Hi!
If you are an American and don´t care about how the format is doing in other countries, you can quit reading now. :)
I like the DVD-Wars website since it is the only regular indicator of high def disc sales. The problem is that it only tracks amazon.com salesranks, so it´s hard to say, how the war is going in other parts of the world.

I took me a few minutes to compare Amazon.de salesranks and here is what I have found: (salesranks taken March, 6th. the lower the number, the better it´s selling)

Total movies on amazon.de:
40 HD DVDs
46 Blu-Ray discs

better salesrank than 10.000:
31 HD DVDs
32 Blu-Ray discs

better salesrank than 5.000:
18 HD DVDs
14 Blu-Ray discs

better salesrank than 1.000:
3 HD DVDs (Miami Vice 593, Perfume 324, Batman Begins 905)
2 Blu-Ray discs (Casino Royale 284, Vertical Limit 804)



same release HD DVD versus Blu-Ray:

Swordfish
HD DVD: 4.415
Blu-Ray: 12.734

Superman Returns
HD DVD: 2.430
Blu-Ray: 9.821

Firewall
HD DVD: 4.323
Blu-Ray: 5.860

Training Day
HD DVD: 7.125
Blu-Ray: 2.352

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
HD DVD: 7.981
Blu-Ray: 5.387

Syriana
HD DVD: 5.432
Blu-Ray: 9.454

Lethal Weapon
HD DVD: 5.614
Blu-Ray: 6.268

The Fugitive
HD DVD: 10.498
Blu-Ray: 8.669

The Lake House
HD DVD: 15.751
Blu-Ray: 17.845

Lady in the Water
HD DVD: 2.389
Blu-Ray: 16.783

Rumor has it
HD DVD: 10.503
Blu-Ray: 19.349

Full Metal Jacket
HD DVD: 16.318
Blu-Ray: 3.890

House of Wax
HD DVD: 18.290
Blu-Ray: 3.540



The salesranks seem to change constantly so don´t take them too seriously.
What these numbers seem to indicate is that Blu-Ray and HD DVD sales are neck to neck right now in Germany.

Finally, I would like to mention that the PS3 has not launched in Europe yet (March, 23rd). I am an HD DVD supporter but I can not deny that the PS3 might give Blu-Ray the edge. Let´s see, maybe I´ll make another list in a few months. :rolleyes:

It will be all over for HD-DVD once the PS3 is released.

I thought there was a site similar to eproductwars.com that showed these numbers for the UK. Does anybody have a link (if there is one)? It would be nice to be able to watch the numbers for all of Europe like this also. From what I saw yesterday, it looks like player sales for the UK, Germany and France combined were something like 3k for HD DVD to 1k for Blu-ray, but I don't think that counted the XBOX360 add-on. With those small numbers, it should be really interesting to see what happens after the PS3 launches.

--Darin

It will be all over for HD-DVD once the PS3 is released.I'd have to agree, the formats are neck and neck on stand alone players ALONE in Germany. The PS3 effect will once again be huge.

It will be all over for HD-DVD once the PS3 is released.

Right, HD DVD had a massive lead in the US when the PS3 arrived, so it'll be interesting to see the effect over the coming months.

Rowlander, can you write 12,943 rather than 12.943? "," is the traditional seperater in these parts.

Right, HD DVD had a massive lead in the US when the PS3 arrived, so it'll be interesting to see the effect over the coming months.

Rowlander, can you write 12,943 rather than 12.943? "," is the traditional seperater in these parts.
"." is the correct separator in Europe and most of the rest of the rest of the world aside from North America. The numbers are pretty obvious, and if someone makes a mistake and doesn't notice they've divided every number by 1,000,000 then they deserve whatever fallout they get. :)

"." is the correct separator in Europe and most of the rest of the rest of the world aside from North America.

I'm European and it's not. I believe it's the case in australia and probably most places. Given that most people who read this are north American it's the custom here.

Anyway, Just to add to the OP's info, Casino Royale is 31 at amazon.co.uk, far ahead of any HD DVD or BD title

Anyway, Just to add to the OP's info, Casino Royale is 31 at amazon.co.uk, far ahead of any HD DVD or BD titleInteresting that the BD is that high given that the first 500k PS3 owners should be able to get it free. But it may take a while to get mailed to them. I notice that the dedicated remote control for the PS3 is at #14 in PC and Video Games, as a preorder.

--Darin

"." is the correct separator in Europe and most of the rest of the rest of the world aside from North America. The numbers are pretty obvious, and if someone makes a mistake and doesn't notice they've divided every number by 1,000,000 then they deserve whatever fallout they get. :)

Waaa?

The metric separator is simply a space, as in 1 343 234. I've never seen "." used, and I was born in England and live in Australia.

The salesranks seem to change constantly so don´t take them too seriously.
What these numbers seem to indicate is that Blu-Ray and HD DVD sales are neck to neck right now in Germany.

Amazon themselves have released actual to-date sales percentages just a few days ago:
76% HD DVD and 24% Blu-ray

Amazon Deutschland: HD-DVD schlägt Blu-ray 02.03 | 10:27

Im Markt der Highdefinition-Medien deutet sich ein Etappensieg von HD-DVD an: Über Drei Viertel der HD-Besteller bei Amazon Deutschland setzten auf das Format, obwohl das Blu-ray-Angebot nahezu gleich groß ist.
Click here to find out more!
Bei den Filmen, die Amazon Deutschland im HD-Format verkauft, macht derzeit HD-DVD das Rennen: Mehr als drei Viertel der neuen hochauflösenden DVDs seien HD-DVDs und nur 24 Prozent Blu-ray-Medien, erklärt Amazon in einer aktuellen Mitteilung.

Obwohl es fast genau so viele Blu-ray-Filme gibt (56) wie HD-DVDs (60), scheint sich HD-DVD durchzusetzen. Allerdings könnte sich Blu-ray noch durchsetzen, wenn Ende März die Sony Playstation mit integriertem Blu-ray-Laufwerk ausgeliefert wird, vermuten die Redakteure von de.internet.com.

Ein guter Teil der HD-DVD-Verkäufe könnte in der Tat durch Microsofts XBox 360 ausgelöst sein: An der schon erhältlichen Spielekonsole kann der Nutzer ein externes HD-DVD-Laufwerk anschließen. (mk)
http://www.testticker.de/pcpro/news/storage/news20070302005.aspx

Something about the term " German next-gen-war" doesn't sit well with me...

Still, I think most pundits are waiting to see what happens when the PS3 releases. Sales of players were only like 7000 combined for the whole of 2006 or some other stupidly irrelevant figure.

Waaa?

The metric separator is simply a space, as in 1 343 234. I've never seen "." used, and I was born in England and live in Australia.

Examples of use

The following examples show the decimal separator and the thousands separator; the lists are ordered chronologically, by when each country adopted the use:

* In France, Finland, Hungary and much of Latin Europe as well as French Canada: 1 234 567,89
* In Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Romania and much of Europe: 1 234 567,89 or 1.234.567,89 (in handwriting you may also come across 1·234·567,89)
* In Switzerland (mainly German-speaking Switzerland): 1'234'567,89
* In Australia, English Canada, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States: 1,234,567.89 or 1,234,567·89; the latter is more commonly found in older, and especially handwritten, documents; many British and Canadian schools now teach the SI style with a dot separator, which has become official in Australia.
* SI style: 1 234 567.89 (dot countries) or 1 234 567,89 (comma countries)
* In China, the comma is sometimes used to separate blocks of four digits: 123,4567.89, since in Chinese, there is a word for 10,000 (the next new word is for 108, not 106 as in most languages).
* In India, due to a numeral system using lakhs (100,000) and crores (10,000,000), an asymmetric distribution of comma separators is commonly used, for example, 30 million (3 crores) would be written as 3,00,00,000, with commas at the thousand, lakh, and crore levels.

In countries with a decimal comma, the decimal point is also common as the "international" notation and under the influence of e.g. electronic calculators using the decimal point. Most computer operating systems allow selection of the decimal seperator and programs that have been carefully internationalised will follow this but some programs ignore it and a few are even broken by it.

Dot countries

Countries where a dot is used to mark the radix point include:

Australia, Brunei, Botswana, Canada (English-speaking), Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong of the People's Republic of China, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea (both North and South), Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Peru, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States (including insular areas)

Comma countries

Countries where a comma is used to mark the radix point include:

Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada (French-speaking), Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Faroes, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Indonesia, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg (uses both separators officially), Macedonia, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa (officially, but decimal point is commonly used in business), Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zimbabwe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator

I'd have to agree, the formats are neck and neck on stand alone players ALONE in Germany. The PS3 effect will once again be huge.

Not really:

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/3780/allemagnekc2.jpg

Source: GfK data posted by cinemotion (http://www.cinemotion.biz/informacion.php?iinfo=75)

So by the end of Jan 07, there were 1,739 HD DVD players and 337 BD players sold. Yeah, over 5:1. ;)

Not really:

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/3780/allemagnekc2.jpg

Source: GfK data posted by cinemotion (http://www.cinemotion.biz/informacion.php?iinfo=75)

So by the end of Jan 07, there were 1,739 HD DVD players and 337 BD players sold. Yeah, over 5:1. ;)My assumption appears absolutely wrong. Maybe there is a war yet. Though these numbers seem awfully small :p

Thanks for that 75%-report Chris_TC! Very interesting. The HD DVD lead makes sense considering how expensive Blu-Ray players are in Germany. Maybe I don´t have to sell my HD DVD player after all. ;) Let´s see how the situation evolves this year.

And Elwar: It didn´t occur to me for a second that there could be something disturbing about that thread title. I guess the rest of the world still mistrusts Germany a little bit so I´m glad I am from Austria! ;)

Source: GfK data posted by cinemotion (http://www.cinemotion.biz/informacion.php?iinfo=75)

So by the end of Jan 07, there were 1,739 HD DVD players and 337 BD players sold. Yeah, over 5:1. ;)
Quite logical.
How can European people like Blu-ray region coding?

Indeed, the Blu Ray forum can screw their region encoding as far as I am concerned. European DVD release dates have been getting closer to US ones over the past couple of years but Blu Ray is lagging behind at the moment in the UK. I believe Black Hawk Down has only just been released. Not to mention the cost of Blu Ray in the shops here (£25-30)
HD DVD on the other hand isn't lagging and it seems that you can get hold of all the latest releases here for about 5 quid cheaper than Blu Ray.
There is just no incentive to go Blu Ray here at the moment, too costly and not enough titles. If I ws going to get a Blu Ray player it would be a cheap US or Japanese PS3 as US imported titles are easy to get hold of.

The biggest problem is software. Releases keep getting pushed back, on Amazon there's only a total of ~60 titles available on each format.

Very interesting. I hope some German films (with alternate English soundtracks or subtitlies) show up soon on region-free HD.

Very interesting. I hope some German films (with alternate English soundtracks or subtitlies) show up soon on region-free HD.

You can expect to see "The Perfume" ("Das Parfüm") soon on HD. I *think* it has an english soundtrack.

Regarding to the sales data: the companies should better rush to bring releases to Germany. 90% of the HD-disks I own are imported.

the formats are neck and neck on stand alone players ALONE in Germany.So by the end of Jan 07, there were 1,739 HD DVD players and 337 BD players sold. Yeah, over 5:1. My assumption appears absolutely wrong.
Ohh so your statement of fact was really only an assumption I'm glad you cleared that up. One might think you didn't know the difference.

Indeed, the Blu Ray forum can screw their region encoding as far as I am concerned. European DVD release dates have been getting closer to US ones over the past couple of years but Blu Ray is lagging behind at the moment in the UK. I believe Black Hawk Down has only just been released. Not to mention the cost of Blu Ray in the shops here (£25-30)
HD DVD on the other hand isn't lagging and it seems that you can get hold of all the latest releases here for about 5 quid cheaper than Blu Ray.
There is just no incentive to go Blu Ray here at the moment, too costly and not enough titles. If I ws going to get a Blu Ray player it would be a cheap US or Japanese PS3 as US imported titles are easy to get hold of.

Not sure where you are getting your facts from, but heres the real world info for the UK.

I have bought 20+ Blu Ray discs in the UK, and have paid a max of £17.99
Black Hawk Down has been out for 6 weeks in the UK...I paid £12.99 :p
Depending where you shop Blu Ray has a much wider selection than hd-dvd..play.com for example. Amazon alone has 200 Blu Ray titles listed.
Casino Royal on Blu Ray is number 26 out of the top selling 100 DVDs on Amazon.co.uk.....hd-dvd cant even get a title into the top 100 :D Incidently Casino Royal on Blu Ray is actualy cheaper than the standard DVD :eek:

The PS3 hits the UK in a couple of weeks, Uk demand has been so strong for the PS3, SCEE increased the allocation from 250,00 units to 300,000.And you can bet you sweet arse plenty of new owners are either buying or planning to buy Blu Ray movies for there new baby ;)

hd-dvd havent even got 2000 stand alone players into UK homes yet, and there lack of advertising is woefull!

Any probs with getting good deals on Blu Ray software or hardware, give me a shout ;)

I see a very Blu forecast for much of Europe. :)

Examples of use

The following examples show the decimal separator and the thousands separator; the lists are ordered chronologically, by when each country adopted the use:

* In France, Finland, Hungary and much of Latin Europe as well as French Canada: 1 234 567,89
* In Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Romania and much of Europe: 1 234 567,89 or 1.234.567,89 (in handwriting you may also come across 1·234·567,89)
* In Switzerland (mainly German-speaking Switzerland): 1'234'567,89
* In Australia, English Canada, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States: 1,234,567.89 or 1,234,567·89; the latter is more commonly found in older, and especially handwritten, documents; many British and Canadian schools now teach the SI style with a dot separator, which has become official in Australia.
* SI style: 1 234 567.89 (dot countries) or 1 234 567,89 (comma countries)
* In China, the comma is sometimes used to separate blocks of four digits: 123,4567.89, since in Chinese, there is a word for 10,000 (the next new word is for 108, not 106 as in most languages).
* In India, due to a numeral system using lakhs (100,000) and crores (10,000,000), an asymmetric distribution of comma separators is commonly used, for example, 30 million (3 crores) would be written as 3,00,00,000, with commas at the thousand, lakh, and crore levels.

In countries with a decimal comma, the decimal point is also common as the "international" notation and under the influence of e.g. electronic calculators using the decimal point. Most computer operating systems allow selection of the decimal seperator and programs that have been carefully internationalised will follow this but some programs ignore it and a few are even broken by it.

Dot countries

Countries where a dot is used to mark the radix point include:

Australia, Brunei, Botswana, Canada (English-speaking), Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong of the People's Republic of China, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea (both North and South), Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Peru, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States (including insular areas)

Comma countries

Countries where a comma is used to mark the radix point include:

Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada (French-speaking), Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Faroes, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Indonesia, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg (uses both separators officially), Macedonia, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa (officially, but decimal point is commonly used in business), Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zimbabwe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator

It looks to me like the commas are winning the world wide seperator format war! Mods, can we start a new forum for this war?

Go Comma! Spaces and dots will cause your shiny discs to rots!!!!

Quite logical.
How can European people like Blu-ray region coding?

Region coding doesn’t matter for regular people in Europe, Asia and South America. More than 90% of viewers see and need their movies dubbed or subtitled, only a very few minority who can speak English buy movies from other countries, especially from USA / Canada. Obviously there are some expectations (Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, etc). only in these countries region coding might affect sales.

Region coding doesn’t matter for regular people in Europe, Asia and South America. More than 90% of viewers see and need their movies dubbed or subtitled, only a very few minority who can speak English buy movies from other countries, especially from USA / Canada. Obviously there are some expectations (Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, etc). only in these countries region coding might affect sales.

I agree as you talk about the average viewer (the species which is sometimes referred to by "J6P"). But I guess the percentage is very different when you count us "early adopters" and movie fans in general. It would not surprise me if the majority of movie enthusiasts across europe keep importing movies on DVD / HD-DVD / BD because they want to see them in unaltered/original form. Evidence is the large number of region free modded DVD players currently installed in home theaters. I don't have numbers on that, but all of my friends who are movie lovers import DVDs regularly.

I have bought 20+ Blu Ray discs in the UK, and have paid a max of £17.99
Black Hawk Down has been out for 6 weeks in the UK...I paid £12.99 :p
Depending where you shop Blu Ray has a much wider selection than hd-dvd..play.com for example.How do you tell? Is there any way to display the number of BDs and HD-DVD offered on play.com? Besides, they seem to be offering a lot of US imports.

Amazon alone has 200 Blu Ray titles listed.If I use "search all titles", I get 217 BDs and 219 HD-DVDs ...

Casino Royal on Blu Ray is number 26 out of the top selling 100 DVDs on Amazon.co.uk.....hd-dvd cant even get a title into the top 100 :D Not too surprising, given that Casino Royale is the only new blockbuster available on any HD format.

Coming back to topic, both HD-DVD and BD are anemic in Germany. In most B&M shops you can get maybe 10 titles of each format, and Amazon offers around 40. It's really pathetic.

How do you tell? Is there any way to display the number of BDs and HD-DVD offered on play.com? Besides, they seem to be offering a lot of US imports.

If I use "search all titles", I get 217 BDs and 219 HD-DVDs ...

Not too surprising, given that Casino Royale is the only new blockbuster available on any HD format.

Click on either BD or HD-DVD on play.com and count up whats available on either format

Click on either BD or HD-DVD on play.com and count up whats available on either formatI don't see any way to display all titles at once.

I don't see any way to display all titles at once.

Give me 5 and I will get the figures

Blu Ray 107

hd-dvd 34

I don't "want stats", I want to know how to verify them, especially since your Amazon.co.uk claim was quite misleading. Don't tell me you went through all the genre menus and counted them by hand. :p

EDIT: Your figures must be wrong. Play.com lists 36 HD-DVD titles just in the Action genre. And there are more in the other genres ...

I don't "want stats", I want to know how to verify them, especially since your Amazon.co.uk claim was quite misleading. Don't tell me you went through all the genre menus and counted them by hand. :p

EDIT: Your figures must be wrong. Play.com lists 36 HD-DVD titles just in the Action genre. And there are more in the other genres ...

A lot of the titles are duplicated across the different catogerys, you have to count them by hand.

The figures I gave are accurate, didn't you notice v for vendetta in just about every catogery? :rolleyes:

A lot of the titles are duplicated across the different catogerys, you have to count them by hand.

The figures I gave are accurate, didn't you notice v for vendetta in just about every catogery? :rolleyes:You said there were 34 HD-DVD titles in total. The Action/Adventure category alone lists 36, and there are no duplicates within that category. Your numbers can't possibly be accurate.

You said there were 34 HD-DVD titles in total. The Action/Adventure category alone lists 36, and there are no duplicates within that category. Your numbers can't possibly be accurate.

The bourne supremecy is listed in several of the catogerys rigby as is miami vice etc etc etc.

Count the best sellers for each format then then count the coming soon/new releases its either 34 or 36 for hd-dvd and 107ish for BLU RAY

Christ man, its not rocket science

1,2,3......get the idea :D

Its like pulling teeth on this site at times :eek:

Region coding doesn’t matter for regular people in Europe, Asia and South America. More than 90% of viewers see and need their movies dubbed or subtitled, only a very few minority who can speak English buy movies from other countries, especially from USA / Canada. Obviously there are some expectations (Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, etc). only in these countries region coding might affect sales.
The only way to watch movies in a lossless way or high-def way is to watch them in original version.
If one cannot understand the original soundtrack, one should watch them with subtitles.

HD DVD and Blu-ray do provide a feature to add extra subtitles.

And good movies come from a lot of countries.

The bourne supremecy is listed in several of the catogerys rigby as is miami vice etc etc etc.The number of titles in a single category already exceeds your bogus total. Sheesh.
Christ man, its not rocket scienceAnd you are certainly not a rocket scientist. :p