, is there a list of movies that Tosh gives away posted somewhere ? Also how long has this been going on ?
http://www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com/_pdf/perfectoffer_advert.pdf

Since March 1st for 5 discs with HD DVD player purchase.

Previous expired offer was for 3 discs with purchase.

Urza

04-09-07, 06:13 PM

Not quite following you, but I agree that the sustained sales rate is normal in emerging markets.

But that's the point.

Its too early to panic about low sales numbers. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray trends are positive in increasing sales.

Its too early to say that the absolute numbers suck. If they are growing with new hardware sales, then its no so much a vapor lock because of the format war holding back disc sales, its a lack of players in the fielded play them on thats the problem.

HD DVD to me at this point has the solution to the problem. Drop the price of players as soon as possible to gain consumer penetration. The lower the price of players, the more shiny discs will be sold to feed them.

It is an emerging market, thats why I don't see any studios panicking at this point.

I think these sales and the breadth of them show that the disc sales, although small are broad based among catalog titles and are growing over time.

I'm sure the studios are more patient than we are here.

First format to $199 wins* ;) *(70% market share)

Sorry for the newb question, but doesnt Blu have the penetration already via the PS3?

Kosty

04-09-07, 06:24 PM

Sorry for the newb question, but doesnt Blu have the penetration already via the PS3? But not all those PS3 owners are buying movies. ;)

But a million plus PS3's are still selling only the numbers were are talking about here.

Obviously they can be convinced to do so in the future, but its a major task to change consumer's behavior after a purchase decision to get them to use something in a way it was not purchased for at the time of purchase.

Its just never been down at this scale before in a consumer device.

Standalone player penetration into consumers home on both the Blu-ray and HD DVD side where the device is being purchased as a movie player will have significantly higher attach rates and people will buy more movie per device than a dual use console.

Much of the PS3 potential to sell Blu-ray movies may never be reached as a number of PS3 owners will never buy as many movie discs to play on them as a person who is purchasing a standalone HD DVD or Blu-ray player.

More standalone player penetration will sell more movies quicker than a lot of gaming consoles that are not being intentionally bought to play movies on. A lot of the early PS3 sales may have been for people wanting a Blu-ray playback device, but that will decrease as other Blu-ray player options appear in the future.

nataraj

04-09-07, 06:27 PM

Sorry for the newb question, but doesnt Blu have the penetration already via the PS3?

Let us look at a comparable scenario.

Why do people buy consoles ? Afterall you can play video games using PCs ...

Urza

04-09-07, 06:30 PM

But not all those PS3 owners are buying movies. ;)

But a million plus PS3's are still selling only the numbers were are talking about here.

Obviously they can be convinced to do so in the future, but its a major task to change consumer's behavior after a purchase decision to get them to use something in a way it was not purchased for at the time of purchase.

Its just never been down at this scale before in a consumer device.

Standalone player penetration into consumers home on both the Blu-ray and HD DVD side where the device is being purchased as a movie player will have significantly higher attach rates and people will buy more movie per device than a dual use console.

Much of the PS3 potential to sell Blu-ray movies may never be reached as a number of PS3 owners will never buy as many movie discs to play on them as a person who is purchasing a standalone HD DVD or Blu-ray player.

More standalone player penetration will sell more movies quicker than a lot of gaming consoles that are not being intentionally bought to play movies on. A lot of the early PS3 sales may have been for people wanting a Blu-ray playback device, but that will decrease as other Blu-ray player options appear in the future.

Ok, I get it, I think LOL

So even though Sony sells a ton of PS3, HDDVD growth rate can get crazy due to cheap Toshiba players, and those people buying a ton of movies?

So the key for BD would be just for them to keep pace with price on stand alone, and not bet the farm on the PS3? Or of course just do both.

Interesting war.

Urza

04-09-07, 06:31 PM

Let us look at a comparable scenario.

Why do people buy consoles ? Afterall you can play video games using PCs ...

Yea, but I dont have to put up with as much Blue Screen of death, drivers, crashes, and other general PC BS on my PS3 and 360.

nataraj

04-09-07, 06:39 PM

Yea, but I dont have to put up with ....

Exactly. You look for convinience ... whats better for playing optical discs than something that is specifically designed to do just that ?

Kosty

04-09-07, 06:39 PM

I guess any studio "abandoning" HiDef for low sales will happen no earlier than '09.

BTW, have you heard anything about acknowledgement from studios that prices need to drop on movies ? I see them still in a test market pricing stage at this point.

My guess is that prices for catalog releases will stabilize at $14.99 to $19.99 in the long term and at current DVD pricing of $19.99 to $29.99 for new releases.

I think the extra cost premium for combo or THD discs and the will drop to under a couple bucks.

You can already see the price experimentation at the Warner HD store and at Circuit City and Amazon and on other retailers.

Right now, CC and BB have little incentive to drop disc pricing as the volumes of players in the field is still small.

Its also likely that at this point the retailers are asking that the MSRPs officially remain high, so their discounts and disc offers with purchase look like a better deal. Big difference between MSRP and street pricing.

As soon as more players are sold, Wal-Mart will start lowering the B&M street pricing of the HD titles.

I have been a bit surprised that Blu-ray MSRPs have not dropped, but sales and other incentives have compensated for that.

Right now, studios know they can sell more discs if they drop prices, but since volumes are still low for player sales, they have time to be deliberate in their pricing in order to maximize revenues. Plus they are setting a precedent to the future for pricing so they don't want to be hasty.

$9.99, $14,99, $19.99 and $24.99 are consumer magic pricing models for consumables and for spur of the moment purchases. Best guess is that street prices will soon fall to the $19.99 price point for catalog HD DVD and Blu-ray discs.

$14.99 will be the common B&M price point a couple years from now IMHO.

Kosty

04-09-07, 06:51 PM

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) That's showing the first alert numbers are exaggerating the amount of any sales drops?

nataraj

04-09-07, 07:10 PM

That's showing the first alert numbers are exaggerating the amount of any sales drops?

I think something happenned on 11th March and we got a big difference. On 4th the small drop was well captured ...

AnthonyP

04-09-07, 07:25 PM

Its too early to say that the absolute numbers suck. If they are growing with new hardware sales, then its no so much a vapor lock because of the format war holding back disc sales, its a lack of players in the fielded play them on thats the problem.
agree, but they do need to pick up and they do need to grow fast.

HD DVD to me at this point has the solution to the problem. Drop the price of players as soon as possible to gain consumer penetration. The lower the price of players, the more shiny discs will be sold to feed them.
totally disagree (but don't think it belongs in this thread)

It is an emerging market, thats why I don't see any studios panicking at this point

agree, but there is always the question of how long.

Like I pointed out to all the "look at UMD" guys. When Sony showed a couple of titles selling 100k each the studios jumped on, when the studios realized 100k is not the norm they jumped back out all in a matter of a year. I think they have more patience because they think HDOM can pick up, but I don't think they will stick around for ever. 35-50k replicated 1/2 shipped to stores and 1/2 of those sold won't keep them around for ever.

AnthonyP

04-09-07, 07:29 PM

Just for my info, is there a list of movies that Tosh gives away posted somewhere ? Also how long has this been going on ?

Nataraj, have not seen the list, but it has been going on for a long time (I think since BD has been around) it used to be pick 3 but now is pick 5 from a list. So even with the list I don't think we can get anywhere (i.e. get A,B,C,D,E want F as well so you buy F).

i.e. could be used as an excuse –and might be valid – but in the end we won’t know if X did not sell well because everyone got it off the free or no one wanted it

AnthonyP

04-09-07, 07:44 PM

Just to be clear, I never said I think H/V is capturing 25% of HD DVD or Blu-ray sales. (edit: I did say 25% could be conceivable) Its as a minimum 40% which is what I think is possibly their DVD catch rate, and its probably closer to 80% than 40%....

Kosty, I just thought that 25% odd, I guess that is why it stuck in my head. It sounded like one of those other HD DVD fanboy posts that are typically "let's try and pretend VS is not good then we can delude ourselves that HD DVD is winning or doing well" (without the honesty :) )

The truth is I don't think there is any difference (in importance) if a bad movie has sold 500 copies or 1000 copies. I think studios look at the high sales movies and at certain levels "we hit 50k", "we hit 100k" or "we hit 1M" the rest are not that important (not that I mean those are the only ones or necessarily the ones).

I know VS does not have all of the sales, is it 800k or 1M it is not the end of the world. I think the ratios (BD/HD DVD) are most likely extremely close to reality and that is what is important. Not as much for the ratios but because of the implication (i.e. how fast and when they will hit those magic numbers)

Kosty

04-09-07, 07:44 PM

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. That tells the 1st quarter story . Its no wonder you don't sell as many HD DVD discs as you could if you had been releasing titles.

Though its important to remember that historically the first 1st qtr is slower for hardware and software sales than in the rest of the year. So maybe its wise not to release a lot during that time. That is especially if your not concerned about a PR offensive against you. ;)

Kosty

04-09-07, 07:48 PM

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. 1st quarter sales are always low. Player prices are decreasing and more players are being sold. 4th quarter will be the first holiday period with affordable players on both sides being available. Lots of sales to come in the rest of the year.

Sales to March 18th is only counting sales from the lowest sales period of the year. Plenty of time to hit those DVD milestones of both 1 M players sold per this year and 7.2 million discs.

AnthonyP

04-09-07, 07:49 PM

But not all those PS3 owners are buying movies.

but not all HD DVD player buyers buy movies either :)

AnthonyP

04-09-07, 07:52 PM

Exactly. You look for convinience ... whats better for playing optical discs than something that is specifically designed to do just that ?

Nataraj: you need to try watching a ovie on a PS3. Nothing inconvenient with it. Loads fast controls are easy.....

WayneL

04-09-07, 08:26 PM

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)
There's a smoothing function, in that sales trail out many weeks from a release. Do trendlines for these curves reveal anything?

WayneL

04-09-07, 08:41 PM

Kosty

04-09-07, 08:41 PM

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 80% of the market also jives with Mickey Mouses's chart and my above posted calculation of the HD DVD and Blu-ray sales figure from Disney compared to the N/V numbers for 2006.

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

I'm beginning ot think that 80% capture rate for N/V or a 1.25 multiplier is a good ballpark benchmark.

That is we should multiply the Nielson/Videoscan numbers by 1.25 to get the actual sales numbers. That may be accurate until Wal-Mart starts selling these things on mass.

Kosty

04-09-07, 08:57 PM

but not all HD DVD player buyers buy movies either :)

LOL :rolleyes:

At least they didn't in Jan-Mar of this year when there were pitifully few HD DVD releases. :D

But that's history now. Looking better for HD DVD sales now with teh upcoming titles.

Kosty

04-09-07, 09:06 PM

Grubert reported a source saying the H/V numbers were 40% of the market. But since Sony passed on an absolute numbers of disks sold to us, it doesn't matter - it must have been close enough for them to accept, however it was derived. If it were 25, 40, 85 or 100% of the market, the numbers were already adjusted. IMO

Now we need someone to feed us real NPD player numbers :) No lie. I've been itching to see those real figures ever since I caught a shared cab ride at CES with some Canadians that had gotten a NPD sales briefing the night before. People have since told me the standalone sales figures that some articles have mentioned are not consistent with the actual NPD figures they have seen. Sales revenues I am told are tended to be confused with unit sales for some strange reason. Maybe because the source leaking the data has an motivation to be confusing?

But I can't get anyone to actually give me the data. Their NDA must actually be enforcable. :rolleyes: Looking forward to some more hard numbers on hardware sales.

AnthonyP

04-09-07, 09:21 PM

LOL

At least they didn't in Jan-Mar of this year when there were pitifully few HD DVD releases.

But that's history now. Looking better for HD DVD sales now with teh upcoming titles.

not at all, there are some HD DVD supporters that have said they are renters and not buyers. The issue is that your assuming that renters that want quality and buy HD DVD will become renters while buyers that buy BD will become renters. I am guessing renters are renters and buyers are buyers. If they get into HD because they bought a 1000$ player a 500$ player or a console that won't change who they are.

Kosty

04-09-07, 09:39 PM

rto

04-09-07, 09:43 PM

Just for my info, is there a list of movies that Tosh gives away posted somewhere ? Also how long has this been going on ?

The first promotion ran on players purchased form 11/1/06, through 2/28/07, with the exact same list of titles that Kosty provided for the most recent promo. They were simply divided into three groups from which to choose, instead of five.

nataraj

04-09-07, 09:44 PM

Nataraj: you need to try watching a ovie on a PS3. Nothing inconvenient with it. Loads fast controls are easy.....

Oh well ... I've been using an HTPC for several years (until I got HD-A1). So nothing will be inconvinient. For that matter I've not had a remote for my music pre-amp for a long time (all tube electronics).

Also, I've not had a BSD on my PC for a number of years. And PC is the largest gaming platform.

Neo1965

04-09-07, 09:45 PM

rto

04-09-07, 09:50 PM

Ah, didn't catch you were talking about renters versus buyers.

I am on the 5 out at a time Netflix plan myself, but I still buy HD DVDs. But I know I'm weird. :D

I'll buy a lot more HD DVDs instead of renting when I can purchase all I want for $19.99 or less. Right now I buy the cheaper ones outright and I rent the more expensive titles.

I think disc sales will accelerate when prices drop to that $19.99 or less price point for most titles.

I must be an outlier. If a film is released which interests me, and it isn't universally panned, I purchase it....figure it's cheaper than tickets/concession, with the added benefit of no possibility of obnoxious/thoughtless fellow patrons. I rarely go to the theater, and never rent.

AnthonyP

04-09-07, 09:56 PM

Ah, didn't catch you were talking about renters versus buyers.

yup menat renters (not that I think all PS3 owners are renters, I am sure some have not used it for movies).

I just think it is easier to convince someone that has a player to try HD then someone that needs to spend 200$ or 500$ for the same priviledge. I also think for renters PS3 just makes it too easy.

I am on the 5 out at a time Netflix plan myself, but I still buy HD DVDs. But I know I'm weird
I think we all are. The other day I was at lunch with some coworkers (client) and one of them that noticed me a few times with new titles (I buy most of them at lunch time) brought it up and then that annoying question "how many DVDs do you have?) that you can't answer because you don't want that look of "are you nuts" eventually one of them said he has 16 (how do you reply I bought more then that in BD this month?)

AnthonyP

04-09-07, 10:02 PM

I must be an outlier. If a film is released which interests me, and it isn't universally panned, I purchase it....figure it's cheaper than tickets/concession, with the added benefit of no possibility of obnoxious/thoughtless fellow patrons. I rarely go to the theater, and never rent.

RTO, same here will also add that I like the convenience of just taking the disk and putting it in (not having to decide days in advance or jump out to the store).

Had my sister and her family (three boys and husband) here for the weekend (came Sat evening left Monday) the kids watched happy feet, Eragon, The Wild and Chicken little, me and my BILL watched Crank. It is nice having a large collection where people can choose what they want and as much.

rto

04-09-07, 10:18 PM

RTO, same here will also add that I like the convenience of just taking the disk and putting it in (not having to decide days in advance or jump out to the store).

The bladder-break button is also very convenient. I don't know about you, but I've squirmed very uncomfortably in a theater seat to avoid missing anything, on more than one occasion.

nataraj

04-09-07, 10:32 PM

The first promotion ran on players purchased form 11/1/06, through 2/28/07, with the exact same list of titles that Kosty provided for the most recent promo. They were simply divided into three groups from which to choose, instead of five.

Assuming monthly sales of about 15K players - that comes to about 45K titles per month, till Feb. Now more like 75K. Considering the current total of some 100K - these numbers will make a big impact. If these are included as MIR instead of movies that Tosh sends - suddenly the totals will come to be near or better than BD.

The other way of looking at it is - if all these people were to buy that many movies in retail - it would have made a big impact on the videoscan numbers.

At another angle - these movies are probably making some money for the studios. Look at KK. If it was not packed with 360 add-ons Universal wouldn't have been able to sell so many (more than 100K) - considering the largest selling HD DVD movie has sold some 40K.

rto

04-09-07, 10:40 PM

Assuming monthly sales of about 15K players - that comes to about 45K titles per month, till Feb. Now more like 75K. Considering the current total of some 100K - these numbers will make a big impact. If these are included as MIR instead of movies that Tosh sends - suddenly the totals will come to be near or better than BD.

The other way of looking at it is - if all these people were to buy that many movies in retail - it would have made a big impact on the videoscan numbers.

At another angle - these movies are probably making some money for the studios. Look at KK. If it was not packed with 360 add-ons Universal wouldn't have been able to sell so many (more than 100K) - considering the largest selling HD DVD movie has sold some 40K.

Agreed. "Sales" of some of those titles are relatively abysmal for an obvious reason, and it seems reasonable to surmise that having several titles on the way, might suppress the impulse to rush out and purchase others.

Reginald Trent

04-09-07, 10:55 PM

Where are the direct sales from the Warner Brothers website reflected?

WayneL

04-09-07, 11:19 PM

Not so fast there. Sony's nielsen chart very clearly marked the headers as POS (point of sale), meaning they are raw nielsen numbers, not scaled up by whatever ratios.
Couldn't mean derived from POS? Does N/V report the market or their sample? What do raw POS numbers mean if nobody really knows the sample fraction or size? Or type? Would you think other sales are that different than POS? Given these uncertainties any numbers don't mean much.

What is the basis of these numbers? If these aren't anchored in real numbers, nothing but ratios are meaningful, and from what little we really know about raw POS quite probably not that accurate. I assumed Sony was happy to say this is what they sold, so they're close.

Neo1965

04-09-07, 11:28 PM

Assuming monthly sales of about 15K players - that comes to about 45K titles per month, till Feb. Now more like 75K. Considering the current total of some 100K - these numbers will make a big impact. If these are included as MIR instead of movies that Tosh sends - suddenly the totals will come to be near or better than BD.

The other way of looking at it is - if all these people were to buy that many movies in retail - it would have made a big impact on the videoscan numbers.

At another angle - these movies are probably making some money for the studios. Look at KK. If it was not packed with 360 add-ons Universal wouldn't have been able to sell so many (more than 100K) - considering the largest selling HD DVD movie has sold some 40K.
Is that realistic to assume 15K players sold per month (or 45K in 3 months) that would mean a large percentage of owners did not buy any new disks beyond the free disks they got?

BB is not part of the free disks (as of october), so that's as close to a must buy title. BB in 2007 is probably the best indicator for new red format buyers.

Neo1965

04-09-07, 11:31 PM

Tim Glover

04-10-07, 12:03 AM

Where are the direct sales from the Warner Brothers website reflected?

Those have got to be rather huge...at least from this forum! I know personally I had to have bumped up a few ratings for some HD DVD titles. :)

rto

04-10-07, 01:23 AM

Is that realistic to assume 15K players sold per month (or 45K in 3 months) that would mean a large percentage of owners did not buy any new disks beyond the free disks they got?

BB is not part of the free disks (as of october), so that's as close to a must buy title. BB in 2007 is probably the best indicator for new red format buyers.

Some percentage of owners simply won't bother to send in the UPC sticker, receipt, etc., and others wouldn't have purchased any of the free titles anyway, but total numbers are so low, that large numbers of free discs which don't appear in the Nielsen software figures would in all likelyhood, significantly reduce the apparent BD/HD DVD sales disparity, if they did.

To the extent free discs negate potential sales of titles on the freebie list, or the impulse to purchase others, a false impression of lower demand is the result. Free HD DVD discs are great for promoting hardware sales, but they also muddy the waters if you're attempting to gain a coherent view of relative software demand between the two formats.

Kosty

04-10-07, 06:50 AM

Kosty

04-10-07, 06:57 AM

Where are the direct sales from the Warner Brothers website reflected? Anybody have a thought on this?

The kdragon Nielson list of retailers (which IMHO I thought looked legit) had Warner Music Group as an e-retailer.

But Warner may have incentive not to give DVD sales data, so I dunno.

If they are not counted, then thats a hole as a lot of HD DVD buys have gone there since there recent sale and knowledge of their discounts have gotten around.

Kosty

04-10-07, 07:05 AM

Couldn't mean derived from POS? Does N/V report the market or their sample? What do raw POS numbers mean if nobody really knows the sample fraction or size? Or type? Would you think other sales are that different than POS? Given these uncertainties any numbers don't mean much.

What is the basis of these numbers? If these aren't anchored in real numbers, nothing but ratios are meaningful, and from what little we really know about raw POS quite probably not that accurate. I assumed Sony was happy to say this is what they sold, so they're close. In this context , Nielson POS means the raw numbers reported in the final data set in the Nielson/Videoscan database.

It would not be scaled up numbers, that would be for the person analyzing the data to do based on their own additional information.

The usefulness of this is its a fairly consistent database, and someone with more information (ie the studios) that know what they shipped and what was reordered my be able to multiply up and get estimated current or projected data.

The N/V numbers are useful as trend lines and as a forecasting tool for future sales, as well as telling things as what genres are selling, what has sales legs and what titles are overachievers based on their disc sales to box office performance.

Its not the complete picture but better than nothing and the studios and retailers have more data than we do internally to combine with this N/V data.

For example if we had studio reported end of year sales for some of these titles we could combine that with the N/V report figures and could determine the capture rate and the multiplier we needed to determine complete sales from N/V numbers...... :D

patrick99

04-10-07, 07:54 AM

Anybody have a thought on this?

The kdragon Nielson list of retailers (which IMHO I thought looked legit) had Warner Music Group as an e-retailer.

But Warner may have incentive not to give DVD sales data, so I dunno.

If they are not counted, then thats a hole as a lot of HD DVD buys have gone there since there recent sale and knowledge of their discounts have gotten around.

I believe Warner Music is now totally separate from Warner movies.

Kosty

04-10-07, 08:07 AM

I believe Warner Music is now totally separate from Warner movies. Makes it even more unlikely that the Warner online site is being Nielson tracked.

Maybe Grubert can ask?

the blob

04-10-07, 09:27 AM

Kosty

04-10-07, 09:31 AM

I think it would be in Warner's best interest to give data to Nielsen. It covers all their home video sales and things like chart position are important on a general level to the studios so i imagine they would submit anything to help that cause. On second thought, that makes more sense than my previous comments. Higher sales rankings mean higher dealer stockage and thus more sales.

nataraj

04-10-07, 10:03 AM

Is that realistic to assume 15K players sold per month (or 45K in 3 months) that would mean a large percentage of owners did not buy any new disks beyond the free disks they got?

The number is derived from what Robert of VE said (20 a day, 3% of Tosh's worldwide sales).

BB is not part of the free disks (as of october), so that's as close to a must buy title. BB in 2007 is probably the best indicator for new red format buyers.

Even a "must buy" will not sell anywhere close to 100%. I was quite disappointed with BB, for eg.

nataraj

04-10-07, 10:06 AM

On second thought, that makes more sense than my previous comments. Higher sales rankings mean higher dealer stockage and thus more sales.

Also, is there a clause that says whoever gets Nielsen data should also give their sales data to Nielsen ? I thought it did - looking at the statement Wal-mart issued when they withdrew from Nielsen.

Kosty

04-10-07, 10:08 AM

I think Robert from VE 3% HD DVD sales percentge is going to be lower this month and in the future as HD A2 prices drop and the players becme more available.

nataraj

04-10-07, 10:21 AM

I think Robert from VE 3% HD DVD sales percentge is going to be lower this month and in the future as HD A2 prices drop and the players becme more available.

Quite true. As the market expands his market share will go down.

joshd2012

04-10-07, 10:39 AM

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.

Any update?

nataraj, will you be providing an updated spreadsheet?

Icemage

04-10-07, 10:59 AM

Any update?

nataraj, will you be providing an updated spreadsheet?
Almost done since last night. I'm trying to find a good way to resolve the issue of First Alert data. From my analysis, it looks like using First Alert data comes with a whole bunch of caveats.

nataraj

04-10-07, 11:12 AM

Almost done since last night. I'm trying to find a good way to resolve the issue of First Alert data. From my analysis, it looks like using First Alert data comes with a whole bunch of caveats.

Yes. If you use real data till 18th and then HMM (first alert) you get a big drop on 25th.

nataraj

04-10-07, 11:14 AM

nataraj, will you be providing an updated spreadsheet?

My spreadsheet needs to be cleaned up before I can put it up. Since ice is already working on it - not sure the duplicated effort is worth it.

Grubert

04-10-07, 11:20 AM

Yes. If you use real data till 18th and then HMM (first alert) you get a big drop on 25th.

Looking back it seems First Alert data for the week ending 3/11 were especially incomplete for both Blu-ray and HD DVD. Maybe one or more big retailers missed their deadlines?

Wet1

04-10-07, 11:27 AM

Thought you guys might find this interesting...
http://www.dailytech.com/Sony+Releases+Report+on+Bluray+vs+HD+DVD/article6841.htm

GBFreek

04-10-07, 11:42 AM

^^You might want to read the first post of the thread...was in there 4 days ago...

Thanks anyways ;)

Kosty

04-10-07, 11:54 AM

Looking back it seems First Alert data for the week ending 3/11 were especially incomplete for both Blu-ray and HD DVD. Maybe one or more big retailers missed their deadlines? I said before, there was a major weather event in the north east US during that week a late winter snowstorm.

Things like that could easily affect a routine data submission , even if it was digitally submitted.

Kosty

04-10-07, 11:59 AM

Thought you guys might find this interesting...
http://www.dailytech.com/Sony+Releases+Report+on+Bluray+vs+HD+DVD/article6841.htm Anyone think that Sony may have released the March 18th N/V sales report now because it may show the high water mark of Blu-ray over HD DVD sales? :rolleyes:

A bit more competition in the market now since HD DVD titles are being released and that HD A2 sales are going a bit more mainstream with their price drops.

The data tells a great Blu-ray sales story, and has a a bunch of great Blu-ray data comparisons, why not release it now before HD DVD sales of The Departed, Happy Feet and Children of Man kick in to soften and blur the sales ratios.

patrick99

04-10-07, 12:04 PM

Anyone think that Sony may have released the March 18th N/V sales report now because it may show the high water mark of Blu-ray over HD DVD sales? :rolleyes:

A bit more competition in the market now since HD DVD titles are being released and that HD A2 sales are going a bit more mainstream with their price drops.

The data tells a great Blu-ray sales story, and has a a bunch of great Blu-ray data comparisons, why not release it now before HD DVD sales of The Departed, Happy Feet and Children of Man kick in to soften and blur the sales ratios.

I am sure you're right about the timing. Calling it the "high water mark" is a little bit too permanent sounding, but I am sure it is the high point for the immediate future. And I am someone who wants BD to win.

Kosty

04-10-07, 12:13 PM

"high water mark" is a bit much.

But its reasonable to assume that at least in the short term, the date of the report is showing data that is going to be the best for Blu-ray against HD DVD for a while.

HD DVD is ramping up player sales, dropping prices, raising inventory, starting to advertise, increasing its retail presence and is now releasing titles.

Why not release the report now to get some media mileage out of the best figures you can have before HD DVD starts to fight back. :D

If I was the BDA media PR guy, I would release this report to the media and make sure I gave it to some major Blu-ray advocates like Bill Hunt, from The Digital Bits........ooops did they already do that?........ :rolleyes:

The data may not be suspect, but the timing of the release and choosing a reporting period that shows your side in the best light is certainly a valid topic of discussion.

You always gotta ask, why are we getting this data now?

Jeff Lampert

04-10-07, 12:33 PM

Why not release the report now to get some media mileage out of the best figures you can have before HD DVD starts to fight back

It's pretty much a given that the BDA is a heavywieght as far as PR, promotion and advertising goes. HD DVD is WAAYYYY behind. It isn't just money spent, it's things like this report, the various CEO announcements about Blu-ray victory, etc. You need marketing vision and arrogance, and the BDA has both in spades.

george king

04-10-07, 12:35 PM

Kosty,

But its reasonable to assume that at least in the short term, the date of the report is showing data that is going to be the best for Blu-ray against HD DVD for a while.

I said as much when I posted the original link to the article. The week of the 11th had seen a drop in sales (according to the chart), so the 74% increase in sales over the previous week that they talk about, along with the large sales ratio were particular to that week.

So, I think that Sony's raw numbers are solid, but they picked a date to maximize their advantages over HD DVD.

nataraj

04-10-07, 12:41 PM

You need marketing vision and arrogance, and the BDA has both in spades.

I doubt they have much vision and you don't definitely need arrogance. Infact more than once it has been the PR downfall of Sony ... but this is all OT.

Phloyd

04-10-07, 01:07 PM

HD DVD is ramping up player sales, dropping prices, raising inventory, starting to advertise, increasing its retail presence and is now releasing titles.

About the only part of this I agree with is the dropping prices part, and the releasing titles part (though mostly catalog titles of little interest).

All evidence I have seen in store is decreasing retail presence. Fry's in Sunnyvale took down the HD DVD display and put a PS3 pod where it was.

I know that cheaper players could be an incentive to buy, but really how many customers will stay satisfied with a player with many critical titles missing from the catalog?

While I admire your optimisim I do not share it - unless they start coming in cereal boxes, I don't see HD DVD players reaching the 2M stated by Toshiba any time soon if ever.

rto

04-10-07, 01:10 PM

I know that cheaper players could be an incentive to buy, but really how many customers will stay satisfied with a player with many critical titles missing from the catalog?

Are you referring to BD or HD DVD? :confused:

plazman

04-10-07, 01:14 PM

About the only part of this I agree with is the dropping prices part, and the releasing titles part (though mostly catalog titles of little interest).

All evidence I have seen in store is decreasing retail presence. Fry's in Sunnyvale took down the HD DVD display and put a PS3 pod where it was.

I know that cheaper players could be an incentive to buy, but really how many customers will stay satisfied with a player with many critical titles missing from the catalog?

While I admire your optimisim I do not share it - unless they start coming in cereal boxes, I don't see HD DVD players reaching the 2M stated by Toshiba any time soon if ever.

Ramping up on amazon for sure where the A-2 is the #3 DVD Player, the XA-2 #8 and the best BD Player is the Sammy at #22 or something...incidently these are the best ranking for HD DVD players on Amazon that I can recall.

My local BB that has started promoting BD over HD DVD just sold 8 players over the weekend! Yes 8. I was there on Friday and then yesterday. I asked the Manager there if this was the case since I remember seeing 8 boxes of the A-2 (without any display) and he said yes, at least 8 and the 4 free disks may have been the reason why....

No BD player sold that I could tell....as far as Sony or Sammy players are concerned. There were 2 of each. So, it tells me that Toshiba is shipping a lot more products now. Even the CC across the street have several A-2s in stock - but they have an xbox (with hd dvd drive) and A-2 demos playing in the front of the store.

So I believe Kosty is right.

wnorris

04-10-07, 01:42 PM

Anybody have a thought on this?

The kdragon Nielson list of retailers (which IMHO I thought looked legit) had Warner Music Group as an e-retailer.

But Warner may have incentive not to give DVD sales data, so I dunno.

If they are not counted, then thats a hole as a lot of HD DVD buys have gone there since there recent sale and knowledge of their discounts have gotten around.

It's probably alot of BD sales too though, in all fairness. The discount was linked in both forums here.

nataraj

04-10-07, 01:50 PM

I know that cheaper players could be an incentive to buy, but really how many customers will stay satisfied with a player with many critical titles missing from the catalog?

I think one of things a lot of us miss is that "missing titles" in any format can be easily supplanted with DVD. That is no different from titles unavailable in both formats. Most people - even the ones into HiDef - are not extremists who will completely stop watching DVDs.

wnorris

04-10-07, 01:55 PM

I think it is likely that the HD A2 is now selling at a much higher rate than that and has been selling more than that each month since January.

I've heard that to date, Toshiba has shipped over 150k XA2's. Now that is shipped, and not sold, but places like Amazon and VE seem to be moving a lot of these players, and I haven't seen big box stores like BB or CC even carry this model. So it seems they would have to be stocked on websites and non-Big Box retailers.

It would lead me to believe that a high percentage of that 150k has possible sold (maybe 100k or so). If the more expensive XA2 could sell that well, I would think the more broadly available, and cheaper, A2, would sell even better.

I wouldn't be surprised if 300k standalone HD-DVD players (not counting 360 addons) had been sold this year already. And again, a local CC employ claims they sold 30-40 A2's in one week of the 9 free movie promotion (and they ran out of stock 5 days into the sale, so they could have possibly sold more if available). If this is typical of CC stores, and BB repeats the same success, you could be looking at 75k A2's in two weeks hitting the market.

I think by the end of June, we will see a half million standalone sales for 2007, which makes me think that by Christmas, there should easily be 1+ million standalones sold. If the price drops another $100 before Christmas, I think it will be closer to 2+ million standalones. At this point, I don't see how some of those exclusive studioscan keep from considering neutrality.

Has anyone received any NPD numbers for March?

WiFi-Spy

04-10-07, 02:00 PM

JAG1977

04-10-07, 02:05 PM

I think one of things a lot of us miss is that "missing titles" in any format can be easily supplanted with DVD. That is no different from titles unavailable in both formats. Most people - even the ones into HiDef - are not extremists who will completely stop watching DVDs.

If they are actually interested in HD, all things being equal, they will choose the format that offers them more titles, especially as HD-DVD's price advantage is quickly being eroded.

Kosty

04-10-07, 02:08 PM

It's pretty much a given that the BDA is a heavywieght as far as PR, promotion and advertising goes. HD DVD is WAAYYYY behind. It isn't just money spent, it's things like this report, the various CEO announcements about Blu-ray victory, etc. You need marketing vision and arrogance, and the BDA has both in spades. Except that HD DVD has chosen an equally valid PR campaign strategy, that is based on performance and quiet confidence.

They are using major industry events to highlight certain issues that show their value propositions and performance capabilities.

They have chosen not to compete with Blu-ray on the "format war is over" stage. They are letting facts on the ground speak for themselves, and just were taking a defensive strategy against the first quarter BDA blitz. They could do that if they knew that their HD DVD group alliance was solid and was not going to be swayed by PR or press articles.

I believe that the HD DVD companies expected a strong Blu-ray showing in the Nielson/Videoscan numbers during the first quarter and they chose not to fight it by concede the first quarter to Blu-ray. The rest of the year is more meaningful from a real sales perspective, and the first quarter is now history.

dilvish

04-10-07, 02:10 PM

Paulidan

04-10-07, 02:13 PM

If they are actually interested in HD, all things being equal, they will choose the format that offers them more titles, especially as HD-DVD's price advantage is quickly being eroded.

If I could find a decent Blu-ray player for under $600 that wasn't going to be oboslete (sorry, Andy) by the end of the year because of new mandatory feature specs- I would be format neutral right now.

the soonest I can even get close to that is in a few months with the upcoming Sony, but I'm still not sure if that is going to be out of spec either. I don't want to pay 20% more than what I paid for my other HD player and yet only have 80% functionality. Thats the exact reason some of us have been dogging the format the last 9 months or so. Despite the hype and propaganda and specs, the format expects me to pay more for what is, when the rubber actually meets the road, less.

Kosty

04-10-07, 02:17 PM

I've heard that to date, Toshiba has shipped over 150k XA2's. Now that is shipped, and not sold, but places like Amazon and VE seem to be moving a lot of these players, and I haven't seen big box stores like BB or CC even carry this model. So it seems they would have to be stocked on websites and non-Big Box retailers.

It would lead me to believe that a high percentage of that 150k has possible sold (maybe 100k or so). If the more expensive XA2 could sell that well, I would think the more broadly available, and cheaper, A2, would sell even better.

I wouldn't be surprised if 300k standalone HD-DVD players (not counting 360 addons) had been sold this year already. And again, a local CC employ claims they sold 30-40 A2's in one week of the 9 free movie promotion (and they ran out of stock 5 days into the sale, so they could have possibly sold more if available). If this is typical of CC stores, and BB repeats the same success, you could be looking at 75k A2's in two weeks hitting the market.

I think by the end of June, we will see a half million standalone sales for 2007, which makes me think that by Christmas, there should easily be 1+ million standalones sold. If the price drops another $100 before Christmas, I think it will be closer to 2+ million standalones. At this point, I don't see how some of those exclusive studioscan keep from considering neutrality.

Has anyone received any NPD numbers for March? Woah. Thats even higher than the information I have for HD XA2s.

I know that Circuit City regionally around me has sold a lot more HD A2's in the last 30 days than they ever have before.

Toshiba was forcasting 100,000 HD DVD players sold on average per month by the end of the 2nd quarter, after the price drop to $399 MSRP.

I think April is going to be the breakout month for HD DVD player sales. I'm just waiting for those to hit the Nielson and Amazon tracking.

I don't know if HD A2 sales are that high yet, but I think they are a lot higher than 50,000 for the year, as some have said here. I think its totally possible that HD A2s will be selling at 100,000 per month by the summer and that gives more than a decent shot at 1 million Toshiba HD DVD players sold by the end of the year.

That should sell more discs.

Kosty

04-10-07, 02:25 PM

If I could find a decent Blu-ray player for under $600 that wasn't going to be oboslete (sorry, Andy) by the end of the year because of new mandatory feature specs- I would be format neutral right now.

the soonest I can even get close to that is in a few months with the upcoming Sony, but I'm still not sure if that is going to be out of spec either. I don't want to pay 20% more than what I paid for my other HD player and yet only have 80% functionality. Thats the exact reason some of us have been dogging the format the last 9 months or so. Despite the hype and propaganda and specs, the format expects me to pay more for what is, when the rubber actually meets the road, less. I too keep holding off buying a Blu-ray player because of the delay in BD-Live implementation. I had a chance to buy a PS3 and passed. I'll probably buy a Blu-ray player, but I can't find one yet at a price I want and with those BD-Live capabilities. (and I don't want a PS3 until its proven it can do it )

I wonder how many people were like me, and did not jump on the Blu-ray train when the PS3 launched. I have now made my PS3 decision. I'm holding off Blu-ray for now.

If there are people who considered the PS3 but passed, like me, I wonder if additional PS3 sales will have the same strong effect on Blu-ray sales in the future or that effect will slow down over time.

Don't the N/V stats to date show a bit of a slow down in the constant rate of growth of Blu-ray disc sales during the last couple weeks?

Alan Gordon

04-10-07, 02:39 PM

I too keep holding off buying a Blu-ray player because of the delay in BD-Live implementation. I had a chance to buy a PS3 and passed. I'll probably buy a Blu-ray player, but I can't find one yet at a price I want and with those BD-Live capabilities. (and I don't want a PS3 until its proven it can do it

I decided to go ahead and get into Blu-Ray due to the current sales lead (and my belief that it will continue), and have chosen the PS3 regardless of whether or not BD-Live is ever activated... because I figure the player prices will be down to the point where I will just pick up a BD-Live capable player next year, and then have the PS3 relegated to playing games...

The only special features I've watched on my HD-A2 have been the trailers and the "Natalie Raps" sketch on VfV... so even if player prices aren't that low by the time BD-Live comes out, I can do without it.

Of course, if one isn't a gamer, the PS3 purchase seems a lot harder to swallow...

~Alan

Kosty

04-10-07, 02:40 PM

Originally Posted by Wet1
Thought you guys might find this interesting...
http://www.dailytech.com/Sony+Relea...article6841.htm Anyone think that Sony may have released the March 18th N/V sales report now because it may show the high water mark of Blu-ray over HD DVD sales?

A bit more competition in the market now since HD DVD titles are being released and that HD A2 sales are going a bit more mainstream with their price drops.

The data tells a great Blu-ray sales story, and has a a bunch of great Blu-ray data comparisons, why not release it now before HD DVD sales of The Departed, Happy Feet and Children of Man kick in to soften and blur the sales ratios.
I am sure you're right about the timing. Calling it the "high water mark" is a little bit too permanent sounding, but I am sure it is the high point for the immediate future. And I am someone who wants BD to win. high water mark" is a bit much.

But its reasonable to assume that at least in the short term, the date of the report is showing data that is going to be the best for Blu-ray against HD DVD for a while.

HD DVD is ramping up player sales, dropping prices, raising inventory, starting to advertise, increasing its retail presence and is now releasing titles.

Why not release the report now to get some media mileage out of the best figures you can have before HD DVD starts to fight back.

If I was the BDA media PR guy, I would release this report to the media and make sure I gave it to some major Blu-ray advocates like Bill Hunt, from The Digital Bits........ooops did they already do that?........

The data may not be suspect, but the timing of the release and choosing a reporting period that shows your side in the best light is certainly a valid topic of discussion.

You always gotta ask, why are we getting this data now?

Look at this graph.

http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/4391_large_graph.png

We know HD DVD started rising back after the March 19th period.

Could you pick a better time frame to release the data if you were a Blu-ray backer?

This was the most extreme time period to show the sales gap between Blu-ray and HD DVD, you could not choose a better time period, if you wanted to show Blu-ray's sales strength in the first quarter of the new year.

GBFreek

04-10-07, 02:46 PM

Woah. Thats even higher than the information I have for HD XA2s.

I know that Circuit City regionally around me has sold a lot more HD A2's in the last 30 days than they ever have before.

Toshiba was forcasting 100,000 HD DVD players sold on average per month by the end of the 2nd quarter, after the price drop to $399 MSRP.

I think April is going to be the breakout month for HD DVD player sales. I'm just waiting for those to hit the Nielson and Amazon tracking.

I don't know if HD A2 sales are that high yet, but I think they are a lot higher than 50,000 for the year, as some have said here. I think its totally possible that HD A2s will be selling at 100,000 per month by the summer and that gives more than a decent shot at 1 million Toshiba HD DVD players sold by the end of the year.

That should sell more discs.

100,000 per month!!!! Wow, I need to drink some of the Kool Aid you are drinking. 250,000 to date, give or take a few, and they will double that in the next 10 weeks???

Like a previous poster stated, unless they are partnering with Captain Crunch and putting them in cereal boxes, along with their sack of free discs, thats a wee bit optimistic. You ready to go to Vegas and stake a few weeks of your pay on the projection?

If they can achieve that figure, more power to them. I think cheaper players is going to help - but this is still a niche (and may always be that way). Neither HD DVD or BD is ready for primetime sales like you suggest.

I think we continue to the status quo....HD DVD doing OK, selling players...but BD still in the lead, with the PS3 chugging along for them at a moderate pace...

nataraj

04-10-07, 02:52 PM

It would lead me to believe that a high percentage of that 150k has possible sold (maybe 100k or so). If the more expensive XA2 could sell that well, I would think the more broadly available, and cheaper, A2, would sell even better.

Are you sure the person who is telling you these things is not a BD plant - just trying to prove that attach rates on HD DVD is also very low ? ;)

Nescio

04-10-07, 03:08 PM

Toshiba has shipped over 150k XA2's. Now that is shipped, and not sold, but places like Amazon and VE seem to be moving a lot of these players

You can find exactly how many A2's amazon has sold by looking at the stock data on eproductwars. There seems to be some measurement issues around 3/9. But even taking the most optimistic look at these data gives you at most 2000 players sold since end of January. The XA2 has consistently ranked way lower than the A2. So it's definitely not Amazon which sold these 100,000 players.

Nescio

04-10-07, 03:11 PM

Are you sure the person who is telling you these things is not a BD plant - just trying to prove that attach rates on HD DVD is also very low ? ;)

Hah, now that is the most funny view I've heard. The BD side is trying to convince everyone that HD DVD players are selling incredibly well :rolleyes:

Phloyd

04-10-07, 03:14 PM

I think one of things a lot of us miss is that "missing titles" in any format can be easily supplanted with DVD. That is no different from titles unavailable in both formats. Most people - even the ones into HiDef - are not extremists who will completely stop watching DVDs.

I can't remember the last time I bought a movie on DVD.

It was well before either format launch in anticipation of the HD discs.

I am not going to buy Universal or Weinstein movies on DVD. I will wait for the BD releases - no matter how long it takes.

Phloyd

04-10-07, 03:20 PM

Are you referring to BD or HD DVD? :confused:

I am referring to HD DVD - the format that is missing around half of the top 10 box office movies for any given year of late.

wnorris

04-10-07, 03:22 PM

Are you sure the person who is telling you these things is not a BD plant - just trying to prove that attach rates on HD DVD is also very low ? ;)

Well, the number was shipped (actually, it was 150k manufactured, but I assumed Toshiba didn't warehouse 100k of these), and not sold. So there could be warehouses full of them, and only 10 k sold. But it just seems Amazon is selling them briskly, VE is selling them briskly. Since big box stores typically don't even carry them, it seems retail outlets and smaller retailers would be the source of any sales. I just don't see Toshiba manufacturing them for the sake of doing so, or making them and stockpiling a 6 month supply. In light of the brisk sales, I figured 66% of shipped as sold wouldn't be to far off base. Maybe it is though...

I still think we will see a huge bump in hardware sales for April, with a number around 100k. I've heard another promotion is in the works for May at some big box retailers (supposedly a $299.99 A2 [which means Amazon will probably be $250 by then]), which is supposed to generate a similar amount of interest. That would mean two months of 100k sales, plus a "regular" level of sales in June. Seems like player sales could push 500k by end of June, which makes a million players on the market possible by Christmas.

I hazard a guess that there will be $175-200 doorbuster A2's after Thanksgiving, with a regular price drop to $200 a few weeks before Christmas.

Toshiba lit the fuse by funding the Get 9 free promos, and I think HD-DVD sales are about to explode, both hardware and software.

Phloyd

04-10-07, 03:23 PM

I believe that the HD DVD companies expected a strong Blu-ray showing in the Nielson/Videoscan numbers during the first quarter and they chose not to fight it by concede the first quarter to Blu-ray. The rest of the year is more meaningful from a real sales perspective, and the first quarter is now history.

A history where since inception numbers were passed, number of available titles were passed ... seems like some pretty relevant history to just ignore...

It will certainly be interesting to see how the rest of the year plays out...

nataraj

04-10-07, 03:23 PM

Can we see an end to the BD plant accusations?

You missed the whole meaning of the post.

Nescio

04-10-07, 03:24 PM

Don't the N/V stats to date show a bit of a slow down in the constant rate of growth of Blu-ray disc sales during the last couple weeks?

Kosty, aren't you the rental guy? It seems to me that (for both formats) as the buying public expands, you get into segments of the population who are less likely to buy instead of rent. With uncertainty about the war, that effect must be even much bigger than it was with other technologies. While both BD and HD DVD software sales are improving, I don't think the rate of growth of either is a good indication of HD adoption. If there is any systematic difference between the demographics of both technologies, then even software sales may not give you a good picture of how well each technology is doing (since a lot of those who rent may turn into buyers when the fog of war starts lifting).

Phloyd

04-10-07, 03:24 PM

You missed the whole meaning of the post.

No I am simply tired of the whole thing.

Nescio

04-10-07, 03:26 PM

You missed the whole meaning of the post.

Indeed, but I guess it was more obvious (and more funny) to those who followed the whole attach rate discussions a while ago :)

wnorris

04-10-07, 03:26 PM

I can't remember the last time I bought a movie on DVD.

It was well before either format launch in anticipation of the HD discs.

I am not going to buy Universal or Weinstein movies on DVD. I will wait for the BD releases - no matter how long it takes.

You should get them around the same time HD-DVD gets Disney and Fox movies.

nataraj

04-10-07, 03:28 PM

Phloyd

04-10-07, 03:29 PM

You should get them around the same time HD-DVD gets Disney and Fox movies.

Only time will tell.

They will certainly have to fix the 'unmanaged copy' on HD DVD before Fox and even Disney will consider the format...

rto

04-10-07, 03:45 PM

I am referring to HD DVD - the format that is missing around half of the top 10 box office movies for any given year of late.

Your point was ostensibly about content, and there are a great many high quality/classic Universal catalog titles which aren't available on BD, so Blu-ray isn't immune from a similar charge. HD DVD also seems to be currently enjoying "timed exclusive" catalog releases from other studios. Then again, I suppose waiting is part-and- parcel of the BD format.

Rich Peterson

04-10-07, 03:48 PM

Referring to sales of HD-DVD units:

Seems like player sales could push 500k by end of June, which makes a million players on the market possible by Christmas.
Forecasts by the Consumer Electronics Association expect sales of about one million stand-alone units for both formats combined this year. Sorry, but this seems way overly optimistic.

Phloyd

04-10-07, 05:35 PM

Your point was ostensibly about content, and there are a great many high quality/classic Universal catalog titles which aren't available on BD, so Blu-ray isn't immune from a similar charge. HD DVD also seems to be currently enjoying "timed exclusive" catalog releases from other studios. Then again, I suppose waiting is part-and- parcel of the BD format.

Waiting is not a problem since I have plenty of titles to watch already.

Universal does indeed have many classics yet they are choosing to release very few of them to HD DVD. That said, there are of course a number of the catalogue titles that I would like to have. But I am very patient :)

However, we see titles like Casino Royale, Pirates of the Carribean and Cars coming to BD now or in the near future. These are recent, very popular movies that are still in people's memories.

Realistically, the day and date releases of recent popular movies are going to be the best sellers - this has been demonstrated with movies like The Departed and Casino Royale. Many of us have extensive DVD collections and the jump to buying a BD or HD DVD of something one already owns is more difficult than adding a title that one never owned.

It will be interesting to see how Pirates and Cars go since the DVDs have been released already...

Icemage

04-10-07, 05:52 PM

rto

04-10-07, 06:00 PM

Waiting is not a problem since I have plenty of titles to watch already.

Universal does indeed have many classics yet they are choosing to release very few of them to HD DVD. That said, there are of course a number of the catalogue titles that I would like to have. But I am very patient :)

However, we see titles like Casino Royale, Pirates of the Carribean and Cars coming to BD now or in the near future. These are recent, very popular movies that are still in people's memories.

Realistically, the day and date releases of recent popular movies are going to be the best sellers - this has been demonstrated with movies like The Departed and Casino Royale. Many of us have extensive DVD collections and the jump to buying a BD or HD DVD of something one already owns is more difficult than adding a title that one never owned.

It will be interesting to see how Pirates and Cars go since the DVDs have been released already...

I agree that day and date releases along with recent blockbuster catalog titles will move more product than most older/classic releases......but I personally tend to prefer the back catalog titles. Speaking of which, where the hell is Hitchcock?

I always thought double-dipping on DVD titles was a bit loony, but I've been repurchasing a number of my favorite films now that they're available on Hi-def. So much for principled consistency.

Kosty

04-10-07, 06:18 PM

100,000 per month!!!! Wow, I need to drink some of the Kool Aid you are drinking. 250,000 to date, give or take a few, and they will double that in the next 10 weeks???

Like a previous poster stated, unless they are partnering with Captain Crunch and putting them in cereal boxes, along with their sack of free discs, thats a wee bit optimistic. You ready to go to Vegas and stake a few weeks of your pay on the projection?

If they can achieve that figure, more power to them. I think cheaper players is going to help - but this is still a niche (and may always be that way). Neither HD DVD or BD is ready for primetime sales like you suggest.

I think we continue to the status quo....HD DVD doing OK, selling players...but BD still in the lead, with the PS3 chugging along for them at a moderate pace... Take a lot at thedigitalbits chart again

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/cemadvdsales.html

Notice how 1st quarter sales are always about half or less than the other quarters in the year for historical DVD player sales?

Notice how 4th quarter sales are highest?

To take projections from Jan, Feb and Mar and project them for the rest of the year is just silly.

Kosty

04-10-07, 06:21 PM

Well, the number was shipped (actually, it was 150k manufactured, but I assumed Toshiba didn't warehouse 100k of these), and not sold. So there could be warehouses full of them, and only 10 k sold. But it just seems Amazon is selling them briskly, VE is selling them briskly. Since big box stores typically don't even carry them, it seems retail outlets and smaller retailers would be the source of any sales. I just don't see Toshiba manufacturing them for the sake of doing so, or making them and stockpiling a 6 month supply. In light of the brisk sales, I figured 66% of shipped as sold wouldn't be to far off base. Maybe it is though...

I still think we will see a huge bump in hardware sales for April, with a number around 100k. I've heard another promotion is in the works for May at some big box retailers (supposedly a $299.99 A2 [which means Amazon will probably be $250 by then]), which is supposed to generate a similar amount of interest. That would mean two months of 100k sales, plus a "regular" level of sales in June. Seems like player sales could push 500k by end of June, which makes a million players on the market possible by Christmas.

I hazard a guess that there will be $175-200 doorbuster A2's after Thanksgiving, with a regular price drop to $200 a few weeks before Christmas.

Toshiba lit the fuse by funding the Get 9 free promos, and I think HD-DVD sales are about to explode, both hardware and software. Costo starting selling the HD A2 at their warehouse stores this week for $349. Thats a major retail event.

Those player sales should translate to disc sales soon.

I hazard a guess that there will be $175-200 doorbuster A2's after Thanksgiving, with a regular price drop to $200 a few weeks before Christmas. That seems pretty optimistic to me. I think other players will be at or below that price point, but not the HD A2.

Kosty

04-10-07, 06:32 PM

Referring to sales of HD-DVD units:

Forecasts by the Consumer Electronics Association expect sales of about one million stand-alone units for both formats combined this year. Sorry, but this seems way overly optimistic. They didn't know that Toshiba planned to drop HD DVD player prices this far so fast. ;)

Toshiba executives are on record as staing they project they will sell 1.2 million Toshiba HD DVD players this year.

We will have to wait and see.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/cemadvdsales.html

In 1998 DVD players sold 1,089,000 units in the year and the Jan Feb Mar sales of them back in 1998 were only 34,027 (Jan) 34,236 (Feb) 38,336 (Mar) for just over 100,000 units for the first quarter. In Sep 1998 DVD players were selling over 100,000 units and in Dec over 200,000 units.

So if HD DVD players are starting to move now, they can reach 1 million by the end of the year.......

Kosty

04-10-07, 06:34 PM

Kosty, aren't you the rental guy? It seems to me that (for both formats) as the buying public expands, you get into segments of the population who are less likely to buy instead of rent. With uncertainty about the war, that effect must be even much bigger than it was with other technologies. While both BD and HD DVD software sales are improving, I don't think the rate of growth of either is a good indication of HD adoption. If there is any systematic difference between the demographics of both technologies, then even software sales may not give you a good picture of how well each technology is doing (since a lot of those who rent may turn into buyers when the fog of war starts lifting). Maybe, but I think if street prices of HD DVD or Blu-ray Discs get to $19.99 that's the consumer price point for impulse buying.

If HD DVD or Blu-ray penetrates enough, those day and date releases that sell so well will start converting to HD sales.

Kosty

04-10-07, 06:52 PM

At last, I've finished my update to my spreadsheet!

In honor of the upcoming movie Transformers, I hereby present the Amazing Transforming Spreadsheet (TM)!

New in this version are:

- No more assumptions about starting figures.

- Error calculation against known weekly values, where the weekly numbers are known.

- New button: Toggle 2006. Shows/Hides the 2006 historical data provided by Nielsen/VideoScan.

- New button: Toggle Nielsen. Shows/Hides the 2007 historical data through 3/18 provided by Nielsen/VideoScan.

- New button: Toggle Projection. Shows/Hides the 2007 calculated projection data derived from figures published by Home Media Magazine.

http://endrop.com/album/photos/nuyoazmjwvtt22vxiwzi.jpg (http://endrop.com/viewer.php?file=nuyoazmjwvtt22vxiwzi.jpg)

Download the new version here: Great work, oh ye spreadsheet god. :D

Just looking at the Dec 2006 HD DVD weekly totals they averaged over 43,000 units per week for a total of 219,325 HD DVD units sold in Dec 06.

Then HD DVD sold only 249,451 N/V units in the next 11 weeks for a 22,677 average.

Does that imply that HD DVD could have sold an additional 20,000 units per week for 11 weeks in 2007 for a total of 220,000 more units if there were more HD DVD releases during that period? That would be enough to cover the SI shortfall and would be 2/3 of the YTD sales gap.

Its seems that the HD DVD side didn't really care what the numbers looked like during that period.

Kosty

04-10-07, 06:58 PM

huntaar

04-10-07, 08:06 PM

Robert said he sells about 20 a day. Similar to what Amazon seems to be selling. And that is about 3% of what Tosh sells WW. That comes to 20K per month WW. Going from there to the numbers you are quoting is such a huge jump - I don't see many buying these numbers.

Nataraj, I think the 20 per day claim by Robert is pretty believable when he stated that and is probably signifcantly higher since the price drop but nowhere near wnorris' claim.

Robert is averaging about 10 per day since he started selling players if my math is right.

From a recent post by Robert(VE), (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10243621&&#post10243621) he state he has sold 3800 HD DVD players total as of April 7th. Later in the thread, he said 300 of those were xbox add-ons. So 3500 Toshiba's sold by VE. Let's call that 3600 to get us to Toshiba's 1 year anniversary (April 18th in the US). That would work out to 300 a month or 10 a day on average for VE. If we assume Robert is still at the 3% of WW sales, that would give us 120,000 total HD DVD standalones sold.

Sketcha

04-10-07, 08:35 PM

Nice work, Ice.

Once again, thanks. :)

AnthonyP

04-10-07, 08:37 PM

Looking back it seems First Alert data for the week ending 3/11 were especially incomplete for both Blu-ray and HD DVD. Maybe one or more big retailers missed their deadlines?

Grubert. The only issue with that is that we get YTD and SI. If a batch was late we would have seen it the next week as a big jump.

wnorris

04-10-07, 08:40 PM

AnthonyP

04-10-07, 08:45 PM

Anyone think that Sony may have released the March 18th N/V sales report now because it may show the high water mark of Blu-ray over HD DVD sales?

Kosty: That is obvious, the same way Toshiba and the HD DVD PRG was over excited in Aug and published HD DVD ouslells BD disks 3:1 and they shut up after that because it went from 3:1 for HD DVD to 3:1 for BD

wnorris

04-10-07, 08:45 PM

How does the YTD projection columns work and what do they represent? i seee fixed values....

Can you adjust the numbers up by a fixed number say 1.25 to project for a 80% N/V capture rate? or 60% or 40% rate?

I don't think that sort of correction should be included, as it is based entirely on guesswork. The current sheet at least seems to be rooted in the facts of the Sony/Nielsen report.

huntaar

04-10-07, 09:04 PM

Having math trouble. 20 a day for VE and 20 a day for Amazon, would be 40 per day. If it is 3%, as you say, that would be 1333 per day. At 30 days per month, that is 40k player per month. Let's see, Jan-Mar would be 120k. Why would 150k manufactured seem so unreasonable?

The 3% came from Robert of VE for his sales alone. Why are you adding in Amazon's sales to this 3% figure? Cut your 120k in half.

AnthonyP

04-10-07, 09:18 PM

Having math trouble. 20 a day for VE and 20 a day for Amazon, would be 40 per day. If it is 3%, as you say, that would be 1333 per day. At 30 days per month, that is 40k player per month. Let's see, Jan-Mar would be 120k. Why would 150k manufactured seem so unreasonable?

wnorris: no, but this post does explain your other numbers. if the 20 a day and 3% are right (and considering Robert tends to add like you I don't trust any of his numbers) then who cares what Amazon does. 20 *100/3= 666 a day and 30*that gives 20K. why would you add the Amazon just because Nataraj said he thinks they also have roughly the same numbers?

Icemage

04-10-07, 09:51 PM

How does the YTD projection columns work and what do they represent? i seee fixed values....

Can you adjust the numbers up by a fixed number say 1.25 to project for a 80% N/V capture rate? or 60% or 40% rate?
I actually had that feature built into the previous version.

The Projection columns are a measure of the data we are getting from Home Media Magazine.

If you'd like, I can add more columns in the next version and allow for an optional multiplier to "project from the projection" as it were, and allow for a Nielsen coverage of X%.

nataraj

04-10-07, 10:06 PM

...Nataraj said he thinks they also have roughly the same numbers?

Just to clarify - 20 a day on Amazon came from someone who tracked the quantity on hand for HD-A2.

Alan Gordon

04-10-07, 10:13 PM

wnorris: no, but this post does explain your other numbers. if the 20 a day and 3% are right (and considering Robert tends to add like you I don't trust any of his numbers) then who cares what Amazon does. 20 *100/3= 666 a day and 30*that gives 20K. why would you add the Amazon just because Nataraj said he thinks they also have roughly the same numbers?

You shouldn't have been so public about adding those numbers... now some Blu-Ray fanboy is going to come on here and say that HD DVD is the devil's toy! ;)

I'm sorry guys... I couldn't help myself...

~Alan

nataraj

04-10-07, 10:15 PM

At last, I've finished my update to my spreadsheet!

So, you have taken actual ratios till 11th Feb and then HMM ratios. Any particular reason for this cut off (apart from thats when SI ratios flipped) ?

nataraj

04-10-07, 10:18 PM

Icemage

04-10-07, 10:47 PM

So, you have taken actual ratios till 11th Feb and then HMM ratios. Any particular reason for this cut off (apart from thats when SI ratios flipped) ?

HMM switched from finalized numbers to First Alert numbers at that point. I thought it would be informative to do a side-by-side comparison of the performance between First Alert versus the finalized figures.

As things stand, it looks like the current Nielsen First Alert data is undercounted by ~13K for Blu-ray and ~11K for HD DVD up through March 18th. We need to bear that in mind when looking at future numbers, as it's very possible that undercount will "bounce back" into the figures at some point. If I were a betting man, I'd say that may have happened on week of April 1. The numbers for both sides are abnormally high, even considering the new releases.

I'd almost prefer that HMM go back to just releasing finalized numbers. These First Alert figures are cool, but they're not really useful for the sort of projections we want to do (week-to-week sales), as evidenced by what happened on March 11th.

AnthonyP

04-10-07, 11:09 PM

Just to clarify - 20 a day on Amazon came from someone who tracked the quantity on hand for HD-A2.

OK, did not mean to over attribute to you. My point was that you were talking about two separate and distinct ideas "Robert has 20 a day and 3%" and "Amazon is roughly the same" and wnorrids amalgamated them together to try and get the numbers high enough to add some credibility to his own ridiculous numbers.

nataraj

04-10-07, 11:10 PM

http://endrop.com/album/photos/nuyoazmjwvtt22vxiwzi.jpg (http://endrop.com/viewer.php?file=nuyoazmjwvtt22vxiwzi.jpg)

There is small problem here. For the 1st of April the YTD ratio should be 43.16 not 43.6. That is why I'm getting 66,580 & 34,910 and you are getting 75,116 & 41,561.

nataraj

04-10-07, 11:12 PM

HMM switched from finalized numbers to First Alert numbers at that point. I thought it would be informative to do a side-by-side comparison of the performance between First Alert versus the finalized figures.

Makes sense.

As things stand, it looks like the current Nielsen First Alert data is undercounted by ~13K for Blu-ray and ~11K for HD DVD up through March 18th. We need to bear that in mind when looking at future numbers, as it's very possible that undercount will "bounce back" into the figures at some point. If I were a betting man, I'd say that may have happened on week of April 1. The numbers for both sides are abnormally high, even considering the new releases.

I'd almost prefer that HMM go back to just releasing finalized numbers. These First Alert figures are cool, but they're not really useful for the sort of projections we want to do (week-to-week sales), as evidenced by what happened on March 11th.

Right. The First alert corrects itself in one or two cycles. Though, the high numbers you get is because of the wrong ratio (atleast according to what was posted - haven't checked HMM).

Neo1965

04-10-07, 11:26 PM

Sorry if it's been covered, but has anyone OCR'ed the nielsen pdf to put all those per title sales data in a spreadsheet? TIA.

Icemage

04-10-07, 11:36 PM

There is small problem here. For the 1st of April the YTD ratio should be 43.16 not 43.6. That is why I'm getting 66,580 & 34,910 and you are getting 75,116 & 41,561.
Hmmm.. I typed that number in manually; was so focused on getting everything else right that I didn't see the numbers shift (though as you can tell above, I did notice the abnormally large numbers... lol).

EDIT: Here's corrected data and a revised spreadsheet with the right ratio for Apr 1.

http://endrop.com/album/photos/bynjnnljt5jegtmtyjto.jpg (http://endrop.com/viewer.php?file=bynjnnljt5jegtmtyjto.jpg)

Download corrected version here:

nataraj

04-11-07, 12:03 AM

Sorry if it's been covered, but has anyone OCR'ed the nielsen pdf to put all those per title sales data in a spreadsheet? TIA.

Someone posted that a while back. I posted an office 2007 version of it too.

wnorris

04-11-07, 12:32 AM

The 3% came from Robert of VE for his sales alone. Why are you adding in Amazon's sales to this 3% figure? Cut your 120k in half.

Okay, it was not clear when nat said it. He talked about VE and Amazon, and then the 3% figure, which I've never heard.

Regardless, Toshiba has manufactured over 150k XA2's. I don't believe they are just stockpiling them, so they had to go somewhere...

nataraj

04-11-07, 12:39 AM

Regardless, Toshiba has manufactured over 150k XA2's. I don't believe they are just stockpiling them, so they had to go somewhere...

Let me ask you this. How sure are you about this source of yours ?

150K of just XA2s is a lot of players when they have only sold some 50K in the first three months - it sounds like. Afterall that would mean even more of A2s have been made.

Grubert

04-11-07, 05:29 AM

The latest issue of HMM that contains a hagiography -er, tribute to Warren Lieberfarb. An interesting inclusion is a 'history of DVD' and the following scattered data:

Estimates show that as much as 40% of all DVD sales in the country occur in Wal-Mart stores.

The first DVD to ship 1 million units was Titanic, in August 1999.

The first DVD to sell 1 million units in a single day was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in October 2001.

joshd2012

04-11-07, 07:44 AM

Question about the graph:

What does the error column signify? Is that saying you have to take the projected number and then add that many to get the correct number? or is the correct number in there, and the error number the difference from what was projected using First Alert?

Wet1

04-11-07, 07:53 AM

Estimates show that as much as 40% of all DVD sales in the country occur in Wal-Mart stores.

While this may be true for DVD sales, I highly doubt optical HD sales are anywhere near that level. I know I've only bought one HD title from Walmart so far, and that was solely because I've only found HD discs in one out of four stores I've checked. I'll also add that the selection at that one store was very thin.

Icemage

04-11-07, 08:30 AM

What does the error column signify? Is that saying you have to take the projected number and then add that many to get the correct number? or is the correct number in there, and the error number the difference from what was projected using First Alert?
The five final weeks in the Error column show the difference between the First Alert data and the finalized data. Negative numbers mean the numbers in the projection are lower than the finalzed ones. So for instance, our projection on 3/11 shows over 10K fewer discs than on the real Nielsen report for both formats.

This is what I was referring to previously about the hazards of using First Alert data. It's still good for inferring general trends for YTD and SI, but not very useful at projecting week-to-week sales.

GmanAVS

04-11-07, 08:49 AM

:) ty Icemage for the new and improved spreadsheet. :)

joshd2012

04-11-07, 08:51 AM

The five final weeks in the Error column show the difference between the First Alert data and the finalized data. Negative numbers mean the numbers in the projection are lower than the finalzed ones. So for instance, our projection on 3/11 shows over 10K fewer discs than on the real Nielsen report for both formats.

This is what I was referring to previously about the hazards of using First Alert data. It's still good for inferring general trends for YTD and SI, but not very useful at projecting week-to-week sales.

So, are the projected numbers based on First Alert or Final data? In other words, is the estimate that the sell was 24739 to 5644? or was it 37733 to 17166?

Icemage

04-11-07, 10:18 AM

So, are the projected numbers based on First Alert or Final data? In other words, is the estimate that the sell was 24739 to 5644? or was it 37733 to 17166?

The projected numbers are based off of whatever Home Media Magazine publishes each week, which recently has been First Alert data (this is why the columns from Feb. 18 and later are all color coded orange).

The real Nielsen numbers on 3/11 were 37,733 BD vs. 17,166 HD, but our projection showed 24,739 BD vs. 5,644 HD. This was mostly due to a 1.12% error in the First Alert Year to Date ratio for HD DVD.

nataraj

04-11-07, 10:29 AM

So, are the projected numbers based on First Alert or Final data?

Apart from what ice said, we would need to use projected numbers from HMM using First Alert going forward. We have actual numbers from Nielsen only till 18th. I doubt Sony will give out the numbers again ... (atleast for a while).

Icemage

04-11-07, 10:50 AM

Apart from what ice said, we would need to use projected numbers from HMM using First Alert going forward. We have actual numbers from Nielsen only till 18th. I doubt Sony will give out the numbers again ... (atleast for a while).
Exactly. It's why I haven't chucked the First Alert data for 2/18-3/18 despite the fact that we have the actual figures from that five week period, and why I invested energy into allowing automatically hiding or displaying certain sets of data.

We need to see the history of how reliable (or otherwise in this case) the First Alert data is, since that's all we're going to get for the time being.. Hopefully this will serve as a warning to those on both sides of the fence who want to use the projected numbers as talking points as if they're gospel.

nataraj

04-11-07, 02:41 PM

Can someone compile the # of releases by studio and post it here. We already have data till 18th. I'm looking for 25th, 1st and possibly a few upcoming weeks. It is going to be interesting to see the correlation between that and the weekly sales.

wnorris

04-11-07, 05:21 PM

Let me ask you this. How sure are you about this source of yours ?

150K of just XA2s is a lot of players when they have only sold some 50K in the first three months - it sounds like. Afterall that would mean even more of A2s have been made.

I guess that means they sold more the 50k then doesn't it? ;)

The only other thing that I can think of that would help your POV is if players like the XE1 are also included in that number (since they are essentially the same machine, and probably manufactured at the same locations).

The e-mail I received (from a Toshiba employee) said XA2 though.

nataraj

04-11-07, 06:07 PM

I guess that means they sold more the 50k then doesn't it?
...
The e-mail I received (from a Toshiba employee) said XA2 though.

Well, it just means - you go with the source you trust more. Either VE or your source.

But looking at all other indicators (including videoscan data) I would go with VE numbers.

wnorris

04-11-07, 09:15 PM

Well, it just means - you go with the source you trust more. Either VE or your source.

But looking at all other indicators (including videoscan data) I would go with VE numbers.

I've never seen this comment from VE, tried to search for it, but still couldn't find it.

wnorris

04-11-07, 09:40 PM

Costo starting selling the HD A2 at their warehouse stores this week for $349. Thats a major retail event.

Those player sales should translate to disc sales soon.

That seems pretty optimistic to me. I think other players will be at or below that price point, but not the HD A2.

Is it still so hard to believe $200 by Christmas?

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=833089

nataraj

04-11-07, 09:52 PM

I've never seen this comment from VE, tried to search for it, but still couldn't find it.

See these two.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10101396&&#post10101396

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10103225&&#post10103225

nataraj

04-11-07, 09:58 PM

Is it still so hard to believe $200 by Christmas?

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=833089

I think $200 player street during the holiday season is highly probable.

UxiSXRD

04-12-07, 12:32 AM

looks like I'm waiting till then! I still do wish I could find a dirt cheap second (or third!) hand working XA1 to play Frankenstein with my add-on with, though.

PeterTHX

04-12-07, 04:18 AM

Originally Posted by Kosty
Costo starting selling the HD A2 at their warehouse stores this week for $349. Thats a major retail event.

Those player sales should translate to disc sales soon.

And the MS Zune is cheaper than the iPod. If you think price alone will win the war...

fistofsouth

04-12-07, 05:33 AM

And the MS Zune is cheaper than the iPod. If you think price alone will win the war...

Yes and the iPod was a refined product that reached the marketplace quite some time prior to Zune. Sort of like HD DVD is a refined product that reached the marketplace quite some time before Blu-Ray. This also ignores 2 facts:

1. A full-spec Blu-Ray device will not even be available until November.
2. Apple uses a purchase business model and Microsoft uses a rental business model while both HD DVD and Blu-Ray use a purchase business model.

DVD to DIVX is a much better (although still inadequate) comparison. DIVX had exclusive studios such as Disney and Fox, promised a brighter future than DVD, had better encryption than DVD and didn’t get a full-spec product to market until affordable DVD Players were already a reality.

WiFi-Spy

04-12-07, 06:53 AM

And the MS Zune is cheaper than the iPod. If you think price alone will win the war...

the iPod is nothing without iTunes.....

PeterTHX

04-12-07, 07:18 AM

DVD to DIVX is a much better (although still inadequate) comparison. DIVX had exclusive studios such as Disney and Fox, promised a brighter future than DVD, had better encryption than DVD and didn’t get a full-spec product to market until affordable DVD Players were already a reality.

DIVX was also pushed by a single sales entity looking for profit from royalties and monopoly.

DIVX had little hardware support, where the industry majority made DVD players.

DIVX had less studio support, a lot of studios supported DIVX but they all supported DVD as well.

DIVX had less capacity & special features.

DIVX was touted as a "better value" to consumers.

The PS2 didn't support DIVX...

Neo1965

04-12-07, 08:38 AM

Azumi

04-12-07, 09:02 AM

Hi, just a note. I check into this thread once or twice a day to try to catch the nielsen videoscan discussions, but it seems I have to go through 2 or 3 pages of mostly well written but off topic discussions. Sometimes I miss interesting posts and attachments if I don't have time. Is it possible to make it sticky, and have the very first post note that this thread is restricted to nielsen & videoscan sales numbers only?

Thanks.

I entirely agree with Neo1965. This thread is very interesting, but it's very easy to miss interesting data when one logs in occasionally.

No offense for the discussions, but wouldn't it be possible to spin off a second thread "data only" which will be maintained and updated only by the half dozen of people who contribute the latest charts and spreadsheets?

nataraj

04-12-07, 10:20 AM

And the MS Zune is cheaper than the iPod.

Really ? I thought they were priced the same. $249 for the 30GB models.

nataraj

04-12-07, 10:22 AM

The PS2 didn't support DIVX...

Weren't there 10M DVD CE players sold before PS2 launched ?

bobgpsr

04-12-07, 11:00 AM

On April 11th Toshiba says Nielsen says more than 900,000 HD DVD titles sold to date.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/04-11-2007/0004563643&EDATE=
WAYNE, N.J., April 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Toshiba America Consumer
Products, L.L.C. ("Toshiba") announced ... With more than 900,000 HD DVD discs sold to date, according to published Nielsen data

How does this correlate with Icemage's spreadsheet?

Isn't this about a 200K difference from what Sony says?

nataraj

04-12-07, 11:31 AM

How does this correlate with Icemage's spreadsheet?

Isn't this about a 200K difference from what Sony says?

Yes. I wonder whether Tosh took the HMM numbers (projected from Nielsen). That said 900K.

HD DVD Titles: Movie lovers take note - to complement growing HD DVD
player sales, more than 70 new HD DVD titles are scheduled to be released
between now and July 2007. With more than 900,000 HD DVD discs sold to
date, according to published Nielsen data, the momentum for HD DVD
continues to grow.

rdjam

04-12-07, 12:00 PM

Because you have blinders on.
Wow, your capacity for twisting the truth really knows no bounds. Read the part where he said "associate publisher of Home Media Magazine", not his friend. The people who run the magazine.
Here's the post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10077926&&#post10077926), as well as a couple (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10070350&&#post10070350) other (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9898690&&#post9898690) posts where Grubert mentions the editor and publisher.

And you know, we're getting tired of your constant efforts to derail, close, and otherwise question the point of a thread you had no real involvement in, and that was doing quite well on both sides. Your ignorance of where the data is coming from is obvious, as is your intent.
I'll pass on commenting on the less relevant comments in your post.

But I will not that the references to the two persons you refer to in Grubert's post does not refer to Amazon in any way. The references Grubert makes to those two individuals are in reference to whether Videoscan covers about 40% of the market or not - and do not confirm that Amazon is included in the Videoscan numbers.

rdjam

04-12-07, 12:19 PM

i work for sony blu ray incorporated, of course. Like you needed to tell us that ;)

From what paidgeek said the Hydra project was just a recommendation on a slide to advocate Blu-ray on forums. No, the meeting stated that BD camp was now entering Phase Hydra - nothing to do with a recommendation at all, but confirmation that it had started.

Something that I think the other side in this format war started doing long ago.B*ll*cks... :)

joshd2012

04-12-07, 12:51 PM

wnorris

04-12-07, 01:17 PM

And the MS Zune is cheaper than the iPod. If you think price alone will win the war...

The ipod video and Zune are both 249.95 at my local Wal-Mart. Seems like they are the same price to me...

wnorris

04-12-07, 01:26 PM

See these two.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10101396&&#post10101396

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10103225&&#post10103225

Well, both these links show that you misrepresented what was actually said.

The links say that Amazon sells around 20 per day of the XA2. Robert then reponds that is about what he sells per day. So is about also 20? 15? 25? Robert does not say he sells 20 per day of the XA2.

In the second link, Robert says, "We have continually sold about 3% of the world production of Toshiba branded HD DVD player for the past 12 months."

He doesn't say that he sells 3% of the XA2. He says he sells 3% of all Toshiba branded players, which looking at VE, means the A2, XA2, XA1, A1, and now A20. He could sell .5% of the XA2 and 5% of the A2 and still average 3% overall, depending on his volumes of the various model numbers.

Thanks for pointing out that you were distorting what was said...

nataraj

04-12-07, 01:33 PM

The links say that Amazon sells around 20 per day of the XA2. Robert then reponds that is about what he sells per day. So is about also 20? 15? 25? Robert does not say he sells 20 per day of the XA2.

That is A2. Not XA2. Sure, it can be 15 or 25. Doesn't change the overall picture.

Originally Posted by
It looks like they sell under 20 units a day of the A2.

Gary, how do you know? That's close to my A2 daily sales.

-Robert

In the second link, Robert says, "We have continually sold about 3% of the world production of Toshiba branded HD DVD player for the past 12 months."

Right.

We have continually sold about 3% of the world production of Toshiba branded HD DVD player for the past 12 months.

And you think an independant boutique shop like his sells less of XA2 than other places ?

While these are not mathematical proofs - they are common sense proofs that the 150K figure you are quoting is way off the mark.

wnorris

04-12-07, 01:40 PM

On April 11th Toshiba says Nielsen says more than 900,000 HD DVD titles sold to date.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/04-11-2007/0004563643&EDATE=

How does this correlate with Icemage's spreadsheet?

Isn't this about a 200K difference from what Sony says?

Couldn't such a difference be easily explained (I've stated this event could occur a few times before)? Ice's numbers only go through April 1. Likely any recent statement by Toshiba would be from April 8 data, which we don't have yet.

Now, CC just ran it's promotion for 4+5 free discs, starting on April 1, so the entire promotion would be covered by April 8 data. The 4 free discs counted as sales at CC (the player came up around $250 with $25 per disc or so). So each disc was was scanned at near full retail, and the discount for the promotion came up on the hardware.

My local CC sold around 40 A2's (there are two CC's actually, but I only visit one normally). If this was an average number per CC, you are looking at 26,000 A2 sales, which means 104,000 disc sales tracked by Nielsen, for that week period. My local store ran out of A2's by Friday night, and missed out on two days of the promotion. If other stores maintained stock, maybe the did 50-60 at those stores. The average per store could easily be higher than 40.

Combine the CC "sales" with the normal level of weekly sales, plus some folks may have got more than just the freebies, and it isn't a far stretch to get to 150k HD-DVD sales showing up on the April 8 data.

So when the new numbers come out, the difference between Ice's numbers and what Toshiba has reported may be much smaller than 200k. If so, it will also mean that for the week, HD-DVD will likely have a 2:1 ratio over BD, and YTD numbers will become much closer.

Now this week, the same promotion is occurring at Best Buy, which has 2X as many stores as CC. If the promotion is an equal success (and the "free" discs ring up as sales), next week HD-DVD might add 300k discs, with a 4:1 ratio over BD, and obliterate BD's YTD lead.

I think the momentum is swinging once again...

wnorris

04-12-07, 01:44 PM

That is A2. Not XA2. Sure, it can be 15 or 25. Doesn't change the overall picture.

Right.

And you think an independant boutique shop like his sells less of XA2 than other places ?

While these are not mathematical proofs - they are common sense proofs that the 150K figure you are quoting is way off the mark.

I'm saying that he may sell way more A2 than XA2. Just because everything lumped together sells 3%, in no way means that he sells 3% of each model. Common sense would tell us that he does not sell 3% of the worldwide total of each model number of HD-DVD manufactured (he doesn't even sell the E1 or XE1, which would count toward the global total he mentions).

nataraj

04-12-07, 01:59 PM

I'm saying that he may sell way more A2 than XA2. Just because everything lumped together sells 3%, in no way means that he sells 3% of each model. Common sense would tell us that he does not sell 3% of the worldwide total of each model number of HD-DVD manufactured (he doesn't even sell the E1 or XE1, which would count toward the global total he mentions).

That is obvious.

But, to me it is also obvious that Tosh makes more A2s than XA2s. Also that most places sell less of A2 than XA2. But, boutique shops sell a better percent of XA2 than other shops.

wnorris

04-12-07, 02:40 PM

That is obvious.

But, to me it is also obvious that Tosh makes more A2s than XA2s. Also that most places sell less of A2 than XA2. But, boutique shops sell a better percent of XA2 than other shops.

Whatever your thoughts, Robert at VE has stated nothing that directly contradicts the possibility of 150k XA2's being manufactured. You took comments that Robert made, not even about the XA2, and applied your own spin to make it an arguement against 150k XA2's being manufactured.

You asked who I would trust more, Robert @ VE, or my source in Toshiba. Well, since Robert never made the claims you stated he made regarding the XA2, I guest I'll trust my source over your interpretations of what should make sense, based on some loosley related comments made by VE.

fozziwig

04-12-07, 03:57 PM

Couldn't such a difference be easily explained (I've stated this event could occur a few times before)? Ice's numbers only go through April 1. Likely any recent statement by Toshiba would be from April 8 data, which we don't have yet....

Possible, but the article does refer to published data. Where has this been published?

You may still be right but I suspect they are refering to the figures up to April 1. My table shows HD DVD at 902,297 units. The difference is that Ice chooses to stick to guessing volume of Nielsen's market coverage. Whereas I prefer to use other numbers published throughout the year that hint at extrapolated volumes that are probably closer to the true state of the market.

For example:

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

I think 250,000:125,000 is more likely than 205,646:97,618 as shown in the Sony report. That would put Nielsen's coverage at close to 80% - more than I initially thought but probably not too far off.

ack_bk

04-12-07, 04:01 PM

Whatever your thoughts, Robert at VE has stated nothing that directly contradicts the possibility of 150k XA2's being manufactured. You took comments that Robert made, not even about the XA2, and applied your own spin to make it an arguement against 150k XA2's being manufactured.

You asked who I would trust more, Robert @ VE, or my source in Toshiba. Well, since Robert never made the claims you stated he made regarding the XA2, I guest I'll trust my source over your interpretations of what should make sense, based on some loosley related comments made by VE.

I think most of us would rather see some actual data from NPD. Does anybody know when we will see NPD data again?

nataraj

04-12-07, 04:23 PM

I think 250,000:125,000 is more likely than 205,646:97,618 as shown in the Sony report. That would put Nielsen's coverage at close to 80% - more than I initially thought but probably not too far off.

Here is a thought.

Does Nielsen itself also give a separate projected total ? Tosh / HMM could be using that.

wnorris

04-12-07, 04:40 PM

Possible, but the article does refer to published data. Where has this been published?

You may still be right but I suspect they are refering to the figures up to April 1. My table shows HD DVD at 902,297 units. The difference is that Ice chooses to stick to guessing volume of Nielsen's market coverage. Whereas I prefer to use other numbers published throughout the year that hint at extrapolated volumes that are probably closer to the true state of the market.

For example:

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

I think 250,000:125,000 is more likely than 205,646:97,618 as shown in the Sony report. That would put Nielsen's coverage at close to 80% - more than I initially thought but probably not too far off.

No.

Ice doesn't estimate market coverage, or at least that is the impression I'm under. Ice's latest table is comprised of the actual released Nielsen data, as provided by Sony, with no estimate of market coverage (Nielsen has told us how many discs they have tracked as sold up until March 18th).

You are the one who is guessing at numbers and trying to extrapolate market coverage. The Nielsen numbers are the disc count sold through tracked retailers. All these numbers were in the Sony report you referred to. If your numbers don't match the ones in that report (from Nielsen data), then you are inflating the numbers to try to estimate some type of market coverage.

Nielsen publishes their reports to studios first, then other subscribers. We will have April 8th data on Friday, as that is when HMM gets their published report. Studios would have had it on the 10th (and I'm sure one of them share that with Toshiba), so Toshiba would have had access to the April 8th data before this article was written.

wnorris

04-12-07, 04:43 PM

Here is a thought.

Does Nielsen itself also give a separate projected total ? Tosh / HMM could be using that.

How many times do we have to go around on this topic. Nielsen does not project to total market coverage. Don't you think that if they did so, that information would have also been icluded in the Sony report (Nielsen says 900k counted, with projections of 1.5 million actually sold). I think that would have definately been there had Nielsen provided such a number.

Grubert

04-12-07, 05:07 PM

TOP HD DVD TITLES FOR WEEK ENDED 4/8/2007

* 1 THE GOOD SHEPHERD (UNI, $39.98)
2 HAPPY FEET (WB, $39.99)
3 CHILDREN OF MEN (UNI, $39.98)
4 THE DEPARTED (WB, $39.99)
5 SUPERMAN RETURNS (WB, $39.99)
6 THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (WB, $28.99)
7 FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (UNI, $29.98)
8 BATMAN BEGINS (WB, $28.99)
9 THE LAST SAMURAI (WB, $28.99)
10 CASINO (UNI, $29.98)

TOP Blu-Ray TITLES FOR WEEK ENDED 4/8/2007

1 HAPPY FEET (WB, $34.99)
2 CASINO ROYALE (SONY, $38.96)
3 THE DEPARTED (WB, $34.99)
4 ROCKY BALBOA (SONY, $38.96)
5 ERAGON (FOX, $39.98)
6 THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS (SONY, $38.96)
7 THE FIFTH ELEMENT (SONY, $28.95)
8 HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS (SONY, $28.95)
9 KING ARTHUR (BV, $29.99)
10 THE PRESTIGE (BV, $34.99)

Source: Rentrak’s Retail Essentials ™.
Sales estimations are based on preliminary data provided through an exclusive arrangement with Rentrak Corp.’s Retail Essentials service. Point-of-Sale data is collected weekly and projected nationally for the U.S. bricks-and-mortar sales channel.

nataraj

04-12-07, 05:11 PM

How many times do we have to go around on this topic. Nielsen does not project to total market coverage. Don't you think that if they did so, that information would have also been icluded in the Sony report (Nielsen says 900k counted, with projections of 1.5 million actually sold). I think that would have definately been there had Nielsen provided such a number.

Don't know. If anyone has had access to Videoscan they can comment.

I know they don't project at title level (videoscan apparently gives data by title by region as well). How about a high level total projection ?

nataraj

04-12-07, 05:16 PM

TOP HD DVD TITLES FOR WEEK ENDED 4/8/2007

* 1 THE GOOD SHEPHERD (UNI, $39.98)
2 HAPPY FEET (WB, $39.99)
3 CHILDREN OF MEN (UNI, $39.98)
4 THE DEPARTED (WB, $39.99)
5 SUPERMAN RETURNS (WB, $39.99)
6 THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (WB, $28.99)
7 FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (UNI, $29.98)
8 BATMAN BEGINS (WB, $28.99)
9 THE LAST SAMURAI (WB, $28.99)
10 CASINO (UNI, $29.98)

TOP Blu-Ray TITLES FOR WEEK ENDED 4/8/2007

1 HAPPY FEET (WB, $34.99)
2 CASINO ROYALE (SONY, $38.96)
3 THE DEPARTED (WB, $34.99)
4 ROCKY BALBOA (SONY, $38.96)
5 ERAGON (FOX, $39.98)
6 THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS (SONY, $38.96)
7 THE FIFTH ELEMENT (SONY, $28.95)
8 HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS (SONY, $28.95)
9 KING ARTHUR (BV, $29.99)
10 THE PRESTIGE (BV, $34.99)

As of now this is what Netflix reports - an interesting comparison.

HD DVD

1. Million Dollar Baby
2. Ray
3. Syriana
4. Failure to Launch
5. The Break-Up
6. Batman Begins
7. Firewall
8. The Lake House
9. Rumor Has It
10. Ocean's Twelve

Blu-ray

1. Crash
2. Mr. and Mrs. Smith
3. Million Dollar Baby
4. Finding Neverland
5. The Da Vinci Code
6. Syriana
7. Click
8. Hitch
9. The Devil Wears Prada
10. Failure to Launch

Greg Kettell

04-12-07, 05:26 PM

Interesting because Da Vinci code isn't expected to be released until 2008.

MarekM

04-12-07, 05:36 PM

Combine the CC "sales" with the normal level of weekly sales, plus some folks may have got more than just the freebies, and it isn't a far stretch to get to 150k HD-DVD sales showing up on the April 8 data.
So when the new numbers come out, the difference between Ice's numbers and what Toshiba has reported may be much smaller than 200k. If so, it will also mean that for the week, HD-DVD will likely have a 2:1 ratio over BD, and YTD numbers will become much closer.

Now this week, the same promotion is occurring at Best Buy, which has 2X as many stores as CC. If the promotion is an equal success (and the "free" discs ring up as sales), next week HD-DVD might add 300k discs, with a 4:1 ratio over BD, and obliterate BD's YTD lead.

I think the momentum is swinging once again...

keep dreaming about 150k for april 8th and 300k for next week :)

Marek

nataraj

04-12-07, 06:15 PM

Interesting because Da Vinci code isn't expected to be released until 2008.

Netflix disagrees ;)

http://www.netflix.com/Genre?sgid=2444

Wonder what they are sending if you put that in queue ...

Nescio

04-12-07, 06:55 PM

If this was an average number per CC, you are looking at 26,000 A2 sales, which means 104,000 disc sales tracked by Nielsen, for that week period.

So, if I get this correctly, you're suggesting that more than 10% of HD DVD sales since inception was that one week's sale through CC? Hmm.

plazman

04-12-07, 07:05 PM

I appeal again to the mods to let us just deal with nielsen videoscan and top 5 here.

As for speculation about April 8. I don't understand why this is done when the numbers are out tomorrow. What's to be gained here?

Not sure if this was brought up. But Toshiba is using Nielson data as well to 'officially' say:

HD DVD Titles: Movie lovers take note - to complement growing HD DVD player sales, more than 70 new HD DVD titles are scheduled to be released between now and July 2007. With more than 900,000 HD DVD discs sold to date, according to published Nielsen data, the momentum for HD DVD continues to grow. Not stopping there, Toshiba wants to show consumer appreciation through its recently announced software promotion. Running through July 31, 2007, consumers who purchase any Toshiba HD DVD player can now get five HD DVD titles for free, from a selection of 15, via a mail-in offer. Full offer details are available at

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070411/new087.html?.v=1

nataraj

04-12-07, 07:37 PM

With more than 900,000 HD DVD discs sold to date, according to published Nielsen data, the momentum for HD DVD continues to grow.

This was posted earlier.

But interesting this - we know Apr 1st shows good increase in HD DVD sales. But looking at Amazon I don't think there is any kind of turnaround (i.e. HD selling more than BD) for the week ending Apr 8th. I doubt a sale by CC will affect the numbers that much (sale by BB didn't affect BD sales much).

Anyway, we just need to wait for a day. Ofcourse Tosh would have got the first alert numbers on Wednesday (yesterday) - though I doubt it will show anywhere close to 900K.

JBCricket

04-12-07, 07:59 PM

Another reference to 900,000 HD DVDs - note the date of the article 3/27.

Sony bets 100K on 'Casino' Blu-ray rollout
By Thomas K. Arnold

March 27, 2007
.
.
.
.
At the same time, Home Media Research shows Blu-ray Disc sales to consumers have now topped 1 million units, with more than 700,000 of those units sold this year. By contrast, Home Media Research pegs cumulative HD-DVD sales at 900,000 units, 310,000 of them being sold this year.

.
.
.
.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i0d15554c06ac16b8420b7964065d4a16

wnorris

04-12-07, 10:34 PM

Another reference to 900,000 HD DVDs - note the date of the article 3/27.

We have all seen that, but HMM admits that was their guess, not actual Nielsen numbers. The new article says Toshiba officially says 900k from Nielsen data.

I don't know why everyone is so dismissive of the impact of the Circuit City sale either. For every one player sold, it was a guarenteed "sale" of 4 discs. Do you really think Circuit City sold just one per store for the entire week or something?

Something has to explain why Toshiba said Nielsen was reporting 900k disc sales, when Ice's latest number is about 750k for April 1. I could see his estimates being 10% off or something (since he has real Nielsen data now except for the past two weeks). Something has to account for the difference, so why not a huge sale, at a major Big Box retailer, that was setup and designed by Toshiba to generate more disc "sales" to give their format parity.

The same offer was made for Best Buy in an attempt to actually put them into the lead again over BD.

nataraj

04-12-07, 10:39 PM

I don't know why everyone is so dismissive of the impact of the Circuit City sale either. For every one player sold, it was a guarenteed "sale" of 4 discs. Do you really think Circuit City sold just one per store for the entire week or something?

If HD DVDs sold so many - they would have surpassed BD sales for the week - and I'm sure Tosh would have mentioned that.

edo9125

04-13-07, 12:06 AM

If HD DVDs sold so many - they would have surpassed BD sales for the week - and I'm sure Tosh would have mentioned that.

I am skeptical about the Circuit City sales theory, but if it is true about sales getting a huge spike why would they mention that they sold more for last 7 day when they are annnouncing the release of the A20, it wouldnt make much sense and doesnt fit in the format of the press release it would make it seem awkward and desperate. It would go something like this (portion added by me is underlined):

Movie lovers take note - to complement growing HD DVD player sales, more than 70 new HD DVD titles are scheduled to be released between now and July 2007. With more than 900,000 HD DVD discs sold to date, and outselling Blu-ray from Apr 3-10 according to published Nielsen data, the momentum for HD DVD continues to grow.

So even if it did happen I wouldnt make sense that they mention it now.

Also BD people can just reply by saying they out sold HD DVD out for the last 4 months.

fistofsouth

04-13-07, 12:20 AM

DIVX was also pushed by a single sales entity looking for profit from royalties and monopoly.

DIVX had little hardware support, where the industry majority made DVD players.

Several companies made "DIVX enhanced" DVD players, but yes there were more companies making standard DVD players.

DIVX had less studio support, a lot of studios supported DIVX but they all supported DVD as well.

The studios I specifically referenced (Fox and Disney) were DIVX EXCLUSIVES until DIVX failed. They did not become supporters of DVD until DIVX failed. Paramount did the same thing and they all did it because DIVX was touted as having better encryption. Sound familiar?

DIVX had less capacity & special features.

DIVX had the same capacity and more special features. A DIVX enhanced DVD Player was just that, a DIVX enhanced DVD Player. That means it was a DVD player PLUS it was capable of being used for DIVX rentals and eventual DIVX Gold discs. How does adding features to a standard DVD player reduce it’s disc capacity? How does adding features to a DVD player make it have fewer features than a DVD player?

DIVX was touted as a "better value" to consumers.

The PS2 didn't support DIVX...

DIVX was touted as many things to consumers as are all CE products. I’ve heard more than one person on these boards tout the PS3 as a “better value” than HD DVD players, the Xbox 360, eternal salvation…well you get the point.

I see some parallels between DIVX/DVD and Blu-Ray/HD DVD, but there are definitely differences. Feel free to use the iPod/Zune example if you like, but I think it’s a poor comparison.