Sales of Blu Ray Discs in the UK up 500%

[Stephan.klose]

Sales of Blu Ray Discs in the UK are up over 500% from last year.

Now they account for 1,2% of the DVD market.

Does anyone have numbers from other countries?

[aramis109]

I don't have this month's Nielsen's handy but they've steadily been in the 7% range for the US in total sales with DVD.

[Fozziwig]

Originally Posted by aramis109

I don't have this month's Nielsen's handy but they've steadily been in the 7% range for the US in total sales with DVD.

The 7% (approx.) figure for Blu-ray applies when comparing the top 20 Blu-ray titles to the top 20 DVD titles.

Because the entire DVD catalogue is more massive than Blu-ray's (by several orders of magnituide) if the overall BD market (US) were compared to the overall DVD market (US) then Blu-ray would not compare quite so well.

I suspect the UK number is a whole market (UK) comparison and not a top 20 (US) comparison that we see weekly in Home Media Magazine.

In any event Blu-ray is performing dramatically better now that there is only one HD format and consumer confusion has been removed. And Q4 '08 is lining ip to be spectacular. I expect to see Blu-ray's first 1 million unit seller come from at least one of the following:

Iron Man
Indiana Jones 4 (it would be incredibly stupid not to release this on BD in Q4 '08)
The Dark Knight

And plenty of backup with titles like Wall.E, Kung Fu Panda, Hancock etc. And all the time the BD catalogue is growing....

[Stephan.klose]

Originally Posted by Fozziwig

The 7% (approx.) figure for Blu-ray applies when comparing the top 20 Blu-ray titles to the top 20 DVD titles.

Because the entire DVD catalogue is more massive than Blu-ray's (by several orders of magnituide) if the overall BD market (US) were compared to the overall DVD market (US) then Blu-ray would not compare quite so well.

I suspect the UK number is a whole market (UK) comparison and not a top 20 (US) comparison that we see weekly in Home Media Magazine.

In any event Blu-ray is performing dramatically better now that there is only one HD format and consumer confusion has been removed. And Q4 '08 is lining ip to be spectacular. I expect to see Blu-ray's first 1 million unit seller come from at least one of the following:

Iron Man
Indiana Jones 4 (it would be incredibly stupid not to release this on BD in Q4 '08)
The Dark Knight

And plenty of backup with titles like Wall.E, Kung Fu Panda, Hancock etc. And all the time the BD catalogue is growing....

The UK numbers were total and not just a comparison of the top 20..

Does anyone have numbers for that in the US of A? Guess they companies won't be that happy to release these numbers..

[Peakman]

Originally Posted by Stephan.klose

Does anyone have numbers from other countries?

First 5 months in Norway: 1.66% (of the total number of discs)
First 6 months in US: 1.78% (of the total number of discs)

[Stephan.klose]

Originally Posted by Peakman

First 5 months in Norway: 1.66% (of the total number of discs)
First 6 months in US: 1.78% (of the total number of discs)

May I ask where you got those numbers from?

In the US it's 1.78%. In the UK it's 1,2%. I wonder if they slashed prices because of that so rapidly in the UK.

[uk-guy]

i have steadily seen the blu-ray format in the united kingdom grow but q4 has possibly been the strongest.

the amount of new titles hitting the likes of play and amazon have really grown
rapidly and i expect it to continue right through till xmas. i think 2009 we will really find blu-ray will find its feet here in Britain. we really need new titles like wall-e to be coming first to blu-ray then i think folks might just start to get the
idea that this is the future of home entertainment.

we also need retailers to start to introduce this format more quickly alongside
dvd because at the moment blu-ray has really been a online revolution. cant
remember seeing much headlines in the media here about blu-ray winning the format war with Toshiba.

also think sony really need to be doing more here in Britain in the way of plugging blu-ray as the future. mainly only really slipped in alongside ps3 ads
so there could be a bit more of a effort from sony

i also think it would help if a film released in one part of the world could be speed up to be released world wide instead of having to wait months for something that may already be available here on dvd.