Shelf Space for HD Formats

At my local best buy shelf space is even as is end caps regarding BD and HD DVD...BD end caps are the Sony and Samsung...HD DVD encaps are the A2 and 360 add on.

Walmarts in Canada place them on the same tiny rack, Blue Ray occupies the top half - 3 shelves and HD-DVD bottom half. You have to bend down to look at the HD-DVD disks, while the BD disks are browsable standing up.

There are a lot more men in their thirties browsing the BD titles now when I visit to see if US released titles are available here. Out of curiosity I paid attention to what titles they pick. It seems that only the low priced ones get bought on the small sampling I saw. Meaning aeon flux, tomb raider and haunted mansion are first to go as they are the sub $20s (in USD terms).

Best buy has equal shelf space as does futureshop. There was hardly any activity until recent boxing day sales when they had a 3rd disk free. Within hour of opening all the MI3, KoH, BHD, X3, F3 were gone ( I arrived 1 hour after opening).

All that were left are the $30+ disks (35.99CDN) such as Omen, Transporter.

I think the cleaning out of the $20 titles sends a strong message on what the actual public wants to pay for these disks, and the studios releasing titles on either formats should take that into consideration.

My local Best Buy has equal space for both formats....however, my local Target has an extra row for their HD-DVD titles.

Even within the same chain of stores I have seen disparities.

One of my local Best Buy stores has identical space (1 shelf width) for both. But another Best Buy to the north (Santa Rosa) has 2 shelf widths for Blu Ray and 1 for HD-DVD.

Very strange. I always assumed these things were dictated higher-up but I guess each store has small differences.

Most stores around here are even, Target, Circuit City and Virgin Megastore all either share space or have a space split 50/50.

at the downey store in so cal theirs about 3x more space for hd-dvd then blu ray. but that was a month ago that i went.

and yes every other store is equal but alot of the slots are low in stock for hd-dvd could mean their selling out fast or they just dont care and dont reorder hd-dvd's

That fits my observations as well. The one best buy with the doubled space also tends to have better prices (2-4$ on average it seems) than the other one, as well, which really had me scratching my head. They're maybe 30 minutes from each other, too.

I didn't notice a price difference between the two, I'll try to pay more attention.

The one with 2X the Blu Ray space is a slightly larger floor plan overall, I think.