State of the HD Market in France

[Elandyll]

I have browsed some data from the French Amazon, and I believe with other reports that this is a fairly accurate summary of the state of the HD market currently in France.

Best Sellers in DVD section (includes DVD, Blu Ray and HD DVD)

1 - BR - Ratatouille Rank # 6
2 - BR - Cars # 102
3 - BR - Pathfinder #130
4 - BR - Die Hard 4 # 135
5 - BR - The Simpsons Movie # 158
6 - BR - The Day After # 330
7 - BR - HP:OOTP # 339
8 - BR - Spiderman3 # 447
9 - HDDVD - Triplettes of Belleville(fr) # 493
10 - BR - Blade Runner # 489
11 - BR - Shakira OFT # 537

The following HD DVDs can't be linked to relative BR positions, as they are too far down the drain:
#2 HD DVD bestseller - HD DVD - Hot Fuzz # 616
3- HD DVD - La Haine # 1018
4 - HD DVD - The Puritans(opera) # 1128
5 - HD DVD - King Kong # 1270
6 - HD DVD - Bourne Ultimatum # 1354
7 - HD DVD - The Big Lebowski # 1398
8 - HD DVD - Smokin Aces # 1504
9 - HD DVD - The Bourne Trilogy set # 1507
10 - HD DVD - The Bourne Identity # 1539

Sad to see that the French movie distributors didn't take the Blu Ray market seriously early enough to have good French titles (such as "La Haine") titles available in Blu Ray. They would be doing sooo much better.
With a market like this, it's only a matter of time though. Canal Studio and now Bac Films turned Blu, they'll go exclusive eventually.

Hardware:
2 different listings (like in the US one depending on how you get there).

Lisiting #1 of all DVD player sales has the Sony BDP S 300 at #23, and the BDP-S500 at # 27 and 32 (two SKUs). No other HD units, not even Tosh, in the top 100.

Listing #2 (all DVD players, best sellers) has the Toshiba HDEP30 (the A3) at #23, followed by the Sony BDP-S300 at #60, the S500 at #69 and 80 (two SKUs). The toshiba XE1 makes the top 100 by a hair at position #100.

Prominently figured, on the right side of he high def pages (both Blu Ray and HD DVD) is the ratio of all HP:OOTP bought.

Blu Ray: 67% - HD DVD: 33%

To confirm those results hugely in favor of Blu Ray (more so than I expected), I checked the Fnac page (major vendor of audio/video discs in France), and here is the result of their bestselling of High Def:

#1 - BR - Die Hard 4
#2 - BR - HP:OOTP
#3 - BR - Sunshine
#4 - BR - Blade Runner
#5 - BR - 300
#6 - BR - HP Box set
#7 - BR - The Good Shepperd
#8 - HDDVD - HP:OOTP
#9 - BR - POTC3
#10 - HDDVD - Hot Fuzz

Yep...