81:19 Nielsen/VideoScan Weekly Sales Numbers

[elwaylite]

Whats funny is I see all these HDDVD guys slamming the numbers because they dont include walmart. Guess what fellas they never have, and if they did in the past the Blu wins would have been even wider.

People love to use numbers when it suits THEM.

I agree with the poster above me, BUT we all knew Transformers would be huge. HDDVD has NOTHING on its roster in the coming months that can touch Transformers so thier big shot was good, but just a little short.

[Jack Torrance]

Originally Posted by elwaylite

Whats funny is I see all these HDDVD guys slamming the numbers because they dont include walmart. Guess what fellas they never have, and if they did in the past the Blu wins would have been even wider.

People love to use numbers when it suits THEM.

Yes, the HD-DVD fanboys will be voicing their displeasure all over the internet for the forseeable future...

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by BillCable

If not for the BOGOs it would have been 60-40 HD DVD if not even more lopsided.

True. However, the BOGO was there to ensure that BD has a fighting chance to do some damage on the Nielsen. The fact that we narrowly had a win is the UNEXPECTED victory.

The BDA made a fantastic tactical decision to ensure victory, but we shouldn't dismiss Transformers' numbers too easily.

I don't dismiss Transformer's Nielsen numbers because it was a big box office hit. If Viacom didn't accept payola, the numbers would be even bigger because more BDs would be sold at a rate of 2:1. It's not the movie that is being dismissed. It's the consumer base.

This week proved that the BDA can outmaneuver HD DVD at will, but TF did sell a record number of HD DVDs.

Indeed. But take a look at the pic I posted for the list of BDs and HD-DVDs that made it to the Top 5. In the Top 5 HD-DVD, 115,000 copies of Transformers were sold along with 9,707 copies of other HD-DVD titles to get HD-DVD the weekly ratio of 49%. That 49% consists of 46-47% of Transformers and the rest are the other titles.

In contrast, the Top 5 BDs account for 37,710 copies only, which is about a third of the Transformers number. Yet BD still leads the weekly ratio by 51%. This means that the rest of the BD titles that are NOT in the Top 5 are causing BD to win the weekly ratio by selling over 100,000 copies cumulatively.

Paramount, Universal and the HD-DVD Promotion Group can spin all they want but it is proven yet again that BD has the consumer base IN SPITE not having US$199 player!

(By the way, 115,000 copies is the number I used based on Home Media Retailing's number. They don't believe that Paramount sold 190,000 copies. The Nielsen First Alert data was only 85,000. EVEN if I were to use 190,000 copies, the effect is still the same. HD-DVD does not have a solid consumer base as BD.)


fuad

[Lee Christie]

Why dos everyone keep caling it BOGO? It's BOGOF isn't it?

[gandley]

its the BOGO POGO baby

[mattym]

ive been away for a couple of days, and come back to this good news. A big round of HA HA HA at paramount for a) 190000 copies sold. b) not winning the only week they should have c) just cos.

[bhampton]

Hi,

Just started another thread about it but looks like lots of things are coming togeather to help HD DUD with the numbers this week and it has me concerned. After winning the week of weeks last week it would be a shame to lose this week.

1) Transformers continues to be the #1 seller (how I can't imagine but, whatever).
2) Heroes is being given away with 2 other HD DUDs with all the Xbox 360's this week at best buy.
3) DVDEmpires numbers usually track with the Neilsens and they have HD DUD winning currently 51/49
4) Many bestselling Blu Rays are pre-orders - Spiderman, Cars, Pirates 3, ect.
5) Many Blu Ray buyers are tapped out after the BOGO sales.
6) Many Blu Ray buyers are holding cash for Spiderman on Tuesday (me for example.)


I hope it's all my imagination,.. I want HD DUD to never win a weeks sales data ever,.. but thought I would voice my concerns,.. now that it's nearly too late to do anything about it.

-Brian

[richteer]

Originally Posted by Lee Christie

Why dos everyone keep caling it BOGO? It's BOGOF isn't it?

Agreed, although I personally prefer 2 for 1.

[JAGUAR1977]

Originally Posted by bhampton

Hi,

Just started another thread about it but looks like lots of things are coming togeather to help HD DUD with the numbers this week and it has me concerned. After winning the week of weeks last week it would be a shame to lose this week.

1) Transformers continues to be the #1 seller (how I can't imagine but, whatever).
2) Heroes is being given away with 2 other HD DUDs with all the Xbox 360's this week at best buy.
3) DVDEmpires numbers usually track with the Neilsens and they have HD DUD winning currently 51/49
4) Many bestselling Blu Rays are pre-orders - Spiderman, Cars, Pirates 3, ect.
5) Many Blu Ray buyers are tapped out after the BOGO sales.
6) Many Blu Ray buyers are holding cash for Spiderman on Tuesday (me for example.)


I hope it's all my imagination,.. I want HD DUD to never win a weeks sales data ever,.. but thought I would voice my concerns,.. now that it's nearly too late to do anything about it.

-Brian

Give aways don't count, Meet the Robinsons, Hostel II etc. will do the business.

[gand41f]

Originally Posted by Terjyn

Actually, you don't know this. A common practice with competing percentages is to always round down the higher number, which would mean these results are between 51 and 51.999999 for Blu.

The main reason they do this is to prevent 99.5 from rounding up to 100.

Really? Then we have a range of 51.999999:48.000000 (~4) to 51.000000:49.000000 (~2). The margin of error would be 2 in that case.

Learn something new every day....

enjoy
gandalf

[gand41f]

Originally Posted by JAGUAR1977

Give aways don't count, Meet the Robinsons, Hostel II etc. will do the business.

I believe give aways do count if their barcodes are scanned separately at the point of sale, regardless of price. Therefore,

• Buy one get one free count both, as both are scanned, even if the second one was $0
• Mail-ins don't count, since they are not scanned when money changes hands
• Bundle sales by retailers count, as they are scanned separately
• Free movies included in the box by manufacturer don't count, since the movie barcode was not scanned individually when the purchase was made

enjoy
gandalf

[The Guardian]

Originally Posted by bhampton

1) Transformers continues to be the #1 seller (how I can't imagine but, whatever).
2) Heroes is being given away with 2 other HD DUDs with all the Xbox 360's this week at best buy.
3) DVDEmpires numbers usually track with the Neilsens and they have HD DUD winning currently 51/49
4) Many bestselling Blu Rays are pre-orders - Spiderman, Cars, Pirates 3, ect.
5) Many Blu Ray buyers are tapped out after the BOGO sales.
6) Many Blu Ray buyers are holding cash for Spiderman on Tuesday (me for example.)

1. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the #1 hidef movie again, but more along the lines of 25,000 copies sold or less.
2. These do count.. but seriously how many do you think will sell? A few, sure, but not 90,000 to make up for dropping TF sales.
3. DVD Empire is rarely the same as Nielson, and has almost never even been close since the Paramount deal for some reason. Especially the incomplete data (check them again on Tuesday) which almost always shows HD DVD winning.
4. Blu-ray doesn't need the best selling movie to win the week. This has been proven time and again.
5. Possibly so.. on the other hand, the BOGOs apparently were in the 80,000 range, which means the equivalent of 40,000 sold price-wise... which is only half of a normal week for BD...
6. Not everyone likes Spider-man, and has been pointed out Blu did have some exclusives this past week, day-and-date even.

[Proteus]

Something to remember:

Neilsen does not count a title that does not report a dollar sum for the sale. So, for example, if a store had their system set up for a BOGO and instead of splitting the price between the two as a discount (like Amazon does) it simply sold one full price and discounted one to 'free', it would not register the 'free' one with Neilsen as a sale.

It's exactly why the 5 free with player movies and other give-a-ways do not register with Neilsen.

I can assure you that not all retailers were splitting the price as Amazon was. Check your receipts and report back (most large B&M should be doing it though but some smaller may not). Will be interesting to see how things were actually rang up at the register.

Looking at the numbers it does not make any sense to me, to be frank. Blu-ray should have pulled at least 85% last week given the 'on the street' accounting. In the post above mine, for example, it was mentioned that if 80000 sold and it was Bogo then that means it would have been 40,000 in a normal unit comparison; however, Blu usually sells more than that per week. Now, how does this make TF week seem odd? Because _Blu-ray was selling out completely everywhere and being restocked several times over_. Blu does not get this amount of sell through normally (even though unit sales are usually higher than last weeks total accounting for BOGO math).

This just does not make sense. Something has affected the Neilsen's and I'm pretty sure it is the BOGO not counting the 'free' movie as that is the only logical culprit. I think only distributors and retailers who tracked the shipping and through sales can know the real number.

I can tell you without hesitation at all that at Circuit City during TF week Blu-ray was selling 10 to 1 _easily_ over HDDVD, including TF. Amazon exemplifies this as according to their sales rankings which indicated _many_ Blu-ray titles just below TF (literally only one rank below and at one point a rank higher) it would indicate that Blu sold A FREAKIN' TON more total discs than HDDVD did.

Something is wrong with these Neilsen's.

I'm still concerned for this Friday's results but after Spidey nothing else will matter and it's smooth sailing.

[WickyWoo]

I will guarantee you that all retailers were ringing up the BOGO sale as 50% off their list prices.

And I have absolutely no doubts that any HD DVD deals are ringing up in a similar fashion. They're not stupid

[Anthony P]

Dude, I seriously doubt the Transformer numbers were impacted much by people buying multiple copies. The point I was trying to make, which a few defensive members seem to have missed or I didn't make very clear, is that the weekly win was great PR for Blu-ray, but not a sign of the depth of the Blu-ray buying base due to so many people buying multiple discs that week.

no, what you miss is that numbers of titles in a single week don't mean much to depth. Maybe you are right many HD DVD owners dust off their wallet for that title and yes maybe it was more then BD. For depth you got to look at titles. Do you expect after several months POTC would sell that week the same number of titles to the same number of owners? This week brought out some people with BD players that decided 10$ or 15$ was too good to pass off but that they could resist it until now.

[Anthony P]

If that's how fragile our position at the top of this two-man race is I'm not happy. Don't get me wrong... wish I could be, and I respect those of you who are happy to hear 51%, some of us just weren't born with the optimist gene, that's all.

what you are missing is that it is not about fragility. It is a simple fact that what ever format you are talking about a big D&D will blow the numbers. I am sure if we could compare on DVD This week, last week and the previous one that the DVD sales would have a big difference. What this proves is that a BIG D&D brings HD DVD sales close to BD (but not close enough to make HD DVD relevent) while a BIG BD D&D will make it 70:30-80:20

[mdm1699]

Originally Posted by Lee Christie

Why dos everyone keep caling it BOGO? It's BOGOF isn't it?

Well if you are getting the second one, then it is redundant to say that it is free. ME WANT MORE BOGO.

[mdm1699]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

I will guarantee you that all retailers were ringing up the BOGO sale as 50% off their list prices.

And I have absolutely no doubts that any HD DVD deals are ringing up in a similar fashion. They're not stupid

+1.

[Esox50]

Ran across a comment over at AVMS earlier today where an HD DVD'er said something to the effect that HD DVD shouldn't be worried til the sales ratio hits 70/20. Come again?

[The Guardian]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

I will guarantee you that all retailers were ringing up the BOGO sale as 50% off their list prices.

And I have absolutely no doubts that any HD DVD deals are ringing up in a similar fashion. They're not stupid

Actually my Future Shop receipt shows $29.99 for the first Pirates and $0 for the second one.

They're fairly minor though... Canada is about 10% of the North American market, and Future Shop probably accounts for half-ish of the hidef movie sales here not from wal-mart. So worse case is they have a 5% effect.