In search of the bluray sales surge, I tracked the Amazon rankings of 4 titles available on both formats the last three weeks in february. I sampled twice a day, mon-friday. Here are the average Amazon rankings for each week, Feb 12-16, Feb 19-23, Feb 26-02.

Searchers
hd 11807....7144.... 5191
blu 18457....13779....19946

Corpse Bride
hd 7972....5543....8263
blu 10006....4010....5599

Departed
hd 44....49....52
blu 51....30....38

Superman Returns
hd 2740....1662....3088
blu 1593....852....1178

I don't see that bluray running away from hddvd in February.

Watch out VideoScan and Nielsen! Maltby is gunnin' for you!!

lol not exactly scientific your study, eh?

lol not exactly scientific your study, eh?

Look, I can't afford to hire a lot of top flight scientists and mathmaticians like Videoscan and Nielsen. I am sure that their methodology is super sophisticated. But until I see actual sales numbers rather than rankings and ratios and such, I will continue to believe mine are just as valid.

Rumor has it that the studios want to release actual sales figures, but, to borrow from David Bowie, they are afraid it'll blow our minds.

The formats are surprisingly close. The only people I see "up in arms" about the sales figures are the stubborn.

If you have two formats doing well but splitting the market the next thing to look at is how can media and players be consolidated so that there is mutual benefit for consumer and producer?

I'm not giving up my HD DVD player. By years end there will be 500 titles of HD DVD movies. I've got at best 60 DVD titles for a format that's been around over a decade. I mean after 2007 HD DVD could vanish and I'd still have more movies available to me than what i've purchased on DVD by a factor of 8+.

In search of the bluray sales surge, I tracked the Amazon rankings of 4 titles available on both formats the last three weeks in february. I sampled twice a day, mon-friday. Here are the average Amazon rankings for each week, Feb 12-16, Feb 19-23, Feb 26-02.

Departed
hd 44....49....52
blu 51....30....38

I don't see that bluray running away from hddvd in February.

You might wanna check March, because last I checked:

Departed
hd 180
blu 50

Looks like a "surge" to me :p

Did you ever consider that besides 'The Departed', these are all titles which have been released in prior months? And that in the absense of new titles, HD DVD owners are starting to buy older content? And that will the flood of new BD titles, Blu-ray owners would be more inclined to purchase new titles like 'The Departed' rather than an older title like 'Corpse Bride'?

Occams Razor would suggest that the fact that Batman Begins, Serenity and other older titles are selling is because of new users coming into the fold. Amazon's numbers on the A2 player at around #240 rank corroborates that sales of HD DVD hardware are still humming along nicely. . On AVS most of the people here are more fanatical than the avg consumer so many already own most of the movies they want by now.

The formats are surprisingly close. The only people I see "up in arms" about the sales figures are the stubborn.

If you have two formats doing well but splitting the market the next thing to look at is how can media and players be consolidated so that there is mutual benefit for consumer and producer?

I'm not giving up my HD DVD player. By years end there will be 500 titles of HD DVD movies. I've got at best 60 DVD titles for a format that's been around over a decade. I mean after 2007 HD DVD could vanish and I'd still have more movies available to me than what i've purchased on DVD by a factor of 8+.

Good points.

The PS3 came along, and moved BD into the lead, with 67% percent of the market share. That's good and all, but it's no where near as large as some would have you believe. It's a good thing these folks don't run Macintosh, Showtime, or Kmart, because they would have thrown in the towel long ago.

I would be more concerned if it looked like the gap was widening, but it doesn't look that way. It looks like BD's lead of 67% is pretty much where we are at until something changes the status quo. I will be interested in seeing how this sale has effected things, because it might change the numbers. But even so, the Studios should know that you will get a big shift in sells if you cut prices by 50%. They don't need videoscan to tell them that. Either side could do that trick. There's nothing special about Blu-ray that says only they can increase their sales by X% if they cut their price in half.

Did you ever consider that besides 'The Departed', these are all titles which have been released in prior months? And that in the absense of new titles, HD DVD owners are starting to buy older content? And that will the flood of new BD titles, Blu-ray owners would be more inclined to purchase new titles like 'The Departed' rather than an older title like 'Corpse Bride'?

Yep. I considered it. But there were even less titles out when Searchers or Corpse Bride came out, so wouldn't HDDVD owners already have them well before February anyway?

I chose titles available on both to separate out interest in a particular title from interest in a particular format. I chose something old, something new and two in between as a representive sample. I chose just four because it was easy to do on Amazon.

If I bought a PS3 to watch hidef movies, Searchers would be one of my first purchases.

Amazon's numbers on the A2 player at around #240 rank corroborates that sales of HD DVD hardware are still humming along nicely.

I would disagree with that observation. As the A2 has dropped in price (499 - 399 and now 357) and adoption increases, its sales should increase. Instead, its position has been dropping (as is easy to see on eproductwars). It used to move between 100 and 150, and now indeed dropped to below 200. That goes the wrong way! (BD players, on the contrary, are slowly increasing their sales). Of course, Amazon is not a major hardware outlet (about 15 A2's per day doesn't get you to 70,000 players :), but if it indicates a trend, then it's not a good one for HD DVD.

That being said, I do agree that HD is holding up better in movie and hardware sales than what I expected mid Feb. If they can organize a serious counter offensive, then the game is not over. But they better hurry!

Occams Razor would suggest that the fact that Batman Begins, Serenity and other older titles are selling is because of new users coming into the fold. Amazon's numbers on the A2 player at around #240 rank corroborates that sales of HD DVD hardware are still humming along nicely.What do you consider humming along nicely? One report had "Batman Begins" selling 4100 copies through the first 3 weeks of January. Even if we play nice and give them 10k sales for the month, there should have been over 100k new owners for HD DVD from November and December of 2006. Obviously, some of those 100k would have bought BB in January. The rest could be allocated amongst new hardware purchasers in January. What percent of new player buyers do you think would have bought BB? Remember, a low number implies a low attach rate for new owners given that BB has been one of the format's main anchors. :)

From the in stock numbers for the HD-A2 it does look to me like 15 per day might be about right for how many Amazon was selling.

--Darin

According to VB, February sales were 250,000 Blu-ray movies vs. 125,000 HD DVD.

Watch out VideoScan and Nielsen! Maltby is gunnin' for you!!

LOL - first post I read today that made me burst out laughing - thanx, man!

In search of the bluray sales surge, I tracked the Amazon rankings of 4 titles available on both formats the last three weeks in february. I sampled twice a day, mon-friday. Here are the average Amazon rankings for each week, Feb 12-16, Feb 19-23, Feb 26-02.

Searchers
hd 11807....7144.... 5191
blu 18457....13779....19946

Corpse Bride
hd 7972....5543....8263
blu 10006....4010....5599

Departed
hd 44....49....52
blu 51....30....38

Superman Returns
hd 2740....1662....3088
blu 1593....852....1178

I don't see that bluray running away from hddvd in February.

I am reading this wrong or are 3 of the 4 titles sellign better on blu ray? And the one that isnt is a movie ive never seen or heard of.

I am reading this wrong or are 3 of the 4 titles sellign better on blu ray? And the one that isnt is a movie ive never seen or heard of.

You are reading it right. My point is, in february, selling a little better-yes, crushing, game over etc-no.

The Searchers is a classic. I would recommend it to you, but if you have never even heard of it, maybe not. The way it has languished on the bluray side may explain why Warner was in no hurry to put out Casablanca or Robin Hood in bluray.

Ockham must be turning in his grave at the continuous need to use of his razor at selective pruning of information when weighing each piece of data dispassionately does not match the original hypothesis.

The razor is meant to shave off assumptions, not the dataset.

Ockham must be turning in his grave at the continuous need to use of his razor at selective pruning of information when weighing each piece of data dispassionately does not match the original hypothesis.

The razor is meant to shave off assumptions, not the dataset.

This is the best post today :)