Nielsen/VideoScan sales ratios and Top 5 [Text View] - Page 30

camaj

06-08-07, 01:46 PM

This is off-topic, yet I'm compelled. By the same logic BD guys blame HD DVD as "spoiler" rather than a healthy does of competition, smacks of "If HD DVD lives it will ruin everything"

You disagree? Maybe not "everything" but it's fair to say that people are staying away because, partly, of the war. No war, better for everyone who isn't invested in the success of HD DVD. It's funny and disappointing that the HD DVD supporters haven't caved in earlier because ultimately they have more to loose by dragging things out. The quicker this is resolved, the quicker we can go back to enjoying the films

Edit: Numbers in. Pretty surprised at how good the numbers are. I would have thought it'd be 50/50 or even HD DVD in the lead considering they've slashed prices yet again and the A2 is the best selling player on amazon.com . Can we deduce that HD DVD owners are buying the machines not realising they have to buy HD DVD discs too?

spacejamz

06-08-07, 01:46 PM

Blood Diamond will show up next week. It was just released on 6/5/07. This i the list for 6/2/07.

fitprod

ooopsssss...

theflux

06-08-07, 01:47 PM

So s.m.f is this weeks winner, and Kosty wasn't to far off with his 'enthusiastic' bid either.

Nope, he was closer than I was. Maybe I need to be a little less enthusiastic ;)

I am really surprised to see the Matrix drop off so fast, I would have expected all of the new player sales to generate some interest in what is arguably the most compelling catalog release for HD DVD yet.

Week: 61/39
Year: 67/33
SI: 59/41

And another point gained in the Since Inception numbers. It seems interesting this would gain twice in two weeks. I really despise the complete lack of precision on these numbers.

eightninesuited

06-08-07, 01:48 PM

These were the movies in contention for that week:

HD DVD:

Dragonheart (Universal)
The Frighteners (Universal)
Lost in Translation (Universal)
Midnight Run (Universal)
The River (Universal)

Blu-ray:

Basic Instinct (Lionsgate)
Chris Botti Live with Orchestra and Special Guests (Sony BMG)
Curse of the Golden Flower (Sony)
Weeds: Season One (Lionsgate)

camaj

06-08-07, 01:59 PM

I am really surprised to see the Matrix drop off so fast, I would have expected all of the new player sales to generate some interest in what is arguably the most compelling catalog release for HD DVD yet.

On the other hand we could suppose that a person who feels $300 is too much for a player would also think $100+ too much for three titles? That buyer would probably wait until prices dropped on discs or the discs are available separately, if they don't want all 3

It seems interesting this would gain twice in two weeks.

Twice yes, but not necessarily 2% It may have gone from 57.9-59.0 in two weeks. The most likely explanation is that sales are high this week compared to the start of the war, but neither side saw much gain in market share

UxiSXRD

06-08-07, 02:11 PM

Very interesting, especially on SI.

Glad to see 1,2,3 are what I would have expected to. Apocalypto must not have dropped THAT much.

Planet Earth dethrones the Matrix very fast on the HDDVD side.

f300v10

06-08-07, 02:20 PM

Planet Earth dethrones the Matrix very fast on the HDDVD side.

No it didn't. If you add the Ultimate + Complete you get 141.54%. So the Matrix is still the best selling HD-DVD title, and an expensive one at that.

jebel

06-08-07, 02:22 PM

On a related note, when do the numbers come out each week? I get mixed up between peoples predictions and such and the first official post of the actual sales ratios. Are they always from Nielsen?

I get mixed up on these too. Could people maybe try their best to put language indicating guess or actual numbers when posting, just for clarity?

Other thoughts:
- SI numbers increasing 2 weeks in a row indicate increasing volumes.
- 0 of the releases for this week were on the top 10. Catalog titles just don't move.

Phloyd

06-08-07, 02:25 PM

I've reported this post to mods.

That is the correct thing to do when you see a post that it not appropriate.

Calling the person a liar is not the correct thing to do.

I am glad that you have seen the light.

Looks like my 65:35 was a little enthusiastic also! :)

Interesting to see the SI converge towards the weekly once again...

jebel

06-08-07, 02:31 PM

Pretty surprised at how good the numbers are. I would have thought it'd be 50/50 or even HD DVD in the lead considering they've slashed prices yet again and the A2 is the best selling player on amazon.com . Can we deduce that HD DVD owners are buying the machines not realising they have to buy HD DVD discs too?

Eh...It's probably more reasonable to just deduce that, despite the PS3's relative lack of success vs Wii/XBOX, the "attach rate" for PS3/BD is high enough that, when combined with other BD standalone sales, gives BD an instrinsic 60/40 edge at this point. Simple as that.

jpb123

06-08-07, 02:36 PM

1. Pirates: DMC 100.00
2. Pirates: CBP 84.63
3. Apocolypto 82.92
4. Planet Earth (HD) 41.26
5. Letters from Iwo Jima (BD) 33.23
6. Ultimate Matrix 30.19
7. Planet Earth (BD) 28.97
8. Complete Matrix 28.21
9. Letters from Iwo Jima (HD) 27.48
10. Casino Royale 24.30

Just put Pirates: DMC at 10.000 for the week and we should be pretty close. That fits well with both PE formats and with Casino Royale.

I for one will stop using Rentrak ranks for anything. This is I believe the third time in the last four weeks that they have had a couple of titles so far off that it's not even funny. Apocalypto managed to sell three times as much as PE BD eventhough it was behind on Rentrak.

In general it seem like most of the releases in their second week did between 40-50% of their first week. Pretty normal, possibly even a little better than most titles in the past.

geko29

06-08-07, 02:43 PM

I am really surprised to see the Matrix drop off so fast, I would have expected all of the new player sales to generate some interest in what is arguably the most compelling catalog release for HD DVD yet.

Actually it picked up a bit of ground from last week, at least relative to POTC: DMC. Last week 51 copies of the matrix trilogy (both versions) were sold for every 100 copies of POTC: DMC. This week it's 58 for every hundred. If you bundle both POTCs together, it was 30 per 100 last week and 32 per 100 this week.

Schlotkins

06-08-07, 02:43 PM

Just put Pirates: DMC at 10.000 for the week and we should be pretty close. That fits well with both PE formats and with Casino Royale.

I for one will stop using Rentrak ranks for anything. This is I believe the third time in the last four weeks that they have had a couple of titles so far off that it's not even funny. Apocalypto managed to sell three times as much as PE BD eventhough it was behind on Rentrak.

In general it seem like most of the releases in their second week did between 40-50% of their first week. Pretty normal, possibly even a little better than most titles in the past.

If I'm doing my quick math right, the ratio of pirates to the matrix is about the same as last week right? I wonder what the $$ breakdown is for the week. I bet it's very close to 50/50.

Big J

06-08-07, 02:44 PM

Edit: Numbers in. Pretty surprised at how good the numbers are. I would have thought it'd be 50/50 or even HD DVD in the lead considering they've slashed prices yet again and the A2 is the best selling player on amazon.com . Can we deduce that HD DVD owners are buying the machines not realising they have to buy HD DVD discs too?
Perhaps they are buying discs that aren't in the top 5 or 10. To today's buyer, all titles are new this week. With 200 + titles out there, one could pick up half a dozen discs not in the top 10, and it wouldn't show up on these weekly ratios at all.
J

Phloyd

06-08-07, 02:49 PM

Eh...It's probably more reasonable to just deduce that, despite the PS3's relative lack of success vs Wii/XBOX, the "attach rate" for PS3/BD is high enough that, when combined with other BD standalone sales, gives BD an instrinsic 60/40 edge at this point. Simple as that.

I was actually just thinking that in many respects the BDA and HD DVD PRG have a different task ahead of them, or at least a different focus.

BDA needs to get PS3 owners to buy discs (and sell more standalone players).

HD DVD needs to sell more players (and get HD DVD owners to buy discs).

Needless to say the HD DVD approach is clear. Though the movie giveaway would tend to stifle disc sales that usually are associated with player sales...

Ah well, on to next week.... :)

Phloyd

06-08-07, 02:53 PM

These were the movies in contention for that week:

It is interesting that new catalogue titles are beaten out by existing 'new' titles (though Matrix and Pirates are catalogue titles also I guess).

I guess typical catalogue releases are a hard sell at the moment...

It would be very interesting to know what percentage of sales the top 5 for each format represents...

briankmonkey

06-08-07, 03:01 PM

:D I can only imagine the weeks that Matrix hit blu-ray as well as Batman begins

Phloyd

06-08-07, 03:13 PM

:D I can only imagine the weeks that Matrix hit blu-ray as well as Batman begins

The end of the year will be interesting times.

Expectations:

Titles like Pirates 3, Cars, Spiderman 3 (and 1 and 2?) coming to BD, as well as profile 1.1 players and titles including a Warner catch up for Batman Begins, Charlie, Harry Potter and The Matrix. As well as some titles from Fox and MGM ?!?! ;)

Titles like Bourne 3, Knocked Up and Evan Almighty from Universal.

Certainly we can expect to see things reach fever pitch in Q4...

nataraj

06-08-07, 03:13 PM

05/13 62/38 68/32 57/43
05/20 58/42 67/33 57/43
05/27 69/31 67/33 58/42
06/03 61/39 67/33 59/41

This is possible only if
- On 5/20 SI was already close to 57/43. Something like 57.44.
- On 5/27 SI moved a LOT (full 1 point) bringing it close to 59 ... something like 58.44
- On 6/03 SI moved a little to 58.5 .... rounding it up to 59.

s.m.f

06-08-07, 03:14 PM

So s.m.f is this weeks winner, and Kosty wasn't to far off with his 'enthusiastic' bid either.

Wow and I almost never win :)

Interesting that on the bd chart top three seems to be "close" in sales but number four drops rather drastically (27,68%) compared to number 4 on hd dvd chart (66,59%) what can we make out of that? My guess is that this means that
1: the to three bd sells plenty
2: the hd dvd has sales spread more evenly on more titles

another interesting (I think) point is the fact that Pe and both matrix sets (top three) are "rather" expensive titles.

But these are just my speculations, may not have anything to do with true facts :)

s.m.f

06-08-07, 03:16 PM

Perhaps they are buying discs that aren't in the top 5 or 10. To today's buyer, all titles are new this week. With 200 + titles out there, one could pick up half a dozen discs not in the top 10, and it wouldn't show up on these weekly ratios at all.
J

hmm not sure I follow... aren´t these nielsen numbers based on "all" sales (bd and hd dvd) ? or do they only track toppsellers?

plazman

06-08-07, 03:20 PM

I believe titles like Batman will show up in TotalHD disks and may not be BD at all! I wonder what that will do to Neilson sales rankings!

Schlotkins

06-08-07, 03:20 PM

hmm not sure I follow... aren´t these nielsen numbers based on "all" sales (bd and hd dvd) ? or do they only track toppsellers?

He's saying with 200 titles out, unless there is a systematic pattern in new buyer purchases of old titles, they are not going to show up in the top 10.

Chris

Big J

06-08-07, 03:23 PM

hmm not sure I follow... aren´t these nielsen numbers based on "all" sales (bd and hd dvd) ? or do they only track toppsellers?

AFAIK, they only track the top sellers (or at least for the numbers here). The ratios are for the top 5 of each format.
That's why I questioned their relevance the other day.
J

Big J

06-08-07, 03:25 PM

I believe titles like Batman will show up in TotalHD disks and may not be BD at all! I wonder what that will do to Neilson sales rankings!
How would THD discs even be counted?
J

dad1153

06-08-07, 03:46 PM

BDA needs to get PS3 owners to buy discs (and sell more standalone players).

HD DVD needs to sell more players (and get HD DVD owners to buy discs).

Advantage: BDA. It's easier to convince people that already have a PS3 in their homes to blow an extra $15/20/30 on a BD movie or two than to convince them to buy a new high-def player (even at $199-249) plus buy some $15/20/30 movies (HD-DVD's two-tier mountain to climb). But of those PS3 owners that don't buy BD movies, how many own an HDTV? And of this now-smaller group of HDTV owners, how many know that you need component and/or HDMI cables to get true HD when they might be fooled into thinking the composite cable packed-in with the PS3 (dumbest decision Sony ever made after the sky-high price) is all they need to get high-definition? Still, the BD player is in the home of every PS3 owner waiting for him/her to unlock the HD potential that HD-DVD can't get until an equal or larger amount of folks own an HD-DVD player (or a hybrid player).

Timothy Ramzyk

06-08-07, 03:54 PM

I get mixed up on these too. Could people maybe try their best to put language indicating guess or actual numbers when posting, just for clarity?

Other thoughts:
- SI numbers increasing 2 weeks in a row indicate increasing volumes.
- 0 of the releases for this week were on the top 10. Catalog titles just don't move.

How about a simple template?

HDM NUMBERS
61:39

Neo1965

06-08-07, 03:57 PM

AFAIK, they only track the top sellers (or at least for the numbers here). The ratios are for the top 5 of each format.
That's why I questioned their relevance the other day.
J

If you meant weekly/SI/YTD numbers, that's total all disks. There is a seperate top5/top10 titles HD/BD/combined that is often tracked, but those are separate numbers.

Timothy Ramzyk

06-08-07, 04:10 PM

You disagree? Maybe not "everything" but it's fair to say that people are staying away because, partly, of the war. No war, better for everyone who isn't invested in the success of HD DVD. Yes, I surely do.
I think you might have to get used to the idea that there are two formats, and even one that sells fewer disks may thrive on it's share of the market. I've said this a million times before, but it's not my responsibility as a consumer to make either format a success. I have my own criteria for what I think deserves my support and act accordingly, end of story.

Edit: Numbers in. Pretty surprised at how good the numbers are. I would have thought it'd be 50/50 or even HD DVD in the lead considering they've slashed prices yet again and the A2 is the best selling player on amazon.com . Can we deduce that HD DVD owners are buying the machines not realising they have to buy HD DVD discs too?Well, I gotta say at this point the numbers are just a sort of amusement for me, they signal neither the life or death of either individual format as long as they stay in tiny-town. I'm not surprised, Matrix isn't cheap and to go on a date with her you have to pay to have the two ugly sisters along. I'm waiting for the single-disk edition.

s.m.f

06-08-07, 04:13 PM

If you meant weekly/SI/YTD numbers, that's total all disks. There is a seperate top5/top10 titles HD/BD/combined that is often tracked, but those are separate numbers.

ok, that´s what I thought.

I was wondering about this earlier (copy and paste again :o ), anyone with thougths on this:

Interesting that on the bd chart top three seems to be "close" in sales but number four drops rather drastically (27,68%) compared to number 4 on hd dvd chart (66,59%) what can we make out of that? My guess is that this means that
1: the top three bd sells plenty
2: the hd dvd has sales spread more evenly on more titles

another interesting (I think) point is the fact that Pe and both matrix sets (top three) are "rather" expensive titles, when they drop in sales, will buyers spend as much $ on purchases, meaning more item sales?

But these are just my speculations, may not have anything to do with true facts

Leterface

06-08-07, 04:47 PM

Big J

06-08-07, 04:48 PM

Allright, thank you Big J, now I understand a whole more of these Nielsen numbers.
Apparently I was wrong. :(
J

Grubert

06-08-07, 05:05 PM

AFAIK, they only track the top sellers (or at least for the numbers here). The ratios are for the top 5 of each format.

Actually the ratio for the top 5 of each format this week is 70/30.

So, no.

UxiSXRD

06-08-07, 05:07 PM

Actually the ratio for the top 5 of each format this week is 70/30.

THAT is certainly interesting. I'd WAG the quantities for the lower ranking discs must be VERY small...

Where are the numbers of the top 5 available?

Phloyd

06-08-07, 05:14 PM

Where are the numbers of the top 5 available?

You should be able to calculate them based on the relative percentages.

Grubert

06-08-07, 05:17 PM

THAT is certainly interesting. I'd WAG the quantities for the lower ranking discs must be VERY small...

Where are the numbers of the top 5 available?

BD:

1. Pirates DMC 100.00
2. Pirates CBP 84.63
3. Apocalypto 82.92
4. Letters from Iwo Jima 33.23
5. Planet Earth 28.97

HD DVD:
1. Planet Earth 41.26
2. Ultimate Matrix 30.19
3. Complete Matrix 28.21
4. Letters from Iwo Jima 27.48
5. Flags of Our Fathers 17.49

Grubert

06-08-07, 05:46 PM

Other additional figures...

xx Flags of Our Fathers BD 18.51
yy Curse of the Golden Flower BD 18.11
zz Flags of Our Fathers HD 17.49

UxiSXRD

06-08-07, 06:46 PM

You should be able to calculate them based on the relative percentages.

Ah yeah, that makes sense, duh.

camaj

06-08-07, 07:03 PM

BDA needs to get PS3 owners to buy discs (and sell more standalone players).

HD DVD needs to sell more players (and get HD DVD owners to buy discs).

No need to over complicate, both companies need to sell players and then discs to those buyers. The BDA could attempt to convince PS3 owners who didn't buy the PS3 solely as a BD-player to buy discs but I doubt they really need to specifically target them rather than target BD owners in general. Given that those people make up a small segment they wouldn't even warrant it, even if it were possible.

Baccusboy

06-08-07, 07:20 PM

UxiSXRD

06-08-07, 07:22 PM

No need to over complicate, both companies need to sell players and then discs to those buyers. The BDA could attempt to convince PS3 owners who didn't buy the PS3 solely as a BD-player to buy discs but I doubt they really need to specifically target them rather than target BD owners in general. Given that those people make up a small segment they wouldn't even warrant it, even if it were possible.

Right on the selling standalones and discs to them part, but if they could ensure say a 50%+ attach rate on the PS3 they would slam the door on any hopes the HDDVD group could have as disc sales could be 5-10 times anything Toshiba could ever hope for. Sony should be hitting all the PS3 groups for official buy days with store dispaly promos and all that. Frys' sale has been the closest as were the Best Buy 50% off but they were pretty low key. Imagine a new Blu-ray endcap with a PS3 and a Blu-ray standalone with Blu-ray movies all over it and a big banner. It would be icing on the cake if they did it in the Magnolia section on the likes of the 70" SXRD.

UxiSXRD

06-08-07, 07:24 PM

Looks like Pirates was an utter failure. Even with its introduction, BR lost nearly 10 percent!

Here's a hint, the week of Pirates/Matrix intro was the week before. ;) Hint 2: look at YTD and SI when you're doing comparisons.

theforce8686

06-08-07, 07:25 PM

So, with the introduction of Pirates on BR, and all of the hoopla surrounding it, we've gone from this:
http://www.tsurugi.co.uk/misc/hdmarketshare_5-27.jpg

To this:
http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t147/Greenmatiz2/niel.jpg

Looks like Pirates was an utter failure. Even with its introduction, BR lost nearly 10 percent!

What caused that? Cheap HD-DVD players boosting sales?

Shouldn't the other numbers (YTD) adjust more? They haven't budged.

Next week should be different, given the Sony 3 for 2 sale.

I hope youre kidding right. HD had its biggest release since inception. It still looks as if YTD BD is still increasing its lead. Spin how you want but HD isnt gonna be catching BD anytime soon.

Baccusboy

06-08-07, 07:26 PM

Am finding that out now... everyone spent their wad during pirates week, and took a week off.

Next week will be big with the 3:2 Sony sale.

theflux

06-08-07, 08:12 PM

So, with the introduction of Pirates on BR, and all of the hoopla surrounding it, we've gone from this:
http://www.tsurugi.co.uk/misc/hdmarketshare_5-27.jpg

To this:
http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t147/Greenmatiz2/niel.jpg

Looks like Pirates was an utter failure. Even with its introduction, BR lost nearly 10 percent!

What caused that? Cheap HD-DVD players boosting sales?

Shouldn't the other numbers (YTD) adjust more? They haven't budged.

Next week should be different, given the Sony 3 for 2 sale.

If "Pirates was an utter failure." and Blu-ray outsold HD DVD by a sizeable margin, what does that make The Matrix on HD DVD? A total disaster? A smoking crater? A joke?

I think its safe to say that neither performed to expectations, but don't just single one out.

Phloyd

06-08-07, 08:27 PM

I hope youre kidding right. HD had its biggest release since inception. It still looks as if YTD BD is still increasing its lead. Spin how you want but HD isnt gonna be catching BD anytime soon.

I think he missed which week Pirates was actually released.

IE, the rise to 69% was due to Pirates, not the fall to 61%...

Timothy Ramzyk

06-08-07, 08:29 PM

If the SONY sale is a major influence on next weeks numbers their really is no market yet.

It's only my opinion, but 3/4 of those titles are duds, have already been on sale once, and 3 for 2 isn't as sweet as 1/2 off because you have to find three you want.

kevinca1

06-08-07, 09:05 PM

Reopened. Please keep to the forum rules. Hope things will be calm for now on. Remember challange the info not the poster.

jpb123

06-09-07, 08:52 PM

Going with 13.900 Matrix two weeks ago, since that's a more exact figure than almost 47.000 for Pirates and 10.000 for Pirates: DMC this week , since that gives reasonable numbers for other titles we would get these combined numbers for the last two weeks:

33.492 Pirates Dead Man
29.453 Pirates Curse
25.613 Apocalypto
19.738 Matrix (10.837 ultimate, 8.901 complete)
17.521 Letter from Iwo Jima (9.591 BD, 7.930 HD DVD)
13.864 Planet Earth (5.615 BD, 8.249 HD DVD)
8.392 Flags of our Fathers (4.637 BD, 3.755 HD DVD)

jpb123

06-09-07, 08:59 PM

Using the same presumptions as above.

Top 7 BD are this week 49% of last week
Top 5 BD are this week 50% of last week
Top 5 HD DVD are this week 57% of last week

nataraj

06-10-07, 12:25 AM

Week: 61/39
Year: 67/33
SI: 59/41

Ignoring SI (since the numbers come out all whacky) and using only weekly and yearly ratios, this is what I get.

Last week I had assumed 67.44 for the YTD ratio (last several weeks its been reported as 67/33 forcing me to assume numbers). This week the number can be anywhere between 67.4 to 66.5. Here are the BD weekly numbers I get for various numbers in that range ...

67.4 5,635
67.3 20,037
67.2 34,904
67.1 50,258
67.0 66,123
...
66.5 154,105

If we assume the Planet Earth is relatively stable - its weekly numbers were calculated as being in the range of 4K for HD DVD - we get 32K for top 5 of BD and 14K for top 5 of HD. That compares to some 75K for top 5 of BD last time.

Using this, I'd guess the ratio is close to 67.1/32.9 and thus the BD weekly number is close to 50K, HD DVD would be 32K.

http://img353.imageshack.us/img353/2562/bdhdweeklypd9.png (http://imageshack.us)

nataraj

06-10-07, 12:32 AM

Going with 13.900 Matrix two weeks ago, since that's a more exact figure than almost 47.000 for Pirates and 10.000 for Pirates : DMC this week , since that gives reasonable numbers for other titles we would get these combined numbers for the last two weeks:...

I took 4K for PE HD DVD that you had calculated earlier and that comes to 9,700 for POTC : DMC - very close to 10K.

Sketcha

06-10-07, 03:02 PM

Ignoring SI (since the numbers come out all whacky) and using only weekly and yearly ratios, this is what I get.

Last week I had assumed 67.44 for the YTD ratio (last several weeks its been reported as 67/33 forcing me to assume numbers). This week the number can be anywhere between 67.4 to 66.5. Here are the BD weekly numbers I get for various numbers in that range ...

67.4 5,635
67.3 20,037
67.2 34,904
67.1 50,258
67.0 66,123
...
66.5 154,105

If we assume the Planet Earth is relatively stable - its weekly numbers were calculated as being in the range of 4K for HD DVD - we get 32K for top 5 of BD and 14K for top 5 of HD. That compares to some 75K for top 5 of BD last time.

Using this, I'd guess the ratio is close to 67.1/32.9 and thus the BD weekly number is close to 50K, HD DVD would be 32K.

http://img353.imageshack.us/img353/2562/bdhdweeklypd9.png (http://imageshack.us)
Thanks nat

nataraj

06-10-07, 03:43 PM

If we assume the Planet Earth is relatively stable - its weekly numbers were calculated as being in the range of 4K for HD DVD - we get 32K for top 5 of BD and 14K for top 5 of HD. That compares to some 75K for top 5 of BD last time.

Using this, I'd guess the ratio is close to 67.1/32.9 and thus the BD weekly number is close to 50K, HD DVD would be 32K.

This also means - the difference between HD DVD and BD is in the top 5 ! Both of them have 18K for the rest.

jpb123

06-10-07, 04:03 PM

This also means - the difference between HD DVD and BD is in the top 5 ! Both of them have 18K for the rest.

Well, we only have the top 5 to compare . It seems likely though that BD is ahead for a bit further down. On the average I think the cut off point is somewhere between number 10-15 for each format. Above that BD is ahead. Further down HD DVD is generally ahead.

s.m.f

06-10-07, 05:01 PM

This also means - the difference between HD DVD and BD is in the top 5 ! Both of them have 18K for the rest.

If this is the way things are, it´s probably more even than the numbers show since the top three hd dvd titles are rather expensive box sets. I think this also shows that the differences in sales rely (almost) solely on blockbuster (or whatever you like to call them) titles. That really shows hos small the hi def market is at the moment.

I think that the first format that can generate sales across he entire cataloge of dics may be in a really good position. right now all tech geeks/hi def movie geeks (as we are) buy the new releases.

wnorris

06-10-07, 05:35 PM

Well, here we are 6 months into 2007 and neither side has really budged since January. Nielseon numbers are still a drop in the bucket compared to DVD. Who thinks that a format winner will be decided in 2007?

Like I've always said, both formats will stick around for years to come.

nataraj

06-10-07, 05:38 PM

That really shows hos small the hi def market is at the moment.

I've been saying this for sometime now. HiDef DVD is barely 0.3% of DVD sales. 25 Million DVDs are sold every week - and in contrast only an average of 75 thousand hidef dvds get sold per week. More over there is no evidence of growth.

I do expect some uptick in HD DVD sales because of price cut on HD-A2 and later a little on BD side because of price cut on Sony players. But it might take a couple of months before we see any clear trends.

alfbinet

06-10-07, 08:52 PM

I've been saying this for sometime now. HiDef DVD is barely 0.3% of DVD sales. 25 Million DVDs are sold every week - and in contrast only an average of 75 thousand hidef dvds get sold per week. More over there is no evidence of growth.

I do expect some uptick in HD DVD sales because of price cut on HD-A2 and later a little on BD side because of price cut on Sony players. But it might take a couple of months before we see any clear trends.

What is the BS with blu-ray saying they have won and HD DVD should just give up? HD DVD is very consumer friendly with cost of hardware. Studios need to be just as friendly with cost of software.

AnthonyP

06-10-07, 09:06 PM

This also means - the difference between HD DVD and BD is in the top 5 ! Both of them have 18K for the rest.

Nataraj isn't it both obvious and wrong? what I mean is that it is obvious that the biggest difference will be in the top 5 let's face it after that the numbers become extremely small

1. Pirates DMC 100.00
2. Pirates CBP 84.63
3. Apocalypto 82.92
4. Letters from Iwo Jima 33.23
5. Planet Earth 28.97

HD DVD:
1. Planet Earth 41.26
2. Ultimate Matrix 30.19
3. Complete Matrix 28.21
4. Letters from Iwo Jima 27.48
5. Flags of Our Fathers 17.49

if we start with 4k for PE HD DVD (like others have stated and you used to get to your conclusion) by the time you get to Flags you are under 2k per title. And if we are slightly off and use different values for PE or POTC by the time we get to Flags that difference has shrunk. So yes the rest most likely won’t be that different because you will very soon get to titles that only sold 1-2 disks (not to mention that the % dif of the top 5 is 2.45 which is higher then the % of the week

Why is it wrong? Because we don’t have absolute numbers they are guesses of guesses of guesses. A small change in any assumption will change the conclusion. Just look at your own numbers. Going from 66.5 to 67.4 you went from 5k to 150k

AnthonyP

06-10-07, 09:14 PM

If this is the way things are, it´s probably more even than the numbers show since the top three hd dvd titles are rather expensive box sets.

it is fun to see HD DVD supporters trying to spin. If it was a price issue why are the cheaper HD DVDs not surpassing the expensive HD DVDs and meeting the BD numbers. Obviously that week the top HD DVD was PE the rest, even though they are cheaper, did not sell as well.

xboxboi

06-10-07, 10:28 PM

I've been saying this for sometime now. HiDef DVD is barely 0.3% of DVD sales. 25 Million DVDs are sold every week - and in contrast only an average of 75 thousand hidef dvds get sold per week. More over there is no evidence of growth.

now imagine, HD DVD presented to the masses as an upgrade or added value to DVD instead of hostile talk of replacing DVD ;)

thomopolis

06-10-07, 10:35 PM

now imagine, HD DVD presented to the masses as an upgrade or added value to DVD instead of hostile talk of replacing DVD ;)

why do people keep saying the goal is to replace DVD? I don't really care if the spoke speak from the studios says that, we should recognize here it is not only unrealistic but pointless. For the vast majority of consumers HiDef will not offer anything other than better extras - and for that they will not pay a premium.

If either or both HiDef media reaches 20% of DVD after five years they should consider themselves lucky and wildy successful.

nataraj

06-10-07, 11:19 PM

why do people keep saying the goal is to replace DVD?

Because, if HiDef doesn't take a major share from DVD, studios will give up (like SACD / DVD-A) and all we will get are DVD (and possibly download).

AnthonyP

06-11-07, 12:58 AM

Because, if HiDef doesn't take a major share from DVD, studios will give up (like SACD / DVD-A) and all we will get are DVD (and possibly download).

agree 100%

but will add (for his second part) if HDOM takes off even if many people see little difference it just becomes the easy choice (buy a HDOM player, it will play the DVDs, buy a DVD player it won't play HDOM disks if you want to buy them later, buy an HDOM disk. One you have an HDOM player- for a bad TV you won't see a big difference, buy a better TV you will see a difference, it is safer to buy HDOM disk) so once people feel safe with HDOM it will take off fast because it is an easy upgrade.

So if it gets close to 20% it will naturally gravitate faster and faster to 100%

Grubert

06-11-07, 04:16 AM

darinp2

06-11-07, 04:26 AM

HD DVD press release: Consumers Drive Record Sales of HD DVD Players to Capture 60% of HD Set-Top Market (http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=149591)

HARDWARE:

- HD DVD has 60% of all high definition set-top players sold.I would say that the claim of 60% here after the HD DVD group has been talking about how players sales have moved more their direction recently would seem to support that the 52% to 48% number we saw previously (that many of us thought was likely based on player value and not number of players) was in fact number of players. Otherwise they should have been at over 60% before and higher now.
- Consumers have purchased 150,000 dedicated HD DVD consumer electronics players which are holding a 4 to 1 movie attach rate over competing formats. Seems like it has now been a while since Kosty's contact indicated that 200k just for the Toshiba units was right.
- High definition movie sales for HD DVD reached an all time high for the month of May

- High definition movie sales for HD DVD exceeded 75,000 movies the last week of May alone.

- Overall high definition sales hit a record $5.2 million in actual consumer spending last week, which was 31% higher than the previous record for the two formats.I'm guessing that by using "movies" they are counting 3 for each Matrix set (which I think is fair). The 75k for HD DVD should help us get a better handle on where sales are (since we're now only get two digits of accuracy for the ratios). I wonder if the last week of May and the "last week" they were referring to is the one ending May 27th, as that is the first week of the Matrix set, the Pirates movies and Apocalypto. I would have expected the week after that to be lower overall.

--Darin

fozziwig

06-11-07, 06:04 AM

HD DVD press release: Consumers Drive Record Sales of HD DVD Players to Capture 60% of HD Set-Top Market (http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=149591)

HARDWARE:

- HD DVD has 60% of all high definition set-top players sold.

- Consumers have purchased 150,000 dedicated HD DVD consumer electronics players which are holding a 4 to 1 movie attach rate over competing formats.

- With the successive price drops by Toshiba, weekly player sales doubled in April when the price dropped from $499 to $399, doubled again during the first week of the latest promotion in late May, and increased again last week.

- The Toshiba HD-A2 model has also reached the top-seller mark among all DVD players on Amazon.com, and is officially the best-selling next-gen DVD player model to date.

SOFTWARE:

- High definition movie sales for HD DVD reached an all time high for the month of May

- High definition movie sales for HD DVD exceeded 75,000 movies the last week of May alone.

- Overall high definition sales hit a record $5.2 million in actual consumer spending last week, which was 31% higher than the previous record for the two formats.

Interesting numbers but where do the HD DVD promo group get their numbers from?

Nataraj says that HD DVD sold just over 40,000 units for the last full week of May (the Matrix launch week) but this report claims 75,000 - that's a massive discrepancy.

This report also puts Blu-ray standalones at 100,000 sold (very good) and BD software sales for the last week of May at approx. 167,000!! Fantastic! :D

I wonder why the HD DVD promo group have decided to start promoting Blu-ray?

edit: As has been pointed out the press release may well be counting each Matrix box as 3 sales. Very cheeky if true.

jpb123

06-11-07, 06:43 AM

Hmm, they have to count each Matrix film as a separate movie. Again nothing wrong with that as they clearly say movies. Adding that to what Nataraj used previously would give us roughly 70.000.

And before anyone scream about it, there's no way they have counted the individual disks or episodes in PE. That would have put them much higher than 75.000.

jpb123

06-11-07, 06:52 AM

Nataraj isn't it both obvious and wrong? what I mean is that it is obvious that the biggest difference will be in the top 5 let's face it after that the numbers become extremely small

if we start with 4k for PE HD DVD (like others have stated and you used to get to your conclusion) by the time you get to Flags you are under 2k per title. And if we are slightly off and use different values for PE or POTC by the time we get to Flags that difference has shrunk. So yes the rest most likely won’t be that different because you will very soon get to titles that only sold 1-2 disks (not to mention that the % dif of the top 5 is 2.45 which is higher then the % of the week

Why is it wrong? Because we don’t have absolute numbers they are guesses of guesses of guesses. A small change in any assumption will change the conclusion. Just look at your own numbers. Going from 66.5 to 67.4 you went from 5k to 150k

Yes to some extent that is true BUT for what we are doing that doesn't necessarily mean that adding numbers week by week gets us further from what's correct.

If you are 20% off one week and 10% off the next and so on it would seem logical that the mistake would be something like 0.8 x 0.9 x 0.8 x 0.9 if we guessed too low each week. That would give a huge fault, something like possibly 50% off.

However it's much more likely that the guesses are 20% low one week and 15% up next, then 10 low and 20 up. 0.8 x 1.15 x 0.9 x 1.2 That would give a total mistake of less than 1%. The way we get these percentages and some other hints for individual titles it's actually likely that if we guess too low (or high) one week we will almost by default compensate for that the weeks after to get correct percentages.

Obviously for individual titles we will not get close to 1% off in most cases but I seem to have been able to put PE within 4% after 5 weeks so it's not useless using these percentages.

And at this point don't underestimate the catalog titles. 200 titles doing 10-200 copies a week does add up.

jpb123

06-11-07, 07:09 AM

HD DVD press release: Consumers Drive Record Sales of HD DVD Players to Capture 60% of HD Set-Top Market (http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=149591)

HARDWARE:

- HD DVD has 60% of all high definition set-top players sold.

- Consumers have purchased 150,000 dedicated HD DVD consumer electronics players which are holding a 4 to 1 movie attach rate over competing formats.

- With the successive price drops by Toshiba, weekly player sales doubled in April when the price dropped from $499 to $399, doubled again during the first week of the latest promotion in late May, and increased again last week.
.

So 11 months with 10.000 a month. Double that in April and May for 20.000 each month. Add a weekly double for last week of May for that week going to 10.000. Putting May actually at 25.000?

That would give a total of 155.000. If they actually also counted 'last week' which should per the above be over 10.000 we need to start at around 9.000 per month instead.

It would seem that they need to keep the numbers at this level for awhile and then have yet another push doubling those in the fall to get close to that promised million players for the year.

Either way it's hard to see prices going back up again for the players.

Not sure if we can presume anything with regard to the add-on from how they worded this.

joshd2012

06-11-07, 08:21 AM

wnorris

06-11-07, 08:59 AM

So HD DVD has had a significant pricing advantage for over a year, and still only has 60% of the standalone market? This tells us one of two things:

1) Pricing is not a factor in purchases of standalone hardware, or

2) Consumers do not believe HD DVD will survive

Either one doesn't pan out well for the HD DVD group, despite the positive nature of the press release.

Sure.....

I guess sales of HD DVD standalones more than doubling for the past two months must be a clear indicator that consumers don't believe HD DVD will survive. :rolleyes:

Whatever helps you sleep at night...

I think you forgot option #3. Prices didn't start dropping until late Feb/early Mar. Prices didn't hit sub $300 until April. Once prices hit that magic consumer adoption point, sales started to increase. Because of these low prices, consumers are now confident enough to make an investment, and we've seen the sales of standalone hardware double as a result. From this point, sales should only continue to grow through the rest of the year. The 150k number should double to 300k by the end of August, with the real increases kicking in starting late October. A million standalones by year end should be possible, and then you will see what the percentage of market is then. It has already widened from 52/48 to 60/40. My guess is 70/30 or better by end of year.

I think the reluctance of consumers to enter the HD market is being eroded by the low cost of HD DVD hardware. To J6P, price is more important than hardware specs and studio support.

At 52/48 in Jan, believe that was around 70k HD DVD and 65k BD. Now it is 150k HD DVD and 100k BD (60/40). So HD DVD picked up 80k standalone sales and BD picked up 35k. So HD DVD standalone hardware is outselling BD standalone hardware more than 2:1 on average between Jan-Jun. Likely the ratio for the past two months is much higher.

You statement that there has been a signifigant price advantage for over a year is also false.

wnorris

06-11-07, 09:06 AM

Interesting numbers but where do the HD DVD promo group get their numbers from?

Nataraj says that HD DVD sold just over 40,000 units for the last full week of May (the Matrix launch week) but this report claims 75,000 - that's a massive discrepancy.

This report also puts Blu-ray standalones at 100,000 sold (very good) and BD software sales for the last week of May at approx. 167,000!! Fantastic! :D

I wonder why the HD DVD promo group have decided to start promoting Blu-ray?

edit: As has been pointed out the press release may well be counting each Matrix box as 3 sales. Very cheeky if true.

Why does everyone assume that 1) Nielsen captures 100% of unit sales, or 2) that the promo group wouldn't have access to studio sales estimates. IF Nielsen only captures ~50% and nat estimates 40k units per Nielsen, then actual unit sales would be ~80K units.

Grubert

06-11-07, 09:10 AM

plazman

06-11-07, 09:11 AM

The two most intriguing comments to me were:

1. That movie sales reached 75K in last week of May. Isn't that significantly more that Neilson.

2. Also, $5.2M spent in the last week was 31% more than the previous record for 'both' formats.

The other comments of interest were from Kornblau about ease of authoring and fundamental lower costs....

Overall a good PR, if what they say is factual.....

joshd2012

06-11-07, 09:20 AM

Sure.....

I guess sales of HD DVD standalones more than doubling for the past two months must be a clear indicator that consumers don't believe HD DVD will survive. :rolleyes:

Whatever helps you sleep at night...

I think you forgot option #3. Prices didn't start dropping until late Feb/early Mar. Prices didn't hit sub $300 until April. Once prices hit that magic consumer adoption point, sales started to increase. Because of these low prices, consumers are now confident enough to make an investment, and we've seen the sales of standalone hardware double as a result. From this point, sales should only continue to grow through the rest of the year. The 150k number should double to 300k by the end of August, with the real increases kicking in starting late October. A million standalones by year end should be possible, and then you will see what the percentage of market is then. It has already widened from 52/48 to 60/40. My guess is 70/30 or better by end of year.

I think the reluctance of consumers to enter the HD market is being eroded by the low cost of HD DVD hardware. To J6P, price is more important than hardware specs and studio support.

At 52/48 in Jan, believe that was around 70k HD DVD and 65k BD. Now it is 150k HD DVD and 100k BD (60/40). So HD DVD picked up 80k standalone sales and BD picked up 35k. So HD DVD standalone hardware is outselling BD standalone hardware more than 2:1 on average between Jan-Jun. Likely the ratio for the past two months is much higher.

You statement that there has been a signifigant price advantage for over a year is also false.

Amazingly incorrect analysis.

Since the beginning of the format war, HD DVD players have been half the cost of Blu-ray players, and that price, no matter what it was, has been touted as the 'mass consumer adoption point'. Also since November, the entry point for Blu-ray has been $500, but for HD DVD, that entry level price has dropped twice - from $500, to $400, and now $300.

So, according to the data you provided, Blu-ray lost 8% of the market, but kept pricing the same (even though costs have been reduced), meaning increased profits. While at the same time, Toshiba has nearly cut the player's cost in half only to gain 8% of the market.

Cutting entry level price in half and removing any profits they were seeing for only 8% of the market (a very small market at that) is not a typical consumer response. All things being equal, HD DVD should have taken a significant chunk of the market the first half of this year. Of course, all things aren't equal, and consumers recognize that - which is why they are still very reluctant to support HD DVD at this time, as shown by the stats Toshiba provided.

Grubert

06-11-07, 09:34 AM

The two most intriguing comments to me were:

1. That movie sales reached 75K in last week of May. Isn't that significantly more that Neilson.

Not if they are counting the Matrix packs as three movies each.

nataraj's chart shows a little over 40,000 for that week. If it were 41,000 units, and 13,900 of them were Matrix, then movie sales were 13900x3 + (41000-13900) = 68800 which is pretty close to 75K.

2. Also, $5.2M spent in the last week was 31% more than the previous record for 'both' formats.

I did say at the time that overall sales had been the best ever, only surpassed by the week before Christmas last year.

(If anybody wants to do numbers - BD sold 66,112 units and HD DVD 52,932 units that week, according to Nielsen.)

Schlotkins

06-11-07, 09:49 AM

Not if they are counting the Matrix packs as three movies each.

nataraj's chart shows a little over 40,000 for that week. If it were 41,000 units, and 13,900 of them were Matrix, then movie sales were 13900x3 + (41000-13900) = 68800 which is pretty close to 75K.

But at the same time, I was under the impression that these numbers only capture about 60% of the market. Or do they project to 100%? Because:

41,000/.6 = about 70k.

Chris

wnorris

06-11-07, 09:57 AM

Amazingly incorrect analysis.

Since the beginning of the format war, HD DVD players have been half the cost of Blu-ray players, and that price, no matter what it was, has been touted as the 'mass consumer adoption point'. Also since November, the entry point for Blu-ray has been $500, but for HD DVD, that entry level price has dropped twice - from $500, to $400, and now $300.

So, according to the data you provided, Blu-ray lost 8% of the market, but kept pricing the same (even though costs have been reduced), meaning increased profits. While at the same time, Toshiba has nearly cut the player's cost in half only to gain 8% of the market.

Cutting entry level price in half and removing any profits they were seeing for only 8% of the market (a very small market at that) is not a typical consumer response. All things being equal, HD DVD should have taken a significant chunk of the market the first half of this year. Of course, all things aren't equal, and consumers recognize that - which is why they are still very reluctant to support HD DVD at this time, as shown by the stats Toshiba provided.

You should stop spreading lies about player pricing. HD DVD players have not always been half the price. Even at Christmas time, the HD A1 was around $450-$500 street price and the Samsung was available at street for $569. How is $569 double $450? If you strictly look at MSRP Toshibas were $500/$800 and then $500/$1000 vs. BD's $1000 for most players. However, if you comapre actual street prices, BD units were the first to be heavily discounted, followed by HD DVD heavy discounts. But HD DVD has rarely been 50% the price of BD as you claim. Even today, the Samsung can be purchased for $470 street vs. $282 for the A2. Not half the price...

Further, can you provide evidence that Toshiba is losing any profits by reducing price? Toshiba could be making the same amount of profit at a street price of $282, as they were at a street price of $400. You assume too much with no facts to support it.

But your illogical and false points can easily be refuted. You state "Of course, all things aren't equal, and consumers recognize that - which is why they are still very reluctant to support HD DVD at this time..." Then please explain why sales have more than doubled (almost tripled) for HD DVD hardware in the past two months. If consumers are so reluctant, why have sales increased so much? If they feel that HD DVD is somehow risky, why have HD DVD standalone hardware the past two months likely outsold BD standalone hardware by 4:1 or 5:1? By your type of reasoning, consumers must think that BD hardware is an even more risky purchase.

joshd2012

06-11-07, 10:29 AM

You should stop spreading lies about player pricing. HD DVD players have not always been half the price. Even at Christmas time, the HD A1 was around $450-$500 street price and the Samsung was available at street for $569. How is $569 double $450? If you strictly look at MSRP Toshibas were $500/$800 and then $500/$1000 vs. BD's $1000 for most players. However, if you comapre actual street prices, BD units were the first to be heavily discounted, followed by HD DVD heavy discounts. But HD DVD has rarely been 50% the price of BD as you claim. Even today, the Samsung can be purchased for $470 street vs. $282 for the A2. Not half the price...

MSRP is the only fair way to compare prices. Street pricing adds in too many outside influences to get good data.

Further, can you provide evidence that Toshiba is losing any profits by reducing price? Toshiba could be making the same amount of profit at a street price of $282, as they were at a street price of $400. You assume too much with no facts to support it.

No, because I don't have access to that data (no one outside Toshiba does). Of course, if you are willing to suggest that dropping MSRP by $200 has resulted in the same profit model, then you must also agree that Blu-ray players would be on a similar trend, meaning profits for Blu-ray companies are many times more that Toshiba. Gee, I wonder why companies would overwhelmingly float towards Blu-ray?

But your illogical and false points can easily be refuted. You state "Of course, all things aren't equal, and consumers recognize that - which is why they are still very reluctant to support HD DVD at this time..." Then please explain why sales have more than doubled (almost tripled) for HD DVD hardware in the past two months. If consumers are so reluctant, why have sales increased so much? If they feel that HD DVD is somehow risky, why have HD DVD standalone hardware the past two months likely outsold BD standalone hardware by 4:1 or 5:1? By your type of reasoning, consumers must think that BD hardware is an even more risky purchase.

As much as you claim they have sold, they have only gained 8% market share. To compare, Blu-ray has taken 18% of the disc sales market in the same time period without reducing disc MSRP (or player MSRP for that matter). No matter how you swing the data 18 > 8 and the it was accomplished without changing MSRP. That is successful business, over twice as successful as Toshiba as they continue to slash prices.

plazman

06-11-07, 10:45 AM

DavidHir

06-11-07, 10:47 AM

A lot of credit to Uni, Warner and Tosh to keep the format in the game. If WB decided to release all their BD back log in Q1.....or Uni held back any longer....

I'd actually give just as much credit to MS.

nataraj

06-11-07, 10:47 AM

But at the same time, I was under the impression that these numbers only capture about 60% of the market. Or do they project to 100%? Because:

41,000/.6 = about 70k.

Yes. Thats a possibility as well - unfortunate that they don't always give the sources ...

nataraj

06-11-07, 10:51 AM

- HD DVD has 60% of all high definition set-top players sold.

- Consumers have purchased 150,000 dedicated HD DVD consumer electronics players which are holding a 4 to 1 movie attach rate over competing formats.

...

- High definition movie sales for HD DVD exceeded 75,000 movies the last week of May alone.

Looks like our assumptions have been quite accuarate.

Grubert

06-11-07, 11:00 AM

Looks like our assumptions have been quite accuarate.

True. Only on this thread we never assume - we postulate. ;)

guima

06-11-07, 11:14 AM

Actually it's well known the PS3 is losing money. Sony financial statements say so!

Last christmas the MSRP on the Sammy BD player was $799 v. $499 for the A2. AFAIR.

It is more than obvious price matters. The lowest priced hardware is the best selling both within each format and across formats.

The format with the fundamentally lower costs of production will have the advantage in the run run. At least in most markets that's how it works.....the more efficient provess will win. However, it's a little early to know how the HD market will play out.

Remember that HD DVD has been fighting an upstream battle against a lot of BD PR about the imminent demise of HD DVD and the first 3 months of this year, HD DVD weathered a full frontal BD attack - both marketing and product. A lot of credit to Uni, Warner and Tosh to keep the format in the game. If WB decided to release all their BD back log in Q1.....or Uni held back any longer....

It's difficult to analyse the PS3. It's not just a blu-ray player, but also a gaming console. Consoles usually lose money in the beginning, R&D costs plus the hardware itself. They more than make up for it by getting a share of the software sales over years to come.

Sony's strategy is very interesting as they are using the gaming division's profit (and intrinsic cost) to subsidize blu-ray. PS3 will keep on selling, more so once it has a price drop. Even more, next year, by the second price drop. How much it will affect the format war is anyone's guess, but it will sell cause it's a very nice piece of electronics that is only being held back by its high price.

UxiSXRD

06-11-07, 11:26 AM

Last christmas the MSRP on the Sammy BD player was $799 v. $499 for the A2. AFAIR.

It is more than obvious price matters. The lowest priced hardware is the best selling both within each format and across formats.

You're leaving out all the suckers who bought an XA1 for $799. :eek:

Original MSRP of the Sammy was $999. And NPD showed us that was a whopping 4% lead the Toshiba standalones had by the end of 2006. Even then, software sales per week were roughly at parity. Right now the difference in real dollars is half the difference that it was at the launches of the two formats and we know Blu-ray has consistent 2:1 to 5:1 disc sales per week. By the holiday shopping season, the difference will be even lower and the Blu-ray disc sales even higher.

Jiffylush

06-11-07, 12:48 PM

Remember that HD DVD has been fighting an upstream battle against a lot of BD PR about the imminent demise of HD DVD and the first 3 months of this year, HD DVD weathered a full frontal BD attack - both marketing and product. A lot of credit to Uni, Warner and Tosh to keep the format in the game. If WB decided to release all their BD back log in Q1.....or Uni held back any longer....

What they have been fighting against is a software sales deficit, looks like they are fighting back (look at this weeks releases for example) but that is what they are fighting against.

Unless you consider the BD PR to be any news regarding software sales that shows the BD lead.

plazman

06-11-07, 01:09 PM

You're leaving out all the suckers who bought an XA1 for $799. :eek:

Original MSRP of the Sammy was $999. And NPD showed us that was a whopping 4% lead the Toshiba standalones had by the end of 2006. Even then, software sales per week were roughly at parity. Right now the difference in real dollars is half the difference that it was at the launches of the two formats and we know Blu-ray has consistent 2:1 to 5:1 disc sales per week. By the holiday shopping season, the difference will be even lower and the Blu-ray disc sales even higher.

The consistent 2:1 to 5:1 sales ratio is not really true (the 5:1 ratio especially was an outlier, with 2:1 being reached once in awhile, but mostly since April it's been below that). The latest trend shows at 'best' a 2:1 sales ratio with the general trend being 1.5:1 sales ratio. The $ value of sales is probably even closer than that....

FWIW: The XA-1 won several product awards last year - It was Sound & Visisons product of the year and Home Theatre magazines source component of the year. That is more than can be said of any G1 standalone BD player!

Examining facts is clearly more fun than making up FUD :rolleyes:

Also, if I recall correctly there was a good 2 months when Tosh didn't ship any players at all, and by Feb the A-2 had already sold more than all G1 players combined...I could be slightly off, but it is close enough. So since the A-2 was released in mid Dec, HD DVD standalone players have built up a healthy lead over their BD counterpart...and that lead is growing. This cannot be a negative for HD DVD in any way!

fozziwig

06-11-07, 01:21 PM

Why does everyone assume that 1) Nielsen captures 100% of unit sales, or 2) that the promo group wouldn't have access to studio sales estimates. IF Nielsen only captures ~50% and nat estimates 40k units per Nielsen, then actual unit sales would be ~80K units.

For the record I believe that Nielsen under-report by 20-30% (shall I put that in a sig to avoid further confusion?). :rolleyes:

AFAIK NOBODY knows the exact market coverage of Nielsen VideoScan.

HD DVD promo group almost certainly use Nielsen data but they never quote them as a source for their figures. Are they using raw Nielsen data or are they applying some modification? Studio estimates are Nielsen data + assumed missing market - is this the source of the 75K?

If so then that's not much more than the 68K Nataraj guessed at (+10%) - all based on the assumption that all Matrix sales are multiplied by 3.

wnorris

06-11-07, 01:31 PM

MSRP is the only fair way to compare prices. Street pricing adds in too many outside influences to get good data.

No, because I don't have access to that data (no one outside Toshiba does). Of course, if you are willing to suggest that dropping MSRP by $200 has resulted in the same profit model, then you must also agree that Blu-ray players would be on a similar trend, meaning profits for Blu-ray companies are many times more that Toshiba. Gee, I wonder why companies would overwhelmingly float towards Blu-ray?

As much as you claim they have sold, they have only gained 8% market share. To compare, Blu-ray has taken 18% of the disc sales market in the same time period without reducing disc MSRP (or player MSRP for that matter). No matter how you swing the data 18 > 8 and the it was accomplished without changing MSRP. That is successful business, over twice as successful as Toshiba as they continue to slash prices.

Are you seriously trying to compare the change in market share of hardware to the change in market share of software? What planet do you come from and how many people do you think you can mislead?

Let's not forget that all BD didn't change MSRP to get a 18% change, but they sure did do quite a few Buy 1 Get 1 Free or Buy 2 Get 1 Free sales.

Also, blu-ray players wouldn't necessarily be on a similar trend, because no individual player is selling at the volumes of the Toshiba players currently. Let's see, 150k HD DVD players over five total models vs 100k BD players pver what , 9 or 10 models? Now which format has the highest average unit sales per model. This metric is what will bring prices down and keep profits up. Further, much of the R&D costs are typically recouped in the early adopter pricing. So if HD DVD had less R&D overhead when compared to BD (and they most certainly did), then BD would need to sell more units at a higher price to reach an even threshold with HD DVD. So you are way off to assume that the HD DVD pricing/profit model is anything similar to BD's pricing/profit model.

Finally, street pricing is the only price that effects the customers buying decision, so it is the only price that should be considered when talking about factors that influence sales. No one cares about the MSRP, only the street price. Have you ever heard anyone say, I'm not going to buy that new Ipod nano for $50, because the MSRP is $199, and that is way too much for an MSRP? Whatever dude... stop spreading the FUD.

wnorris

06-11-07, 01:36 PM

Looks like our assumptions have been quite accuarate.

I'm wondering how they arrived at the 4:1 advantage in attach rate compared to competing formats. It reads like they are saying that if the attach rate of a BD standalone is 4, then it is 16 for a HD DVD standalone.

Or are they saying that for all HD DVD devices vs. all BD devices, that it is 4:1. So if all BD, including the PS3 has an attach rate of 1, all HD DVD devices, including the addon, has an attach rate of 4.

I could see how they might arrive at the latter (all software sales divided by all hardware sales). I don't know how they could determine the former.

What is everyone elses impression of how that stat reads?

kjack

06-11-07, 01:48 PM

So if HD DVD had less R&D overhead when compared to BD (and they most certainly did), then BD would need to sell more units at a higher price to reach an even threshold with HD DVD. So you are way off to assume that the HD DVD pricing/profit model is anything similar to BD's pricing/profit model.One flaw in your argument is the amount of R&D done by SoC suppliers, which then is used by many player manufacturers. Plus, many CE companies use the same chip in multiple CE products (digital media adapters, HDTVs, recorders, etc.) enabling a bundled price break.

joshd2012

06-11-07, 01:51 PM

Are you seriously trying to compare the change in market share of hardware to the change in market share of software? What planet do you come from and how many people do you think you can mislead?

Its an extremely fair comparison. One would that that with Toshiba grabbing more market share in hardware, that software would also trend that way. The opposite is true, in this case. While HD DVD grabbed 8% of the hardware market, Blu-ray grabbed 18% of the software market. That is a valid comparison, and one that shows the weakness of Toshiba's campaign.

Let's not forget that all BD didn't change MSRP to get a 18% change, but they sure did do quite a few Buy 1 Get 1 Free or Buy 2 Get 1 Free sales.

You should be applauding BDA for having a better marketing campaign, not trying to slam them for having the better idea.

Also, blu-ray players wouldn't necessarily be on a similar trend, because no individual player is selling at the volumes of the Toshiba players currently. Let's see, 150k HD DVD players over five total models vs 100k BD players pver what , 9 or 10 models? Now which format has the highest average unit sales per model. This metric is what will bring prices down and keep profits up. Further, much of the R&D costs are typically recouped in the early adopter pricing. So if HD DVD had less R&D overhead when compared to BD (and they most certainly did), then BD would need to sell more units at a higher price to reach an even threshold with HD DVD. So you are way off to assume that the HD DVD pricing/profit model is anything similar to BD's pricing/profit model.

One of the advantages to having a monopoly is that you get all the sales. As for R&D, a few companies absorbed most of that, and are talking the hit. Others get to use that technology (as members of the BDA) and sell a product with licensing fees. So your general "R&D is higher" statement doesn't work.

Finally, street pricing is the only price that effects the customers buying decision, so it is the only price that should be considered when talking about factors that influence sales. No one cares about the MSRP, only the street price. Have you ever heard anyone say, I'm not going to buy that new Ipod nano for $50, because the MSRP is $199, and that is way too much for an MSRP? Whatever dude... stop spreading the FUD.

Street prices are directly influenced by MSRP. Then you have to add in about 100 factors to get a stores street price. Unless you are capable to breakdown all these factors so we can get a clean comparison, MSRP is the only way to go.

wnorris

06-11-07, 02:05 PM

One flaw in your argument is the amount of R&D done by SoC suppliers, which then is used by many player manufacturers.

Well, that might only apply to the processing component of the BD player. How many BD models use identical cases, power supplies, drive assemblies, tech support infrastructure, etc. Even if you use an SOC, there are many components that differ.

Even the Philips BD player that can actually use Samsung firmware, contains many parts that are not the same between the two players. They won't benefit from the same economy of scale as Toshiba. It will be improved, but not the same.

Now, going forward, there will be more reference designs from both HD DVD and BD, which will help drive component costs down for both formats. I don't think that environment is quite here yet, even though it may appear later this year.

Further, those R&D costs from SOC suppliers is recouped in the cost of the chip, which means it is still passed on to CE's. It would just mean the cost is equal for HD DVD and BD.

wnorris

06-11-07, 02:06 PM

One flaw in your argument is the amount of R&D done by SoC suppliers, which then is used by many player manufacturers. Plus, many CE companies use the same chip in multiple CE products (digital media adapters, HDTVs, recorders, etc.) enabling a bundled price break.

Any insight on how Sigma arrived at 2.5 million BD units shipping this year?

plazman

06-11-07, 02:07 PM

wnorris

06-11-07, 02:08 PM

wnorris

06-11-07, 02:10 PM

What is the change in number of hardware units sold v. software? I would assume that although HD DVD has picked up share against standalone players - the 80K or so PS3 players tilts the overall sales in favor of BD players and with continued weak game titles, BD movies are what many PS3 owners are using their player for....

So I'd say the hardware sales gap is wider than the software sales gap. The challenge for Tosh will be to sell enough hardware to make up for Ps3 players being used for BD playback....this will require mass produced sub $150 players IMHO.

Exactly, HD DVD has gained any hardware market share as Josh is trying to claim they have. HD DVD has overall lost hardware market share and software market share. However, they have lost much less software market share compared to hardware market share.

joshd2012

06-11-07, 02:12 PM

Do you base your personal buying decisions on the street price or on MSRP?

I am a high definition owner. Obviously, neither MSRP or street price enter into my buying decision :p

If you are asking 'in general' I would have to say both.

UxiSXRD

06-11-07, 02:16 PM

HD DVD has overall lost hardware market share and software market share. However, they have lost much less software market share compared to hardware market share.

Exactly.

BTW, as Grubert posted in the Battle Thread, HDDVD group has a press release today:

http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=149591

EDIT: eh, missed it on last page. :o

This indicates that at best, HDDVD is at 150k standalones compared to 100k Blu-ray standalones for a 10% lead (60% players at 150k means the other 40% is Blu-ray) for a 6% increase in 2007 over their 4% lead in 2006.

wnorris

06-11-07, 02:19 PM

Its an extremely fair comparison. One would that that with Toshiba grabbing more market share in hardware, that software would also trend that way. The opposite is true, in this case. While HD DVD grabbed 8% of the hardware market, Blu-ray grabbed 18% of the software market. That is a valid comparison, and one that shows the weakness of Toshiba's campaign.

You should be applauding BDA for having a better marketing campaign, not trying to slam them for having the better idea.

One of the advantages to having a monopoly is that you get all the sales. As for R&D, a few companies absorbed most of that, and are talking the hit. Others get to use that technology (as members of the BDA) and sell a product with licensing fees. So your general "R&D is higher" statement doesn't work.

Street prices are directly influenced by MSRP. Then you have to add in about 100 factors to get a stores street price. Unless you are capable to breakdown all these factors so we can get a clean comparison, MSRP is the only way to go.

More FUD...

HD DVD has lost both hardware and software market share. BD has gained about 30-35% in hardware market share and only 18% in software market share. This is a telling sign that BD underperformed in software. Now HD DVD is starting to gain ground in hardware market share in just the past few months. It stands to reason that software should follow.

You are trying to mislead by comparing data on standalone sales only, and comparing that to sales from all types of hardware. Again, you aren't fooling anyone with your FUD.

Per the HD DVD announcement, if you look just at BD standalones vs. HD DVD standalones, HD DVD players are outselling BD players. Also, the said HD DVD has a 4:1 advantage in attach rate. That means that only looking at standalone players, HD DVD standalones would be outselling BD standalones by more the 4:1 in software. I think most will agree that if there are 150k standalone HD DVD, then there are 100k standalone BD. If the attach rate for each of those BD players is 1, it means 100k BD discs sold. It would also mean 600k HD DVD discs sold, for a 6:1 software advantage for HD DVD when looking only at standalones.

I think this all points to the only reason BD has 20k or so more disc sales per week over HD DVD is from the 1.2+ million US PS3's. At the current rate of hardware sales, HD DVD software sales should be able to overtake BD in a month or two, unless BD can increase adoption amongst PS3 owners, sell more PS3's, or sell more standalones that they currently do.

So in reality, when looking at only standalones, HD DVD has gained market share in both hardware and software sales.

You are trying to mislead people by comparing the data limited to HD DVD standalone players only, and comparing that to data based on ALL BD hardware/software sales.

nataraj

06-11-07, 02:22 PM

Or are they saying that for all HD DVD devices vs. all BD devices, that it is 4:1. So if all BD, including the PS3 has an attach rate of 1, all HD DVD devices, including the addon, has an attach rate of 4.

I'd guess this to be the case.

About 1.4M BD devices compared to about 300K HD DVD devices. This combined with the SI movie sales would give you close to 4:1 attach rates.

darinp2

06-11-07, 02:24 PM

- Overall high definition sales hit a record $5.2 million in actual consumer spending last week, which was 31% higher than the previous record for the two formats.Didn't Warner predict that HD DVD would sell $600 million in software in 2007? My memory is that the prediction was for HD DVD only (not both formats), so I'll go with that assumption and somebody can correct it if it was for both.

Anyway, $5.2 million being 31% higher than any other week means that 2nd best week was about $4.0 million. Since that was the best I think it would be fair to say that the average was likely $3 million or less. If HD DVD got 1/3rd of that this year then they would be averaging $1 million per week or less. Or about $22 million or less so far this year. Even if they averaged $2 million per week for June that would top out at about $30 million in the first half of the year. Only $570 million to go in the 2nd half. :)

--Darin

joshd2012

06-11-07, 02:28 PM

More FUD...

HD DVD has lost both hardware and software market share. BD has gained about 30-35% in hardware market share and only 18% in software market share. This is a telling sign that BD underperformed in software. No HD DVD is starting to gain ground in hardware market share in just the past few months. It stands to reason that software should follow.

You are trying to mislead by comparing data on standalone sales only, and comparing that to sales from all types of hardware. Again, you aren't fooling anyone with your FUD.

Per the HD DVD announcement, if you look just at BD standalones vs. HD DVD standalones, HD DVD players are outselling BD players. Also, the said HD DVD has a 4:1 advantage in attach rate. That means that only looking at standalone players, HD DVD standalones would be outselling BD standalones by more the 4:1 in software.

So in reality, when looking at only standalones, HD DVD has gained market share in both hardware and software sales.

You are trying to mislead people by comparing the data limited to HD DVD standalone players only, and comparing that to data based on ALL BD hardware/software sales.

I'm comparing Standalone Hardware sales data. Its the only one discussed in the press release, so I'm not sure how you are confused as to what I was talking about. I'm comparing that, to total discs sales. You will never see software sales data which is broken out by player ownership.

So you are saying that HD DVD has lost ground in both areas. Then why issue a press release stating such?

And how is HD DVD gaining in software sales? The SI numbers clearly show Blu-ray taking ground which is now up to 60% of the market.

wnorris

06-11-07, 02:30 PM

I'd guess this to be the case.

About 1.4M BD devices compared to about 300K HD DVD devices. This combined with the SI movie sales would give you close to 4:1 attach rates.

I would think that is the only straightforward calculation, but that definately isn't what they stated in the release. Rereading the release, they prefernece the statement saying it is for standalones only. So no idea how they arrived at the number.

darinp2

06-11-07, 02:31 PM

I'm wondering how they arrived at the 4:1 advantage in attach rate compared to competing formats. It reads like they are saying that if the attach rate of a BD standalone is 4, then it is 16 for a HD DVD standalone.

Or are they saying that for all HD DVD devices vs. all BD devices, that it is 4:1. So if all BD, including the PS3 has an attach rate of 1, all HD DVD devices, including the addon, has an attach rate of 4.

I could see how they might arrive at the latter (all software sales divided by all hardware sales). I don't know how they could determine the former.

What is everyone elses impression of how that stat reads?I don't know if they were involved in the claim in the press release part, if they were making an assumption based on it or not, but the email I got from Webershand Wick said:

"Focusing on dedicated consumer electronics players is significant given the high attach rates for these players, which is currently 4 to 1 over the PS3."

--Darin

UxiSXRD

06-11-07, 02:32 PM

The consistent 2:1 to 5:1 sales ratio is not really true (the 5:1 ratio especially was an outlier, with 2:1 being reached once in awhile, but mostly since April it's been below that). The latest trend shows at 'best' a 2:1 sales ratio with the general trend being 1.5:1 sales ratio. The $ value of sales is probably even closer than that....

"Once in a while?" WTF are you talking about? At the most basic level, YTD is above 2:1 therefore we KNOW that it's more than "once in a while." Go to the first post and look at the weekly numbers. For 15 of 22 weeks so far in 2007, BD disc ratio was more than double that of HDDVD. For many of those 7 weeks it was not, it was pretty close to 2:1 (1.8+). On only one week did HDDVD get closer than 10 percentage points, on only 3 weeks was it under 20 points. On 12 of those 22 weeks, the lead was greater than 30 points and it's been over 40 points twice.

FWIW: The XA-1 won several product awards last year - It was Sound & Visisons product of the year and Home Theatre magazines source component of the year.

Indeed. I've wanted one for awhile and it's certainly a beauty (if a bit of a big beast), but it's just not worth the price especially against the much faster and more reliable G2's. I would certainly love to see someone right now defend the price premium for the XA1 against the 2nd gens, if not the the exact same technical capabilities of it's more low brow G1 sibling.

nataraj

06-11-07, 02:37 PM

"Focusing on dedicated consumer electronics players is significant given the high attach rates for these players, which is currently 4 to 1 over the PS3."

This would have to be some combination of analysis and market research.

eightninesuited

06-11-07, 02:44 PM

Well, here we are 6 months into 2007 and neither side has really budged since January.

HD DVD has been cutting hardware prices for months with more releases and still hasn't won a single week. Blu-ray has just released some lowered priced players. Let's see what effect this will have.

theflux

06-11-07, 02:46 PM

wnorris

06-11-07, 03:00 PM

I'm comparing Standalone Hardware sales data. Its the only one discussed in the press release, so I'm not sure how you are confused as to what I was talking about. I'm comparing that, to total discs sales. You will never see software sales data which is broken out by player ownership.

So you are saying that HD DVD has lost ground in both areas. Then why issue a press release stating such?

And how is HD DVD gaining in software sales? The SI numbers clearly show Blu-ray taking ground which is now up to 60% of the market.

No, you are comparing a standalone hardware sales number, to a software sales number that is for all devices, not just standalones.

It's similar to saying that Ford pickup sales are up 8%, but the sale of Chevy truck tires is up 18%, so Chevy must be doing better than Ford.

The statement makes no sense and the comparison isn't useful in anyway, just like the comparisons you are making.

The facts as we know them best are:

At the start of the year, HD DVD standalone players were selling around 9k per month, and BD players were selling around 4k per month.

Now HD DVD has issued an update indicating that HD DVD players increased to 25k units per month for the past two months, and have given a 60/40 SI hardware ratio indicating that BD players are still around 4-5k per month. So HD DVD hardware for the past two months is outselling BD hardware by 5-6:1, or 1.5:1 SI.

HD DVD has also made the claim that among standalone hardware, HD DVD has a 4:1 advantage in attach rate. This would mean that among standalone hardware, HD DVD actually has outsold BD software by 6:1 SI.

So if BD doesn't do something to increase the sale of PS3's, the sale of standlone units, or increase the software attach rate among PS3's, HD DVD could quickly be leading software sales again. If 25% of PS3's are used routinely for BD playback, that means another 300k units, bringing the BD total to around 400k. HD DVD has 150k now, plus the Xbox addon's (I've heard at 190k), which puts them at 340k. So a 60k difference in hardware and we see around 80-100k difference in software each month.

If the PS3 continues as is, it only adds ~22k players per month and declining, plus another 5k for standalones, for 27k new players per month. HD DVD is adding ~25k players at the current rate, with sales climbing. June-August are typically the best DVD player sales months outside of Nov-Dec. So I expect the HD DVD sales to grow quite a bit, which means it's easy to conceive that in the next couple of months HD DVD will have an equal utilized hardware base compared to BD. It stands to reason, software sales will equalize as well.

I expect to see the software sales gap eliminated by August. I think utilized hardware and software will both be even by the end of August; a totally level playing field.

So then it will boil down to Q3 and Q4 performance between the two formats to see who wins the year. Can BD sell more standalones at a higher price than HD DVD? We know PS3 sales will increase for the holidays, but will BD utilization remain at 25%? Can Sony improve that? Will the PS3 gains be offset by HD DVD addon sales, especially if the addon price drops to $100-$150?

I don't see either format outperforming the other by such a large margin that it kills the other format. I would say BD standalone sales will at best double. PS3 will sell around 3 million units, but the BD utilization will be even lower than 25% on these units (they will sell to those who couldn't afford it last year, which means they likely can't afford a nice HDTV, or the increased cost of BD discs compared to DVD). I would guess around 500-750k effective BD players Sep-Dec. I think HD DVD + addon will hit between 750k-1 million. Meaning that it will still be neck and neck going into 2008, with HD DVD having the slightest bit of a lead.

darinp2

06-11-07, 03:10 PM

HD DVD has also made the claim that among standalone hardware, HD DVD has a 4:1 advantage in attach rate. This would mean that among standalone hardware, HD DVD actually has outsold BD software by 6:1 SI.No they haven't and therefore, no it doesn't mean that (although it would if your statement about what they claimed was true). Here is what they said in that official release (which isn't the same as what you said):
Consumers have purchased 150,000 dedicated HD DVD consumer electronics players, which are holding a 4 to 1 movie attach rate over competing formats.Notice that they did not say, "CE players of competing formats".

--Darin

plazman

06-11-07, 03:14 PM

"Once in a while?" WTF are you talking about? At the most basic level, YTD is above 2:1 therefore we KNOW that it's more than "once in a while." Go to the first post and look at the weekly numbers. For 15 of 22 weeks so far in 2007, BD disc ratio was more than double that of HDDVD. For many of those 7 weeks it was not, it was pretty close to 2:1 (1.8+). On only one week did HDDVD get closer than 10 percentage points, on only 3 weeks was it under 20 points. On 12 of those 22 weeks, the lead was greater than 30 points and it's been over 40 points twice.

Indeed. I've wanted one for awhile and it's certainly a beauty (if a bit of a big beast), but it's just not worth the price especially against the much faster and more reliable G2's. I would certainly love to see someone right now defend the price premium for the XA1 against the 2nd gens, if not the the exact same technical capabilities of it's more low brow G1 sibling.

Here is what I have for market share for the first 4 weeks of the year:

1/7 63.3/36.7 <2:1
1/14 68.2/31.8 >2:1
1/21 67.8/32.2 >2:1
1/28 68.8/31.2 >2:1

The last 4 weeks of data:

5/13 62/38 <2:1
5/20 58/42 <2:1
5/27 69/31 >2:1
6/3 61/39 <2:1

So, I'd say HD DVD has improved it's market share since the start of the year. This can be attributed to better hardware sales and/or attachment rates.

Current data is always more relevant....again, we are NOT seeing a consistent 5:1 ratio, we haven't seen that for awhile now!!!

plazman

06-11-07, 03:15 PM

wnorris

06-11-07, 04:15 PM

No they haven't and therefore, no it doesn't mean that (although it would if your statement about what they claimed was true). Here is what they said in that official release (which isn't the same as what you said):
Notice that they did not say, "CE players of competing formats".

--Darin

So what are you claiming. The press release clearly says that they sold 150k units, and that those 150k players have a 4:1 attach rate compared to BD (the only competing format).

Are you claiming they are comparing the standalone attach rate of HD DVD to the overall attach rate for all BD devices? If so, where is your proof? What I read is that HD DVD standalones have a 4:1 attach rate over BD standalones.

I guess either way, you have your interpretation and I have mine, and neither of us can prove what the promotions group really meant.

At least you admit that if my interpretation is the correct one, then what I have said is correct.

darinp2

06-11-07, 04:19 PM

At least you admit that if my interpretation is the correct one, then what I have said is correct.Even though your intepretation is rather ridiculous IMO and you stated it as a fact, while earlier you clearly weren't sure. What made you change from not being sure to stating that as a fact? I also wonder why you decided to make that claim about 4:1 only counting standalones when a little common sense would have told you that it is very unlikely that standalones for HD DVD have 4 times the attach rate as standalones for Blu-ray.

As I already said, HD DVD's own marketing company sent out an email that said:

"Focusing on dedicated consumer electronics players is significant given the high attach rates for these players, which is currently 4 to 1 over the PS3."

That came along with the press release. As I already said, I'm not sure how they got that, but it is what they said. I don't know if their attach rate statement in the press release was because of average attach rates for all players or whether their data is just against the PS3 as the email from their marketing company would indicate, but either way I really don't think anybody should need to try to prop up a format by making people think that its standalones have 4 times the attach rates of standalones for the other format. Marketing companies sometimes play tricks like that, but we don't need it here.

--Darin

jpb123

06-11-07, 04:35 PM

wnorris

06-11-07, 04:38 PM

Even though your intepretation is rather ridiculous IMO and you stated it as a fact, while earlier you clearly weren't sure. What made you change from not being sure to stating that as a fact? I also wonder why you decided to make that claim about 4:1 only counting standalones when a little common sense would have told you that it is very unlikely that standalones for HD DVD have 4 times the attach rate as standalones for Blu-ray.

As I already said, HD DVD's own marketing company sent out an email that said:

"Focusing on dedicated consumer electronics players is significant given the high attach rates for these players, which is currently 4 to 1 over the PS3."

That came along with the press release. As I already said, I'm not sure how they got that, but it is what they said. I don't know if their attach rate statement in the press release was because of average attach rates for all players or whether their data is just against the PS3 as the email from their marketing company would indicate, but either way I really don't think anybody should need to try to prop up a format by making people think that its standalones have 4 times the attach rates of standalones for the other format. Marketing companies sometimes play tricks like that, but we don't need it here.

--Darin

So what you are saying is that you don't know anything for certain and that you have no idea how the numbers were arrived at. So your guess is as good as mine.

And you shouldn't misrepresent. What I asked before was how could they arrive at the 4:1 number? The same question would apply to what you think the comparison is, which is standalones vs. PS3's. How could they seperate out discs sold for HD DVD addons, from those for PC drives, for those for standalone units, to arrive at the 4:1 number? How do they know how many discs are being used for which type of player? Or how would they know how many BD discs are being used on PS3's? If they know that, then they would also know how many are used on standalones.

I was asking a question about what mechanism they have to break out numbers that way. They only way that makes sense, with what we know about the process would be to compare all HD DVD devices to all BD devices, both standalone and non-standalone, and use total disc sales for both formats. They don't appear to have done that here, so I was asking about the mechanism used to seperate the sales.

Steverhcp02

06-11-07, 04:41 PM

Here is what I have for market share for the first 4 weeks of the year:

1/7 63.3/36.7 <2:1
1/14 68.2/31.8 >2:1
1/21 67.8/32.2 >2:1
1/28 68.8/31.2 >2:1

The last 4 weeks of data:

5/13 62/38 <2:1
5/20 58/42 <2:1
5/27 69/31 >2:1
6/3 61/39 <2:1

So, I'd say HD DVD has improved it's market share since the start of the year. This can be attributed to better hardware sales and/or attachment rates.

Current data is always more relevant....again, we are NOT seeing a consistent 5:1 ratio, we haven't seen that for awhile now!!!

did you really just take the first 4 weeks and the last 4 weeks and ignore14 weeks in between as the basis for your argument on TOTAL marketshare?

YTD marketshare is still 67/33 in favor of BD and SI is now 59/41

And whats even more funny is that if we take the first 4 weeks of the years market share and add them up and then divide by 4 to get the average do you know what we get......67.025 marketshare for BD....only .025 off of what we have now, so NO HD DVD has not gained ANY market share from the beginning of the year, actually, im sorry they have gained .025 marketshare since the first 4 weeks, so yes they are improving, good job.

I can't believe you took the first 4 weeks and last 4 weeks as your logic, unbelievable.

jpb123

06-11-07, 04:46 PM

For the record I believe that Nielsen under-report by 20-30% (shall I put that in a sig to avoid further confusion?). :rolleyes:

AFAIK NOBODY knows the exact market coverage of Nielsen VideoScan.

HD DVD promo group almost certainly use Nielsen data but they never quote them as a source for their figures. Are they using raw Nielsen data or are they applying some modification? Studio estimates are Nielsen data + assumed missing market - is this the source of the 75K?

If so then that's not much more than the 68K Nataraj guessed at (+10%) - all based on the assumption that all Matrix sales are multiplied by 3.

I agree with Nielsen probably underreporting with 20% or so.

HOWEVER I also think that ALL studios for some reason are always just referring to Nielsen numbers in their pressreleases. Seems to be some kind of gentlemans agreement. The Nielsen numbers for Casino Royale, The Departed and Planet Earth have all been such that they correspond to the pressreleases made at different times. Maybe it's a royalty scam that they all agree on to screw the filmmakers.

It is not true that nobody knows the market share. The studios all do. They can figure that out quite easy. I agree that none of us do.

yampan

06-11-07, 05:28 PM

In that connection, I think one could establish a link between hardware sales and sales of one specific title: Planet Earth.

After all, if you just bought a hidef player you want something to be wowed with. Planet Earth is the ideal product for that: unlike movies, it doesn't require long viewings. Pop and wow factor is fairly high throughout. And value for money is also very good.

Just my two cents....

*****

Initial post updated.

I just bought my X-A2 and there's only one HD release I will immediately buy--Planet Earth.

I have hundreds of DVDs I want to re-appreciate, and I'm not wowed by the day/date releases of either side. I will replace certain favorites, like Jurassic Park, when (if) they become available and reasonably priced. However, movies such as, POTC I and II, look fine as DVDs and they just aren't good enough for me to be suckered into double dipping, even if they were on HD. JMHO

I wonder if I represent a sizeable segment of new standalone buyers, who transition to an HD and upscaling capable machine, but will wade slowly into the media market and so our purchases, will not be immediately be reflected in across the board movie sales.

theflux

06-11-07, 05:28 PM

did you really just take the first 4 weeks and the last 4 weeks and ignore14 weeks in between as the basis for your argument on TOTAL marketshare?

YTD marketshare is still 67/33 in favor of BD and SI is now 59/41

And whats even more funny is that if we take the first 4 weeks of the years market share and add them up and then divide by 4 to get the average do you know what we get......67.025 marketshare for BD....only .025 off of what we have now, so NO HD DVD has not gained ANY market share from the beginning of the year, actually, im sorry they have gained .025 marketshare since the first 4 weeks, so yes they are improving, good job.

I can't believe you took the first 4 weeks and last 4 weeks as your logic, unbelievable.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Such as releasing a press release to state that its taken you a year and numerous price cuts to gain 8% market share when you pretend that your biggest competitor doesn't exist.

theflux

06-11-07, 05:30 PM

I just bought my X-A2 and there's only one HD release I will immediately buy--Planet Earth.

I have hundreds of DVDs I want to re-appreciate, and I'm not wowed by the day/date releases of either side. I will replace certain favorites, like Jurassic Park, when (if) they become available and reasonably priced. However, movies such as, POTC I and II, look fine as DVDs and they just aren't good enough for me to be suckered into double dipping, even if they were on HD. JMHO

I wonder if I represent a sizeable segment of new standalone buyers, who transition to an HD and upscaling capable machine, but will wade slowly into the media market and so our purchases, will not be immediately be reflected in across the board movie sales.

I think you do represent a big segment, and it is the same one I am in. I am completely opposed to supporting the studios double-dipping, and that even goes for the 5 star PQ and AQ catalog experience like Pirates of the Caribean 1 and 2. When it is the 2-3 star PQ garbage that Universal has been dumping lately, I would be surprised if anyone would be willing to put up with that for long. And frankly, Sony took a lot of heat for the poor quality of its initial transfers. The whole Blu-ray format got a bad rap -- one that they can't seem to shake no matter how many 5 star releases they put out. Right now Universal is flooding the market with sub-par releases that are going to discourage the new HD-A2 owners. I just don't see how a newly minted convert could keep paying $10-15 more per movie when they don't look much better than DVD. In short, HD DVD owners need to put pressure on Universal to up the quality of its releases. I think that their big push to support HD DVD in quantity of titles has led to disregard for quality.

darinp2

06-11-07, 06:18 PM

So what you are saying is that you don't know anything for certain and that you have no idea how the numbers were arrived at. So your guess is as good as mine.No. The fact that I don't know exactly how they are doing their calculation when the HD DVD marketing company claims that the HD DVD standalone attach rate is 4:1 over the PS3's attach rate and the press release is more vague doesn't mean that any ridiculous theory that doesn't even pass a simple common sense test is "as good". Seriously, you've indicated that you are good at math and if you want people to trust what you say, why did you claim:
HD DVD has also made the claim that among standalone hardware, HD DVD has a 4:1 advantage in attach rate.Do you actually believe that this is what they claimed? If so, why? If you think about it for just a little bit do you think that a 4:1 attach rate advantage for HD DVD when only standalones are considered even makes sense? If that is what you are going to continue claiming, then please explain how Blu-ray ended up with a 1.4:1 SI software advantage when the PS3s should have lower attach rates than Blu-ray standalones. And please don't decide that you believe that HD DVD has a 4:1 attach rate advantage for standalones just because you think that helps HD DVD look better in some way. Please look at it logically.
And you shouldn't misrepresent. What I asked before was how could they arrive at the 4:1 number? The same question would apply to what you think the comparison is, which is standalones vs. PS3's. How could they seperate out discs sold for HD DVD addons, from those for PC drives, for those for standalone units, to arrive at the 4:1 number? How do they know how many discs are being used for which type of player? Or how would they know how many BD discs are being used on PS3's? If they know that, then they would also know how many are used on standalones.

I was asking a question about what mechanism they have to break out numbers that way. They only way that makes sense, with what we know about the process would be to compare all HD DVD devices to all BD devices, both standalone and non-standalone, and use total disc sales for both formats. They don't appear to have done that here, so I was asking about the mechanism used to seperate the sales.What did I misrepresent? You don't know what they did to come to their numbers, but stated as a fact:
HD DVD has also made the claim that among standalone hardware, HD DVD has a 4:1 advantage in attach rate.Just read what they said again. They stated "consumer electronic players" for HD DVD, but did not spell out the devices for "competing formats" used. As I said, the email from the marketing group specifically said 4:1 over the PS3. The press release did not spell out PS3s or combinations of PS3s and standalones, just like it didn't spell out only standalones for the other side, like it did for the HD DVD side (if "consumer electronic players" means standalones as I believe it does).

As an example of if we go with 1.45 million PS3s for the US and 100k standalone Blu-ray players against 150k standalone HD DVD players and 150k XBOX360s with add-ons and try the 4:1 that the HD DVD marketing company mentioned for HD DVD players against PS3s and assume the same attach rates for HD DVD standalone players, XBOX360 add-ons, andBlu-ray standalone players the we essentially get:

Blu-ray:
PS3: 1.45 *.25 = 363k
Standalones: 100k
Total: 463k

against 300k HD DVD players. That is a ratio of 1.54:1 for effective players. The latest SI ratio from Nielsen is about 1.44:1. Or in the same ballpark. Note that there are multiple issues with the above, like that I don't know if the 150k is US only, it ignores the time that the players have been in consumer's hands which really should be part of the attach rate thing (so a player out for 12 months that sells a disc a month really isn't better than one out 2 months that sells a disc a month), and probably some other things, but it is still a good check of whether the numbers are enough in the ballpark to be reasonable.

wnorris,

If you still think that it is reasonable at all to think that HD DVD standalones might have 4x the attach rate of Blu-ray standalones, please explain with numbers how that is reasonable given the software sales figures we've gotten.

--Darin

darinp2

06-11-07, 06:37 PM

In light of the HD DVD group claiming in a June 11th press release that consumers have now purchased 150,000 dedicated HD DVD consumer electronics players (although they didn't spell out whether that was worldwide or some region like just the US or NA), I think it is interesting to look back at some of the earlier posts in this thread about player sales. Here is one from April 10th:
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?

And here is one from March 20th:
Maybe you could ask your contacts a simple question. Does HD DVD have an installed base of over 320k, including standalone and XBOX360 add-ons? I think the Toshiba guy was probably including both in his 200k number, but they should be willing to clarify that it was standalone and didn't include the add-ons, if that is the case.They say that 200,000 Toshiba units sold is an accurate number and that shipments are increasing as well as stockage requests from major retailers.

There may be always some shipped/sold disparity in reporting.

They say Toshiba is well on track to sell over 1.2 million second generation players this year and that the HD A2 first quarter sales numbers were above their internal projections.

Toshiba has not yet met a flat 100,000 in HD A2 sales in any month, which would be the straight line estimate, but that 2nd and 3rd quarter and 4th quarter sales projections were being revised upward based on 1st quarter sales.

Sales were expected to increase significantly in the second quarter and would be boosted further by the MSRP reduction to $399.

The HD A2 MSRP was expected to be reduced to $399 earlier, but was held to $499 because of stronger than projected sales at that price point at a major retailer.

The HD XA2 is selling much better than expected and that production is being increased on that model.

I have no additional information on Xbox 360 add on sales besides what has been discussed here at AVS.--Darin

plazman

06-11-07, 06:47 PM

Steverhcp02

06-11-07, 06:56 PM

I was simply comparing the first four weeks to the most recent four weeks. You can see the number of times the 2:1 sales ratio was exceeded during the two relevant periods.

I did not selectively cherry pick 8 weeks of data.....

The avg. of a % makes no sense! The trend shows that a 2:1 or greater sales advantage for BD was more likely early in the year than it is now. That is just a fact, you can accept it or not. But does not change it :)

Ignoring 12 weeks in between to 4 week blocks does NOT demonstrate a trend.

You said Marketshare was coming down for BD from its high beginning in January, you were 100% wrong i proved it. You had no idea what you were talking about, the only thing your post showed was that the ratio of these 4 weeks was smaller than the ratio of those 4 weeks....whereas the market share is nearly identicle, yet you claimed the marketshare was changing based on the data you posted.

67% YTD in january 67% YTD right now, thats a fact.

EDIT: and the Since Inception marketshare is at an all time high STILL for BD, so im not sure what horn youre trying to toot.

nataraj

06-11-07, 06:59 PM

darinp2

06-11-07, 07:09 PM

BTW, when did Tosh announce the 100K number ?April 17th:

http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=129198

That one says US and I don't think the 150k for today says.

--Darin

TriptonUpman

06-11-07, 07:28 PM

wnorris, no offense dude, but seriously, whatever hd-dvd sales are taking place in your little world of imagination are SO FAR beyond even the most upbeat estimation based in reality that your posts regarding the subject, which are all over this entire forum, are truely hilarious. you're just setting yourself up for people to quote later and make you look really foolish, so perhaps you should think a little more before you hit the "post reply" button.

WayneL

06-11-07, 07:35 PM

I just bought my X-A2 and there's only one HD release I will immediately buy--Planet Earth.
Netflix'd it. Did you see the HDNet Shuttle launch? Almost perfect. The studios are ready and willing to sell HD transfers to cable/sat/ota too. These options make HD disk sales less relevant. HDM is just another release option, and I believe the studios are fundamentally format neutral - none will fall on their sword (Sony might try hari-kiri, but it won't increase sales) :)

jpb123

06-11-07, 08:42 PM

darinp2

06-11-07, 08:52 PM

Darin, with some 16.000 posts are you sure you wanna upset anyone enough for them to go hunting ... :rolleyes:

Or should we presume you haven't made projections in many of those?If I have misled people then they should point that out and you are welcome to go see if you can find anything where I have. I think my track record speaks for itself and if you look at claims I have made with numbers, you will see that is the case. If I was the type who misled people a lot then I might be afraid of upsetting others lest they go look at my posts and find things like that, but people are welcome to go look at my past posts. Hunt away if you want.
If you don't go out on a limb quoting numbers none will ever be able to call you on it. Pretty boring discussions we would have then.There are different ways to post numbers. One is to guess and make it clear that it is a guess. But in that case if a person is way off from reality then they and others should take that into account with later guesses. There is also the thing of posting numbers and making it look like they aren't guesses, when they really were. There is also the thing of posting numbers obtained from insiders, where we later find out that the numbers were bogus. It might not be the person who posted the numbers who is at fault, but then things coming through the same insider channel should be questioned. I'm not against a little excitement, but I prefer that it not be in leading people further from the truth.

--Darin

nataraj

06-11-07, 08:55 PM

April 17th:

http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=129198

That one says US and I don't think the 150k for today says.

Oh yes, WW or US only again. I wish we got all the details like they do in Games/consoles.

yampan

06-11-07, 09:06 PM

Netflix'd it. Did you see the HDNet Shuttle launch? Almost perfect. The studios are ready and willing to sell HD transfers to cable/sat/ota too. These options make HD disk sales less relevant. HDM is just another release option, and I believe the studios are fundamentally format neutral - none will fall on their sword (Sony might try hari-kiri, but it won't increase sales) :)

I think there are two divergent groups here, the collectors who exhibit a certain pride of ownership for their hard media and like to have the option to view things again and again. Then there are the Netflixers and downloaders who are content to watch once, or keep on disk for a limited time. Each side probably doesn't want much to do with the other approach. Neither is "correct". The more options the better. :)

wnorris

06-11-07, 10:37 PM

wnorris

06-11-07, 10:38 PM

darinp2

06-11-07, 10:43 PM

I think it is so sad how desperate diehard BD supporters are when any pro-HD DVD news is given the light of day. I think their souls will die when it becomes obvious the BD and HD DVD sell equally, and that both formats will stick around.Regardless of which format wins or if it is a tie, it won't change how credible claims like your:
HD DVD has also made the claim that among standalone hardware, HD DVD has a 4:1 advantage in attach rate.are. Are you going to address whether you still believe what you posted before as fact, or aren't you?

--Darin

ack_bk

06-11-07, 10:46 PM

Why would my 150k SHIPPED number seem far fetched for the XA2? According to Sigma, there will be 2.4 million BD players "shipped" this year that use their chip. Shipped doesn't equal sold.

I was optimistic on my guess at how many sold, but I always claimed it was my guess at sold figures.

Your deperate attempts to witch hunt anyone related to HD DVD is pretty pathetic if you ask me. With 16,000 posts in your witch hunt, you must have an intimate relationship with your PC.

You stated this number back in April.. That was two months ago. What is the shipped XA2 number up to now? 200K? 250K?

If they shipped 150K XA2's that means there are most likely something like 120K sitting in warehouses collecting dust by now.

Please, if you are going to make statements like this one, and ones similar to it please provide some sort of valid proof or evidence.

Between the grossly exaggerated sales numbers and the whole Chinese/Wal-Mart cheap player rumors, I have pretty much stopped listening and believing the numbers that people spout out around here unless there is something substantial to back it up.

And HD DVD can thank me as I am one of the people who purchased an A2 (I bought the $249 Costco D2 version). I like the player, but my BD standalone has had zero issues to date and seems to be of better build quality.

wnorris

06-11-07, 10:55 PM

No. The fact that I don't know exactly how they are doing their calculation when the HD DVD marketing company claims that the HD DVD standalone attach rate is 4:1 over the PS3's attach rate and the press release is more vague doesn't mean that any ridiculous theory that doesn't even pass a simple common sense test is "as good". Seriously, you've indicated that you are good at math and if you want people to trust what you say, why did you claim:
Do you actually believe that this is what they claimed? If so, why? If you think about it for just a little bit do you think that a 4:1 attach rate advantage for HD DVD when only standalones are considered even makes sense? If that is what you are going to continue claiming, then please explain how Blu-ray ended up with a 1.4:1 SI software advantage when the PS3s should have lower attach rates than Blu-ray standalones. And please don't decide that you believe that HD DVD has a 4:1 attach rate advantage for standalones just because you think that helps HD DVD look better in some way. Please look at it logically.
What did I misrepresent? You don't know what they did to come to their numbers, but stated as a fact:
Just read what they said again. They stated "consumer electronic players" for HD DVD, but did not spell out the devices for "competing formats" used. As I said, the email from the marketing group specifically said 4:1 over the PS3. The press release did not spell out PS3s or combinations of PS3s and standalones, just like it didn't spell out only standalones for the other side, like it did for the HD DVD side (if "consumer electronic players" means standalones as I believe it does).

As an example of if we go with 1.45 million PS3s for the US and 100k standalone Blu-ray players against 150k standalone HD DVD players and 150k XBOX360s with add-ons and try the 4:1 that the HD DVD marketing company mentioned for HD DVD players against PS3s and assume the same attach rates for HD DVD standalone players, XBOX360 add-ons, andBlu-ray standalone players the we essentially get:

Blu-ray:
PS3: 1.45 *.25 = 363k
Standalones: 100k
Total: 463k

against 300k HD DVD players. That is a ratio of 1.54:1 for effective players. The latest SI ratio from Nielsen is about 1.44:1. Or in the same ballpark. Note that there are multiple issues with the above, like that I don't know if the 150k is US only, it ignores the time that the players have been in consumer's hands which really should be part of the attach rate thing (so a player out for 12 months that sells a disc a month really isn't better than one out 2 months that sells a disc a month), and probably some other things, but it is still a good check of whether the numbers are enough in the ballpark to be reasonable.

wnorris,

If you still think that it is reasonable at all to think that HD DVD standalones might have 4x the attach rate of Blu-ray standalones, please explain with numbers how that is reasonable given the software sales figures we've gotten.

--Darin

you obviously aren't a good judge of what common sense entails. At least you did admit you have no idea how they arrive at their numbers, just before you start to tell me i am wrong in my interpretation of what they said. You've demonstrated over and over that you are on some kind of witch hunt.

It's also easy for BD to have a better software sales ratio, but HD DVD standalones have a better attach rate compared to BD standalones. Anyone with common sense would know it is possible because there are over 1.2 million BD players. Even a low attach rate among PS3 would make it possible for HD DVD standalones have a 4:1 advantage over the 100k BD standalones, but for BD to still have the software sales advantage. Simple math and common sense.

Let's say 100k BD standalones with an attach rate of 1.5 = 150k BD discs.
150k HD DVD standalones with an attach rate of 6 = 900k HD DVD discs

Then you have 1.2 million PS3's with an attach rate of 1 = 1.2 million BD discs
Then you have 190k addons with an attach rate of 1 = 190k HD DVD discs

Total BD 1.35 million discs
Total HD DVD 1.1 million discs

55/45 SI disc market share for BD. Now what is the actual SI again?

wnorris

06-11-07, 10:56 PM

You stated this number back in April.. That was two months ago. What is the shipped XA2 number up to now? 200K? 250K?

If they shipped 150K XA2's that means there are most likely something like 120K sitting in warehouses collecting dust by now.

Please, if you are going to make statements like this one, and ones similar to it please provide some sort of valid proof or evidence.

Between the grossly exaggerated sales numbers and the whole Chinese/Wal-Mart cheap player rumors, I have pretty much stopped listening and believing the numbers that people spout out around here unless there is something substantial to back it up.

And HD DVD can thank me as I am one of the people who purchased an A2 (I bought the $249 Costco D2 version). I like the player, but my BD standalone has had zero issues to date and seems to be of better build quality.

I stated my "proof" back when I made the original post. i was told that number by a Toshiba rep.

darinp2

06-11-07, 11:02 PM

Simple math and common sense.

Let's say 100k BD standalones with an attach rate of 1.5 = 150k BD discs.
150k HD DVD standalones with an attach rate of 6 = 900k HD DVD discs

Then you have 1.2 million PS3's with an attach rate of 1 = 1.2 million BD discs
Then you have 190k addons with an attach rate of 1 = 190k HD DVD discs

Total BD 1.35 million discs
Total HD DVD 1.1 million discs

55/45 SI disc market share for BD. Now what is the actual SI again?You are just proving that common sense won't get you there with your bogus attach rate of 1 for the XBOX360 add-on. Common sense would tell you right there that it is extremely unlikely that the attach rate for the XBOX360 with add-on is the same as for the PS3 and 1/6th of the attach rate of HD DVD standalones. Do you really believe that your only 50% higher for Blu-ray standalones than the PS3 while the HD DVD standalones have 6x the PS3 attach rate is even close to reality. Seriously, you indicated that you were good at math and the above looks like somebody trying to come up with something that will work, while foregoing logic and common sense.

I doubt even the most ardent HD DVD fan would think that your ratios are even close to reality.

Once again, do you think the following is true:
HD DVD has also made the claim that among standalone hardware, HD DVD has a 4:1 advantage in attach rate.If you say yes despite having to use such ridiculous numbers to get there, it will say a lot. I'm not asking if you can make up bogus numbers to get there, I'm asking if you believe it.

--Darin

Reginald Trent

06-11-07, 11:37 PM

I would certainly love to see someone right now defend the price premium for the XA1 against the 2nd gens, if not the the exact same technical capabilities of it's more low brow G1 sibling.

Nothing to defend as everyone knows or should that early adopters ALWAYS PAY MORE for the privilege of early entry.

theflux

06-11-07, 11:41 PM

Let's say 100k BD standalones with an attach rate of 1.5 = 150k BD discs.
150k HD DVD standalones with an attach rate of 6 = 900k HD DVD discs

Then you have 1.2 million PS3's with an attach rate of 1 = 1.2 million BD discs
Then you have 190k addons with an attach rate of 1 = 190k HD DVD discs

Total BD 1.35 million discs
Total HD DVD 1.1 million discs

55/45 SI disc market share for BD. Now what is the actual SI again?

Instead of just admitting you were wrong, you keep digging yourself in deeper. You can't honestly believe those attach rates.

100,000 people bought a Blu-ray player and then decided they should just buy 1 and a half disks. Right. Assuming some people bought 10 disks that would mean there are 8.5 people out there who bought a Blu-ray player and didn't buy a single disk. Your numbers make absolutely no sense.

Chau808

06-11-07, 11:48 PM

I expect to see the software sales gap eliminated by August.How many of those $199-$249-$299 HD DVD players are finding their way into new homes? If sales are being made to existing HD DVD and Blu-ray owners the attach rate for those units would drop, perhaps drastically.

Are you expecting Universal's catalog releases to contribute to closing the gap as well in your calculations?

Reginald Trent

06-11-07, 11:53 PM

I think you do represent a big segment, and it is the same one I am in. I am completely opposed to supporting the studios double-dipping, and that even goes for the 5 star PQ and AQ catalog experience like Pirates of the Caribean 1 and 2. When it is the 2-3 star PQ garbage that Universal has been dumping lately, I would be surprised if anyone would be willing to put up with that for long. And frankly, Sony took a lot of heat for the poor quality of its initial transfers. The whole Blu-ray format got a bad rap -- one that they can't seem to shake no matter how many 5 star releases they put out. Right now Universal is flooding the market with sub-par releases that are going to discourage the new HD-A2 owners. I just don't see how a newly minted convert could keep paying $10-15 more per movie when they don't look much better than DVD. In short, HD DVD owners need to put pressure on Universal to up the quality of its releases. I think that their big push to support HD DVD in quantity of titles has led to disregard for quality.

Those so called sub par releases are you confusing HD DVD with the BD releases.

AnthonyP

06-12-07, 12:23 AM

Yes to some extent that is true BUT for what we are doing that doesn't necessarily mean that adding numbers week by week gets us further from what's correct.

I agree it does not, but it is more likely since each week is based on the last. We are using SI and YTD. If SI and YTD moved up a lot more or a lot less then assumed the previous week then this week the change will be different. Further more his conclusion was that after the top 5 they are equal. A very strong conclusion to be based on numbers that can be extremely off.

Obviously for individual titles we will not get close to 1% off in most cases but I seem to have been able to put PE within 4% after 5 weeks so it's not useless using these percentages.

where did I say the % or even Nataraj or others numbers are useless.

All I said was
1) it is obvious that the biggest differences will be in the top titles
2) he can't know if the rest are equal or even how off they are. Even if we assume a 5% difference it goes from equal 50:50 to 55:45

AnthonyP

06-12-07, 12:39 AM

There is also one more way we can go from 40k to 75k disks

So 11 months with 10.000 a month. Double that in April and May for 20.000 each month. Add a weekly double for last week of May for that week going to 10.000. Putting May actually at 25.000?

That would give a total of 155.000. If they actually also counted 'last week' which should per the above be over 10.000 we need to start at around 9.000 per month instead.

why bring in player discussion? well the last week of may is around 7k (plus it should be a bit lower because some might not have filled the card and we don't know if the 150 is US or US and Canad that does not have the free movies)
40k + 7*5=75k. If Toshiba decided to use VS and the free ones that came with the player nd got used they can easily make 40k real sales look like 75k

AnthonyP

06-12-07, 12:48 AM

I would think that is the only straightforward calculation, but that definately isn't what they stated in the release. Rereading the release, they prefernece the statement saying it is for standalones only. So no idea how they arrived at the number.

easy it is a PR, it is menat to make HD DVD look good and missinform. Loook at all of us here discusssing that one senetence trying to make heads or tails of it because we have a good idea of the facts and it does not make sense. Many others looking at it will see the 60:40, the 150 and then the 4:1 and go WOW HD DVD is doing great compared to BD when it is actually doing crap.

nataraj

06-12-07, 12:51 AM

AnthonyP

06-12-07, 01:02 AM

So what you are saying is that you don't know anything for certain and that you have no idea how the numbers were arrived at. So your guess is as good as mine.

not at all. Like NAtaraj pointed out much earlier

About 1.4M BD devices compared to about 300K HD DVD devices. This combined with the SI movie sales would give you close to 4:1 attach rates.

1.4 PS3+ 100k BD =1.5 (the only mistake he did) 300 HD DVD the ratio 59:41 gives 3.5:1 that then rounds off to 4:1 and if they used the week before it is even closer

AnthonyP

06-12-07, 01:13 AM

That one says US and I don't think the 150k for today says.

it does not, but it is from PRG America, At best it is US atr worst I would assume it is US and Canada so it is 150-135 (going with the usual 10% for Canada)

theflux

06-12-07, 01:17 AM

Those so called sub par releases are you confusing HD DVD with the BD releases.
This sentence isn't very clear, but I'll take a stab at it and guess that you were trying to say: "Are you confusing HD DVD releases with BD releases?"

Clearly you haven't been keeping up with the state of releases lately with regard to the PQ of Blu-ray exclusive studio releases vs HD DVD exclusive studio releases for the past 3 months.

AnthonyP

06-12-07, 01:17 AM

You stated this number back in April.. That was two months ago.

he also stated AX2 while the 150k was for all 6 Toshiba players (and possibly the RCA to make 7). We also know 60k were from last year

AnthonyP

06-12-07, 01:21 AM

Total BD 1.35 million discs
Total HD DVD 1.1 million discs

55/45 SI disc market share for BD. Now what is the actual SI again?

59:41, quite a bit off from yours where every PS3 owner buys a movie.

The biggeest problem is that why would anyone assume every PS3 owner buys a movie, just to assume that someone that buys a stand alone HD DVD player buys 4:1 movies?

theflux

06-12-07, 01:25 AM

59:41, quite a bit off from yours where every PS3 owner buys a movie.

The biggeest problem is that why would anyone assume every PS3 owner buys a movie, just to assume that someone that buys a stand alone HD DVD player buys 4:1 movies?

Because hes completely wrong and won't admit it. He's just trying to make up numbers that fit his statements, but those numbers are so far off I can't imagine who would agree with him.

los seres

06-12-07, 01:54 AM

Top HD DVD Titles For Week Ended 6/9/2007

RANK TITLE (LABEL/DISTRIBUTOR, SRP)
1 Planet Earth: The Complete series (BBC, $99.98)
2 Ultimate Matrix Collection (War,$119.99)
3 Complete Matrix Trilogy (War, $89.99)
4 Norbit (Par, $39.99)
5 40 Year Old Virgin (Uni, $29.98)
6 Batman Begins (War, $28.99)
7 Rio Bravo (War, $28.99)
8 Comin To America (Par, $29.99)
9 The Frighteners (Uni, $29.98)
10 Letters From Iwo Jima (War, $39.99)

Top Blu-Ray Titles For Week Ended 6/9/2007

RANK TITLE (LABEL/DISTRIBUTOR, SRP)
1 Blood Diamond (War, $28.99)
2 Planet Earth: The Complete series (BBC, $99.98)
3 Apocalypto (Dis, $34.99)
4 Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Dis, $34.99)
5 Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl (Dis, $34.99)
6 The Messengers (Sny, $38.96)
7 Casino Royale (Sony, $38.96)
8 Hellboy (Sny, $28.95)
9 Norbit (War, $39.99)
10 Letters From Iwo Jima (War, $34.98)

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.

jpb123

06-12-07, 03:32 AM

jpb123

06-12-07, 03:36 AM

FrancescoP

06-12-07, 03:56 AM

As an example of if we go with 1.45 million PS3s for the US and 100k standalone Blu-ray players against 150k standalone HD DVD players and 150k XBOX360s with add-ons

Is there some source for the 150k Xbox 360 add-ons number?

Grubert

06-12-07, 08:53 AM

These are last week's releases:

Blu-ray
Blood Diamond
Bruce Springsteen &Seeger
Coming to America
Cowboys, The
Hellboy
Messengers, The
Norbit
Rescue Me 3rd Season
Rio Bravo
Trading Places

HD DVD
Coming to America
Cowboys, The
HD Window Great Southwest
HD Window Hawaii
Norbit
Rio Bravo
Serenity Southern Seas
Trading Places
Visions of the Sea

day-and-date (or almost d&d) releases are underlined.

wnorris

06-12-07, 09:58 AM

59:41, quite a bit off from yours where every PS3 owner buys a movie.

The biggeest problem is that why would anyone assume every PS3 owner buys a movie, just to assume that someone that buys a stand alone HD DVD player buys 4:1 movies?

Every PS3 owner doesn't have to buy a movie. I never said that. 50% of them could buy two movies, or 24% 4 movies, etc. In either case, the attach rate for the PS3 as a whole would still be 1 per PS3.

wnorris

06-12-07, 10:05 AM

You are just proving that common sense won't get you there with your bogus attach rate of 1 for the XBOX360 add-on. Common sense would tell you right there that it is extremely unlikely that the attach rate for the XBOX360 with add-on is the same as for the PS3 and 1/6th of the attach rate of HD DVD standalones. Do you really believe that your only 50% higher for Blu-ray standalones than the PS3 while the HD DVD standalones have 6x the PS3 attach rate is even close to reality. Seriously, you indicated that you were good at math and the above looks like somebody trying to come up with something that will work, while foregoing logic and common sense.

I doubt even the most ardent HD DVD fan would think that your ratios are even close to reality.

Once again, do you think the following is true:
If you say yes despite having to use such ridiculous numbers to get there, it will say a lot. I'm not asking if you can make up bogus numbers to get there, I'm asking if you believe it.

--Darin

I believe it in as much as I think that is what the HD DVD promotions group has said. Unless someone with better access to data than they have comes along with contradictory information, I guess I will have to believe them.

It boils down to I'm basing my analysis off of what was said, and the context of what was said. You are trying to dispute that based on what wasn't said. It is scientifically unsound of you to do so. There were an almost infinite number of things that weren't said, and many things that weren't said would be contradictory.

It would be like a man saying, "I wish my wife was dead." And then the next day the police show up to arrest him because he didn't say "... and I would pay you $10,000 to kill her." Your line of logic is, he didn't say it, so it must be a fact that I can use against you. That type of arguement makes no sense.

Here I though this was a science forum. Perhaps you should change your signature.

wnorris

06-12-07, 10:11 AM

You are just proving that common sense won't get you there with your bogus attach rate of 1 for the XBOX360 add-on. Common sense would tell you right there that it is extremely unlikely that the attach rate for the XBOX360 with add-on is the same as for the PS3 and 1/6th of the attach rate of HD DVD standalones. Do you really believe that your only 50% higher for Blu-ray standalones than the PS3 while the HD DVD standalones have 6x the PS3 attach rate is even close to reality. Seriously, you indicated that you were good at math and the above looks like somebody trying to come up with something that will work, while foregoing logic and common sense.

I doubt even the most ardent HD DVD fan would think that your ratios are even close to reality.

Once again, do you think the following is true:
If you say yes despite having to use such ridiculous numbers to get there, it will say a lot. I'm not asking if you can make up bogus numbers to get there, I'm asking if you believe it.

--Darin

Where do you get your data on what attach rates would be logical? Can you tell me how many PS3 owners only rent BD? Addon on owners who only rent? What is the ratio of renters between the two platforms? What about the rental ratio among standalones? Since Xbox users are used to "renting" downloadable movies from live, are the more or less prone to rent HD DVD's than BD owners?

Please enlighten us with the unlimited fountain of knowledge that you believe you have into how these systems are used, and how that effects attach rate.

I'm only analysing the data presented. You are trying to bring all your personal biases and beliefs into the analysis, so that it isn't based on data, but on your own skewed perceptions.

wnorris

06-12-07, 10:24 AM

There is also one more way we can go from 40k to 75k disks

why bring in player discussion? well the last week of may is around 7k (plus it should be a bit lower because some might not have filled the card and we don't know if the 150 is US or US and Canad that does not have the free movies)
40k + 7*5=75k. If Toshiba decided to use VS and the free ones that came with the player nd got used they can easily make 40k real sales look like 75k

I don't think they used any free movies, or I think HD DVD would have more discs out there then BD, and they would have mentioned that as well. Every Toshiba has had somewhere between 3-9 discs given away as free. We don't know how many, if any, of those are counted already by VS. We know that the HD DVD Promo group said 25k players sold during the month 9 discs were free. So the other 125k players get between 3-5 discs. We know another 25k of those were elegible for 5 discs. So now 100k got between 3-5 discs. I think we know another 30k of those were also eligible for 5, and lets say the final 70k averaged out as 4. That would mean 730k free discs given away, plus another 190k or so for the KK disc in the addon (this is assuming we are talking US numbers here).

So if they added the VS numbers with almost a million discs that have been given away, I think the total number of HD DVD discs would surpass, or at least equal, the number of VS plus free BD discs (maybe 600k freebies). The promotions group would also hype this stat if it were the case.

So I don't think they used freebies in any way.

wnorris

06-12-07, 10:30 AM

And before anyone goes off on how much Pirates have dropped. Remember how rong they were last week compared to Nielsen. Planet Earth BD is at best around 3000 copies now. So not likely that it is number 2 for BD. The HD DVD rank at least looks possible.

Can I ask a question, why does everyone say Rentrak is "wrong" and Nielsen is "right"?

Both companies track POS data and both have historically accurate results for DVD. Often with DVD, the data from Rentrak matches exactly with Nielsen.

But now suddenly with an emerging market like HD discs, Rentrak is "wrong" and Nielsen is "right".

You guys crack me up...

Grubert

06-12-07, 10:37 AM

Can I ask a question, why does everyone say Rentrak is "wrong" and Nielsen is "right"?

Short answer: because Rentrak doesn't track online sales and Nielsen does.

ChrisBeveridge

06-12-07, 11:52 AM

As Grubert said, Rentrak is more incomplete than the already incomplete Nielsen. It's rare that you see industry folks quoting rentrak for numbers. They certainly provide another perspective on things though and their lack of internet coverage gives some insights into the different markets.

theflux

06-12-07, 12:27 PM

Is there some source for the 150k Xbox 360 add-ons number?

It was discussed previously in this thread, but I can't seem to find where. I think the final hard number we had was around 140k.

studioguy

06-12-07, 03:54 PM

My first post so please be kind :)

A couple rules of thumb studios typically use when discussing the concept of attach rate.

For DVD the attach rate of a user was defined as the number of discs a consumer would purchase within the first 12 months of purchasing their FIRST DVD playback device. The idea is to quantify the disc sales that will result in the near term (12 months) with each hardware unit purchase. For DVD stand-alone set top devices this number was ~30 discs.

Also for DVD, attach rates for game boxes (PS2 and X-Box) were much less, about 5 discs. This intuitively makes sense since PS3 and X-Boxes were typically not in the living room/home theater room and were usually in the kid's room and used primarily for playing games. Also recall PS3 adn X-box were launched a couple years after the launch of the DVD format.

So for HD packaged media the question is will these same attach rates prove to be true? Frankly, it is too early to tell, but the current thinking is that for stand-alone devices the attach rate may be slightly lower (say 25-30 discs within a 12 month period). The discount in the attach rate is mainly due to the fact that in general media consumption has become much more fragmented than it was 10 years ago when DVD launched, and users have less time to spend watching movies on packaged media. Other direct competitors like HD resolution VOD also cannibalize sales of catalog titles on HD packaged media. We can argue about the specific number, but the point is it will likely be smaller than what we saw for DVD.

For game boxes it is a little more convoluted: PS3's are being deployed in user's living rooms at a higher rate than PS2/Xbox was, so users will likely purchase more BD movies than they did DVD movies for their PS3/Xbox. Exactly how many more is not clear, i.e. the experiment is under way as we speak.

Further, the Xbox360 is considered to have the same attach rate as a set-top player, since the only reason a user would purchase the add-on drive was specifically to watch HD DVD movies.

Only other comment is that people should be careful not to take Nielsen numbers as giving the full picture with regard to actual discs sold - it is extremely useful, but does not give the full picture. Issues that dirty up the data: some retailers don't give sales data to Nielsen, discs that are bundled with hardware, self reported numbers from studios that may be 'rosier' than actuals.

Hope this helps the discussion.

SG

joshd2012

06-12-07, 03:59 PM

The Sales thread gets an insider of its own?

Great first post SG, thanks.

wnorris

06-12-07, 04:00 PM

Short answer: because Rentrak doesn't track online sales and Nielsen does.

I gues my only problem with your statement is that Rentrak does track online sales. As a matter of fact, online sales is one of the filters you can apply if you just want to look at that subset of data.

So what's the next excuse?

fozziwig

06-12-07, 07:12 PM

Only other comment is that people should be careful not to take Nielsen numbers as giving the full picture with regard to actual discs sold - it is extremely useful, but does not give the full picture. Issues that dirty up the data: some retailers don't give sales data to Nielsen, discs that are bundled with hardware, self reported numbers from studios that may be 'rosier' than actuals.

Hope this helps the discussion.

SG

I'm sure you didn't mean to say it but that paragraph may give some the impression that the Nielsen data is in some way innacurate. It is not.

To my knowledge Nielsen reported data is gathered from participating retailers using electronic POS. The Nielsen data will not include freebies, studio guesses and, of course, does not include data from non participating retailers - like Wal*Mart. Nielsen make no estimation based on data they do not have.

As I say, I'm sure you didn't intend to give the impression that Nielsen data was corrupted by these things but your words may be interpreted by some in that way.

It is generally assumed (at least in this thread) that Nielsen under-report the market by 20-30%. Some people claim the figure is as high as 50%. Nobody seems to know (apart from Nielsen presumably).

What is not in doubt is that, even without full market coverage, the sample size is so immense that the percentage share reported weekly is about as accurate as you can get.

Guesses about sales volume based on this data are just that - guesses. Good guesses sometimes, but guesses none the less. I'm not aware of anyone including free discs in any volume estimates - have you seen this?

Of course the online media report numbers and sometimes these will be raw Nielsen data and sometimes they will be Nielsen + studio top-up. How accurate these studio numbers are unknown - but it's fun to discuss them anyway.

For a summary of what Nielsen VideoScan do click the link:

http://www.videoscan.com/about.html

Oh, and welcome to the sales thread. :)

nataraj

06-12-07, 07:27 PM

To my knowledge Nielsen reported data is gathered from participating retailers using electronic POS. The Nielsen data will not include freebies, studio guesses and, of course, does not include data from non participating retailers - like Wal*Mart. Nielsen make no estimation based on data they do not have.

I think SG means to say - if you want "real" movie sales those "freebees" should be included - since the hardware vendor paid the movie studio.

mrseder

06-12-07, 07:30 PM

If the Nielsen numbers were giving a misleading picture of the market, the HDDVD promotion group would be releasing press releases every week.

theflux

06-12-07, 07:38 PM

If the Nielsen numbers were giving a misleading picture of the market, the HDDVD promotion group would be releasing press releases every week.

I think if the Nielsen numbers were giving a misleading picture of the market they wouldn't exist. If your job is to provide a clear picture of the market and you don't companies will stop paying you.

darinp2

06-12-07, 08:11 PM

I believe it in as much as I think that is what the HD DVD promotions group has said. Unless someone with better access to data than they have comes along with contradictory information, I guess I will have to believe them.

It boils down to I'm basing my analysis off of what was said, and the context of what was said. You are trying to dispute that based on what wasn't said. It is scientifically unsound of you to do so. There were an almost infinite number of things that weren't said, and many things that weren't said would be contradictory.I think readers here can see that you are claiming they said something they didn't and while I have told you more than once that the marketing group that is paid by this HD DVD organization to send out these emails stated in the one with this press release:
Focusing on dedicated consumer electronics players is significant given the high attach rates for these players, which is currently 4 to 1 over the PS3.Yet you continue to believe your nonsense and claim that they said something they did not say. I think rational thinkers here can see that you have had to go with ridiculous numbers in order to back up your claim that they said something they did not say. They said, "dedicated HD DVD consumer electronics players" for the HD DVD side, but did not say what they used from the other side for the 4:1 claim. You say they did, but they didn't and you should be smart enough to see how ridiculous your attach rate numbers had to get in order to support your claim.
Here I though this was a science forum. Perhaps you should change your signature.I am happy with my signature as it relates to this discussion. Even in science when a person claims that somebody said something they didn't and comes up with crazy numbers to support it, others should point out the fault in that.

I am not sure why you are holding onto this belief about HD DVD standalones have 4x the attach rate of Blu-ray standalones. Maybe you could explain what your motivation is given how illogical that is.

I agree with theflux about what you are doing:
Instead of just admitting you were wrong, you keep digging yourself in deeper. You can't honestly believe those attach rates.Given that, even this might not deter you from holding onto a belief that others can see is ridiculous. This morning I responded to the email from the marketing company (Weber Shandwick) and asked them to clarify their 4:1 vs the PS3 with the press release in the same email that didn't specifically spell out the other side and they responded with:
Apologies for the confusion. To clarify, the 4-to-1 attach rate figure takes into consideration standalone players (BD and HD DVD), and PS3 and Xbox 360 HD DVD drive numbers, given that the game consoles are also driving titles sales. However, the key point here is that standalone players will always drive a higher attach rate and consistent sales growth. As you likely know, title attach rates for gaming systems has never been on par with standalone players, and as availability of game titles increase, game system attach rates for movies continue to trend down.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.Please stop claiming that the following was ever true or is true now:
HD DVD has also made the claim that among standalone hardware, HD DVD has a 4:1 advantage in attach rate.--Darin

nataraj

06-12-07, 08:44 PM

Just for fun ... here is what I wrote on 6/6.

1.3 M PS3s are in the US homes. Add a high figure of 100K Blu-ray players to that.

We have some 125K tosh players now along with 150K 360 add-ons. So,

effective BD players = 100K+1.3M*0.22 = 390K
effective HD players = 150K+150K*0.75 = 260K

That even gives a 1.5:1 advantage to BD - as reflected in movie sales. To counter that Tosh needs to sell 130K players quickly - and then sell at the rate of some 25K to 35K per month to counter PS3.

Developing on this theme we can see why the price cut of HD DVD is not having an immidiate effect. I've corrected the above for the numbers we know now.

Let us assume Tosh is selling at a high rate of about 40K players per month. PS3 is selling at about 80K ... let us be generous and make that about 100K, so that 22% is close to 20K. Further let us assume add-on continues to sell at 10K per month. BD stand alone's sell at 7.5K per month.

So, in effect we have 40+10*0.75 - (20+7.5) = 20K effective increase of HD DVD players per month.

To even BD's effective players we need to wait for 130/20 = 6 months. So, if things stay the way they are (they never do !) - we should see HD DVD movie sales equal BD sales on a consistent basis by end of this year :)

btp

06-12-07, 10:00 PM

I am not sure why you are holding onto this belief about HD DVD standalones have 4x the attach rate of Blu-ray standalones. Maybe you could explain what your motivation is given how illogical that is.
HD DVD has also made the claim that among standalone hardware, HD DVD has a 4:1 advantage in attach rate.
I have to agree. Regardless any skepticism there might be in this thread toward good news coming from the HD-DVD promo group, a 4:1 ratio between HD-DVD and BD standalones absolutely does not pass the common sense or plausibility test.

I'm quite happy with my HD-A2 but, if I were wnorris, I would retreat from that statement as quickly as possible. A 4:1 advantage in attach rate among all capable HD media players, standalone and game systems combined, is still something any HD-DVD supporter can be happy about.

Bradley

joshd2012

06-12-07, 10:03 PM

Further, can you provide evidence that Toshiba is losing any profits by reducing price? Toshiba could be making the same amount of profit at a street price of $282, as they were at a street price of $400. You assume too much with no facts to support it.

I now have the facts (yay!).

"Doherty said, Toshiba is losing money whereas Sony is making money on its $499 player."

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0110014KSQN9

theflux

06-12-07, 10:08 PM

Developing on this theme we can see why the price cut of HD DVD is not having an immidiate effect. I've corrected the above for the numbers we know now.

Let us assume Tosh is selling at a high rate of about 40K players per month. PS3 is selling at about 80K ... let us be generous and make that about 100K, so that 22% is close to 20K. Further let us assume add-on continues to sell at 10K per month. BD stand alone's sell at 7.5K per month.

So, in effect we have 40+10*0.75 - (20+7.5) = 20K effective increase of HD DVD players per month.

To even BD's effective players we need to wait for 130/20 = 6 months. So, if things stay the way they are (they never do !) - we should see HD DVD movie sales equal BD sales on a consistent basis by end of this year :)

I agree with most of that except for the add-on selling 10k a month. I think sales were already on their way downward in march/april, and have continued to drop off -- hence the clearance sales we saw in april/may. I just can't see a situation in which a person would purchase a $200 add-on with 1 free movie in place of a $250 dedicated player with 5 free movies, and thats assuming they haven't been to the forums where most people advocate the dedicated over the add-on. Barring a price cut I just can't see the add-on topping more than 1000 a month.

nataraj

06-12-07, 10:25 PM

I agree with most of that except for the add-on selling 10k a year. I think sales were already on their way downward in march/april, and have continued to drop off -- hence the clearance sales we saw in april/may. I just can't see a situation in which a person would purchase a $200 add-on with 1 free movie in place of a $250 dedicated player with 5 free movies, and thats assuming they haven't been to the forums where most people advocate the dedicated over the add-on. Barring a price cut I just can't see the add-on topping more than 1000 a month.

You mean 10K per month ? Yes, as the price of stand alone goes down the add-on becomes that much less attractive. I guess a price cut would be needed for continued decent level of sales.

theflux

06-12-07, 10:28 PM

You mean 10K per month ? Yes, as the price of stand alone goes down the add-on becomes that much less attractive. I guess a price cut would be needed for continued decent level of sales.

Yeah I meant month. Mistake on my part -- I've corrected the original post.

AnthonyP

06-12-07, 10:43 PM

Every PS3 owner doesn't have to buy a movie. I never said that. 50% of them could buy two movies, or 24% 4 movies, etc. In either case, the attach rate for the PS3 as a whole would still be 1 per PS3.

wnorris: are you even remotely serious. If 50% of the PS3 owners actualy bought a movie that PS3 owners that bought movies have a much higher attachment rate then people that own stand alone players. And considering there a few stand alones that sold long before the PS3 even came out don't you think that would be an insane assumption for your analyst to do?

AnthonyP

06-12-07, 11:34 PM

Except it's been concluded time and time again that the studios only ever base these pressrelease numbers on Nielsen numbers, and that seems to included both Sony and others previously. So if it's your belief that those 5 free movies are counted in the Nielsen they are counted every week. I think even you could agree that that's not happening.
jpb123:
1) I don't think anyone rational has concluded that those are Neilsen numbers.

look at what someone said in post 7327 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=798080&page=245&pp=30) Hmm, they have to count each Matrix film as a separate movie. Again nothing wrong with that as they clearly say movies. Adding that to what Nataraj used previously would give us roughly 70.000.

And before anyone scream about it, there's no way they have counted the individual disks or episodes in PE. That would have put them much higher than 75.000.

2) the only way those could be VS numbers is if the calculated estimates here from Nataraj and whom ever did the PE numbers are way off considering the numbers in the article were almost double and someone seemed to indicate in 7328 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10758535&&#post10758535) that he thinks those numbers should not be more then 1% off because ofg some odd self correcting over time because of slightly over/under guessing.

3) We don't know if VS counts those disks in the first place (anyone can register with them) but these are Toshiba nd not VS

4) the last time we got numbers from the PRG (after the BDA anounced 1M sold and they said the difference they see is 2K) we saw they did not match VS numbers at all . Actually if we assume the same thing (they are counting Toshibas free ones) that woul make them prety close (i.e. 1M BD -> a bitween 800k and 750k HD DVD -> so the difference between VS and the PRG is 250k-200k which IF it is the HD DVD disks would mean 40-50 players that matches pretty much what we would expect (Toshiba said they passed 100k players and before the sale they were at around 60k

5) I am not saying it is the answer. I just added one other possibility that looks to make sense.

AnthonyP

06-12-07, 11:43 PM

I don't think they used any free movies, or I think HD DVD would have more discs out there then BD, and they would have mentioned that as well. Every Toshiba has had somewhere between 3-9 discs given away as free. We don't know how many, if any, of those are counted already by VS. We know that the HD DVD Promo group said 25k players sold during the month 9 discs were free. So the other 125k players get between 3-5 discs. We know another 25k of those were elegible for 5 discs. So now 100k got between 3-5 discs.

wnoris

1) we know thwe in store ones are counted by VS, that is what VS does. So as far as I know the uncounted ones are 3 or 5

2) we are talking about a specific week and that week it was a 5

3) no they most likely would not add up to more even if counted

AnthonyP

06-12-07, 11:51 PM

Can I ask a question, why does everyone say Rentrak is "wrong" and Nielsen is "right"?

Wnoris: it is not a matter of wrong or right. VS covers a larger % of the market so they should be more precise.

either way the two should not be compared directly, which was all that he said. You can't compare the ranking of a movie on VS on one week and Rentrak the next because the differences could be on the stores they cover.

GoCheese

06-13-07, 12:03 AM

dialog_gvf

06-13-07, 02:59 AM

Are you claiming they are comparing the standalone attach rate of HD DVD to the overall attach rate for all BD devices? If so, where is your proof? What I read is that HD DVD standalones have a 4:1 attach rate over BD standalones.

Claim 1: HD DVD has 4:1 attach rate advantage (HD DVD PRG)
Claim 2: PS/3 users aren't buying as many Blu-ray discs as Sony claimed they would (Ken Graffeo)
Claim 3: HD DVD has a 60/40 stand-alone unit advantage. (HD DVD PRG)
Claim 4: Blu-ray has a 60/40 since inception disc sales advantage (Nielsen)

It seems to me the only logical consolidation of the claims is if the PS/3 is included when determining the attach rates.

Gary

Wet1

06-13-07, 07:28 AM

I now have the facts (yay!).

"Doherty said, Toshiba is losing money whereas Sony is making money on its $499 player."

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0110014KSQN9
I don't know if Sony is making any money on their new player (I kind of doubt it), but I'd bet the farm that Toshiba is losing money on their A2.

Anyway, lets get back to software sales... Predictions for this weeks numbers???

plazman

06-13-07, 08:09 AM

Just because you produce something in house does not make it cheaper. IBM for instance saves more by buying their PCs from Lenovo than when they were making them!

There are many factors including opportunity cost.

There is no explanation other than Sony makes money on the $499 player because they are making the blue diodes. However, simple logic would imply, given the poor sales of the PS3, there is a glut of blue lasers available that can now be used for standalone players....so supply isn't tight anymore.

I guess the analyst would like to believe Sony is making money on this endevour. We'll see :)

Prediction:

61:39 BD

jpb123

06-13-07, 08:36 AM

jpb123:
1) I don't think anyone rational has concluded that those are Neilsen numbers.

look at what someone said in post 7327 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=798080&page=245&pp=30)

2) the only way those could be VS numbers is if the calculated estimates here from Nataraj and whom ever did the PE numbers are way off considering the numbers in the article were almost double and someone seemed to indicate in 7328 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10758535&&#post10758535) that he thinks those numbers should not be more then 1% off because ofg some odd self correcting over time because of slightly over/under guessing.

Not sure what's up with your use of someone and whom ever etc? Are you saying that someone (eg. ME in this case) are trying to avoid or deny anything? If so when have I ever done that? If you quote ME say so and stop being cute about it.

1. When you say that everyone disagreeing with you aren't rational it really is obvious how you are only here to spread your FUD.

2. I've been saying (yes that was my quote so strange how you couldn't read that yourself) that they used the Nielsen numbers, including those for Matrix multiplied by movies. They simply used those same Nielsen numbers and changed them to Movies instead of units. They are still using Nielsen numbers although in a different way. Shoud I explain it further or do you get it now?

Not that it has anything to do with this but the PE numbers obviously arent 'way off' since Warner themselves have announced when they reached certain numbers. Would you have a problem with Warner too? Or is it just Toshiba?

Finally nowhere in that quote, or anywhere else, did I say that 'those numbers should not be more then 1% off'

Providing a link to a post instead of an actual quote and then pretending that something was said in such post that wasn't is way out of line.

While you are at it please explain exactly what you mean by 'because ofg some odd self correcting over time because of slightly over/under guessing'. What's so hard to understand about how estimating high one week and low the other would put us closer to the truth than estimating too low or too high two weeks in a row.

Grubert

06-13-07, 09:51 AM

63:37

1. Blood Diamond BD
2. Planet Earth HD
3. Norbit BD

JackBee

06-13-07, 09:59 AM

65/35 Bd

wnorris

06-13-07, 10:24 AM

I'm sure you didn't mean to say it but that paragraph may give some the impression that the Nielsen data is in some way innacurate. It is not.

To my knowledge Nielsen reported data is gathered from participating retailers using electronic POS. The Nielsen data will not include freebies, studio guesses and, of course, does not include data from non participating retailers - like Wal*Mart. Nielsen make no estimation based on data they do not have.

As I say, I'm sure you didn't intend to give the impression that Nielsen data was corrupted by these things but your words may be interpreted by some in that way.

It is generally assumed (at least in this thread) that Nielsen under-report the market by 20-30%. Some people claim the figure is as high as 50%. Nobody seems to know (apart from Nielsen presumably).

What is not in doubt is that, even without full market coverage, the sample size is so immense that the percentage share reported weekly is about as accurate as you can get.

Guesses about sales volume based on this data are just that - guesses. Good guesses sometimes, but guesses none the less. I'm not aware of anyone including free discs in any volume estimates - have you seen this?

Of course the online media report numbers and sometimes these will be raw Nielsen data and sometimes they will be Nielsen + studio top-up. How accurate these studio numbers are unknown - but it's fun to discuss them anyway.

For a summary of what Nielsen VideoScan do click the link:

http://www.videoscan.com/about.html

Oh, and welcome to the sales thread. :)

I don't think he is saying Nielsen included them. As I read it, I think he is saying maybe the HD DVD Promotions group press releases is based off Videoscan numbers + freebies + any other data they have access.

wnorris

06-13-07, 10:36 AM

I am not sure why you are holding onto this belief about HD DVD standalones have 4x the attach rate of Blu-ray standalones. Maybe you could explain what your motivation is given how illogical that is.
--Darin

Quite simply, this is what the HD DVD promotions group implied in the context of their press release.

They made it a point to narrow down the discussion to standalone players. Nowhere in their press release to they ever imply that they are comparing HD DVD standalone performance to the PS3.

In the context of what they wrote, they narrowed the topic down to standalones and made no statements implying they were comparing apples to oranges (standalones to PS3's).

However, for whatever reason, this metric upsets you so much that you feel you need to partake in a witch hunt, and discredit everything based on your own "common sense" . I have yet to see you provide any factual evidence that would discredit what the HD DVD promotions group stated. If you want to disagree with what they said, then please just provide some facts that prove the HD DVD promotions group was trying to slide an apples to oranges comparison off as an apples to apples comparison.

If you can't do that, then please stop your ranting and raving.

I'm also curious when you will start a thread apologizing to Amir for the witch hunt you tried to undertake with him. When he stated that they had an upcoming major release that had VC-1 bitrates averaging under 10 Mbs, you basically called him a liar and said it couldn't be done. Now low and behold, Blood Diamond has been released with a VC-1 encode and average bitrates under 10 Mbs. I still haven't seen a public apology for that.

Your BD zealotry is transparent to all, and off course the BD fanboys support your anti-HD DVD witch hunts. But everyone else sees them for what they are.

wnorris

06-13-07, 10:44 AM

I now have the facts (yay!).

"Doherty said, Toshiba is losing money whereas Sony is making money on its $499 player."

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0110014KSQN9

Who is Envisioneering? Who paid them to write their report (these places don't do it for free)? And how would Envisioneering have access to Toshiba's cost break down? Have you seen Envisioneerings website?

http://www.envisioneeringgroup.com/

Looks like a business run out of someone's basement.

wnorris

06-13-07, 10:52 AM

wnoris

1) we know thwe in store ones are counted by VS, that is what VS does. So as far as I know the uncounted ones are 3 or 5

2) we are talking about a specific week and that week it was a 5

3) no they most likely would not add up to more even if counted

You assume too much. We don't know that the discs in stores were counted. Everyone likes to talk about "common sense", and common sense would dictate they are not counted. In April, ~20,000 HD DVD plaer sold. In April is when they did the 5+4 free promotion. So if existing HD DVD owners bought at the same rate as they had been, their would have been an 80,000 unit boost for the month of April. However, looking at the Nielsen numbers, no such boost exists. So this would lead one to believe the instore 4 freebies were not counted.

wnorris

06-13-07, 10:55 AM

Wnoris: it is not a matter of wrong or right. VS covers a larger % of the market so they should be more precise.

either way the two should not be compared directly, which was all that he said. You can't compare the ranking of a movie on VS on one week and Rentrak the next because the differences could be on the stores they cover.

No, what was actually said was the Rentrak was wrong, not that the two shouldn't be compared. It was said Rentrak was wrong because it had different rankings than Nielsen.

Again, you also presume too much. Please tell us the market coverage of Nielsen for hi-def media. Please tell us the market coverage for Rentrak on hi-def media. You obviously must know what those two numbers are, since you can state as a fact that Nielsen covers a larger percentage of the hi-def market.

Grubert

06-13-07, 11:17 AM

No, what was actually said was the Rentrak was wrong, not that the two shouldn't be compared. It was said Rentrak was wrong because it had different rankings than Nielsen.

Read the Rentrak disclaimer:

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.

alfbinet

06-13-07, 11:23 AM

Grubert:

I suspect you would know this (you know a lot.) Who is Envisioneering? Isn't this that London based group that wrote the HD DVD hit piece for BDA at CES 2007?

joshd2012

06-13-07, 11:33 AM

Who is Envisioneering? Who paid them to write their report (these places don't do it for free)? And how would Envisioneering have access to Toshiba's cost break down? Have you seen Envisioneerings website?

http://www.envisioneeringgroup.com/

Looks like a business run out of someone's basement.

That's not their new website anymore (not that the real one is any better), but here is his bio:

Rick Doherty is a co-founder and Director of The Envisioneering Group; a two-decade old Seaford, NY Technology Assessment and Market Research Corporation. Before that, for thirteen years, Doherty was the Senior Technology Writer for Electronic Engineering Times, where he remains a guest columnist. Doherty is an electro-physicist who has garnered more than a dozen U.S. patents in computing, communications, medical electronics, high performance tooling and consumer electronics industry sectors along with dozens of international patents. During Doherty's 32 year career he has been Director of the Urban Vehicle Design Group at Pratt Institute, an engineer for Data General Corp., Chief Engineer of Lourdes Industries, Inc., founder and President of Optronic Labs and since 1983, co-founder and Director of The Envisioneering Group. There, he directs laboratory testing of technologies, products and services, oversees publication of the Envisioneering Newsletter, market research reports and provides senior executive counsel on market development and intellectual property protection, portfolio management and licensing opportunities. Doherty's prime focus is on researching and articulating the impact of advanced digital technologies, services, products, industry initiatives and standards efforts on consumers, industry and society. Doherty is a 31 year member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and is active with its Biomedical Engineering, Solid State Circuits Society , Consumer Electronics Society, Broadcast Engineering, Magnetic Technology Society, Technology & Social Policy and other I.E.E.E. societies. This is his eleventh year as a planning director for the International Conference on Consumer Electronics. Doherty is also a member of the Society for Information Display, Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers and many other technology & professional business industry associations. In addition, Doherty has been a co-chair of, and presently sits on several cross industry standards associations and technical working groups, spanning consumer digital electronics, communications, digital media and computing architecture definition groups. He is called upon by the industry to organize and chair panels at trade conferences and technical symposia more than a dozen times each year. Amongst his many industry awards, Doherty has been cited by the International Television Association for his many years of technology coverage of digital video design and engineering trends, and is the writer most cited by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment for detailed features on the evolution of America's Digital TV system. Doherty also assisted Dr. Richard Feynman, NASA and Congressional researchers in the Shuttle Challenger accident investigation at the Kennedy Space Center, Johnson Space Center and many NASA contractor sites. In 2003, Doherty was nominated to and accepted a multi-year position on the Presidential Medal of Technology Award Selection Committee, reporting to the White House and Department of Commerce. Acting as an independent resource on the impact of digital and internet technologies on the consumer, society and business, Doherty is quoted frequently for his opinions on new technologies by CNN, CNBC, Fox News and by numerous American and international industry trade and daily business publications, including the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Newsday and the San Jose Mercury News. Doherty is married and resides in Seaford, NY with his wife and two daughters.

darinp2

06-13-07, 12:45 PM

They made it a point to narrow down the discussion to standalone players. Nowhere in their press release to they ever imply that they are comparing HD DVD standalone performance to the PS3.

In the context of what they wrote, they narrowed the topic down to standalones and made no statements implying they were comparing apples to oranges (standalones to PS3's).This was a press releases. I don't think it should need a disclaimer that says, "This is a press release. If you make assumptions that it says things that it does not, then you may be misled." Most of us will get caught by marketing materials sometimes, but even after I pointed out the fallacy in your claim you continue to defend it.

They left it somewhat open just like many marketing materials do and quite simply, your claim about what they said is false.
However, for whatever reason, this metric upsets you so much that you feel you need to partake in a witch hunt, and discredit everything based on your own "common sense" .I pointed out a statement that you made that is false. When they don't say something things are left open common sense, plausibility and even asking for clarification come in. If you cared about the truth enough you could go ask for clarification. I already gave you the name of a marketing company paid by the HD DVD group to send this press release out in emails.
I have yet to see you provide any factual evidence that would discredit what the HD DVD promotions group stated.Even before you made your false claim about what they stated I told you that the marketing company they paid to send this press release out in emails said in there:
Focusing on dedicated consumer electronics players is significant given the high attach rates for these players, which is currently 4 to 1 over the PS3.I have pointed that out multiple times along with their response to my request for clarification which included:
However, the key point here is that standalone players will always drive a higher attach rate and consistent sales growth.Yet you claim that I have provided no evidence. I'm picturing somebody with their fingers in their ears humming so they don't hear what is said and can claim it wasn't. As I said, I already gave you the name of the marketing company. If you want to claim that you don't believe those quotes I'm sure you could figure out how to send them or the HD DVD promotions group an email, but I think others can see that you are willing to defend your false statement pretty much no matter what. If you want people to believe your conjectures in the future it would probably have helped not to have been willing to go down such an illogical path this time.

--Darin

darinp2

06-13-07, 12:46 PM

I'm also curious when you will start a thread apologizing to Amir for the witch hunt you tried to undertake with him. When he stated that they had an upcoming major release that had VC-1 bitrates averaging under 10 Mbs, you basically called him a liar and said it couldn't be done.You seem to have an issue with reading comprehension. I didn't say it couldn't be done. Different things compress at different rates. I addressed his claims there and Amir is the one who owes readers here an apology for what he did in that thread that is here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=718689

Back at the beginning of September 2006 he claimed that they had made a breakthrough at that time that was going to bring the general range down by 20-30%:
Given this breakthrough, we are going to see more titles appear at average rate of less than 10 mbit/sec, bringing the general range lower by 20% to 30%. So no longer will I use the 12-15 mbit/sec for rule of thumb . :)and that this was not based on "some random, special case, easy to encode content.[/QUOTE]He said that one was live action and when I pointed out that it sounded like one was an animation, he said that he didn't know. He never did address what it was, which many would consider a good indication that one of them was an animation. For the other one he refused to give a straight no-wiggle-room answer as to what kind of camera was used to shoot it. He claimed that it wasn't special, but if it was shot with a 35mm camera then he could have said so then or anytime in the last 9 months without really narrowing down what the movie was much at all. My guess is that he won't give a straight answer to you, me, or anybody else on this forum as to the kind of camera used for it because if he did people would figure out some of the tricks used on them. He could think about out-and-out lying about the camera used, but I think too many people in the industry would know. So, I don't think he will answer. And the excuse that he can't tell us the movie is a pretty lame one for refusing to say what kind of camera was used if it wasn't special.
Now low and behold, Blood Diamond has been released with a VC-1 encode and average bitrates under 10 Mbs. I still haven't seen a public apology for that.There are multiple factors here. One, Amir's claim was for over 9 months ago. A person can claim that they can bench press 200 lbs and then spend 9 months working out so they can and then do it, but it wouldn't make their statement from 9 months earlier true. Even if Blood Diamond is under 10Mbps ABR it doesn't support his claim in September 2006 that a breakthrough with the encoder that was being used at that time meant that the general range was going to drop 20-30% from his 12-15Mbps rule of thumb (which works out to about 9-12Mbps for the rule of thumb). At the time we had to mostly rely on the insiders to give us bitrates, but after the XBOX360 add-on came out some people can connect that to a computer and get a good idea of bitrates themselves. And Amir's claim did not come to pass even following it for months. They could make a breakthrough now or have made improvements in the last 9 months that would bring the general average bitrates down that low, but it still wouldn't make that claim from September 2006 true. Or that Amir needs to hide the information about the kind of camera used for that movie he wanted people to believe wasn't special.

And where did you get that Blood Diamond is under 10Mbps ABR? You have been around long enough that I would hope you would know the difference between ABRs for releases and current bitrates for particular scenes and so wouldn't make the mistake of confusing those 2. I haven't checked the bitrate, so it is possible that it is under 10Mbps ABR, but it wouldn't surprise me if this came from a statement about one particular section showing 7.9Mbps to one reviewer.

--Darin

ChrisBeveridge

06-13-07, 12:50 PM

You assume too much. We don't know that the discs in stores were counted. Everyone likes to talk about "common sense", and common sense would dictate they are not counted.

Depends on the kind of common sense you like. Some like reality based common sense, some like personal common sense.

Here's an example. Back when I bought my Panasonic A110 DVD player, there was a buy a player get five free promotion just like there is now. There was also a Warner promotion of buy 3 get 1 free that wasn't player related.

I go to get my player. I'm told I get 5 free DVDs with it on purchase from a particular set of titles. I pick those titles off the shelf and bring them.

Player is rung up
DVDs are rung up
Promotion kicks in
DVDs are priced at zero

Videoscan still takes that as five sales. Cause, well, they are five sales. The COST of it goes to the studio/hardware producer who made the promotion.

Now, the Warner Bros. deal was different. You'd buy your snapper cases and inside were four proofs of purchase. When you bought three discs, you'd take those proofs and send them in an envelope to the fulfillment center with the title of the disc you wanted. They'd then send it to you. That did not count towards a sale anywhere, not within WB and not within Videoscan.

Frankly, I used to get a lot from my father about my lack of common sense. Back when I was around ten or so. Claimed I didn't have much. Probably still would say as much considering the toys I buy as an adult. So I'm always very hesitant to question someone elses common sense. But after reading this thread for so long, your posts do the most damage in terms of providing a valuable discourse here because they are so nonsensical and lack "reality based" common sense that the majority of people here with experience in the retail realm have. And even repeated attempts to fill you in on it has resulted in plenty of "I don't believe you" or "I'll redirect the argument in another manner."

btp

06-13-07, 01:40 PM

I addressed his claims there and Amir is the one who owes readers here an apology for what he did in that thread that is here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=718689

Back at the beginning of September 2006 he claimed that they had made a breakthrough at that time that was going to bring the general range down by 20-30%:
and that this was not based on "some random, special case, easy to encode content." He said that one was live action and when I pointed out that it sounded like one was an animation, he said that he didn't know. He never did address what it was, which many would consider a good indication that one of them was an animation. For the other one he refused to give a straight no-wiggle-room answer as to what kind of camera was used to shoot it. He claimed that it wasn't special, but if it was shot with a 35mm camera then he could have said so then or anytime in the last 9 months without really narrowing down what the movie was much at all. My guess is that he won't give a straight answer to you, me, or anybody else on this forum as to the kind of camera used for it because if he did people would figure out some of the tricks used on them. He could think about out-and-out lying about the camera used, but I think too many people in the industry would know. So, I don't think he will answer. And the excuse that he can't tell us the movie is a pretty lame one for refusing to say what kind of camera was used if it wasn't special.

Are you suggesting Amir would lie if he thought he could get away with it? Why would would he (or anyone) proudly post about significant improvements in VC-1 knowing that everyone here would take him to ask on it if the claims weren't legitimate and couldn't be backed up? I certainly wouldn't want to make claims that I couldn't back up and then have egg on my face. I'm just trying to figure out if you're implying Amir is dishonest/untrustworthy, foolish, or both.

Bradley

darinp2

06-13-07, 01:49 PM

Are you suggesting Amir would lie if he thought he could get away with it? Why would would he (or anyone) proudly post about significant improvements in VC-1 knowing that everyone here would take him to ask on it if the claims weren't legitimate and couldn't be backed up? I certainly wouldn't want to make claims that I couldn't back up and then have egg on my face. I'm just trying to figure out if you're implying Amir is dishonest/untrustworthy, foolish, or both.I am saying that he misled people there. Whether he did it on purpose or realized a mistake later and then tried to keep people misled, I didn't say and don't claim to know. And whether wording things to make people believe something that isn't true even while leaving wiggle room is a lie, I haven't weighed in on that either.

--Darin

btp

06-13-07, 01:50 PM

I have yet to see you provide any factual evidence that would discredit what the HD DVD promotions group stated. If you want to disagree with what they said, then please just provide some facts that prove the HD DVD promotions group was trying to slide an apples to oranges comparison off as an apples to apples comparison.

If you can't do that, then please stop your ranting and raving.

He already did:

This morning I responded to the email from the marketing company (Weber Shandwick) and asked them to clarify their 4:1 vs the PS3 with the press release in the same email that didn't specifically spell out the other side and they responded with:

Apologies for the confusion. To clarify, the 4-to-1 attach rate figure takes into consideration standalone players (BD and HD DVD), and PS3 and Xbox 360 HD DVD drive numbers, given that the game consoles are also driving titles sales. However, the key point here is that standalone players will always drive a higher attach rate and consistent sales growth. As you likely know, title attach rates for gaming systems has never been on par with standalone players, and as availability of game titles increase, game system attach rates for movies continue to trend down.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.

That seems plain as day to me. I don't know what more could you possibly want.

Bradley

briankmonkey

06-13-07, 01:51 PM

Depends on the kind of common sense you like. Some like reality based common sense, some like personal common sense.

Here's an example. Back when I bought my Panasonic A110 DVD player, there was a buy a player get five free promotion just like there is now. There was also a Warner promotion of buy 3 get 1 free that wasn't player related.

I go to get my player. I'm told I get 5 free DVDs with it on purchase from a particular set of titles. I pick those titles off the shelf and bring them.

Player is rung up
DVDs are rung up
Promotion kicks in
DVDs are priced at zero

Videoscan still takes that as five sales. Cause, well, they are five sales. The COST of it goes to the studio/hardware producer who made the promotion.

Now, the Warner Bros. deal was different. You'd buy your snapper cases and inside were four proofs of purchase. When you bought three discs, you'd take those proofs and send them in an envelope to the fulfillment center with the title of the disc you wanted. They'd then send it to you. That did not count towards a sale anywhere, not within WB and not within Videoscan.

Frankly, I used to get a lot from my father about my lack of common sense. Back when I was around ten or so. Claimed I didn't have much. Probably still would say as much considering the toys I buy as an adult. So I'm always very hesitant to question someone elses common sense. But after reading this thread for so long, your posts do the most damage in terms of providing a valuable discourse here because they are so nonsensical and lack "reality based" common sense that the majority of people here with experience in the retail realm have. And even repeated attempts to fill you in on it has resulted in plenty of "I don't believe you" or "I'll redirect the argument in another manner."

Dead on.

Jiffylush

06-13-07, 01:55 PM

He already did:

That seems plain as day to me. I don't know what more could you possibly want.

Bradley

Now he needs to ask them if the free dvds count towards the attach rates or if it is strictly sales/players

Get to it darinp2!

theflux

06-13-07, 02:25 PM

Now low and behold, Blood Diamond has been released with a VC-1 encode and average bitrates under 10 Mbs. I still haven't seen a public apology for that.
.

And it looks terrible. I hope they increase the bit rates after this failed experiment, and roll back whatever "optimizations" they did.

Frankly, I used to get a lot from my father about my lack of common sense. Back when I was around ten or so. Claimed I didn't have much. Probably still would say as much considering the toys I buy as an adult. So I'm always very hesitant to question someone elses common sense. But after reading this thread for so long, your posts do the most damage in terms of providing a valuable discourse here because they are so nonsensical and lack "reality based" common sense that the majority of people here with experience in the retail realm have. And even repeated attempts to fill you in on it has resulted in plenty of "I don't believe you" or "I'll redirect the argument in another manner."

Hear hear! I completely agree.

He already did:

That seems plain as day to me. I don't know what more could you possibly want.

Bradley

Clearly wnorris thinks that Weber Shandwick, the official PR firm for the HD DVD promotions group, is part of Phase Hydra, and is not to be believed.

GoCheese

06-13-07, 02:28 PM

Now he needs to ask them if the free dvds count towards the attach rates or if it is strictly sales/players

Get to it darinp2!

I would think no, as no money exchanges hands, some one in another thread touched on it as they looked into it.

theflux

06-13-07, 02:30 PM

On Topic:

63:37 Blu-ray

1) Blood Diamond BD
2) Pirates of the Caribbean 2
3) Pirates of the Caribbean 1
4) Planet Earth HD DVD
5) Ultimate Matrix

bjonni

06-13-07, 02:32 PM

begin rant...

Seriously, where do I go to find the latest "Nielsen/VideoScan sales ratios and Top 5"? It is getting really hard to find them anywhere in this thread. I'd like to click "Last post" and at least end up on a page somewhere in the vicinity of the latest numbers.

Maybe one thread that collects just the stats, that should make it easy for the mods to clean up, and a separate one with all the arguing? Or am I somehow missing the fun in endlessly debating pretty much the same thing with pretty much the same people over and over again? And without any beer at that...

...end rant.

UxiSXRD

06-13-07, 02:33 PM

BD 64:36 HDDVD

1) Pirates DMC BD
2) Blood Diamond BD
3) Pirates CotBP BD
4) Planet Earth HDDVD
5) Apocalypto BD
6) Ultimate Matrix HDDVD

UxiSXRD

06-13-07, 02:34 PM

Seriously, where do I go to find the latest "Nielsen/VideoScan sales ratios and Top 5"? It is getting really hard to find them anywhere in this thread. I'd like to click "Last post" and at least end up on a page somewhere in the vicinity of the latest numbers.

You've missed the posts where Grubert notes that he updates the first post in the thread regularly (with every update IIRC). I always click on "First" on the lower right whenever I want to see the numbers without the discussion. ;)

Jiffylush

06-13-07, 02:41 PM

I would think no, as no money exchanges hands, some one in another thread touched on it as they looked into it.

I am not asking if they are included as sales.

There was reference to HD DVD having a 4:1 advantage in attach rate over BD. I was wondering if that because they include all films in customers hands or if the figure was specifically (# sold/# players). Since darinp2 had made contact I was wondering if we could get an official word on that.

bjonni

06-13-07, 02:43 PM

You've missed the posts where Grubert notes that he updates the first post in the thread regularly (with every update IIRC). I always click on "First" on the lower right whenever I want to see the numbers without the discussion. ;)

This thread is perhaps the easiest one to miss things in... fortunately missing most stuff in it doesn't bother me much. ;)

Thanks for the tip.

darinp2

06-13-07, 02:45 PM

I am not asking if they are included as sales.

There was reference to HD DVD having a 4:1 advantage in attach rate over BD. I was wondering if that because they include all films in customers hands or if the figure was specifically (# sold/# players). Since darinp2 had made contact I was wondering if we could get an official word on that.I sent in a question asking about the 5 free ones by mail and also free discs that people sometimes get with players at Circuit City and Best Buy and I'll let you know what I hear.

--Darin

jebel

06-13-07, 02:46 PM

Guess:
70/30 BD
1) Blood Diamond
2) Norbit
3) POTC - DMC

Lrrr1971

06-13-07, 03:23 PM

My guess: BD 61:39 HD-DVD, same as last week. Increased Toshiba sales offset by Sony's cut price software sale.

darinp2

06-13-07, 04:01 PM

There was reference to HD DVD having a 4:1 advantage in attach rate over BD. I was wondering if that because they include all films in customers hands or if the figure was specifically (# sold/# players). Since darinp2 had made contact I was wondering if we could get an official word on that.Here is the response I got:
Free titles offered through promotions such as the “Five Free” with a Toshiba player are not factored into the HD DVD attach rate #’s. These discs are not rung up at the cash register and are not counted as a sale.It didn't specifically address the free discs that people get at Circuit City and Best Buy sometimes with players, but given what it says about whether they get rung up at the cash register being the important part, seems like they would.

--Darin

nataraj

06-13-07, 04:04 PM

BTW, today CED reported the Tosh news of 150K players, 60% market share, 4:1 attach rates etc. Interestingly they put the 360 add-on figure at 200K. Still no word whether it is US / NA / WW ... but since NPD reports only US, I guess it should be US only.

Wondering whether a bunch of people got it along with the 360 Elite boosting the figures.

Ofcourse 15K monthly sales from Jan would bring the total near 200K rather than 150K. At the end of '06, the figure was 92K.

Wet1

06-13-07, 04:21 PM

I'm going to guess 67:33 in favor of BR... Yes, I'm probably optimistic this week. ;)

wnorris

06-13-07, 04:49 PM

Read the Rentrak disclaimer:

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.

Well, that is in contradiction to this statement from them.

Industry Revenue is available by TV Market, by Country and by Channel (e.g., Online, Brick and Mortar, Supermarket, Urban Stores, Rural Stores), Format, and by Specific Date Ranges.

And if you actually bothered to use Retail Essentials, you would see that is also give the number of units along with revenue. You can filter by online sales and it will give you number of units. So where is that data from if they are B&M only?

UxiSXRD

06-13-07, 04:53 PM

Wondering whether a bunch of people got it along with the 360 Elite boosting the figures.

Any idea how well the Elite is selling? I see them all over the place around here...

aaronwt

06-13-07, 06:50 PM

Hard to find them anywhere around here.

theflux

06-13-07, 07:10 PM

Any idea how well the Elite is selling? I see them all over the place around here...

I haven't seen them around, but I haven't really been looking either. I think generally they are hard to come by, so if you see them you might be able to get some ebay money from one.

evader45

06-13-07, 08:31 PM

Any idea how well the Elite is selling? I see them all over the place around here...

Looks like they are sold out at Best Buy....

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcmcat66900050001&type=category

and Circuit City.....

http://www.circuitcity.com/rpsm/oid/177538/zip/90001/showMoreStores/false/userClick/STORE_PICKUP/originURLEncoded/http%253A%252F%252Fwww.circuitcity.com%252Fssm%252FXbox-360-Hardware%252Fsem%252Frpsm%252FcatOid%252F-16487%252FN%252F20012841%252B20016483%252B20016487%252Flink% 252Fref%252Frpem%252Fccd%252Fcategorylist.do/rpem/ccd/howToGetIt.do#tabs

Where are you seeing them?

nataraj

06-13-07, 08:58 PM

Any idea how well the Elite is selling? I see them all over the place around here...

Don't know. I think all we have officially been told is, IIRC, that it is in good demand and is getting sold out.

PS : On eBay they seem to be selling for a premium.

item number : 280124680553

You are bidding on a

BRAND NEW, FACTORY SEALED

MICROSOFT XBOX 360 ELITE 120 GB HDMI System!!

SOLD OUT in stores!!!

Minimum buy it now price is $559 ...

thomopolis

06-13-07, 09:17 PM

I think some are forgetting the crux of lowering player prices versus attachment rates; the lower prices get toward mass adoption, the lower the attachment rate will be.

This isn't meant to imply that selling more players is bad in anyway - it's just that the average person that is willing to jump in at $200 is not going to spend as much on software as someone who was willing to pay $800. This was seen with DVD's - especially when the players dropped below $100. The only way the general populace was convinced to start buying a meaningful amount of software was to start selling it in bins for ~$10.

This is the early stage, so software sale numbers are probably still driven more by the quality of releases rather than the above dogma, but Toshiba is already starting to head very quickly to the mass adoption price, so while this could increase their overall software sales numbers, people shouldn't expect every future player owner will buy as many movies as the ones from yesterday - especially when it comes to catalog titles which are already proving to be anemic.

Think of it this way; if an A2 were suddenly $50 (and from some of the prognostications we hear this is soon to happen ;) ) there would be many, many consumers who would be unwilling to buy a single $30 movie even if they bought the player. Someone who buys a $2000 Elite probably isn't going to blink at spending $1000 on movies. There are aberrations to the above rule of course - someone that does research and decides the A2 is a fine player and they would prefer to spend their gobs of cash on movies instead - but these consumers slowly become the minority, and then eventually the extreme minority the more the mass market gets involved.

theflux

06-13-07, 09:22 PM

nataraj

06-13-07, 10:21 PM

Here is an interesting titbit ..

Remember when Buena Vista's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest sold 10.5 million DVDs its first week in stores? Since when did we settle for championing an individual title's total unit sales exceeding 100K?

Almost 10% of DVD owners bought the POTC : DMC DVD in the first week. How much did it sell in BD ... 47K for 1.4 Million owners or some 3%.

wnorris

06-13-07, 11:28 PM

Looks like they are sold out at Best Buy....

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcmcat66900050001&type=category

and Circuit City.....

http://www.circuitcity.com/rpsm/oid/177538/zip/90001/showMoreStores/false/userClick/STORE_PICKUP/originURLEncoded/http%253A%252F%252Fwww.circuitcity.com%252Fssm%252FXbox-360-Hardware%252Fsem%252Frpsm%252FcatOid%252F-16487%252FN%252F20012841%252B20016483%252B20016487%252Flink% 252Fref%252Frpem%252Fccd%252Fcategorylist.do/rpem/ccd/howToGetIt.do#tabs

Where are you seeing them?

My Wal-Mart has had two for a week now.

theflux

06-14-07, 12:15 AM

Here is an interesting titbit ..

Almost 10% of DVD owners bought the POTC : DMC DVD in the first week. How much did it sell in BD ... 47K for 1.4 Million owners or some 3%.

Is that a big surprise to you given that a large majority of those people were having to re-buy a copy? You just established that DMC had great DVD sales in its first week, and I'm sure it's continued to sell well. I've tried to say it time and time again, but catalog titles are always going to sell poorly because not many people are interested in re-buying.

AnthonyP

06-14-07, 12:21 AM

Not sure what's up with your use of someone and whom ever etc? Are you saying that someone (eg. ME in this case) are trying to avoid or deny anything?
jpb123:

not at all. Just that your first comment was nuts. I was hoping you would be able to see it by yourself.

BUt before this escalates any more, answer me these few questions

1) do you agree that Nataraj numbers are very far from the PR numbers for the week

2) do you agree most here think Nataraj's numbers are most likely closer to VS numbers then the article

3) do you agree that most here don't think that the PR is trying to show VS numbers

4) do you agree that no where in the PR is it saying they are supposed to be VS numbers.

5) do you agree none of us know what those numbers are supposed to represent

6) do you agree that for all we know those numbers could have come from the holy omniscient chicken pecking it out on the calculator of truth. Or maybe from the psychic hot line or maybe some strange mathematical formula based on shipments

7) do you agree that most of us presume that they use the VS numbers and then augmented them some way

8) do you agree that if we are right in 7 that it would mean these are not VS numbers anymore

9) do you agree that 7 is the reason one person said something like “VS does not cover all stores and if they assume it covers X% then Nataraj could be close while this numbers are also true if the multiplier is right

10) do you agree 7 is the reason Darin first said if you take Nataraj’s number and use Movie as an excuse to multiply by 3 the Matrix then Nataraj is close to VS and the augmented that way arte close to the PR numbers

11) do you agree 7 is the reason that I said that if you take Nataraj number and add 5x what you (I think it was you) came up as the player numbers we get a number close to the PR number.

12) do you agree you tried to dismiss 11 by making a stupid comment about how VS does not count such sales when 9 and 10 do the same (VS does not make stupid multiplications for box sets nor do they try and guess what it might be for stores they don’t get numbers from)

13) the worst part is that out of the three guess #11 would be the most honest thing (if that is what they did. Why?

a) if it is “Movies” and so you should 3x the matrix set because of 3 movies you should not count PE because there are 0 movies in that box set
b) 9 is honest but the multiplier is a pure guess. ON the other hand if that is how they come to their numbers then their previous comment where they compared VS 1M to the augmented HD DVD number would be totally dishonest
c) let’s face it, these titles are titles that the customer had a choice and chose to get all for the low price of 0$. This time I bought titles from Amazon and I bought 2 movies for 0$ (paid for the other 4), what is the difference?
but because you have your HD DVD blinders on you decided that my added guess must have some sinister point and so you decided to use stupid reasons to truy and dismiss it.

14) to answer the question you asked was to point out that

a)
Except it's been concluded time and time again that the studios only ever base these pressrelease numbers on Nielsen numbers, and that seems to included both Sony and others previously.
that no one has concluded this time that the numbers in the PR are VS numbers

b) So if it's your belief that those 5 free movies are counted in the Nielsen they are counted every week. I think even you could agree that that's not happening.
I don’t know if they normally are or not. But my assumption was that if they are not the augmented numbers that no one here seems to assume represent VS (or else people would be looking to correct the numbers like they did in the past) might be using them because Toshiba should now exactly how many went out that day

15) I never said it was right or the only possible one. Like I said I added one more alternative that I thought possible. For all we know they just though it was a number that would be credible enough people would buy it as the real number.

AnthonyP

06-14-07, 12:40 AM

Well, that is in contradiction to this statement from them.

Quote:
Industry Revenue is available by TV Market, by Country and by Channel (e.g., Online, Brick and Mortar, Supermarket, Urban Stores, Rural Stores), Format, and by Specific Date Ranges.

And if you actually bothered to use Retail Essentials, you would see that is also give the number of units along with revenue. You can filter by online sales and it will give you number of units. So where is that data from if they are B&M only?

I think the problem is that we don't have access to it. The list is taken (I am guessing) from VB also if you go back to Rentrak sight (no time to look) but I think they have different packages that can be bought (I am guessing at different prices).

Maybe VB only gets the B&M data.

thomopolis

06-14-07, 01:00 AM

Here is an interesting titbit ..

Almost 10% of DVD owners bought the POTC : DMC DVD in the first week. How much did it sell in BD ... 47K for 1.4 Million owners or some 3%.

OK, I don't often do this but I am officially calling BS on your post. We have discussed ad nauseum how all the PS3 attach rates would not be the same as a standalone DVD player.

By saying 10.5 million copies equals 10% you are automatically exluding all PS2's, XBOX's, and computers and only looking at standalone DVD players sales - and a low estimate at that.

Even if we don't go that far for BD and say that a PS3 has roughly the attach rate of 0.2 (20%) standalones, and let us assume ~100,000 BD standalones have been sold.

This means that roughly 10% of BD owners bought PofC DMC.

If you want to assume 1 PS3 equals 0.4 standalones (I would think that high personally), then yes, the attachment of DMC would only be 7% - which is still nothing to sneeze at, especially since it has been out for a few months on DVD.

You keep trying to show that these formats are failing completely even though the available market for High Def media is much smaller than what DVD was when launched. I don't know if it is because you are miffed HD-DVD isn't doing better, or you really only want downloads to succeed since you only rent, or what, but I mean c'mon.

In fact, if you look at how many DVD players sold in the first year according to Bill Hunt's website (~420,000), BD is doing pretty well if you look at every PS3's as 0.2 standalones and not that bad if you look at 1/0.4 - it's all in the realm of comparison. I remember when everyone was excited that Air Force One sold over 50,000 units - and nobody called DVD a failure the first year.