Nielsen/VideoScan sales ratios and Top 5 [Text View] - Page 6

wnorris

02-09-07, 10:17 AM

Content is the primary concern for people interested in purchasing a disc player.

If price is the primary concern, they'll never go with HD discs. DVD will always be cheaper. And it is currently MUCH cheaper.

Gary

This is part of my concern for both formats. Will mass consumers care about the difference between hi-def and standard def? Could BD and HD-DVD become the next laser disc? My wife is one of those people who think a good upconverted SD doesn't looks as good as an HD disc. She would never pay the premium for HD.

I have people at work that go out and buy new 42" plasma sets and don't try to get any HD programming at all. They think it looks better just because it is bigger and is less of a strain on their old eyes. The baby boomers are the biggest segment of our population, with the most disposable income, and they often can't tell the difference between UC SD-DVD and HD because of poor eyesight (my parents fit this profile).

I'm also concerned with price. I bought into DVD in 1997. When discs first came out, I bought them for $19.95. A new disc today still sells for $19.95 (which it is easier to find sales and discounts because so many more people carry DVD now). The MSRP hasn't really changed. There are many cheaper discs of select titles, but new disc prices are still the same.

Now we have hi-def formats with new discs costs $25-$30 each. If it trends the same as DVD, those prices will never come down. So now we are asking the mass of consumers to buy a format where they might not see a difference (smaller TV's, poor eyesight, not detail oriented, etc.), and where they pay $5-$10 more per disc.

So if content is the primary concern for the mass consumer, then I don't think either format will really take off for several years because of DVD (30,000+ DVD titles vs maybe 1200 BD + 900 HD-DVD in the next 2 years). If price is the primary concern, then when hardware/software prices start to come more inline with DVD, which ever format gets there first will win the war. If quality is the primary concern, then that is an entirely different arguement.

Grubert

02-09-07, 10:21 AM

okay, 100/99 then. What's your guess on YTD?

Let's say 100/35.

BTW in order to avoid any hurt feelings, be aware that I won't update the initial post before a link to the new issue of HMM is provided on its homepage. Until that moment, the data should be considered unofficial.

SamwisetheBrave

02-09-07, 10:26 AM

This is part of my concern for both formats. Will mass consumers care about the difference between hi-def and standard def? Could BD and HD-DVD become the next laser disc? My wife is one of those people who think a good upconverted SD doesn't looks as good as an HD disc. She would never pay the premium for HD.

I have people at work that go out and buy new 42" plasma sets and don't try to get any HD programming at all. They think it looks better just because it is bigger and is less of a strain on their old eyes. The baby boomers are the biggest segment of our population, with the most disposable income, and they often can't tell the difference between UC SD-DVD and HD because of poor eyesight (my parents fit this profile).

I'm also concerned with price. I bought into DVD in 1997. When discs first came out, I bought them for $19.95. A new disc today still sells for $19.95 (which it is easier to find sales and discounts because so many more people carry DVD now). The MSRP hasn't really changed. There are many cheaper discs of select titles, but new disc prices are still the same.

Now we have hi-def formats with new discs costs $25-$30 each. If it trends the same as DVD, those prices will never come down. So now we are asking the mass of consumers to buy a format where they might not see a difference (smaller TV's, poor eyesight, not detail oriented, etc.), and where they pay $5-$10 more per disc.

So if content is the primary concern for the mass consumer, then I don't think either format will really take off for several years because of DVD (30,000+ DVD titles vs maybe 1200 BD + 900 HD-DVD in the next 2 years). If price is the primary concern, then when hardware/software prices start to come more inline with DVD, which ever format gets there first will win the war. If quality is the primary concern, then that is an entirely different arguement.

Hey...MY eyesight is pretty damn good, whippersnapper!

joshd2012

02-09-07, 10:27 AM

A 400 rank jump in about a hour starting at exactly midnight? That's wierd. But, it was also wierd that the HD DVD ranking average had dropped to 1000 recently, and was 800 before the pop.

Gary

There was an Amazon Prime glitch that gave out $5 off every order. Apparently people went crazy and ordered a bunch of discs.

Azumi

02-09-07, 10:28 AM

As we're toying with numbers, here's a couple of infos:

- on the week 1/29 - 2/4, 18,727 PS3s were sold in Japan (Media Create),
- and yesterday on a live chat on Wired, (Sony's) Phil Harrison said that shiploads of PS3 are being freighted from China to Europe as we speak.

So we (europeans) are basically sucking the life out of japanese shipments. ;)

Bill0711

02-09-07, 10:40 AM

My guess - SI BD 92 HD 100, YTD BD 100 HD 35. Logic - week 2 of January saw a jump of 7 points in SI for Blu-ray, Last week SI was 82 for BR, adding 7 gives 89. I increased it a little for BR momentum and the Sony statement that BR now exceeds HD. With the data jumping all over (dvdempire, even Amazon last night) hard to even guess though.

xbdestroya

02-09-07, 10:41 AM

I personally don't think that BD will have the SI lead yet; even with Sony chiming in, that seems like advance data that I'd more expect to see with the first week of Feb numbers. Not to mention, I don't take SCEA's claims at face value either.

So... for my part I'll just wait for some numbers. :)

Kosty

02-09-07, 11:51 AM

My Total WAG (Wild A** Guess) for Jan 28 Videoscan numbers

SI BD 81 HD 100
YTD BD 100 HD 59

I think the HD A2 sales started kicking in.

Kosty

02-09-07, 11:56 AM

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/7076/salesranktime01recent14jr2.jpg

Wow, what happened last night? Matrix up for preorder or what? Maybe they added the combos too? or added in "The Departed"?

MikeDV

02-09-07, 11:56 AM

I bought into DVD in 1997. When discs first came out, I bought them for $19.95.

If you were getting your discs for $19.95 in 1997 then you were getting them for way below retail. Even in 1998 the average MSRP was closer to $29.95 with some studios charging as much as $34.95.

dialog_gvf

02-09-07, 12:12 PM

There was an Amazon Prime glitch that gave out $5 off every order. Apparently people went crazy and ordered a bunch of discs.

Ah! That explains it.

No wonder it happened so fast.

Gary

wnorris

02-09-07, 12:14 PM

If you were getting your discs for $19.95 in 1997 then you were getting them for way below retail. Even in 1998 the average MSRP was closer to $29.95 with some studios charging as much as $34.95.

What do you think the MSRP is today? You certainly aren't paying MSRP when you go to buy them in most stores. In 1997 I was buying them at Best Buy and DVD Empire for $19.95.

And to that point, The Departed on DVD has a MSRP of $34.99. So as I stated, in a decade DVD has not lowered its MSRP. I see no reason why HD-DVD or BD would break from this trend. The prices you pay today at retail (based off of even higher MSRP's), will be the price you are paying for hi-def discs 10 years from now. DVD's are cheaper to manufacture than ever, and in mass quantities, but the price never dropped. I hear lots of arguements (especially for BD) that prices will come down on discs, once volume goes up. I don't think it will ever happen for either format. It's part of why I went HD-DVD. The discs are cheaper now, and since I'm going to pay the same for the next 10 years, it will save me a chunk of change in the long run.

EDIT: The MSRP of Departed on DVD is $28.99 or $34.99, depending on regular or SE. Originally DVD MSRP's ranged from ~$20-35, basically the same as today. BTW, the MSRP of Departed on HD-DVD is $34.99 (but it is a combo) and $34.99 on Bluray.

As a side discussion, why can retailers sell a BD disc with the same MSRP for less than a combo disc (again, with the same MSRP). Are the prices they pay in no way related to MSRP? Then you look at movies like Click on a BD-50, with a MSRP of $38.95, and despite its higher MSRP, it actually retails for less than a combo disc. Is MSRP entirely arbitrary?

dialog_gvf

02-09-07, 12:22 PM

So if content is the primary concern for the mass consumer, then I don't think either format will really take off for several years because of DVD (30,000+ DVD titles vs maybe 1200 BD + 900 HD-DVD in the next 2 years). If price is the primary concern, then when hardware/software prices start to come more inline with DVD, which ever format gets there first will win the war. If quality is the primary concern, then that is an entirely different arguement.

Content purchases are dominated by new releases. When every new release is available on an HD disc format day and date (and REALLY day and date, that is actually on the shelf) with the DVD, then this is when content is no longer an issue, and the quality can be used to justify an HD purchase.

Neither format can currently reach this situation even if the studios start day and dating everything, because neither format has 100% studio support.

But, if price is going to be the dominant factor with the consumer, then HD discs will never catch on.

Gary

Bendertv

02-09-07, 12:25 PM

If I remember, the retail prices in 1997 were lower than prices a year or two later. It was an introductory price, so to speak, to make the format more attractive to early adopters and laserdisc buyers, and also to get better press coverage. This is how I remember it, anyway.

dialog_gvf

02-09-07, 12:27 PM

What do you think the MSRP is today? You certainly aren't paying MSRP when you go to buy them in most stores. In 1997 I was buying them at Best Buy and DVD Empire for $19.95.

We're now about 10 months into the release of HD DVD and eight months in BD. If the initial releases had been DVD, they'd now be 2 for $15 or better.

At this point the BD/HD DVD of launch are sold about the same price today as they did at launch. This clearly shows that the HD formats are very different from DVD from a marketing perspective.

There are many people who don't rush to the new releases and wait a few months for the bargain prices to arrive. Are there consumers that will wait to see this happen with HD discs before considering HD discs?

Gary

wnorris

02-09-07, 01:17 PM

We're now about 10 months into the release of HD DVD and eight months in BD. If the initial releases had been DVD, they'd now be 2 for $15 or better.

At this point the BD/HD DVD of launch are sold about the same price today as they did at launch. This clearly shows that the HD formats are very different from DVD from a marketing perspective.

There are many people who don't rush to the new releases and wait a few months for the bargain prices to arrive. Are there consumers that will wait to see this happen with HD discs before considering HD discs?

Gary

When DVD launched, and only had 100 or so titles, those titles were rarely ever discounted heavily. It was about 2 years before the $15 tier emerged. I remember when the $10 tier emerged at Walmart. I believe it was around Christmas of year 3. Cheaper tiers ($7.50, $5.50, $3.88, etc.) seemed to emerge each year after.

So I think it will be another year (maybe this year for Christmas at the earliest), before we see a new $15 tier of HD discs emerge. I think BD/HD-DVD are basically repeating the strategy of DVD.

I think there are probably many consumers who pick up a HD copy of Tomb Raider an say, "Why would I pay $20-$25 for this when the DVD is $5.50?" I think this will turn many potential consumers off (since so many titles of both formats are catalog releases). It's okay when a day and day release is $20 on DVD and $25 on a HD format. That isn't as hard a pill to swallow.

I think studios are really sticking it to consumers charging this much for HD discs of catalog titles that are $5.50 on DVD. The should be $14 max, just enough premium to cover the cost of the new disc authoring. A higher price might be justified if the film is totaly remastered or something.

wnorris

02-09-07, 01:20 PM

Just looking at DVD Empire, something weird seems to be going on. Just look at their list of best sellers for BD and HD-DVD:

BD

1. Guardian, The
2. Flyboys
3. Open Season
4. Crank
5. Alien Vs. Predator
6. Superman Returns
7. Saw III: Unrated
8. Legends Of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis: Showcase
9. Pearl Harbor
10. Last Samurai, The

HD-DVD

1. Eagles: Farewell 1 Tour - Live From Melbourne
2. Toto: Live In Amsterdam - 25th Anniversary
3. Half Baked (DVD & HD DVD Combo)
4. Lucky # Slevin
5. HDScape Exotic Saltwater Aquarium (DVD & HD Combo)
6. Pat Metheny Group: The Way Up - Live
7. James Taylor: Musicares Person Of The Year Tribute
8. Chicago / Earth, Wind & Fire: Live At The Greek Theatre
9. Poseidon
10. Beerfest: Unrated

BD has 1 music title in their top 10, but HD-DVD has 5! HD-DVD also has a Saltwater Aquarium disc! Just looking at this, it appears that two entirely seperate demographics shop at DVD Empire, when comparing BD and HD-DVD. The HD-DVD list just looks weird to me.

And remember several pages back, I said, "Don't underestimate the power of Toto!"

Kosty

02-09-07, 01:25 PM

I think studios can probably charge $19.99 street prices for HD DVD or Blu-ray disks and get retail volumes. It's the price that is above that that is the issue. Anyone who is spending $299 or above will be ok for that price for the next year or so.

After 2009 street prices probably need to fall a bit to sutain growth in a sub $149 HD player market.

joshd2012

02-09-07, 01:27 PM

My guess, with relation to DVD Empire, is that those music discs were out of stock and that surge was the fulfillment of pre orders.

Kosty

02-09-07, 01:28 PM

Snickering Hound

02-09-07, 01:31 PM

Kosty

02-09-07, 01:33 PM

Ah! That explains it.

No wonder it happened so fast.

Gary Not the only reason, HD DVD was steadily rising for 4 days.

The big spike has lasted all day now.

wnorris

02-09-07, 01:35 PM

My guess, with relation to DVD Empire, is that those music discs were out of stock and that surge was the fulfillment of pre orders.

It still seems weird that there was such a demand for music discs that when a shipment arrived, it alone enough to pull HD-DVD very close to BD in sales for the year. Also, wouldn't this point out a fallacy to the DVD Empire numbers. There could be thousands of backorders for one format, and it would appear to have lower sales than the actual demand for the product, because of the methods DVD Empire uses. So if your guess is true, then DVD Empire's sales figures don't actually reflect the true demand for their products.

Four of those 10 discs still appear to be on order, so HD-DVD may even be closer yet to BD.

Alan Gordon

02-09-07, 01:39 PM

When DVD launched, and only had 100 or so titles, those titles were rarely ever discounted heavily. It was about 2 years before the $15 tier emerged. I remember when the $10 tier emerged at Walmart. I believe it was around Christmas of year 3. Cheaper tiers ($7.50, $5.50, $3.88, etc.) seemed to emerge each year after.

So I think it will be another year (maybe this year for Christmas at the earliest), before we see a new $15 tier of HD discs emerge. I think BD/HD-DVD are basically repeating the strategy of DVD.

Yes, let's not forget that Fox's first DVDs (which had no special features and were non-anamorphic) were found at most Target's for $34.95 when they first came out and on (what is now DVDEmpire.com) for $27.95 (sound familiar).

Warner, New Line and Sony were usually cheaper and could be found for anywhere between $19.95 and $24.95, and Paramount's usually ran for around $24.95 with Disney falling somewhere between $24.95 and $34.95 pricing depending on the title.

I purchased my first DVD player in September of 1998. It was the Panasonic A-110 (which is still going today) for the price of $349.

~Alan

Alan Gordon

02-09-07, 01:43 PM

It still seems weird that there was such a demand for music discs that when a shipment arrived, it alone enough to pull HD-DVD very close to BD in sales for the year. Also, wouldn't this point out a fallacy to the DVD Empire numbers. There could be thousands of backorders for one format, and it would appear to have lower sales than the actual demand for the product, because of the methods DVD Empire uses. So if your guess is true, then DVD Empire's sales figures don't actually reflect the true demand for their products.

Back when I used to order from DVDEmpire (which I haven't in a long time), they would ship my pre-orders out the Friday before release date, and I would get it on the release date (once, the day before). Since next Tuesday is the release date for "The Departed", it's possible that DVDEmpire only counts the number once they are shipped out...

~Alan

lymzy

02-09-07, 01:54 PM

so HD-DVD may even be closer yet to BD.

I think the current data from multiple source suggested that both formats still remained at niche status and bluray showed a lead or a trend to lead/victory in that market.

HD DVD camp worst fear is that PS3 would establish a strong beachhead for bluray in the mainstream market via its volume. Once that happens, the game is over.

Let's wait for more data.

dialog_gvf

02-09-07, 01:56 PM

Not the only reason, HD DVD was steadily rising for 4 days.

The big spike has lasted all day now.

It rose from 1000 to 800 over the four days, and then from 800 to 400 in an hour.

Gary

b2bonez

02-09-07, 02:09 PM

wnorris

02-09-07, 02:10 PM

I think the current data from multiple source suggested that both formats still remained at niche status and bluray showed a lead or a trend to lead/victory in that market.

HD DVD camp worst fear is that PS3 would establish a strong beachhead for bluray in the mainstream market via its volume. Once that happens, the game is over.

Let's wait for more data.

I was only referring to DVD Empire. In the past week, HD-DVD has made a huge jump, YTD, on BD. Looking at the bestsellers, it would seem music discs might be responsible for this (at least that is another posters theory). They speculated the surge was a result of backordered items (the music discs) being filled.

My comment that HD-DVD may be closer to BD still is based on 4 of the same 6 music discs still being on backorder. Basically, If DVD Empire were to count their actual orders, as many HD-DVD discs may have been ordered as BD discs. The percentages are off because of an items backorder/pre-order status (if the other poster's theory is correct), menaing that the numbers we see on the DVD Empire chart may not have as much meaning as everyone reads into them (BD may not be ahead, or HD-DVD may not have had a sudden surge in orders).

lymzy

02-09-07, 02:41 PM

I was only referring to DVD Empire. In the past week, HD-DVD has made a huge jump, YTD, on BD.

I was saying the jump itself ( if not a system error) is not too meaningful. It only indicate that the whole volume might be so small that a little change will cause wild fluctutation.

JAG1977

02-09-07, 02:53 PM

I'm guessing 25:75 for the week in favor of BD,YTD 20:80 in favor of BD and since inception 15 point lead for BD.

Followed with a couple of HD DVD is dead threads....

What's new? :)

Short to medium term it is dead.

It's just a question if owners will stick it out to the bitter end or become dual format.

wnorris

02-09-07, 02:59 PM

Short to medium term it is dead.

It's just a question if owners will stick it out to the bitter end or become dual format.

Why so?

JAG1977

02-09-07, 03:19 PM

Why so?

Content, industry support, PS3, marketing and Will to Win.

plazman

02-09-07, 03:28 PM

Content, industry support, PS3, marketing and Will to Win.

So, you're basically saying BD has the better politics.

However, HD DVD has the better economics - cheaper hardware, cheaper replication, easier conversion of existing DVD lines to HD DVD, focus.

Does economics trump politics? We don't know. Yet.

But the PS3 and marketing don't come for cheap. Sony is fighting on two fronts - the game console and BD. Both it appears requires billions of dollars in subsidy.

Just because a boxer decides to throw a lot of punches does not mean he is showing a greater desire to win....just that he wants to win fast, perhaps because he is aware he doesn't have the energy to go the distance....

d3code

02-09-07, 03:37 PM

i would be worried about the mental state of people when i see the top 10 of the HD-DVd side of DVD empire lol.

5. HDScape Exotic Saltwater Aquarium (DVD & HD Combo)

this should be the slogan of that company who release that disc.

not satisfied waiting so long for the new movie releases? dont worry we have the perfect answer. HDscape Exotic Saltwater Aquarium!!!!! watch fish swim by until your new movie arives lol

seriously that made my day lol. cant stop laughing.

i can already see the studio heads sitting in 1 room.

and what are the sales this week for HD? well sir it seems we have a littlebit strange reading today? director checks the list. first bluray. hmmm seems normal. then checks HD-DVd list . starts laughing and says , yeah that is a nice joke, but please show me the real sales list. but sir that is the REAL list!!! hahaha.

ah well hopefully nobody take my joke to seriously. but come on that list at dvdempire is worth a good laugh :)

JAG1977

02-09-07, 06:03 PM

So, you're basically saying BD has the better politics.

However, HD DVD has the better economics - cheaper hardware, cheaper replication, easier conversion of existing DVD lines to HD DVD, focus.

Does economics trump politics? We don't know. Yet.

But the PS3 and marketing don't come for cheap. Sony is fighting on two fronts - the game console and BD. Both it appears requires billions of dollars in subsidy.

Just because a boxer decides to throw a lot of punches does not mean he is showing a greater desire to win....just that he wants to win fast, perhaps because he is aware he doesn't have the energy to go the distance....

The economic argument is valid for another 6 months tops, then both formats will have affordable players (PS3 ignored).

Discs themselves cost the same for the consumer, less if you include combo's, so who cares?

I bought an A1, became worried by the pre Christmas release schedule, and moved over to Blu-ray.

I like to watch movies, I like to watch new releases, even more so with HD. Much as I enjoyed my A1 the format does not have the software that meets my, and my families needs.

Call me shallow but I enjoy my popcorn blockbusters, along with an increasing number of classic and cult films appearing on Blu-ray, so all my needs are met.

Christy Warren

02-09-07, 06:04 PM

So any ETA on new numbers?

Cheers
Christy

awmurray

02-09-07, 06:10 PM

Discs themselves cost the same for the consumer, less if you include combo's, so who cares?

Blu-ray may be cheaper at the store at this point because HD DVD is out there putting pressure on it.

I believe Warner stamps 1,000,000,000 DVDs a year (think Amirm said that). So, I would guess the manufacturing cost would matter a bit to them since a 10 cent saving per disc would give them an extra 100 million dollars.

debyrd

02-09-07, 06:19 PM

I was saying the jump itself ( if not a system error) is not too meaningful. It only indicate that the whole volume might be so small that a little change will cause wild fluctutation.

It is my fault. I ordered 'Departed' today from Amazon. That probably caused the surge in numbers.

Kosty

02-09-07, 07:52 PM

Very silly question:

http://www.betanews.com/article/PS3...ales/1170704837

This articles states there was a $15 off Blu-ray disc coupon in teh coupon book shipped in every PS3.

Is this true?

If it is doesn't that have the effect of temporarily boosting the PS3 attach rate by one for many users . that may not repeated?

If that was counted as the Blu-ray stats, why wouldn't that imply a lot of the the PS3 surge will not be sustained in future Blu-ray sales?

Kosty

02-09-07, 07:54 PM

Nuts, I just notice there is another thread on this.

Discussion link below:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=803035

Kosty

02-09-07, 07:57 PM

Another thread appropriate to this discussion:

These are still tiny volumes

the top-selling Blu-Ray title in the first three weeks of January was Lionsgate's CRANK, which sold some 7500 units. HD DVD's top title in that period was Warner's BATMAN BEGINS, which sold 4100 units. According to VIDEO BUSINESS, "studio sources" indicated that the top-selling Blu-Ray title in the first three weeks of January was Lionsgate's CRANK, which sold some 7500 units. HD DVD's top title in that period was Warner's BATMAN BEGINS, which sold 4100 units.

As an indication of the difficulty in assessing sales "enthusiasm", CRANK was a new title at that time and BATMAN BEGINS had been out since November.

You really can't judge how the formats are doing on a moment-by-moment basis. It's fairly meaningless. Of course, newly released titles should sell better than older ones at any given time. Erichttp://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=803078

GeorgeLV

02-09-07, 08:52 PM

Very silly question:

http://www.betanews.com/article/PS3...ales/1170704837

This articles states there was a $15 off Blu-ray disc coupon in teh coupon book shipped in every PS3.

Is this true?

No.

There are $10 mail-in rebates for select titles from each of the studios supporting Blu-ray. Up to $70 in rebates are possible. (Each studio has 3 titles a rebate is valid on.)

Kosty

02-09-07, 08:54 PM

No.

There are $10 mail-in rebates for select titles from each of the studios supporting Blu-ray. Up to $70 in rebates are possible. (Each studio has 3 titles a rebate is valid on.) Thank you. Is see this is being discussed in the other thread.
Nuts, I just notice there is another thread on this.

Discussion link below:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=803035

plazman

02-09-07, 09:25 PM

FWIW, paidgeek on another thread 'Sony declares victory...' says that the Jan. end Nielson data shows 67% share for BD. He also reports 487K BD disks and 456K HD DVD disks sold SI according to Nielson.

That puts the attachment rate of 4 BD Players appox. for each movie.

I can't post a link to that thread on my PDA.

Given these numbers, wouldn't it seem that Videoscan is under reporting?

xbdestroya

02-09-07, 09:30 PM

First, let's wait for the videosacan numbers themselves. Not that I don't trust Paidgeek to be on the ball on the vast majority of that which he chimes in on, but personally I'm just eager to filter out all the white noise on these numbers for the time being.

If indeed BD takes the SI crown with Nielsen for the Jan-end figures...

Then well, obviously if you include the PS3 en masse, indeed it'll be more players than films! ;)

That said - I think ultimately, Nielsen is not going to take account of Amazon and other online retailers; places I would say until quite quite recently, have probably represented the majority of media sales. Cheaper pricing, no tax, free shipping, and ability to pre-order... I mean, most of us ourselves order online, am I right?

But almost as importantly, if Paidgeeks hard figures do indeed corroborate the ratios we'll receive, then we'll more or less have the Nielsen situation figured out.

Kosty

02-09-07, 09:32 PM

PC mag article on the effect of the Sony PS3 Blu-ray Disc Rebate Offer.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2093296,00.asp

xbdestroya

02-09-07, 09:36 PM

Timothy Ramzyk

02-09-07, 09:40 PM

Kosty

02-09-07, 09:48 PM

The reason I don't like that article - and I swear this is just another one for the books in terms of weak journo/analyst research - is that they are just repeating the '$15 gift certificate' thing being quoted elsewhere. For god's sake, do none of these people own a PS3 themselves, or know of someone they can call to confirm their facts? No sheeet. I think a lot of what he's says makes sense, in theory its great, but then not accurately quoting that single fact makes you question other things. I mean it took me 10-15 minutes to watch some unboxing videos and get to Sony's rebate website to see the offer.

Maybe that was in the first press kit on the PS3 launch these guys got? Or it was in some boxes of the PS3 and not others?

PC magazine I'm sure got sent a early PS3 and their office kit may not have seen the full consumer package. But its silly not to verify all your facts in an article like that.

darinp2

02-09-07, 10:09 PM

Its like it only took one new title (the Departed) showing up on the 31 ranking to even up the sales stats. Its also ranked 32 on Blu-ray."The Departed" had almost nothing to do with it. Moving from 60 to 30 only helps the average for the top 10 by 3 points. That title has also been there for about the same amount of time on both formats. As I mentioned before, "The Good Shepherd" (spelled correctly this time :)) showed up for the HD DVD side, which helped it some (almost 100 points for the top 10 at the time). Then if you look at the 24 hour chart you will see how much more HD DVD jumped after the Amazon messup with the $5 off deal that I believe shows up as spikes after midnight last night. You can also go to hdgamedb.com and look at the comparisons for a specific day. Or compare 2 titles in order to look at one, like see what "Eternal Sunshine" did after midnight even though it has been up for preorder for a while. The HD DVD side held up pretty good today, but given how much more it jumped shortly after the $5 messup at Amazon, I think we need to watch it a little longer to see if it will stay up there. I'm also not sure what Amazon is doing with those orders and whether both sides will see lots of orders cancelled.

--Darin

Kosty

02-09-07, 10:14 PM

Well Blu-ray also jumped up then, but at a much lower jump. That itself might say something.

just saw another poster mention that none or few of the rebate eligible Blu-ray titles are top sellers now.

Still waiting for Gruberts' Videscan numbers. :)

darinp2

02-09-07, 10:16 PM

I was wondering about Amazon having a preorder up for "The Good Shepherd" when the Universal site says that is almost 2 months away (4/3, even though Amazon says 3/2) and wondered what would happen when some of the titles that look like they are coming out 3/20 and 3/27 go up for preorder ("Happy Feet", "The Holiday", "Night at the Museum", "Rocky Balboa", and "The Pursuit of Happyness"). But now I see that Amazon not only put "The Holiday" and "The Pursuit of Happyness" up for preorder, but has put up preorders for a couple of titles over 3 months away. The 2 "Pirates" movies from Disney. It should be interesting to see how high those are able to maintain given the very long preorder time.

--Darin

darinp2

02-09-07, 10:19 PM

Well Blu-ray also jumped up then, but at a much lower jump. That itself might say something.I think it is an indicator toward this site (and maybe sites like it) being skewed more toward HD DVD than even the average Amazon purchaser and so when people here find out about a deal that applies to both sides and has a very short timeframe, it tends to help HD DVD more for that time. We can just look at polls here and see that more people here favor HD DVD, so if there were sales rankings that were only for people who vote in polls here, that bias/leaning should show up in those to some degree also.

Do you agree that it wouldn't be very realistic to attribute the jump that happened last night at a little after midnight and around 1 am (for both formats) to sales of players over the last couple of weeks?

--Darin

Kosty

02-09-07, 10:51 PM

It could have happened when they received stock and shipped pre-orders out or for various other reasons besides the $5 off offer to Amazon prime people.

the trend was up for several days before the spike.

darinp2

02-09-07, 11:01 PM

It could have happened when they received stock and shipped pre-orders out or for various other reasons besides the $5 off offer to Amazon prime people.Amazon rankings don't go by when they ship. Have you actually looked at the 24 hour graph? The change from the trend wasn't even close to what happened in that hour and a half or so.

--Darin

nataraj

02-09-07, 11:06 PM

FWIW, paidgeek on another thread 'Sony declares victory...' says that the Jan. end Nielson data shows 67% share for BD. He also reports 487K BD disks and 456K HD DVD disks sold SI according to Nielson.

That contradicts 1.5M shipped value given a few months back by HD DVD group (I find it difficult to beleive only a third of the shipped is sold).

So, who do you beleive ?

Esp. given the fact that Sony also says Sony standalone+PS3 is 40% of BD player ownership ;)

xbdestroya

02-09-07, 11:10 PM

Esp. given the fact that Sony also says Sony standalone+PS3 is 40% of BD player ownership ;)

Paidgeek ammended that claim to 40% of the standalone market is comprised of the BDP; PS3 was not supposed to be a part of the "40%" reference. Which of course makes more sense, since if it was PS3 inclusive, seriously it should be more like 98% of the BD player market.

plazman

02-09-07, 11:13 PM

paidgeek corrected that by saying 40% was for the BDP-1 only.

I think Videoscan's numbers are too low. They have inadequate coverage. But paidgeek at least gave us the numbers behind Videoscan that we were looking for. Now I knaow what the percentages are.

I have a hard time believing that less than a total of 1M HD movies have sold combined for both formats. I guess, what we are seeing is the shrinking share of B&M stores for hi def movie sales - and B&M is where Videoscan gets their data from. FWIW, my local BB doesn't have a single HD DVD title released this year. Not one! Not sure if they sold out or never got them at all. For now, I buy all my movie disks from Amazon.

wnorris

02-09-07, 11:13 PM

That contradicts 1.5M shipped value given a few months back by HD DVD group (I find it difficult to beleive only a third of the shipped is sold).

So, who do you beleive ?

Esp. given the fact that Sony also says Sony standalone+PS3 is 40% of BD player ownership ;)

No contradiction. As I posted previously, it would just mean Nielson is only capturing about 25% of the actual market, instead of the 60% one would expect (since they capture that much of the DVD market).

wnorris

02-09-07, 11:14 PM

Paidgeek ammended that claim to 40% of the standalone market is comprised of the BDP; PS3 was not supposed to be a part of the "40%" reference. Which of course makes more sense, since if it was PS3 inclusive, seriously it should be more like 98% of the BD player market.

What is the other 60% then?

nataraj

02-09-07, 11:18 PM

What is the other 60% then?

If 40% is only Sony BDP - the other 60% would be Samsung+Pioneer+Panasonic+Phillips.

xbdestroya

02-09-07, 11:18 PM

What is the other 60% then?

Samsung, Philips, Panasonic, Pioneer.

nataraj

02-09-07, 11:19 PM

No contradiction. As I posted previously, it would just mean Nielson is only capturing about 25% of the actual market, instead of the 60% one would expect (since they capture that much of the DVD market).

I don't know what you mean.

If Nielsen says some 500K as the total and HD DVD says 1.5M shipped - there is a contraction. What that exists - we can all postulate and debate.

nataraj

02-09-07, 11:20 PM

xbdestroya

02-09-07, 11:22 PM

Exactly. Atleast this clears the "mystery" BD player problem ;)

Now, why would Sony put out such a faulty statement to start with ?

Maybe they didn't.

Next-gen.biz is a chronic source of misquotes and broken contexts; to say the fault in numbers lay with Sony I think is giving Next-gen too much benefit of the doubt. But whoever the fault lies with, I don't think that anyoen would have put out a faulty statement like that on purpose, that's for sure.

nataraj

02-09-07, 11:25 PM

wnorris

02-09-07, 11:26 PM

I don't know what you mean.

If Nielsen says some 500K as the total and HD DVD says 1.5M shipped - there is a contraction. What that exists - we can all postulate and debate.

It's not really a contradiction because Nielsen has never claimed they account for all discs sold. Their only claim would be that is the number of discs sold by the retailers they track.

It would be the same as saying there is a contradtiction because Amazon didn't sell all 1.5 million discs.

nataraj

02-09-07, 11:27 PM

But whoever the fault lies with, I don't think that anyoen would have put out a faulty statement like that on purpose, that's for sure.

I agree ... my question is more like "how could they have put out such a faulty statement ?". If the source is not reliable .... well thats the problem of single source - without a link to the original statement or not reporting the statement verbatim.

We should remember this when discussing something that a single website posts from now on.

plazman

02-09-07, 11:29 PM

plazman

02-09-07, 11:31 PM

I believe 67% was for 2007. The 487K to 456K is since inception.

wnorris

02-09-07, 11:36 PM

xbdestroya

02-09-07, 11:40 PM

Yeah, well clearly more media has sold than is being reported by Nielsen - I truly believe that online sources have formed the bulk of sales since the format war began. That will favor HD DVD in SI - so whatever Nielsen reports, we know that the *real* SI in HD DVDs favor is probably higher. That said, it'll still provide good B&M insight. For online, I suppose we can use DVDempire as a completely arbitrary footnote to the Nielsen statistics, as it will help give a little insight into past behavior and how the YTD numbers differ online vs B&M.

And Amazon... well, everyone loves charts!

Sketcha

02-09-07, 11:42 PM

So, you're basically saying BD has the better politics.

However, HD DVD has the better economics - cheaper hardware, cheaper replication, easier conversion of existing DVD lines to HD DVD, focus.

Does economics trump politics? We don't know. Yet.

But the PS3 and marketing don't come for cheap. Sony is fighting on two fronts - the game console and BD. Both it appears requires billions of dollars in subsidy.

Just because a boxer decides to throw a lot of punches does not mean he is showing a greater desire to win....just that he wants to win fast, perhaps because he is aware he doesn't have the energy to go the distance....
IF BD is able to kill off HD DVD, who, would you say had the better economics?

Hard to have good economics when you don't sell anything.

Again... I said IF!!!

It's like Ray Krock opening one of his new McDonalds down the street from the original McDonalds boys. The object is not to profit short term, but to bury the oppenent and dominate long term. It's not pretty. Just business. Ask your Xbox, boyfriend Bill Gates about it. ;)

nataraj

02-09-07, 11:46 PM

It's not really a contradiction because Nielsen has never claimed they account for all discs sold. Their only claim would be that is the number of discs sold by the retailers they track.

I was under the impression Nielsen tracks 60% retailers - but extrapolates to cover the whole market. So, the numbers they put out is supposed to be 100% of the sales ... not just from those 60% of retailers (note it is 60% retailers - not 60% sales).

After a bit of searching it seems Nielsen just releases their numbers - not the extrapolated ones like NPD.

That mean this whole Nielsen number is highly questionable. We just don't know how correct they are in terms of BD/HD DVD number comparison.

xbdestroya

02-09-07, 11:50 PM

I was under the impression Nielsen tracks 60% retailers - but extrapolates to cover the whole market. So, the numbers they put out is supposed to be 100% of the sales ... not just from those 60% of retailers (note it is 60% retailers - not 60% sales).

After a bit of searching it seems Nielsen just releases their numbers - not the extrapolated ones like NPD.

That mean this whole Nielsen number is highly questionable. We just don't know how correct they are in terms of BD/HD DVD number comparison.

Right, well the numbers (coming from Sony in this case) would indeed be questionable, but B&M industrywide extrapolation of the ratios would still be valid.

nataraj

02-09-07, 11:55 PM

Right, well the numbers (coming from Sony in this case) would indeed be questionable, but B&M industrywide extrapolation of the ratios would still be valid.

Who cares about only B&M industrywide extrapolation of Sales ratios ? :mad:

I want the total. And this gives nothing of the sort. I feel like it is a big let down. I no longer really care about these numbers ... that much.

plazman

02-09-07, 11:55 PM

Even MSFT has their limitations. Think they wouldn't love to take out Google or Oracle or any number of other software companies? What about the PS3? Sure, they would want to. However, it's not always possible. When you can't take out your rival, then you need to plan for a long term competitive strategy.

Intel would love to take out AMD as well. But...

For every Netscape MSFT took out, there is a Google.

Fact is, to survive and thrive you need a sustainable competitive advatange. HD DVD's appears to be better long term economics. BDA's advantage is content - which is really political. Disney, Fox and other studios can support HD DVD and not hurt their busines one bit. Same for Universal.

As an economist, my bias is towards supporting better economics v. politics. Since it's usually not in a consumers interest when politics overcomes better economics. But does it happen? All the time :)

xbdestroya

02-09-07, 11:59 PM

Who cares about only B&M industrywide extrapolation of Sales ratios ? :mad:

I want the total. And this gives nothing of the sort. I feel like it is a big let down. I no longer really care about these numbers ... that much.

Well, I want the total too... but we're just not going to get that, because no one tracks it save for the studios themselves in terms of their own sales; no one's going to crack open the world of online sales to us, so it's useless to let it bother us.

For what it's worth, going forward B&M will comprise a larger and larger role, so I think that the trending ratios *do* matter. In terms of SI, we'll just always have to keep in mind that there's a year 1 SI-boost advantage for HD DVD that was never properly described by the numbers provided by these services.

b2bonez

02-10-07, 12:07 AM

the blob

02-10-07, 12:09 AM

i don't understand why most people think the low SI units are so hard to believe??? Sure, they will be low due to the sources that videoscan don't receive data from but like i said in another post, in november Paramount stated they had shipped 20,000 units of MI:3 overall for both formats. That's shipped, not sold. That was one of last years highest profile titles with broad appeal.

It's entirely possible that Crank, a much lesser title and only available on one format, adding in the factor of non videoscan outlets, sold maybe 10,000 or more in the whole of January, seeing as it's being reported as 7,500 by videoscan (via Video Business), and that was BD's biggest seller over the period with the biggest opening week confirmed by Lions Gate.

Yes, it would mean the attach rates are low, especially for the PS3 but without wanting to go too far in another direction, how many units of POTC 2 were sold on SD DVD? wasn't it about 10 - 15 million by years end? There have been over 120 million DVD players sold in the USA since 1997. Even if we scrap half of those as broken down/replaced, that would mean a 4:1 player/dvd ratio. I think we could be at the level now where a high profile title may sell 20,000 on each format with the increase in players since november but there's absolutely no data to indicate that sales are higher than that anywhere. All higher unit number quotes have been of units shipped, not sold.

Richard Paul

02-10-07, 12:28 AM

I want the total. And this gives nothing of the sort. I feel like it is a big let down. I no longer really care about these numbers ... that much.Just curious but why did you never say anything like this back when the 3 to 1 ratio from Nielsen was released last year in a HD DVD press release?

...
As an economist, my bias is towards supporting better economics v. politics.plazman, besides leaving out a few advantages that I personally believe are important to Blu-ray I think that both HD formats are political. After all politics always comes into the decision when you talk about any major video format which is why EVD, which is a far cheaper video format than HD DVD, is not really competing in the format war. For instance do you think that Toshiba would have sold HD DVD players with a MSRP of $500 last year or that Microsoft would have released a HD DVD add-on to the Xbox 360 if politics had not been involved in their decisions?

K.L.

02-10-07, 01:02 AM

Disney, Fox and other studios can support HD DVD and not hurt their busines one bit.Not true for Fox as long as BD has BD+. The excuse that it's not implemented yet will disappear soon.

Kosty

02-10-07, 03:36 AM

Amazon rankings don't go by when they ship. Have you actually looked at the 24 hour graph? The change from the trend wasn't even close to what happened in that hour and a half or so.

--Darin I agree with you.

The 24 hour graph trend is clearly showing slow attrition from that spike period.

Its just seems so ludicrous that a spike like that could happen from a single thread and a few postings here. That means the overall volumes are so small that any tracking is so volatile that its almost meaningless.

We just need to be patient on any trends.

Kosty

02-10-07, 03:42 AM

Interesting graphic from this article..
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2093290,00.asp

(link only - img tag doesn't work for this one)
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/15/0,1425,sz=1&i=152611,00.jpg

b2b Yeah, but the author in the article staed that the graph didn't tell the whole story.

Of course, I'd trust his analysis more if he got the PS3 Blu-ray movie disc rebate offer right. :rolleyes: That didn't help his credibility,

darinp2

02-10-07, 04:02 AM

Its just seems so ludicrous that a spike like that could happen from a single thread and a few postings here. That means the overall volumes are so small that any tracking is so volatile that its almost meaningless.Somebody said that a report about the $5 deal ended up on fatwallet and another place. I'm not sure about the timing there as it sounds like the deal then disappeared pretty quickly.

But when I see a thread here get revived about the HD Sampler disc that has been up for preorder for a while and it goes up in the 24 hours or so after that and then right back down, it does make me think that this place has a fair amount of influence on the Amazon rankings. That is one reason I believe that it is likely that the Amazon rankings skew more toward HD DVD than the market as a whole for these 2 formats does (since we know from polls that the voters here lean heavily toward HD DVD support) and why I figured that a title like "The Departed" (which should have a lot of sales) would be a good one to track.

--Darin

johnu

02-10-07, 04:04 AM

plazman, besides leaving out a few advantages that I personally believe are important to Blu-ray I think that both HD formats are political.

And an unhealthy dose of religion added in :p

Richard Paul

02-10-07, 06:01 AM

And an unhealthy dose of religion added in :pI wouldn't quite say that, but there certainly are some posters on this forum that take this format war personally. Also johnu you commonly make little quips against Blu-ray supporters and tend to include a :p or :D at the end of such posts. As such based on that I don't even really know if your agreeing with me or trying to make a joke out of what I said.

Azumi

02-10-07, 08:31 AM

Slim GoodBooty

02-10-07, 08:43 AM

No matter how you slice it, even after putting hundreds of thousands of players in houses and giving away discs by the box load, BluRay still isn't getting a lot of traction. I'm still buying Casino Royale, though.

wnorris

02-10-07, 09:02 AM

plazman

02-10-07, 09:15 AM

Just curious but why did you never say anything like this back when the 3 to 1 ratio from Nielsen was released last year in a HD DVD press release?

plazman, besides leaving out a few advantages that I personally believe are important to Blu-ray I think that both HD formats are political. After all politics always comes into the decision when you talk about any major video format which is why EVD, which is a far cheaper video format than HD DVD, is not really competing in the format war. For instance do you think that Toshiba would have sold HD DVD players with a MSRP of $500 last year or that Microsoft would have released a HD DVD add-on to the Xbox 360 if politics had not been involved in their decisions?

Politics and economics are on both sides. However, BD has the political advantage over HD DVD, just as both HD DVD and BD had the political advantage over EVD (I am going by what you said). Sometimes politics trumps economics and sometimes its the other way around. At this point, I don't know which one will win out here.

Just like the politics, the economics can also change. These things are not set in stone :)

I mostly disagree on the part where people believe one format has won already or than HD DVD will call it quits in Sept. Those conclusions IMHO are not based on reasonable assumptions or analysis. again, JMHO. No one has to take my word for it. Please decide for yourself.

Richard, the smiley is not because I'm making fun of you. It's me saying cheers and have a good day :)

Timothy Ramzyk

02-10-07, 11:14 AM

Politics and economics are on both sides. However, BD has the political advantage over HD DVD, just as both HD DVD and BD had the political advantage over EVD (I am going by what you said). Sometimes politics trumps economics and sometimes its the other way around. At this point, I don't know which one will win out here.
:)

I also think the BD honeymoon of PS3 and no HD-DVD releases isn't going to last.

Granted, in the near future BD has more big name releases, but all new releases become catalog titles in a month. If the buyer-base isn't there for either yet, then movie buyers will pick up the DVD of hot titles, and when they do buy some high-def format a year down the road, they may double-dip, but I doubt releases from this Winter are going to have the same impact they might if you were taking the plunge now.

I think there are plenty of people waiting for significant player-price drops, they know how fast DVD player-prices went down, and they're in no hurry.

Also if a place like Best Buy, which has been paid to jockey for Blu-ray for the last three months says it's premature to make predictions, it's premature.

the blob

02-10-07, 11:25 AM

They shipped 20,000 combined MI3's in one week. We don't really know the final ship number, just that week. I believe they also shipped an additional 20,000 or so box sets the first week, which means an additional 20,000 copies of MI3.

True.. but in general initial sales are the biggest, and it was dropping out of the top 5 sellers by early december, just over a month after release. The box set didn't even make it into the top 10 so i would doubt that there were 20,000 of those shipped too.... i'm not saying sales aren't improving. That's a given just by the extra amount of players on the market. Would you anyone like to take an estimate at how many a more restricted appeal title like Blazing Saddles or Forbidden Planet might have sold?

nataraj

02-10-07, 12:32 PM

Just curious but why did you never say anything like this back when the 3 to 1 ratio from Nielsen was released last year in a HD DVD press release?

Whats wrong with you ? Do you just read my posts to see if you can somehow point out biases ? If you had read just a couple of other posts you would have noticed that until just a few minutes before that post - I used to think Nielsen extrapolated (like NPD) and gave what they beleived to be 100% of the numbers.

Sheesh, your hatred for MS is really clouding your replies to my posts :rolleyes:

Besides that 1:3 looks very possible for that time (we all know BD players were selling poorly compared to HD DVD).

Sketcha

02-10-07, 12:44 PM

Timothy Ramzyk

02-10-07, 01:16 PM

Even MSFT
As an economist, my bias is towards supporting better economics v. politics. Since it's usually not in a consumers interest when politics overcomes better economics. But does it happen? All the time :)

Economics usually involve a lot more truth and rational decision-making, rather than the hype-fueled gut-level responses made based on politics. I favor the former and wish more people did as well.

However it's the nature of politics to masquerade as economics, and it's work to separate the two.

Grubert

02-10-07, 04:48 PM

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2093290,00.asp

http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/9783/01425sz1i15261100wr5.jpg

Those are weekly sales ratios. Like Fox said, BD started outselling HD DVD on the week of December 24. Sales ratios seem to have stabilized around 68/32 (2.125:1).

Also,

to date (Jan. 28), 53.3 percent of all next-gen DVDs have been in the HD DVD format, compared to 46.7 percent for Blu-ray.

So since inception figures, when they are published (not yet!) should be HD DVD 100, BD 87.62 (100*46.7/53.3)

Sketcha

02-10-07, 06:18 PM

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2093290,00.asp

http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/9783/01425sz1i15261100wr5.jpg

Those are weekly sales ratios. Like Fox said, BD started outselling HD DVD on the week of December 24. Sales ratios seem to have stabilized around 68/32 (2.125:1).

Also,

So since inception figures, when they are published (not yet!) should be HD DVD 100, BD 87.62 (100*46.7/53.3)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if 1/21/07 was 100/50.51, then 67.8/32.2 would not quite jive. Should be more like, roughly 66.4/33.6.

Significant digits aside...

33.6/66.4=.5060

32.2/67.8=.4749

I would sure hope that combos were included in this graph; all dates, but, at the very least the 21st and 28th.

jpb123

02-10-07, 06:44 PM

To me the much bigger discrepency is between 500K movies sold to 2M Players. This attachment rate is terrible! There is just no way that only 500K movies have sold and yet, Paidgeek confirms these are from Nielson/Videoscan. So, either we have a terrible attachment rate, which should be worrisome to the BDA, or Videoscan isn't doing a very good job in compiling data - of the two choices, I'd say the problem is Videoscan. Perhaps we need to recognize that their reach is too limited to be accurate. JMHO.

If there is one guy I believe among insiders it's Paidgeek.

I think we have all assumed wrongly that the numbers given out by various "counters" have been adjusted to account for the sales places not measured by them.

I remember from about 10-15 years back when I was following the cd sales in magazines like Billboard etc. The were giving out numbers from soundscan like 137.518 sold in a week etc. For every title in the top 20 or so. Exact numbers. By doing that you would assume they had some system to include all copies sold. Turns out they didn't. I remember a story reporting that those numbers was the numbers only from the stores that reported directly to soundscan through some computersoftware. One effect at the time was that countryalbums was always way low in the general chart since alot of those albums were sold in the types of stores that wasn't hooked up to soundscans system.

You would think they had figured it out by now but I bet that those 400.000ish numbers are only for stores reporting to videoscan. I believe the real numbers (for both formats) are 3 to 4 times as much. The attachment rates just doesn't add up otherways.

Also if Batman Begins are selling 4.000 a week (on HD-DVD) as reported elsewhere that would mean 60.000 or so since release if it has been at the current level all the time but early on it was much higher so it might in reality be 80-100.000. I acknowledge that it is one of the best selling titles but there is no way it has sold a fifth of all disks by itself.

the blob

02-10-07, 07:22 PM

The 4,100 Batman Begins sales was over a three-week period.

Stromprophet

02-10-07, 09:30 PM

Where do we find the updated videoscan numbers for each week?

Ilka

02-10-07, 09:38 PM

Where do we find the updated videoscan numbers for each week?

Grubert normally provides them ... send a PM to him :) ... I'm curious also

Richard Paul

02-10-07, 09:41 PM

Politics and economics are on both sides. However, BD has the political advantage over HD DVD, just as both HD DVD and BD had the political advantage over EVD (I am going by what you said).True, and I am just saying that politics enters into the equation for both HD formats. It just seems to me that some people who are asking for all studios to support all video formats tend to leave out EVD when they say that.

I mostly disagree on the part where people believe one format has won already or than HD DVD will call it quits in Sept.Well I certainly don't believe that the HD DVD companies would call it quits anytime this year. Even if it got to the point were it looked like Blu-ray had won I would expect many of them to carry on for at least a year.

Richard, the smiley is not because I'm making fun of you. It's me saying cheers and have a good day :)I know, and trust me based on experience there is good reason why I don't know how to take that post from johnu (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9736239&&#post9736239).

Whats wrong with you ? Do you just read my posts to see if you can somehow point out biases ?Come on nataraj considering you never even questioned any of the Nielsen numbers until recently I think that was a pretty legitimate question.

Sheesh, your hatred for MS is really clouding your replies to my postsWow, what a surprise. A personal attack from nataraj accusing someone of hating Microsoft. That certainly isn't a common attack that he makes when someone asks him a hard question. And yes that is supposed to be a bit sarcastic.

Besides that 1:3 looks very possible for that timeAnd Blu-ray outselling HD DVD by 2:1 looks very possible for this time as well.

nataraj

02-10-07, 11:06 PM

Come on nataraj considering you never even questioned any of the Nielsen numbers until recently I think that was a pretty legitimate question.

Ofcourse not. You didn't read the other posts and didn't know the context. If you knew the context you should have known that I had always thought Videoscan gave full (extrapolated) numbers. It was not a fair question at all.

Wow, what a surprise. A personal attack from nataraj accusing someone of hating Microsoft.

Personal attacks ? Just go back and read your own posts and face upto the facts. Not to mention your year long Jihad against me ... where you have resorted to nothing but unprovoked personal attacks, innuendo, smear and stuff that would make DC political operatives proud.

WayneL

02-10-07, 11:17 PM

Gotta go with Nataraj on this one

plazman

02-10-07, 11:29 PM

nataraj, Videoscan only reports actual numbers from their sources. They do not state who their sources are in their report. AFAIK, Best Buy, Circuit City, Border, Barnes & Noble and their web sites are their major known sources. I am not sure about Fry's.

So, if the HD DVD promo group declared they had shipped 1.5M disks in Sept last year (as I recall, but could be wrong), and on Jan 30th Videoscan says 456K were sold, they are probably missing around 1-1.5M HD DVD disk sales, and perhaps even more for the BD side.

My own take is that we are perhaps seeing the declining importance of Videoscans sources in capturing a majority of the market. But it's hard to tell.

Didn't Fox say they were shipping 70K disks a week?

nataraj

02-11-07, 12:30 AM

nataraj, Videoscan only reports actual numbers from their sources. They do not state who their sources are in their report. AFAIK, Best Buy, Circuit City, Border, Barnes & Noble and their web sites are their major known sources. I am not sure about Fry's.

Yep ... I figured that out recently ....

My own take is that we are perhaps seeing the declining importance of Videoscans sources in capturing a majority of the market. But it's hard to tell.

Perhaps. Also I guess the Hidef DVD sales thr' channels not covered by videoscan could be (much) higher than for DVDs. If and when they become mainstream, may be videoscan numbers will still be relevent.

Didn't Fox say they were shipping 70K disks a week?

If every week is like Christmas holidays, everyone will sell 100x what they normally sell and everyone consumer would be bankrupt as well.

I guess Fox studios follows the group when it comes to spinning ....

Richard Paul

02-11-07, 02:39 AM

Ofcourse not. You didn't read the other posts and didn't know the context. If you knew the context you should have known that I had always thought Videoscan gave full (extrapolated) numbers. It was not a fair question at all.Of course it was a fair question. If somebody who has never sought to question a source while it was giving numbers he liked started questioning it when it stopped giving numbers he liked that is something that is rather noticeable.

Personal attacks ? Just go back and read your own posts and face upto the facts. Not to mention your year long Jihad against me ... where you have resorted to nothing but unprovoked personal attacks, innuendo, smear and stuff that would make DC political operatives proud.Calm down nataraj and stop trying to always accuse me of being the villian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villain). I mean come on your using the word "Jihad" to describe the fact that I often disagree with you. Don't you think that is a bit much?

Grubert

02-11-07, 05:24 AM

Where do we find the updated videoscan numbers for each week?

On the digital edition of Home Media Magazine. Go to initial post for more info.

Grubert

02-11-07, 05:38 AM

Its a bit larger trend than that. It shows up in everything including the sales rank of the top 10 titles.

HD DVD is just looking like it regained its previous floor after a relative slump.

Two days later...

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8049/hdg0211su4.jpg

What do they say about counting your chickens? ;)

Kosty

02-11-07, 05:53 AM

Two days later...

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8049/hdg0211su4.jpg

What do they say about counting your chickens? ;) Well at least I was not saying that HD DVD had won the format war yet. :o

I've been saying all along that its just too early to tell.

Kosty

02-11-07, 05:56 AM

Grubert:

When do you expect to be able to divine the HMR stats ?

Urza

02-11-07, 07:05 AM

Ray Cathode

02-11-07, 08:12 AM

As everyone is so busy with pretty charts, and ripping one another to shreds, the "download business" is laughing all the way to the bank. Hell, even WalMart just got into the business. Add the pending release of Apple TV, and the seas are getting stormy for HDDVD and Blu.

Yes I know the complaints. Download times, not enough HD content, but with improving speeds(FIOS,etc. etc.), Apple TV(and other media streamers), the download biz looks to be the spoiler!

Look at it from the consumer point of view

"Oh cool, I dont have to get up, I can download this movie"

"HDDVD, PS3? too much $"

"Companies are promising more HD content anyway, I'll just wait"

Most consumers want physical media... and they always will. Downloads will exist but will not replace tangible media, no matter how badly IT companies and Microsoft want it to. I'll never buy into it.

majortom

02-11-07, 08:24 AM

Most consumers want physical media... and they always will.

Given the size of the illegal P2P market, I do not think that you are correct. Many older consumers want physical media. If I could get a download that was 1080P24 or 60, had all the extras that are often on physical media, could be played on any player I own and could be delivered in less time than going to Best Buy to get it, I would certainly consider buying it over physical media. If they enabled me to download it again (even a limited number of times) in the event I lost or suffered a disk crash (possibly at a small fee), that would clinch the deal for me.

Downloads will exists but will not replace tangible media, no matter how badly IT companies and Microsoft want it to. I'll never buy into it.

Maybe not for you, but ask kids that you know (if you know any) how many songs and shows/movies they have for which they do not have media and I think you will be surprised at their answer.

/carmi

Urza

02-11-07, 08:32 AM

The other thing is how much pie is left? Blue and HDDVD already have to fight off each other, and then they have to fight off both SD DVD and the download market. With so many hats in the ring, someone is bound to go home unhappy.

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 08:50 AM

Let's look at another way in which predicting trends based on the limited volume of sales could go horribly wrong.

Let's take SCEA's word when they report 439,000 BD discs sold vs. 438,000 for HD-DVD. Let's assume that they have access to the actual Nielsen unit numbers, and this is what they are reporting. If so, the next HMM magazine should show a ratio of around 100/100.

However, lets also take Nielsen/Toshiba/Microsoft/Warner at their word too. We have an average attach rate of 8.4 discs per player and 175,000 players as of Dec. 31st. This would mean over 1.47 million HD-DVD discs sold.

This would mean that Nielsen is only capturing ~30% of HD-DVD's actual sales. What we wouldn't know is what percentage of BD sales are being captured. Anything more than ~30% means Nielsen's data is skewed. Nielsen is obviously missing many HD-DVD sales, but are the missing just as many BD sales? If they were catching ~50% of BD sales, it would mean that despite Nielsen showing BD ahead, HD-DVD would actually still be ahead. If the Nielsen data was skewed in any way (paid endcaps, dispraportionate ratio of format exclusive retailers, etc.), then the reported lead, or any trend based on the data, could be completely incorrect. It would even be possible for Nielsen to show one trend, while the reverse was actually true.

Until retailer penetration of HD formats increases, and until sales volumes increase by an order of magnitude, then I don't think any meaningful trends can be garnered from the data. Things like Nielsen numbers are just a curiousity that don't mean much, if anything.

You are right on the money

one issue wiyth yoour analysis. the 8.4 was for August, sometime in June (if I rememebr correctly) Toshiba said they finnaly shipped their 20k player internationally. Yes those guys with 9 disks in June most likely bought more, but the guy that bought his add-on in Dec most likely did not buy 9 disks at the same time.

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 08:58 AM

Well, if you read my statement, it is based on the assumption that the SCEA (Sony) numbers are based on their Nielsen information. Sony either made these numbers up and are lying, or they got them from some source like Nielsen.

So my statement is based on the assumption that Sony is being truthful, but that also Nielsen/Toshiba/MS/Warner were also telling the truth with the information they provided at CES. If both parties are being truthful, it would mean that 70+% of HD-DVD's are being sold by non-Nielsen retailers.

Did you even read what I wrote? This is all in the post. Again, no conspiracy. I think you're being a bit paranoid looking for all this conspiracy stuff.

I don't think anyone is outright lying. though it is odd that every month since August when Neilsen released the 8.4:1 attachment that it has never changed as new players came on the market (especially since many more people bought in Nov or Dec then had players in Sep. Toshiba never said that rate was for Dec or end of year. That is your assumption.

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 09:18 AM

I do not think that is true.

DVD sales use the same type algorithm that Amazon uses for book sales. Its complicated, but it combines a combination of current sales, and an aging component so a large volume in one day is still somewhat considered over time.

As an example, if a book sold 1000 copies in one day and another title sold 10 copies every day for two weeks , the first title would still be ranked higher two weeks later, even though the daily sales were higher 12 out of the 14 days.

After 90 days or so, the aging component matters less and less but it still is present. That's how titles with no sales can still be above those with higher sales on that day.

It is not just the charting of daily sales volume for the title.
It is not sales but orders. if it was sales and history, then how does a new title that is added and isn't yet available have a rank?

plazman

02-11-07, 09:22 AM

Two days later...

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8049/hdg0211su4.jpg

What do they say about counting your chickens? ;)

Grubert, what is your opinion on the fact that Videoscan believes that 487K BD titles and 456K HD DVD titles have sold since inception?

Ray Cathode

02-11-07, 09:31 AM

Given the size of the illegal P2P market, I do not think that you are correct. Many older consumers want physical media. If I could get a download that was 1080P24 or 60, had all the extras that are often on physical media, could be played on any player I own and could be delivered in less time than going to Best Buy to get it, I would certainly consider buying it over physical media. If they enabled me to download it again (even a limited number of times) in the event I lost or suffered a disk crash (possibly at a small fee), that would clinch the deal for me.

Maybe not for you, but ask kids that you know (if you know any) how many songs and shows/movies they have for which they do not have media and I think you will be surprised at their answer.

/carmi

Most of the kids that I am familiar with brag about how they PAY NOTHING at all for all of that downloaded media! :p Not exactly a profitable motivation for content providers.

Like I said, IMHO they will co-exist because the market will demand both. BTW, most of that audio content (p2p) at 128K offends my ears. Hi Def Audio and Video will ensure that some form of physical media will exist. It may eventually evolve into a partnership with downloads (some form of managed copy to physical media)... but not for some time to come.

patrick99

02-11-07, 09:39 AM

Where do we find the updated videoscan numbers for each week?

The graph Grubert posted seems to have the latest one-week numbers:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9740049&&#post9740049

68.8/31.2

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 10:26 AM

That contradicts 1.5M shipped value given a few months back by HD DVD group (I find it difficult to beleive only a third of the shipped is sold).

So, who do you beleive ?

Nataraj: why, it makes perfect sense that it should be close to 1/3. The numbers are too small and too distributed. that 1.5M was for roughly 100 titles. that means the average title ships 15k copies. How many locations are there? I am sure there must be >2000 (BB hasover 1000 and then there are some on-line, walmarts, CC....) many B&M probably get something like 6 copies. if you go there and there are 3-4 copies on the shelf then the number looks about right.

you also need to consider that VS is US only, while I don't remember that the 1.5 was US only. You also have that the 1.5 was shipped, it covers all stores and distributors that got disks. VS only covers some of those stores/distributors. So the number is not the real absolute sold but close to it because it covers most vendors.

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 10:40 AM

I don't know what you mean.

If Nielsen says some 500K as the total and HD DVD says 1.5M shipped - there is a contraction. What that exists - we can all postulate and debate.

let's say there is a get together, three teenage couples. the guys decide "let's get some pizza" to watch with the movie and so the first guy looks in his pocket and has 5$, the other guy has 12$ a third one has 17$ all together the guys have 34$. And so they decide to get <34$ of pizza because they don't want to ask the GF for $. Would you sau the three couples have <34? would you say it contradicts if I say the household has 50$ on them.

The same is happening here the 1.5M is NA and all stores, VS only covers most stores and only the US (so the ones shipped to Canada don't count)

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 10:53 AM

I was under the impression Nielsen tracks 60% retailers - but extrapolates to cover the whole market.

for numbers it is their numbers. For percentages they are compared to shipments to determine the accuracy and pseudo reconciliation

for example let's say VS counted places ordered the same number of copies of two titles and that they sold the same amount, if the studio sent out 2x as many of the first one then the second one then it is not safe to say that the two titles sold the same. But if the studios sent out the same number of each, then there is no reason to believe that the uncounted ones will sell any differently then the counted.

dialog_gvf

02-11-07, 11:04 AM

Well at least I was not saying that HD DVD had won the format war yet. :o

I've been saying all along that its just too early to tell.

When HD DVD was leading, it was all about how BD studios were going to switch to neutral any moment because they were leaving too much money on the table. Now BD has the lead, it's all about how the current sales aren't important and the war has just started.

Is there a point where HD DVD should concede for the good of the industry, like Sony/Philips did with MMCD before DVD arrived? Or, will Microsoft/Toshiba be whipping this horse in public indefinitely, turning off the consumers from ever embracing this generation?

Gary

theforce8686

02-11-07, 11:09 AM

As everyone is so busy with pretty charts, and ripping one another to shreds, the "download business" is laughing all the way to the bank. Hell, even WalMart just got into the business. Add the pending release of Apple TV, and the seas are getting stormy for HDDVD and Blu.

Yes I know the complaints. Download times, not enough HD content, but with improving speeds(FIOS,etc. etc.), Apple TV(and other media streamers), the download biz looks to be the spoiler!

Look at it from the consumer point of view

"Oh cool, I dont have to get up, I can download this movie"

"HDDVD, PS3? too much $"

"Companies are promising more HD content anyway, I'll just wait"

I WILL NEVER GET INTO DOWNLOADING MOVIES WHILE I CAN BUY HARD COPIES. NEVER!! I want to be able to hold the disc and move it from room to room or at work or a friends house. I dont want to be limited to one spot. And what if your machine breaks or gets a virus and you lose everything. Ive got 800 DVDs that I wouldnt want to have to download all over again. Its just a bad idea.

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 11:10 AM

Well, I want the total too... but we're just not going to get that, because no one tracks it save for the studios themselves in terms of their own sales; no one's going to crack open the world of online sales to us, so it's useless to let it bother us.

no, not even the studios. No one has the full real numbers, they don't exist anywhere. All the studios know is what they shipped. If it is getting dusty on a shelf or bought they have no idea. Why do you tyhink they all look at places like NPD and VS? Do you think these places exist so that once in a blue moon they can be reported to some nut on a keyboard wondering how is what I like doing compared to the rest.

Kosty

02-11-07, 11:25 AM

DVD sales use the same type algorithm that Amazon uses for book sales. Its complicated, but it combines a combination of current sales, and an aging component so a large volume in one day is still somewhat considered over time.

As an example, if a book sold 1000 copies in one day and another title sold 10 copies every day for two weeks , the first title would still be ranked higher two weeks later, even though the daily sales were higher 12 out of the 14 days.

After 90 days or so, the aging component matters less and less but it still is present. That's how titles with no sales can still be above those with higher sales on that day.

It is not just the charting of daily sales volume for the title.It is not sales but orders. if it was sales and history, then how does a new title that is added and isn't yet available have a rank? Agreed. But most of those orders aer never cancelled so its still a consistent valid indicator. i do not know if Amazon subtracts cancelled orders, but some people analyzing the book sale ranking algorithms have sworn that it does.

patrick99

02-11-07, 11:26 AM

Kosty

02-11-07, 11:27 AM

The graph Grubert posted seems to have the latest one-week numbers:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9740049&&#post9740049

68.8/31.2 those were in the PC mag article, and may not have been corrected for combo sales

Besides that graph is a perfect example of using a graph type fro perceptual distortion. Thats a graph of ratios not actual sales. At first glance on looks at the HD DVD line and sees falling sales as the line is dropping left to right. But its a track of a ratio compared to Blu-ray.

http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/9783/01425sz1i15261100wr5.jpg

The actual sales (which we don't know exactly but can surmise ) have been pretty constant for HD DVD, but recently sharply rising for Blu-ray. But a chart like that with slow but steadily rising HD DVD sales gives a different perception, that does see conversion away from HD DVD, but instead shows an unmatched spurt for Blu-ray. With a ratio chart HD DVD is seen as declining , with a sales chart HD DV would be seen as being steady , but needing to comeback and match Blu-ray rapid sales.

raaj

02-11-07, 11:27 AM

When HD DVD was leading, it was all about how BD studios were going to switch to neutral any moment because they were leaving too much money on the table. Now BD has the lead, it's all about how the current sales aren't important and the war has just started.

Is there a point where HD DVD should concede for the good of the industry, like Sony/Philips did with MMCD before DVD arrived? Or, will Microsoft/Toshiba be whipping this horse in public indefinitely, turning off the consumers from ever embracing this generation?

Gary

These numbers could be attributed to the PS3 factor bringing in sales from the "curious george"s checking out what the buzz is all about BR and HD movies is all about. The same way people bought every single disc released on HD when HD-DVD released, leading to double digit attach rates.

The honeymoon will be over sooner or later, and the buying habits of the customers will mellow down to realistic rates, and then which ever format gets the most sales and attach rate will take the lead.

I would say if by the January of 2008, HD-DVD does not pull back to competitive parity, the format war would have been lost, and I am sure Universal would finally go neutral. Anybody who says otherwise at this stage is clearly biased and has agenda to push here.

Grubert

02-11-07, 11:27 AM

Grubert, what is your opinion on the fact that Videoscan believes that 487K BD titles and 456K HD DVD titles have sold since inception?

They are about a million below my expectations in view of the announced shipped quantities.

But when hard data contradict my prior expectations, I usually jettison my expectations, not the data.

raaj

02-11-07, 11:34 AM

They are about a million below my expectations in view of the announced shipped quantities.

But when hard data contradict my prior expectations, I usually jettison my expectations, not the data.

Even when the "hard data" is disclaimed to have come from a limited number of retail locations, which are known to be biased towards one format or the other? How do you account for the sales from all the non-Nielsen-VS affiliated sales outlets?

Kosty

02-11-07, 11:38 AM

rto

02-11-07, 11:38 AM

I WILL NEVER GET INTO DOWNLOADING MOVIES WHILE I CAN BUY HARD COPIES. NEVER!! I want to be able to hold the disc and move it from room to room or at work or a friends house. I dont want to be limited to one spot. And what if your machine breaks or gets a virus and you lose everything. Ive got 800 DVDs that I wouldnt want to have to download all over again. Its just a bad idea.

I also prefer physical media, but believe that this notion will be considered a quaint anachronism by the time my youngest daughter graduates college. She's five.

patrick99

02-11-07, 11:39 AM

those were in the PC mag article, and may not have been corrected for combo sales

Besides that graph is a perfect example of using a graph type fro perceptual distortion. Thats a graph of ratios not actual sales. At first glance on looks at the HD DVD line and sees falling sales as the line is dropping left to right. But its a track of a ratio compared to Blu-ray.

http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/9783/01425sz1i15261100wr5.jpg

The actual sales (which we don't know exactly but can surmise ) have been pretty constant for HD DVD, but recently sharply rising for Blu-ray. But a chart like that with slow but steadily rising HD DVD sales gives a different perception, that does see conversion away from HD DVD, but instead shows an unmatched spurt for Blu-ray. With a ratio chart HD DVD is seen as declining , with a sales chart HD DV would be seen as being steady , but needing to comeback and match Blu-ray rapid sales.

The January 21 ratio included combos, so presumably the January 28 ratio of 68.8 to 31.2 does also.

plazman

02-11-07, 11:40 AM

They are about a million below my expectations in view of the announced shipped quantities.

But when hard data contradict my prior expectations, I usually jettison my expectations, not the data.

So, you believe that Videoscan is providing comprehensive coverage of all hi-def disc sold? If not, what % of total sales does Videoscan represent? TIA

Kosty

02-11-07, 11:53 AM

They are about a million below my expectations in view of the announced shipped quantities.

But when hard data contradict my prior expectations, I usually jettison my expectations, not the data. I have seen Nielson methodologies in broadcast advertising consistently have issues in counting new products, or low density products or new channels or shows in small markets.

They do fantastic when they compile a large data set, but they openly admit their modeling which is great and consistent over time with mature products or large market shares breaks down in its reliability and confidence when they look at niche issues. It catches up over time, but smaller reported numbers from them always have a much greater error and volativity as they try to extrapolate from small distinctions from small sample sizes.

As a example, they may be able to do well giving the market share of a new show in a major metro market, but they start getting larger errors when they sample that show in a smaller market or even more flaky when they are trying to tell how a specific age and sex demographic is doing in that smaller market.

But people who use those numbers understand some of those limitations. Small assumptions in their modeling or a major capture decision has a large impact in their figures for niche or newer products.

It works out in the long run for both them and NPD, but we of course we are not obsessing here about the long run. :)

Kosty

02-11-07, 11:58 AM

The January 21 ratio included combos, so presumably the January 28 ratio of 68.8 to 31.2 does also.That chart may have been produced before the corrected data for Jan 21st was available.

We will see soon.

plazman

02-11-07, 11:59 AM

Two days later...

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8049/hdg0211su4.jpg

What do they say about counting your chickens? ;)

In the last 3 hours, BD sold a total of 23 disks and HD DVD sold 44 on Amazon :)

My counts are based on:

Stock on hand:

8:30AM: BD 10075 HD DVD 13967
11:30AM: BD 10041 HD DVD 13923

I am trying to see the correlation between the graph that you just put with actual units shipped. Sunday is a good day since I believe their inventory is probably not replenished (unlike other days of the week).

The last time I did this, BD enjoyed massive lead in avg. rankings, but the difference in actual units sold at the end of 6 hours was 2 in favor of BD!

Urza

02-11-07, 12:01 PM

I WILL NEVER GET INTO DOWNLOADING MOVIES WHILE I CAN BUY HARD COPIES. NEVER!! I want to be able to hold the disc and move it from room to room or at work or a friends house. I dont want to be limited to one spot. And what if your machine breaks or gets a virus and you lose everything. Ive got 800 DVDs that I wouldnt want to have to download all over again. Its just a bad idea.

There is no reason to lose all your files without backup. Even ITunes lets you backup all your media on to DVD or CD if you want,etc. etc.

Also, as this improves, you will be able burn movies to a DVD or Blu\HDDVD, and you wont be able to tell the difference.

Cant stop the wave!

plazman

02-11-07, 12:02 PM

That chart may have been produced before the corrected data for Jan 21st was available.

We will see soon.

I won't be surprised since my local Best Buy stopped carrying new HD DVD titles. Not a single title released in 2007 are on the shelves of the Best Buy in Tyson's Corner or Reston, VA (where I visit) - at least not as on yesterday!

fozziwig

02-11-07, 12:15 PM

They are about a million below my expectations in view of the announced shipped quantities.

But when hard data contradict my prior expectations, I usually jettison my expectations, not the data.

A million below in a relatively small market is a substantial miscalculation. Obviously shipped quanties don't equal 'sold to customer' quantities but I would have thought the suppy chain would have a pretty good handle on sell-thru rates. In other words, order according to customer demand.

When you say shipped do you mean ordered by and shipped to wholesalers?

Another possibilty is that there is a generous sale or return policy taking the risk away from the retail chain - meaning they tend to over-order.

plazman

02-11-07, 12:28 PM

A million below in a relatively small market is a substantial miscalculation. Obviously shipped quanties don't equal 'sold to customer' quantities but I would have thought the suppy chain would have a pretty good handle on sell-thru rates. In other words, order according to customer demand.

When you say shipped do you mean ordered by and shipped to wholesalers?

Another possibilty is that there is a generous sale or return policy taking the risk away from the retail chain - meaning they tend to over-order.

This was back in Nov.

http://www.betanews.com/article/HD_DVD_Ships_15_Million_Movie_Titles/1163713156

Ilka

02-11-07, 12:52 PM

...

Besides that graph is a perfect example of using a graph type fro perceptual distortion. Thats a graph of ratios not actual sales. At first glance on looks at the HD DVD line and sees falling sales as the line is dropping left to right. But its a track of a ratio compared to Blu-ray.

http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/9783/01425sz1i15261100wr5.jpg

Just wait until Blu-Ray starts outselling HD DVD 3:1, 4:1, ... 5:1 ... It will look like HD DVD is dying.

Kosty

02-11-07, 12:56 PM

Just wait until Blu-Ray starts outselling HD DVD 3:1, 4:1, ... 5:1 ... It will look like HD DVD is dying. if....not.....until

plazman

02-11-07, 12:59 PM

Just wait until Blu-Ray starts outselling HD DVD 3:1, 4:1, ... 5:1 ... It will look like HD DVD is dying.

As long as Videoscan is counting a fewer and fewer percent of total sales, the more and more it's going to look and smell like propaganda....which it really is in the end.

plazman

02-11-07, 01:04 PM

In the last 3 hours, BD sold a total of 23 disks and HD DVD sold 44 on Amazon :)

My counts are based on:

Stock on hand:

8:30AM: BD 10075 HD DVD 13967
11:30AM: BD 10041 HD DVD 13923

I am trying to see the correlation between the graph that you just put with actual units shipped. Sunday is a good day since I believe their inventory is probably not replenished (unlike other days of the week).

The last time I did this, BD enjoyed massive lead in avg. rankings, but the difference in actual units sold at the end of 6 hours was 2 in favor of BD!

Update at 1PM EST:

BD: 10040 and HD DVD: 13908

Total sold in the last hour and a half: BD 1, HD DVD 15.

For the Day: BD 24 HD DVD 59

During this period while HD DVD has been selling more than BD, the avg. sales rank of BD v. HD DVD has increased.

So, for today, on Amazon, HD DVD has been outselling BD by over a 2:1 ratio! While the avg. sales rank for BD continues to increase.

Grubert, what do you think is going on here?

patrick99

02-11-07, 01:14 PM

Update at 1PM EST:

BD: 10040 and HD DVD: 13908

Total sold in the last hour and a half: BD 1, HD DVD 15.

For the Day: BD 24 HD DVD 59

During this period while HD DVD has been selling more than BD, the avg. sales rank of BD v. HD DVD has increased.

So, for today, on Amazon, HD DVD has been outselling BD by over a 2:1 ratio! While the avg. sales rank for BD continues to increase.

Grubert, what do you think is going on here?

Amazon sales ranks include orders, not just shipments.

Kosty

02-11-07, 01:21 PM

plazman

is it possible that the stock levels decrease and the sales rank charting are off in time a little bit?

Say, the order is taken out of a virtual inventory listing as soon as it taken, but it takes a little more time for the sales rankings to be updated?

Or for instance it takes 1 hour for a pulled order (inventory goes down) to go to shipping when it is logged out and the sale is posted to the sold and shipped area and is reflected in the sales rank?

Or maybe its the other way around, that the inventory depletion is from the previous days sales that have already been reflected in the sales rank when they were placed, and only now are depleting physical inventory.

Point is maybe the inventory and sales ranking are not in temporal sync.

Grubert

02-11-07, 01:23 PM

Grubert, what do you think is going on here?

That you're chasing your own tail.

plazman

02-11-07, 01:26 PM

Amazon sales ranks include orders, not just shipments.

Correct! Orders and shipments are not the same. The graph shows orders, not actual shipment. So, to assume that BD is selling far more than HD DVD on Amazon based on that graph is not obvious - that is my point.

plazman

02-11-07, 01:28 PM

That you're chasing your own tail.

How so? You mean the actual shipment data from Amazon is wrong? I thought you cared about the data. No? Or is it only when it favors BD? ;)

patrick99

02-11-07, 01:32 PM

fozziwig

02-11-07, 01:39 PM

This was back in Nov.

http://www.betanews.com/article/HD_DVD_Ships_15_Million_Movie_Titles/1163713156

Wow! “Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice. And that was before the big Christmas period when I presume they shipped quite a few as well. In fact by the end of 2006 might it be reasonable to estimate that over 2 million HD DVD discs had shipped?

So roughly 3 - 4 times as many discs are shipped out to the retail chain than are actually selling through? There must be a HD DVD mountain building up somewhere!

What date was the 456,000 sold-thru figure from? That might help rationalise these numbers a bit.

Azumi

02-11-07, 01:45 PM

How so? You mean the actual shipment data from Amazon is wrong?

The most logical explanation is that today, a majority of Blu-ray customers are buying preorders, while a majority of HD DVD customers are buying existing titles.

Grubert

02-11-07, 01:47 PM

How so? You mean the actual shipment data from Amazon is wrong? I thought you cared about the data. No? Or is it only when it favors BD? ;)

I'll disregard that lowly (and mendacious) dig.

Just consider: who found out and posted that HD DVD outsold BD 2:1 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=784579) in 2006?

Hint: it was me.

Rthoreau

02-11-07, 02:05 PM

The most logical explanation is that today, a majority of Blu-ray customers are buying preorders, while a majority of HD DVD customers are buying existing titles.

That could be a result of the lack of HD-DVD titles, I mean just look at upcoming titles of the two formats, and the release dates. If HD-DVD had more releases they would probably have more preorders.

plazman

02-11-07, 02:08 PM

The 456K was for up to Jan 30th. The funny thing is that when HMM was quoting their percentages, I asked for the data behind it. Curiously, the answer always was that you had to pay for it and hence no one knew. Actually this data isn't that hard to find. Most media folks have it, especially if it's their business. Why don't they state the number? My guess is that they don't want tit to be scrutinized so that the ratios and percentages can be posted on forums such as these and other media as if they represented the entire industry.

That is my #1 peeve here and what I want folks to understand. Why are we being made to believe that Nielson has data for the entire industry, why are we posting ratios and percentages for the entire industry when we know the data does not cover it. In fact we are looking at perhaps a third or even a fourth of the data....

We are now seeing titles being announced months ahead of release to drive up sales rank, even when that rank is not tied to actual sales.

My question is, am I the only person that thinks this is strange? Obviously not! But people are afraid or shy of being accused of seeing demons in the dark....well. I say it like I see it. I believe sections of the BDA are trying to manipulate information.

I am tracking the Amazon sales all day and will see where that leads in terms of the avg. rank and actual sales....fair enough?

nataraj

02-11-07, 02:46 PM

They are about a million below my expectations in view of the announced shipped quantities.

But when hard data contradict my prior expectations, I usually jettison my expectations, not the data.

I bet you have not worked on any data warehouse applications in your life. If the data doesn't pass the "makes sense" test - you start looking at the data. This is from my decade long experience in data warehouses & BI - almost always we find problem with data.

In this case we don't have to even look for problems. We know now that data is not complete.

WayneL

02-11-07, 03:02 PM

Here comes the unspeakable: the BD side is inputting pre-orders and then cancelling them to inflate their numbers. Is this possible?

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 03:06 PM

Agreed. But most of those orders aer never cancelled so its still a consistent valid indicator. i do not know if Amazon subtracts cancelled orders, but some people analyzing the book sale ranking algorithms have sworn that it does.

I am assuming it does, but by then it is most likely too late. The issue is that the title appears higher then it should for a longer time.

Let's make up an extreme example. Let's assume Amazone accepts pre orders for a movie that will come out in a year (let's call it A). Some one posts it here and I decide to preorder. While I ma there I also order (in stock) an other movie (let's call it B). That other movie will only count me for a few days/hours, while the first movie it will show my interest for a year. Let's say on the A reaches 20k preorders with mine and I was last one to preorder. Let's assume B reached 15k with my order but before A comes out 30k people bought B, B would not have ever surpassed A in the ranking but yet sold more titles.

Now let's say I really wanted A and I preorders it at 5 places ,the first confirmation e-mail comes from buymoviehere.com (made up, I think) that decided to send it out a few days early and so I cancel my Amazon order. On Amazon that preorder was showing my interest for a year even though I never did buy it from them.

Amazon (or any place) needs a short history for ranking, it needs to be short or the mega blockbusters would kill the ranking. For example Cars sold 5M in two days. It was #1 everywhere, Davinci code was #1 the week after (when it came out ) but did less then 5M in the week.

There needs to be a time factor in the history weighed more heavily on the now, the issue is a preorder is always now until they become orders.

Under normal circumstances (I want to buy a movie, what do I get) it is not a bad thing to consider preorders and orders the same. But if one is trying to determine the numbers of titles sold and if A sold more then B it does skew the numbers.

dialog_gvf

02-11-07, 03:17 PM

These numbers could be attributed to the PS3 factor bringing in sales from the "curious george"s checking out what the buzz is all about BR and HD movies is all about. The same way people bought every single disc released on HD when HD-DVD released, leading to double digit attach rates.

The honeymoon will be over sooner or later, and the buying habits of the customers will mellow down to realistic rates, and then which ever format gets the most sales and attach rate will take the lead.

I would say if by the January of 2008, HD-DVD does not pull back to competitive parity, the format war would have been lost, and I am sure Universal would finally go neutral. Anybody who says otherwise at this stage is clearly biased and has agenda to push here.

Actually, that would seem fair. But, that would be a tactical assessment. Sales right now don't warrant tactical manoevers. You're saying they would if their isn't sales parity by 2008.

I was mostly refering to strategy. The need for the studios to build up a new generation to keep the revenues with a transition to HD. DVD sales are slowing. That is unavoidable. The studios hope HD discs reduce or reverse an overall decline.

Many would say that can't happen when there are two formats battling things out publically. The vast, even interested, public will stay on the fence awaiting a resolution. In the meantime other possibilities become more and more viable.

The disc ownership model clearly must be more lucrative for the studios than a rental (PPV) one. But, conversion to PPV is what they risk if the format war continues much longer. Delaying a general adoption by a few years because of a war is a serious problem.

Gary

Grubert

02-11-07, 03:21 PM

I bet you have not worked on any data warehouse applications in your life. If the data doesn't pass the "makes s
ense" test - you start looking at the data.

Don't put words in my mouth. There is a difference between data defying expectations and data not making sense. (We saw an example of the later last week.)

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 03:22 PM

When you say shipped do you mean ordered by and shipped to wholesalers?

Another possibility is that there is a generous sale or return policy taking the risk away from the retail chain - meaning they tend to over-order.

the shipped was for Oct or Nov. So even thought it would be wholesalers. It does not make a big difference.

I think the miscalculation happens because people are not taking into consideration that the 1.5M is for roughly 100 different movies. So once you do the division you have small numbers for many movies (i.e. 15k average) and then when you drill down to distribution the lot size will play a big effect. If it was 1.5M of one title it would be different. (why would someone order 100k when they can order 50k but if a lot is 5 disks then someone that can only sell 2-3 copies can't order less.

nataraj

02-11-07, 03:36 PM

Don't put words in my mouth. There is a difference between data defying expectations and data not making sense. (We saw an example of the later last week.)

Grubert ... you seem like a smart guy. So, what part of "incomplete data" don't you understand ?

And do you know how much of the full data they do collect ? How do they know what % of data they are collecting ? Do they even claim they know what % of data they collect ? Do you have a link to that, if they do ?

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 03:36 PM

Wow! “Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice. And that was before the big Christmas period when I presume they shipped quite a few as well. In fact by the end of 2006 might it be reasonable to estimate that over 2 million HD DVD discs had shipped?

So roughly 3 - 4 times as many discs are shipped out to the retail chain than are actually selling through? There must be a HD DVD mountain building up somewhere!

What date was the 456,000 sold-thru figure from? That might help rationalise these numbers a bit.

no
1) that would imply that .5M shipped in one month while 1.5m in the 8-10 months previously
2) those are the Christmas numbers. When would you ship something that needs to reach retailers get stocked,put on the shelves so people can buy it for Christmas presents? On Dec 27?

My guess that must have been the last shipment for 2006. So the number should be close to 1.5M. But now we are mid Feb so the number must have gone up a bit.

nataraj

02-11-07, 03:43 PM

In the last 3 hours, BD sold a total of 23 disks and HD DVD sold 44 on Amazon :)

I beleive (according to some links posted a while back about someone who studied amazon rankings) - rankings are recalculated at a frequency based on the ranks themselves i.e. top 10 rankings are recalculated every hour - top 100 every day etc etc (just examples).

They would also be some latency in the way these are calculated - we don't know what that is.

Assuming the stock levels are realtime (is it ?) - if one were to monitor the stock level continously - we can figure out how much is getting sold and getting replenished - over a period of time.

plazman

02-11-07, 03:44 PM

plazman

02-11-07, 03:48 PM

I bet you have not worked on any data warehouse applications in your life. If the data doesn't pass the "makes sense" test - you start looking at the data. This is from my decade long experience in data warehouses & BI - almost always we find problem with data.

In this case we don't have to even look for problems. We know now that data is not complete.

Interesting. I used to be a Product Manager for MicroStrategy a BI company and was part of the team that sold and implemented Best Buys BI/DHW system (in fact in the 5 years I was there, I must have worked with many of the well known retailers :)

nataraj

02-11-07, 03:49 PM

So the number is not the real absolute sold but close to it because it covers most vendors.

But how much of the sales, in % ? And how they/we know ?

raaj

02-11-07, 03:49 PM

Issac Hunt

02-11-07, 03:50 PM

Where are the stock totals obtained from? I've looked on Amazon and can't see any indication. Though I do see them on one of the DVD Wars sites. Curious.

plazman

02-11-07, 03:51 PM

That could be a result of the lack of HD-DVD titles, I mean just look at upcoming titles of the two formats, and the release dates. If HD-DVD had more releases they would probably have more preorders.

When you have titles on pre-order that will release in May taking up a top 10 spot, it seems a little strange to me....hence the need to look at actual stock movements/

Issac Hunt

02-11-07, 03:53 PM

But how much of the sales, in % ? And how they/we know ?
For the purposes of polling/tracking it's not necessary to follow all of the sales. It's more important to get a representative sample, and a large enough one. If they are approaching a 60% take on the market then that is very impressive, and lends credibility to their data.

plazman

02-11-07, 03:55 PM

Where are the stock totals obtained from? I've looked on Amazon and can't see any indication. Though I do see them on one of the DVD Wars sites. Curious.

yes. You can track it from thedvdwars.com site. Under the following:

Total copies in stock at Amazon:

BD9983 HD DVD13816

I believe Sundays are the only days when they don't get a replishment of stock so you can track sales.....

Issac Hunt

02-11-07, 03:58 PM

yes. You can track it from thedvdwars.com site. Under the following:

Total copies in stock at Amazon:

BD9983 HD DVD13816

I believe Sundays are the only days when they don't get a replishment of stock so you can track sales.....
Yes, but where is that website getting their data from. It is not readily available on Amazon.

plazman

02-11-07, 04:01 PM

For the purposes of polling/tracking it's not necessary to follow all of the sales. It's more important to get a representative sample, and a large enough one. If they are approaching a 60% take on the market then that is very impressive, and lends credibility to their data.

Not necessarily. Not if major sources like Best Buy are not keeping the most recent HD DVD titles in stock.

As of now, we don't even know what percent of the overall hi-def market Videoscan is tracking. It could be as low as 25% of the market....

So, there were two questions regarding Videoscan:

1. What is the volume they are tracking? We know that now.

2. What is the percent of the market they are tracking? We don't know.

You can predict the market by taking a sample. Absolutely. However, for a new product that is selling through non traditional channels it becomes more difficult. For instance, Amazon may be doing 5% of DVD sales, but 20% of hi-def video. In that case, the extrapolation used for DVD would not work for the new formats....

skogan

02-11-07, 04:02 PM

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 04:06 PM

yes. You can track it from thedvdwars.com site. Under the following:

how do you jknnow they are exact.

Even a better question (since you are looking at totals) how do you know the movement in both directions? for example what if at 10:00 20 BD titles got added?

plazman

02-11-07, 04:07 PM

Yes, but where is that website getting their data from. It is not readily available on Amazon.

It is a query, in the same way that the number of titles available and numbe rof titles that can ship etc. are queries that are not readily available on the Amazon website. Amazon has a stock on hand for all their products and this is an aggregate query of the stock on hand. How are they publishing this? I don't know, probably the same way they are publishing all the other metrics - via a web service?

plazman

02-11-07, 04:09 PM

how do you jknnow they are exact.

Even a better question (since you are looking at totals) how do you know the movement in both directions? for example what if at 10:00 20 BD titles got added?

That's why I picked Sunday to track it. They are not replenished on Sunday, so you are looking at inventory depletion. Any other day, that is a problem.

trgraphics

02-11-07, 04:12 PM

Good find plaz! Thats one of the few numbers I've seen lately that make since! Sunday is also probably a busy day for online ordering as well.

Issac Hunt

02-11-07, 04:16 PM

It is a query, in the same way that the number of titles available and numbe rof titles that can ship etc. are queries that are not readily available on the Amazon website. Amazon has a stock on hand for all their products and this is an aggregate query of the stock on hand. How are they publishing this? I don't know, probably the same way they are publishing all the other metrics - via a web service?
I don't understand. The only benefit to Amazon of offering constantly updated stock totals to an organisation would be in exchange for money or advertising. In this case they already have all the advertising they could possibly ask for, and have not received more on the website in question since the stock totals were added.

b2bonez

02-11-07, 04:20 PM

Grubert ... you seem like a smart guy. So, what part of "incomplete data" don't you understand ?

And do you know how much of the full data they do collect ? How do they know what % of data they are collecting ? Do they even claim they know what % of data they collect ? Do you have a link to that, if they do ?

Nat, you are amazing... ;) Now you are spinning and laying out FUD on how unreliable the Videoscan numbers are. But you know what, Videoscan is the gold standard for all of the people who make decisions to use. They use it not because it is perfect or that all 100% of disc sales are counted. They use it because nothing else comes close in terms of counting actual product movement at the point of sale.

So spin and FUD all you want. Unless you can come up with a data collection network that is more complete, just move on and accept the real world data for what it is and not because you don't like the result... :)

b2b

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 04:24 PM

That's why I picked Sunday to track it. They are not replenished on Sunday, so you are looking at inventory depletion. Any other day, that is a problem.

I agree it makes it unlikely, but still not impossible. Things do ship and get received on Sundays.

Issac Hunt

02-11-07, 04:24 PM

Not necessarily. Not if major sources like Best Buy are not keeping the most recent HD DVD titles in stock.

As of now, we don't even know what percent of the overall hi-def market Videoscan is tracking. It could be as low as 25% of the market....

So, there were two questions regarding Videoscan:

1. What is the volume they are tracking? We know that now.

2. What is the percent of the market they are tracking? We don't know.

You can predict the market by taking a sample. Absolutely. However, for a new product that is selling through non traditional channels it becomes more difficult. For instance, Amazon may be doing 5% of DVD sales, but 20% of hi-def video. In that case, the extrapolation used for DVD would not work for the new formats....
What non-traditional channels of commerce are being used? Internet sales are hardly new, and have been factored into Videoscan data for a while now. As to exptrapolation, that is simply a question of weighting. I'm not clear why HighDef sales should be so markedly different in their distribution through the marketplace compared to DVDs. But if they are it will be readily apparent in the data. Videoscan have sales figures for both DVD and HD/BD from Amazon and major B&M stores. If HighDef is moving in far greater numbers online this will not be difficult to spot in a comparison of the proportions.

plazman

02-11-07, 04:28 PM

I don't understand. The only benefit to Amazon of offering constantly updated stock totals to an organisation would be in exchange for money or advertising. In this case they already have all the advertising they could possibly ask for, and have not received more on the website in question since the stock totals were added.

Amazon puts stock on hand for every product they sell. Go click on any product and it will tell you how many they have of it. I don't know their business reason for doing so, but by doing so they are being pretty open with how large or small their contribution to a particular market is.

I think it's also useful for a vendor and you're selling stuff to sell through Amazon. say you're WB and you see that the stock of Batman is low. You can call your Amazon rep and say, hey! I need to ship you x number of units. It certainly helps a vendor know how much and when to replenish. OTOH, it also provides competitive information, since you can track how your competitors are doing.

Overall, I think Amazon is doing a brilliant job. It really helps their business. Walmart tries to do a similar thing as well. Where they want their large suppliers like P&G to manage the inventory of their products etc.....

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 04:28 PM

awmurray

02-11-07, 04:29 PM

I don't understand. The only benefit to Amazon of offering constantly updated stock totals

Amazon makes it public to anyone who cares:

Amazon web services (http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=3435361)

darinp2

02-11-07, 04:30 PM

Amazon puts stock on hand for every product they sell. Go click on any product and it will tell you how many they have of it.I don't see that data. Can you show me where it is for a product like the XBOX360 add-on:

http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-HD-DVD-Player/dp/B000JHO4L0/sr=8-1/qid=1171229351/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-5325687-7788110?ie=UTF8&s=videogames

It looks like there is a way to get it through some API, but I don't know how to get it. I wish somebody would provide them for the XBOX360 add-on so we could get some idea of how many are sold on there.

--Darin

Issac Hunt

02-11-07, 04:32 PM

Why do we care about Amazon numbers anymore anyway? We have better sources now.

Amazon numbers aren't a very reliable indicator of anything. We used them when we had nothing better, but now that we do I think they add more confusion then they solve for the most part.

Without making this post real long, I'll just say that I can imagine a few different ways that could cause the discrepancy we're seeing. The Amazon numbers no longer rate this level of scrutiny. In my opinion they should only be used to check for large long term swings, and even then it's not a very good indicator.
Amazon trends are probably worth something, IMO, even though the specific sales rankings are only worthy of playful indulgance. I don't think the posters in this thread (at present) are taking the latest figures as the be-all-and-end-all, but mearly as another data point. If the sales figures Plazman has calculated are correct it would give an indication of the level of interest in one online store for these next gen media. It would be even more useful if we could obtain similar data for DVDs at the same store for the same time period.

plazman

02-11-07, 04:38 PM

What non-traditional channels of commerce are being used? Internet sales are hardly new, and have been factored into Videoscan data for a while now. As to exptrapolation, that is simply a question of weighting. I'm not clear why HighDef sales should be so markedly different in their distribution through the marketplace compared to DVDs. But if they are it will be readily apparent in the data. Videoscan have sales figures for both DVD and HD/BD from Amazon and major B&M stores. If HighDef is moving in far greater numbers online this will not be difficult to spot in a comparison of the proportions.

Before I forget. Videoscan are not extrapolating their HD DVD and BD sales data. The numbers being reported by Videoscan are the numbers as reported by their sources with no extrapolation. I was under the assumption they extrapolated. But they do not. So that's one thing.

Amazon, Wal-Mart and most internet sites are NOT part of Videoscan data. So, when you say that the internet sales is factored into Videoscan. It is not. AFAIK, the only internet sites that provide data to Videoscan are the B&M sites that provide them data. So Bestbuy.com and circuitcity.com would be sources.

Given their low peneration in the internet sales channel, we need to factor that into their published numbers....

plazman

02-11-07, 04:40 PM

I don't see that data. Can you show me where it is for a product like the XBOX360 add-on:

http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-HD-DVD-Player/dp/B000JHO4L0/sr=8-1/qid=1171229351/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-5325687-7788110?ie=UTF8&s=videogames

It looks like there is a way to get it through some API, but I don't know how to get it. I wish somebody would provide them for the XBOX360 add-on so we could get some idea of how many are sold on there.

--Darin

Darin,

The xbox add on drive has 920 on hand.

http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/hd-dvd.cfm

Issac Hunt

02-11-07, 04:46 PM

Amazon puts stock on hand for every product they sell. Go click on any product and it will tell you how many they have of it.
I must be more dense than usual this evening, but I can't for the life of me find any sales totals for BD products on Amazon. Can you point the info out for me, and save my sanity?!

Here are some titles I've just had a quick look at -

The Departed: Best seller on BD, though not given a sales total at TheDVDWars (http://www.amazon.com/Departed-Blu-ray-Leonardo-DiCaprio/dp/B000M5AJQI/sr=8-6/qid=1171229683/ref=pd_bbs_sr_6/105-4852950-9313202?ie=UTF8&s=dvd)

Black Hawk Down: given a stock total of 393 on TheDVDWars at time of typing (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000G0O5N2/ref=nosim/tonyswebsit02-20)

I didn't realise that totals are only given for certain titles on Amazon. Pre-orders I can understand being excluded, but isn't The Departed now available for purchase?

fozziwig

02-11-07, 04:49 PM

no
1) that would imply that .5M shipped in one month while 1.5m in the 8-10 months previously
2) those are the Christmas numbers. When would you ship something that needs to reach retailers get stocked,put on the shelves so people can buy it for Christmas presents? On Dec 27?

My guess that must have been the last shipment for 2006. So the number should be close to 1.5M. But now we are mid Feb so the number must have gone up a bit.

HD DVD launched on 18th April 2006 (at least that was the street date for the first batch of releases) so obviously your '8-10 months' is not correct.

The report of 1.5 million units shipped was mid-November. That's a period of 7 months. These months would be a period that showed an initial launch spike of sales followed by steady growth through the summer.

Of course a lot of Christmas stock would be shipped in November but not all of it. Shipping companies don't 'down tools' on November 30th! You can get deliveries for Christmas right up to December 24th if you like and yes even a few days after.

In November the X-Box 360 add-on was launched followed by a new player from Toshiba. Coming into the busy Christmas period I feel it would be quite reasonable to suggest that between mid November and the end of December there were an additional 500,000 units shipped. That makes a total of 2 million.

I presume you are saying that 0.5 million units were not shipped in those 6 weeks over Christmas. I have no problem with you disputing the figures but I wondered what you thought might be shipped based on the evidence outlined here. Or are you saying that Team HD DVD sent everything out for Christmas at the start of November and then put their collective feet up?

In those 6 weeks Christmas did happen. The X-Box 360 add-on was launched (selling 92,000 units). Toshiba did launch a new player. Presumably this was all backed up with some intensive marketing campaigns. How many movies would you have backed this up with? Just curious.

plazman

02-11-07, 04:50 PM

Sales Today on Amazon:

Based on total stock on hand:

8:30AM: BD 10075 HD DVD 13967
11:30AM: BD 10041 HD DVD 13923
1:30PM: BD 10040 HD DVD 13908
3:30PM: BD 9988 HD DVD 13820

Total Sales: BD 87 HD DVD 147

During this entire period BD led HD DVD in all the sales rank comparison graphs.

OK. Time to go swimming.

So one last update:

4:30PM: BD 9961 HD DVD 13810

So for this 8 hour window:

Total Sales:BD 107 HD DVD 157

During this whole period BD avg. sales ranking was above HD DVD. So, if there is a lag between sales and avg. rank, it does not show up in this 8 hour window.

So, the avg. ranking on Amazon seem to be biased towards pre-orders. Some titles won't even be shipped for several weeks. So, next time someone posts a avg. sales trend chart that is full of pre-orders, hopefully, you'll remember this little experiment and what it showed :D

darinp2

02-11-07, 04:52 PM

Darin,

The xbox add on drive has 920 on hand.

http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/hd-dvd.cfmThanks. I didn't know about that page.

I know it would be some work, but are you checking your assumption that they don't restock the movies on Sunday by checking to see which ones change stock and by how much? The changes to the overall stock should pretty closely match the changes to the stock for the individual titles. I've been keeping some old windows open to eproductwars without updating them so I could go back and compare things later, but I was only looking at the page that showed the top 10.

--Darin

plazman

02-11-07, 04:52 PM

I must be more dense than usual this evening, but I can't for the life of me find any sales totals for BD products on Amazon. Can you point the info out for me, and save my sanity?!

Here are some titles I've just had a quick look at -

The Departed: Best seller on BD, though not given a sales total at TheDVDWars (http://www.amazon.com/Departed-Blu-ray-Leonardo-DiCaprio/dp/B000M5AJQI/sr=8-6/qid=1171229683/ref=pd_bbs_sr_6/105-4852950-9313202?ie=UTF8&s=dvd)

Black Hawk Down: given a stock total of 393 on TheDVDWars at time of typing (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000G0O5N2/ref=nosim/tonyswebsit02-20)

I didn't realise that totals are only given for certain titles on Amazon. Pre-orders I can understand being excluded, but isn't The Departed now available for purchase?

Based on this, The Departed is released on Feb 13th. Today is the 11th!

http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/

darinp2

02-11-07, 04:54 PM

During this whole period BD avg. sales ranking was above HD DVD. So, if there is a lag between sales and avg. rank, it does not show up in this 8 hour window.There is a historical component, so just selling more in the last 8 hours shouldn't put one ahead unless it is enough to overcome the previous orders. Are you looking at how the sales rankings change with the in stock numbers?

"The Departed" should be interesting on Tuesday if they don't run out of stock as we should get some idea of how much a title that high sells, unless they are restocking real often.

--Darin

skogan

02-11-07, 05:10 PM

The thing is, there is not an equal distance between rankings. So the difference between 34 and 35 is not the same as between 3000 and 3001. In fact, due to the fact that lower numbers have greater sales, we can assume that the number of sales it takes to go from 35th to 34th is far greater than the number it takes to go from 3001 to 3000.

So if 100 people bought from BD, and 100 from HD, it would matter what they were buying before we would know how it effected the rankings. If the HD DVD folks were buying a new release, (one that was ranked high) it would take a lot of sales to move it even one ranking. If the BD sells were more evenly distributed around lower ranked titles, it would have a greater effect on the average rankings.

All that being said, we have no idea how they calculate their rankings. It's clearly not ranked according to all time sales. Just how they adjust for sales over time isn't known.

Which leads me back to the point that the Amazon numbers really aren't that useful, especially now that we have better sources of information.

nataraj

02-11-07, 05:28 PM

What non-traditional channels of commerce are being used? Internet sales are hardly new, and have been factored into Videoscan data for a while now. As to exptrapolation, that is simply a question of weighting. I'm not clear why HighDef sales should be so markedly different in their distribution through the marketplace compared to DVDs. But if they are it will be readily apparent in the data. Videoscan have sales figures for both DVD and HD/BD from Amazon and major B&M stores. If HighDef is moving in far greater numbers online this will not be difficult to spot in a comparison of the proportions.

Videoscan doesn't extrapolate.

Let us say there are 100 stores in the US that sell HiDef DVD (should probably be smaller). Videoscan gets data from say 60 of them. They just add up the numbers and publish. Thats it - AFAIK - they make no claim about how much % that data represents the total sales. Also, I don't know whether videoscan gives numbers segmented by sales channels ... and I'm sure they don't give it out by actual stores.

Kosty

02-11-07, 05:30 PM

I beleive (according to some links posted a while back about someone who studied amazon rankings) - rankings are recalculated at a frequency based on the ranks themselves i.e. top 10 rankings are recalculated every hour - top 100 every day etc etc (just examples).

They would also be some latency in the way these are calculated - we don't know what that is.

Assuming the stock levels are realtime (is it ?) - if one were to monitor the stock level continously - we can figure out how much is getting sold and getting replenished - over a period of time. I believe this is the case, or at least it was the case last year when some guys exhaustedly studied the Amazon book ratings. Sounds fairly logical to me. I also think a re- ranking might be triggered when unexpected volumes surge through.

Kosty

02-11-07, 05:34 PM

Does Amazon take the relative popularity of an item (like the "most searched for", "most added to the wishlist" and so on) into the rankings?

No.

Unless it is totally different than their book sales ranking system. But it seems to be have in exactly the same way, and I have no reason to think it does. Jeff Bezos was on record as saying that searches had nothing to do with Amazon rankings.

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 05:38 PM

HD DVD launched on 18th April 2006 (at least that was the street date for the first batch of releases) so obviously your '8-10 months' is not correct.

The report of 1.5 million units shipped was mid-November. That's a period of 7 months. These months would be a period that showed an initial launch spike of sales followed by steady growth through the summer.

Of course a lot of Christmas stock would be shipped in November but not all of it. Shipping companies don't 'down tools' on November 30th! You can get deliveries for Christmas right up to December 24th if you like and yes even a few days after.

In November the X-Box 360 add-on was launched followed by a new player from Toshiba. Coming into the busy Christmas period I feel it would be quite reasonable to suggest that between mid November and the end of December there were an additional 500,000 units shipped. That makes a total of 2 million.

I presume you are saying that 0.5 million units were not shipped in those 6 weeks over Christmas. I have no problem with you disputing the figures but I wondered what you thought might be shipped based on the evidence outlined here. Or are you saying that Team HD DVD sent everything out for Christmas at the start of November and then put their collective feet up?

In those 6 weeks Christmas did happen. The X-Box 360 add-on was launched (selling 92,000 units). Toshiba did launch a new player. Presumably this was all backed up with some intensive marketing campaigns. How many movies would you have backed this up with? Just curious.

This is shipped from the studios to distributors, It takes time lots of time for things to reach destination. We are not talking shipped to end users (like an Amazon) where you will order 3 days before and ask for 2 days shuipping. We are talking Paramount (for example) shipping to a few chains and some distributors (a week or two at the best), then these distribution centres shipping (could be a week or two again) to retailers, then these retailers putting them on the shelves and all thios needs to be done before you go to the store and buy it to wrap so that it will be under the tree on the 25th.

My point was the vast majority of what is considered Holiday sales would need to have left around that date, if not sooner.

as for the months, you are wrong. Again you are mixing sales and shipping. Shipping needs to happen before the sales. Sales started on the 18, but when was the first title shipped? well if the store had the disk in its posession before the 18 (which it must to have it on the shelve on the 18) shipping must have happened before that. Freight is extremely slow and there is no reason to pay a lot to speed up the process.

As for how many more shipped? I don’t know, like I said for anything meant the holydays I would guess not much, for anything for 2007 I think more. You seem to missing the difference between shipped and sold. Yes many of those shipped pre Nov were meant for the add-on and 2G. But why do you think that since the add on was available before mid Nov that they would ship the needed titles for the jump after mid Nov?

Do you wait until you are hungry and ready to eat before you go to the store and do your grocery shopping for that one meal and because you feel like Turkey you buy a great big one to make in the oven?

Kosty

02-11-07, 05:39 PM

Why do we care about Amazon numbers anymore anyway? We have better sources now.

Amazon numbers aren't a very reliable indicator of anything. We used them when we had nothing better, but now that we do I think they add more confusion then they solve for the most part.

Without making this post real long, I'll just say that I can imagine a few different ways that could cause the discrepancy we're seeing. The Amazon numbers no longer rate this level of scrutiny. In my opinion they should only be used to check for large long term swings, and even then it's not a very good indicator.We we have them for a longer period and they are available readily and are based on a consistent model. Once we can find there correlation to actual sales figures it will give us ready access to firm data.

Right now there absolutely still valid and consistent, we just don't know their relationship to the total universe of HD optical disc sales.

Maybe if we created a identical site as them for DVD sales we could figure out the DVD sales relationship, but the HD DVD and Blu-ray markets will be different for a long time.

nataraj

02-11-07, 05:41 PM

There is an analysis of Amazon ranks that was linked earlier. I think this is the one. It talks about books - but should apply to dvds as well.

http://www.fonerbooks.com/old_rank.htm - The old system

http://www.fonerbooks.com/surfing.htm - The new system

Looks like ranks are computed every hour - but the ranks decay slowly.

This is what Amazon themselves say ...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=525376

As an added service for customers, authors, publishers, artists, labels, and studios, we show how items in our catalog are selling. The lower the number, the higher the sales for that particular item. The calculation is based on Amazon.com sales and is updated each hour to reflect recent and historical sales of every item sold on Amazon.com. We hope you find the Amazon.com Sales Rank interesting!

Note the historical reference i.e. it is somehow a cumulative sales ranking rather than a hourly sales rank.

Kosty

02-11-07, 05:41 PM

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 06:22 PM

Note the historical reference i.e. it is somehow a cumulative sales ranking rather than a hourly sales rank.

yes, and it must be. Numbers would not be different enough in one hour for anything but the most popular product, look at Plazmamans stuff for an example. It is a rolling total. My guess it is a rolling of 48 hours (but could be different), I also think the time factor would need to be on shipped not ordered (because of presales)

Kosty

02-11-07, 06:26 PM

yes, and it must be. Numbers would not be different enough in one hour for anything but the most popular product, look at Plazmamans stuff for an example. It is a rolling total. My guess it is a rolling of 48 hours (but could be different), I also think the time factor would need to be on shipped not ordered (because of presales) Its a lot longer tham 48 hours. A component of it lasts for at least weeks, in not more than a month for large volumes. But the time component ages rapidly so by the end of its aging its only affecting long tale small ranking competitors.

fozziwig

02-11-07, 06:36 PM

As for how many more shipped? I don’t know, like I said for anything meant the holydays I would guess not much, for anything for 2007 I think more. You seem to missing the difference between shipped and sold. Yes many of those shipped pre Nov were meant for the add-on and 2G. But why do you think that since the add on was available before mid Nov that they would ship the needed titles for the jump after mid Nov?

Do you wait until you are hungry and ready to eat before you go to the store and do your grocery shopping for that one meal and because you feel like Turkey you buy a great big one to make in the oven?

OK. How about we agree on 1.5 million and a bit then? I have to say your 8-10 months must still be a bit off (up to mid-November). The lead time is only a few weeks isn't it? I can't imagine those early discs were shipped out in February - unless they were saving money and using extremely slow couriers.

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 07:57 PM

Its a lot longer tham 48 hours. A component of it lasts for at least weeks, in not more than a month for large volumes. But the time component ages rapidly so by the end of its aging its only affecting long tale small ranking competitors.

Kosty. I did not say all was the same for up to 48h and then cut off. My observations (looking at decay and increase) leads me to believe that after 48h the effect is relatively meaningless.

chap

02-11-07, 08:01 PM

http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/4808/oopses9.jpg

wnorris

02-11-07, 08:18 PM

What non-traditional channels of commerce are being used? Internet sales are hardly new, and have been factored into Videoscan data for a while now. As to exptrapolation, that is simply a question of weighting. I'm not clear why HighDef sales should be so markedly different in their distribution through the marketplace compared to DVDs. But if they are it will be readily apparent in the data. Videoscan have sales figures for both DVD and HD/BD from Amazon and major B&M stores. If HighDef is moving in far greater numbers online this will not be difficult to spot in a comparison of the proportions.

How do you get Videoscan tracks online sales. They don't track Amazon. They don't track Wal-Mart.com. I don't believe they track DVD Empire. They don't track Deep Discount DVD. See the trend. Videoscan doesn't really track much online at all. They are more comprehensive for B&M's, but have a very poor showing for web stores.

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 08:34 PM

OK. How about we agree on 1.5 million and a bit then?
I do think it is likely to be a bit more for 2006, but no where near the .5M you assume and not because of Christmas like you said but because that I don’t think that it would need more in Dec they need to ship the ones for Jan.

It is obvious that after Nov 2006 more must have shipped. There were some new titles in Feb and March :)

I have to say your 8-10 months must still be a bit off (up to mid-November). The lead time is only a few weeks isn't it? I can't imagine those early discs were shipped out in February - unless they were saving money and using extremely slow couriers.

but that is the point, it is not courier but freight. They also don't go directly. The replicator (they do the shipping) will ship to a regional distributor/distribution centre, some will then ship to local distributor/centre and then retail.

nataraj

02-11-07, 08:41 PM

http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/4808/oopses9.jpg

A picture is worth a thousand words. But, you shuold add "Again" at the end ... ;)

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 08:43 PM

How do you get Videoscan tracks online sales. They don't track Amazon. They don't track Wal-Mart.com. I don't believe they track DVD Empire. They don't track Deep Discount DVD.

how do you know they don't. This is what they have to say

Sell-through POS (consumer purchase) sales data are collected weekly from traditional channels of video distribution including mass merchants, audio/video and video specialty retailers, electronics outlets, grocery stores, drug stores, and some Internet sites. Nielsen VideoScan maintains this weekly POS data in one of the largest databases of VHS and DVD products in the country. Data is collected on more than 40,000 VHS items and 12,000 DVD items. Virtually every UPC code in sell-through release since 1993 can be found in our extensive database. Complete sales data in all retail channels are available as far back as January 1999 (however Wal*Mart data is included only through 7/28/01). Prior to January 1999, limited information is available in most channels going back to 1993.

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

will people stop making up stuff and pertending it is facts when it is not. Doing some research before posting is a good thing.

nataraj

02-11-07, 08:44 PM

Kosty. I did not say all was the same for up to 48h and then cut off. My observations (looking at decay and increase) leads me to believe that after 48h the effect is relatively meaningless.

It is difficult to say.

For eg. one way to design the system would be to give progressively lower weightage to earlier sales. I've a feeling that is what is being done ... and at lower ranks, may be sales even weeks earlier might have some effect.

Afterall, items that sell just one or twice a week also have ranks.

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 09:13 PM

It is difficult to say.

For eg. one way to design the system would be to give progressively lower weightage to earlier sales. I've a feeling that is what is being done ... and at lower ranks, may be sales even weeks earlier might have some effect.

Afterall, items that sell just one or twice a week also have ranks.

hopefully no one is talking about a title that sells a movie a week :)

Kosty

02-11-07, 09:17 PM

Kosty. I did not say all was the same for up to 48h and then cut off. My observations (looking at decay and increase) leads me to believe that after 48h the effect is relatively meaningless. I agree for the top titles.

I think they are relatively meaningless for the to 10 titles after 48-72 hours.

For the top 100 titles after 7 days and for the top 1000 titles after about a month.

They may affect the to 10000 rankings for months if the cumulative sales are more than their neighbors as there is a permanent cumulative sales component as well.

Kosty

02-11-07, 09:24 PM

hopefully no one is talking about a title that sells a movie a week :) There's tiebreakers somewhere for those tiny tiny DVD sales titles. But $20 a week is a grand a year. Over two or three years $ 3000 pays someone bar tab. And 100 niche DVDs that sell 1 a week might even be worth making.

But yes, I hope none of our HD format charting is concerned about that.

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 09:40 PM

There's tiebreakers somewhere for those tiny tiny DVD sales titles. But $20 a week is a grand a year. Over two or three years $ 3000 pays someone bar tab.

if you only spend 20$ a week for going out, you have a much more frugal life style then me. 20$ a week isn't even enough for lunch for a week. Also don't forget a 20$ DVD on Amazon does not mean 20$ in your pocket to start off :)

Kosty

02-11-07, 09:46 PM

Well if you get the check every fiscal quarter, it'll be a nice dinner. ;)

Agreed, those sort of titles don't mean spit in the HD format struggle.

xboxboi

02-11-07, 09:56 PM

A picture is worth a thousand words. But, you shuold add "Again" at the end ... ;)

indeed - it shows how the ignorant the media is of Blu-ray .... Dude! Wheres the "-"?

plazman

02-11-07, 10:07 PM

how do you know they don't. This is what they have to say

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

will people stop making up stuff and pertending it is facts when it is not. Doing some research before posting is a good thing.

When they say Wal Mart data is included only through 2001, I am assuming it means, it is available until 2001, not after 2001.

When they say some internet sites. I am assuming they are aware of their limited coverage. Or they would have said most, or major or used some other better sounding term.

Obviously I don't know who or what they track. But AFAIK, neither Amazon nor Walmart provide PoS data to Videoscan. Someone who works for Videoscan should probably verify this for us pretty easily....

wnorris

02-11-07, 10:11 PM

how do you know they don't. This is what they have to say

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

will people stop making up stuff and pertending it is facts when it is not. Doing some research before posting is a good thing.

You should really take your own advice then. Your quote even says Wal-Mart data was collected through 2001. Gee what year is it 2007?

Here is a little snip from 2001. It was mainly focused on video games, but also applies to their video sales too. They don't submit their sales information to anyone. It's entirely internal now.

"MAY 11 | Wal-Mart Stores, the nation's leading retailer of sell-through video and videogames, said it will stop supplying its sales information to outside companies, including NPD Group and A.C. Nielsen, effective in July.

We felt we were not benefiting as much from the aggregated information as others were," a Wal-Mart spokesman said. "It was a business decision. The decision did not focus on one aspect of our business like videogames or home video; we're looking at the whole business here." "

Maybe before making such posts, you should try to do some research so you can be informed. Now take your FUD elsewhere.

Also, as a previous poster stated, the "SOME internet sites" refers to B&M stores that have a web presence like Circuit City and Best Buy. Nielsen has very few internet only partners, and none of them are major web-only retailers.

darinp2

02-11-07, 10:12 PM

Its a lot longer tham 48 hours. A component of it lasts for at least weeks, in not more than a month for large volumes. But the time component ages rapidly so by the end of its aging its only affecting long tale small ranking competitors.One title you could have looked at is "Superman Returns" on Blu-ray to see what happened when it would go out of stock. It was the only one I can think of that couldn't be ordered at that point and I recall it falling pretty fast over the next couple of days after it would sell out. I'm not sure if the current graphs go back far enough to see what happened in the times it went out of stock though.

--Darin

plazman

02-11-07, 10:13 PM

4:30PM: BD 9961 HD DVD 13810

Total Sales:BD 107 HD DVD 157

7:00PM: BD 9956 HD DVD 13783
8:30PM: BD 9910 HD DVD 13750
9:30PM: BD 9897 HD DVD 13741

For the 13 hour window tracked:

BD sold 178 disks and HD DVD sold 226 disks on Amazon.com

All this work in response to Grubert's chart he posted earlier today showing the bottom had fallen off of HD DVD on Amazon :eek:

plazman

02-11-07, 10:27 PM

Thanks. I didn't know about that page.

I know it would be some work, but are you checking your assumption that they don't restock the movies on Sunday by checking to see which ones change stock and by how much? The changes to the overall stock should pretty closely match the changes to the stock for the individual titles. I've been keeping some old windows open to eproductwars without updating them so I could go back and compare things later, but I was only looking at the page that showed the top 10.

--Darin

Darin,

Inventory on that page is updated once a day. I am not sure if it's just the eproducts folks doing that, or AMZN providing daily updates for some products.

wnorris

02-11-07, 10:30 PM

7:00PM: BD 9956 HD DVD 13783
8:30PM: BD 9910 HD DVD 13750
9:30PM: BD 9897 HD DVD 13741

For the 13 hour window tracked:

BD sold 178 disks and HD DVD sold 226 disks on Amazon.com

All this work in response to Grubert's chart he posted earlier today showing the bottom had fallen off of HD DVD on Amazon :eek:

Taking a cue from your research, I stared crunching some hypothetical numbers. Based off my findings, I now believe it is possible for BD performance to appear better on Amazon than HD-DVD, when only looking at sales rank. However, HD-DVD could actually be selling more discs than BD.

In light of this, my personal opinion of the Amazon sales ranks is that they are totally meaningless to gauge the format wars.

Basically, if the BD sales on concentrated on a few new release titles, while HD-DVD sales are spread throught their range of titles, it appears possible for HD-DVD to sell more discs, but BD can have the lead in sales rank, in Top 10, top 100, 1000, or across the entire range of product.

Its a result of the fallacy of doing a straight average of sales rank, coupled with lower volumes (especially among lower ranked titles). So BD could be leading in sales rank, and actually be selling more discs than HD-DVD. Or BD could lead in sales rank, and HD-DVD could actually be selling more discs. Naturally, the same situations apply to HD-DVD.

This may or may not be the case in past, present, or future. I just took some educated guesses at numbers, and used Plaz's numbers. Basically, I ran some various scenarios, and found a few mathematical cases where the fallacy of averages resulted in average sales rank and total discs sold arriving at different conclusions as to the leading format.

Couple all this, with something like the Top 10 HD-DVD disc list at DVD Empire (which shows a broad spread in the types of discs that are selling), and it looks like this type of situation may be possible. Now I'm not sure that the Amazon information gives any insight into which format is really selling the best.

darinp2

02-11-07, 10:35 PM

Basically, if the BD sales on concentrated on a few new release titles, while HD-DVD sales are spread throught their range of titles, it appears possible for HD-DVD to sell more discs, but BD can have the lead in sales rank, in Top 10, top 100, 1000, or across the entire range of product.I would expect the one with more spread out sales to show the advantage compared to the one with concentrated sales, in general. For instance, if 10 more copies of "The Departed" sold, it might change the ranking by 1 point. But if 10 movies with rankings of about 8,000 sold one more copy each, they might move up to 6,000 (at least for a little while), changing the average for the top 100 by 200 points.

--Darin

Kosty

02-11-07, 10:46 PM

that would only show the change in the charting of the top 1000 or 10,000 titles.

But his point is a valid one. If HD DVD is focused more on the low volume titles it might only move them up the low ranks while the Blu-ray gains could be concentrated on the higher ranking titles.

bottom line, until the palyer and disc sales go way up , there's enough volatility that every promotion, every batch of new players sold, every new release will have much more disruptive effects on these charts than when sales are more in volume and routine buys become more commonplace and start to dwarf the exceptions.

Right now, most sales are some kinda exception and not a routine buy, which is a temporary situation. New player rebates will attrite out as will the excitement of some of these other events.

Kosty

02-11-07, 10:49 PM

http://www.hdgamedb.com/amazon/history.aspx

sales history graphs now go back to 30 and 45 days instead of just 14 and 7 days.

Gives a new perspective on the magnitude of the Blu-ray and HD DVD surges.

darinp2

02-11-07, 10:51 PM

that would only show the change in the charting of the top 1000 or 10,000 titles.

But his point is a valid one. If HD DVD is focused more on the low volume titles it might only move them up the low ranks while the Blu-ray gains could be concentrated on the higher ranking titles.Which should result in HD DVD having better averages for the top 100 titles, unless there are less sales for HD DVD. If I told you that you could allocate 10,000 sales among 100 titles, how would you get the best average for the top 100? Basically, be allocating them pretty much equally. If you allocate more to the top titles then that would be very likely to drop the bottom titles even more and so lower the average for the top 100. So, how would you explain Blu-ray having a higher average for the top 100 titles if HD DVDs sales are concentrated more in the low volume titles and Blu-ray doesn't have more sales overall?

--Darin

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 11:12 PM

When they say Wal Mart data is included only through 2001, I am assuming it means, it is available until 2001, not after 2001.

your interpretation does look to be right (searching for what Wnoris wrote) on the other hand it is odd that the whole section was on starts.
Someone who works for Videoscan should probably verify this for us pretty easily....

but who works for them?

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 11:16 PM

Maybe before making such posts, you should try to do some research so you can be informed. Now take your FUD elsewhere.

I do do research and I also post links so that others can berify what I wrote. That is the difference between someone interested in ghetting to the truthe and someone posting FUD to help his format

wnorris

02-11-07, 11:17 PM

I would expect the one with more spread out sales to show the advantage compared to the one with concentrated sales, in general. For instance, if 10 more copies of "The Departed" sold, it might change the ranking by 1 point. But if 10 movies with rankings of about 8,000 sold one more copy each, they might move up to 6,000 (at least for a little while), changing the average for the top 100 by 200 points.

--Darin

Nope. Concentrated sales rule the roost, as long as they get you a very high sales ranking. Selling one extra copy may make a movie jump from 8000 to 10000, or some such. However, when looking at averages, like top 100, Top 50, Top 10, etc., you are better off having all your sales concentrated into 5-10 discs, than to have them spread out. It will make your average sales rank higher, but you could actually be selling fewer copies of the higher average format.

For example, lets say BD sells 9,000 discs and HD-DVD sells 10,000 discs. However, HD-DVD had two discs that sell ~1,000 copies each, and their other ~8000 copies are spread amongst 100 titles (so ~80 discs each). However, BD has 5 discs that sell ~1000 copies each, and the other ~4000 discs are spread amongst 50 titles (so still ~ 80 discs each).

So lets say HD-DVD has the #1 disc with a rank of 20 and the #6 disc with a rank of 200 (say only 200 copies between the two ranks, s 1100 and 900, but still average 1000 copies). The rest are ranked around 1000 (you also must assume multi-way ties when you get to low volumes). BD on the other hand has their 5 big sellers ranked 25,50,100,150,175 (again all selling around a 1000 copies). The rest are ranked around 1000 like their HD-DVD counterparts.

So the Top 10 HD-DVD sales rank is 822 and a top 10 BD sales rank of 550. However, HD-DVD sold more copies. This is a crude analysis of course, glossing over many factors (I don't want to type pages of calculations), but if you do your own, you will quickly see many situations in which sales rank and actual number of copies sold, may not give you the same leader.

The main assumptions are that HD-DVD sales are spread out amongst many more titles, and the bulk of BD sales are concentrated on a handful of titles, with most of their remaining sales spread out amongst a fewer number of titles. Looking at Top 10, 50, 100 charts can show BD in the lead, even though it sells fewer copies. This problem is compounded even further if you start trying to guess at how Amazon's sales rank include past sales data, mingled with current data. It means a sales rank can remain artificially high because of a week of big sales on release days. So basically if release schedules are tilted in favor of one format over the other, it can help that leading format appear to lead in sales rank, even though the lead in copies sold may have already came and went.

The more factors you add, the more complex it becomes, but it does appear that it is easily possible for the format with the lead in sales rank to actually be lagging in number of copies actually sold. Again, if this has happened, or how often it occurs, is impossible to tell.

wnorris

02-11-07, 11:22 PM

your interpretation does look to be right (searching for what Wnoris wrote) on the other hand it is odd that the whole section was on starts.

but who works for them?

I have no idea what you are talking about, or where you get anything about asking who works for Videoscan.

I was quoting an article in Video Business Magazine. It was in response to a press release from Wal-Mart. I would assume that Wal-Mart knows that Wal-Mart is no longer submitting information to Videoscan. Why would you need to ask someone from Videoscan?

Your comments don't make any sense.

darinp2

02-11-07, 11:24 PM

Nope. Concentrated sales rule the roost, as long as they get you a very high sales ranking. Selling one extra copy may make a movie jump from 8000 to 10000, or some such. However, when looking at averages, like top 100, Top 50, Top 10, etc., you are better off having all your sales concentrated into 5-10 discs, than to have them spread out. It will make your average sales rank higher, but you could actually be selling fewer copies of the higher average format.

For example, lets say BD sells 9,000 discs and HD-DVD sells 10,000 discs. However, HD-DVD had two discs that sell ~1,000 copies each, and their other ~8000 copies are spread amongst 100 titles (so ~80 discs each). However, BD has 5 discs that sell ~1000 copies each, and the other ~4000 discs are spread amongst 50 titles (so still ~ 80 discs each).

So lets say HD-DVD has the #1 disc with a rank of 20 and the #6 disc with a rank of 200 (say only 200 copies between the two ranks, s 1100 and 900, but still average 1000 copies). The rest are ranked around 1000 (you also must assume multi-way ties when you get to low volumes). BD on the other hand has their 5 big sellers ranked 25,50,100,150,175 (again all selling around a 1000 copies). The rest are ranked around 1000 like their HD-DVD counterparts.You just proved my point that the average for the top 100 would be a much higher number on Blu-ray with your scenario. BD would have 45 titles with huge averages that would make their top 100 average huge. If you have sales that are not in the top 100 then of course those aren't a good place to have your sales if trying to have the best average for the top 100, but your example would make the average for the top 100 bad for BD, not good.

If you disagree with me, how about answering my:

"If I told you that you could allocate 10,000 sales among 100 titles, how would you get the best average for the top 100?"

with a scenario that has more of them allocated to the top titles and doesn't end up with a lower average for the top 100?

Obviously, if you allocate more up high it results in a higher average for the top 10, but you stated that they could have a higher average for each grouping (top 10, 100, etc.), including the entire range of product.

--Darin

wnorris

02-11-07, 11:24 PM

I do do research and I also post links so that others can berify what I wrote. That is the difference between someone interested in ghetting to the truthe and someone posting FUD to help his format

Since when are facts FUD? By your own admission, I posted facts. You were the one posting misleading information, which is FUD. I'm glad you recognize that your post was FUD now.

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 11:29 PM

I have no idea what you are talking about, or where you get anything about asking who works for Videoscan.

I was quoting an article in Video Business Magazine. It was in response to a press release from Wal-Mart. I would assume that Wal-Mart knows that Wal-Mart is no longer submitting information to Videoscan. Why would you need to ask someone from Videoscan?

Your comments don't make any sense.

I know what you quoted, I searched for it since you did not include a link, I was answering Plazman

AnthonyP

02-11-07, 11:34 PM

Since when are facts FUD? By your own admission, I posted facts. You were the one posting misleading information, which is FUD. I'm glad you recognize that your post was FUD now.
FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. Neither of which my post did. Assuming that in May 2001 WM decided to stop but continued until Jul (and that they never changed their mind after) then WM is not included. At no point in time did you substantiate that any of the other ones were not included in your previous list. You are the one that keeps on talking about Internet sales not being there and the reason I went directly to VS is that I new for a fact some where. Unless you have a list from VS of the full list neither you nor I know what is included.

wnorris

02-11-07, 11:38 PM

You just proved my point that the average for the top 100 would be much higher on Blu-ray with your scenario. BD would have 45 titles with huge averages that would make their top 100 average huge. If you have sales that are not in the top 100 then of course those aren't a good place to have your sales if trying to have the best average for the top 100.

If you disagree with me, how about actually answering my:

"If I told you that you could allocate 10,000 sales among 100 titles, how would you get the best average for the top 100?"

with a scenario the has more of them allocated to the top titles and doesn't end up with a lower average for the top 100?

Obviously, if you allocate more up high it results in a higher average for the top 10, but you stated that they could have a higher average for each, including the entire range of product.

--Darin

Well, I'm lumping my findings into one statement Different scenarios result in which catagories (Top 10, entire range, etc.) are effected by the fallacy of averages.

The problem with your questions is that they must start with the assumption that there are only 100 discs. There are over 150 discs available for purchase, so when you start looking at top 100's, you have 50 discs that could have practically zero sales, and still get the same sales rank bias I was speaking of. So 100 BD dics that get sales, but HD-DVD spreads its sales over 150 discs. No one shows sales rank of Top 10,000, so we can't see what the effect is there.

If you start looking at ways in which Amazon may determine sales rank (since no one knows the exact formula), this is where the Top 10,000 (that I spoke of originally) could see the skewed results.

I've already given you an example where The top 10, top 50, etc. would show BD with a better average sales rank, but HD-DVD would actually have sold more copies. Somewhere, you would see BD worse, but it may not be a stat that is published anywhere. We have also shown that when an unequal number of titles are available, the average rankings of a whole format are meaningless. This is why HDGameDB removed their avearages from the Top 10, Top 100, etc. (the kept them for Top 10 vs. Top 10). If you have one BD disc (assume this is the only title they published) ranked 20 and 9 HD-DVD (assume they only made 9) ranked 21-200, then BD will have a higher average rank as a whole format, even though HD-DVD may have sold many times more copies. Again, I know it is a simple example, but if you start expanding from these simple examples, you will find the same situations can exist in more complex scenarios with 100+ titles. The problem becomes even more compounded if you drop volumes from 10000 to 1000.

Again, certain conditions must exist, but since we don't know what sales are like, its possible those conditions could exist.

wnorris

02-11-07, 11:43 PM

FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. Neither of which my post did. Assuming that in May 2001 WM decided to stop but continued until Jul (and that they never changed their mind after) then WM is not included. At no point in time did you substantiate that any of the other ones were not included in your previous list. You are the one that keeps on talking about Internet sales not being there and the reason I went directly to VS is that I new for a fact some where. Unless you have a list from VS of the full list neither you nor I know what is included.

Actually, you did try to spread FUD. Uncertainty. I posted that Wal-Mart data was not included. You confusingly tried to pass of some data that said Wal-Mart was included up until a certain point long passed (and indicating it stopped after that) as evidence Wal-mart data was still included. Confusion=uncertainty=FUD.

darinp2

02-11-07, 11:46 PM

The problem with your questions is that they must start with the assumption that there are only 100 discs. There are over 150 discs available for purchase, so when you start looking at top 100's, you have 50 discs that could have practically zero sales, and still get the same sales rank bias I was speaking of. No one shows sales rank of Top 10,000, so we can't see what the effect is there.

If you start looking at ways in which Amazon may determine sales rank (since no one knows the exact formula), this is where the Top 10,000 (that I spoke of originally) could see the skewed results.We agree that if you have sales outside of the top xxx then that doesn't help your average for that top xxx even though it is more sales, as I mentioned above. Why are you using "Top 10,000" though? I wouldn't use that as I don't think it makes sense to count different numbers of titles, as I think you covered elsewhere in your response. Using the top 10, 50, 100, or whatever titles make sense to me, but if you mean counting the average for the titles that are in the top 10k, then I think that is a good way to get even more bogus values.

As long as you are talking about sales in whatever average you are talking about concentrated sales do not rule the roost. Your example had to use sales that were outside the number of titles you were averaging. With a certain number of titles considered, spreading them evenly (or close to evenly) should get the best average.

Do you still believe that this statement you made is true:
However, when looking at averages, like top 100, Top 50, Top 10, etc., you are better off having all your sales concentrated into 5-10 discs, than to have them spread out.The example you used only worked because you moved sales for one format outside of the range you were looking at (considered only the top 50 and made sure many sales were outside that top 50). Concentrating sales within 5-10 discs did not help. It was the other factor that did (basically making some sales not count). If you think that concentrating sales within the top 5-10 discs helps the average of the top 100 more than spreading them out across those 100 discs, then feel free to give an example.

--Darin

Kosty

02-11-07, 11:51 PM

I do do research and I also post links so that others can berify what I wrote. That is the difference between someone interested in ghetting to the truthe and someone posting FUD to help his format I thank you for your contibutions here. :cool:

A lot of you and most of the others say here make me think and I think in the fracas a lot of information comes out.

Its the posts attacking the posters that irritate me.

Kosty

02-11-07, 11:55 PM

Darin one of the issues is that both formats numbers are so low that a relatively small numbers of sales can affect all of those charts at this point and the historical component becomes more important at this small scale.

It will become more clear as the sales volumes increase.

wnorris

02-11-07, 11:57 PM

We agree that if you have sales outside of the top xxx then that doesn't help your average for that top xxx even though it is more sales, as I mentioned above. Why are you using "Top 10,000" though? I wouldn't use that as I don't think it makes sense to count different numbers of titles, as I think you covered elsewhere in your response. Using the top 10, 50, 100, or whatever titles make sense to me, but if you mean counting the average for the titles that are in the top 10k, then I think that is a good way to get even more bogus values.

As long as you are talking about sales in whatever average you are talking about concentrated sales do not rule the roost. Your example had to use sales that were outside the number of titles you were averaging. With a certain number of titles considered, spreading them evenly (or close to evenly) should get the best average.

Do you still believe that this statement you made is true:
The example you used only worked because you moved sales for one format outside of the range you were looking at. Concentrating sales within 5-10 discs did not help. It was the other factor that did (basically making some sales not count).

--Darin

But that is the exact situation that exists. Sales of both formats are moved outside of the ranges that are being looked at. Your arguement as to why my example is invalid, can equally be applied to why Amazon sales ranks are invalid.

Top 10,000 or something similar would be what I consider a format average, which is what you questioned me about earlier. Basically all BD vs. all HD-DVD, even though # of titles are different. It leads to a bogus comparison.

Yes, I still believe my statements are true. I looked at 9,000 BD disc sales and 10,000 HD DVD disc sales. I hypothetically spread the HD-DVD sales over 100 titles, with two big sellers, and I spread the BD sales over 50 titles with 5 big sellers. If you look at the Top 10, Top 25, or Top 50, BD sales rank will appear to be better, however, HD-DVD is selling more discs. So sales rank does not show the format selling the best.

Like wise, you can show something similar if you scale the example to sales over 100 BD discs and 150 HD-DVD discs, then look at the Top 100. One format can have a better sales rank, but the other format can be selling more copies. Again, the problem is further compounded by the nature of the Amazon sales ranks historical component.