Blu-ray Still Dominates in Week of Bourne/Potter

[sj001]

http://www.hollywoodinhidef.com/blog_detail.php?id=149

It must be hard to try to find a tune to trumpet when your orchestra instruments are rapidly deteriorating.
Universal's HD DVD champion Ken Graffeo tried desperately last week to find a good note to play about the resurging HD DVD with the exclusive release on HD DVD of "The Bourne Ultimatum" and the dual-format release of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix."
Without including any explanation about how many more high-def players overall are in the market now than two months ago when "Spider-Man 3" was released (including all those fire sale $99 and $199 HD DVD players), Graffeo boasted how first week sales of "Bourne" at about 60,000 units doubled the first-week sales of "SM3."
He conveniently failed to note that "Pirates 3" sold more than 87,000 exclusive Blu-ray units just a week earlier and has reached more than 127,000 after only two weeks.
Graffeo and Universal were also touting how Harry Potter HD DVDs were closing the gap, having reached 45% of overall sales on the newest movie, "Order of the Phoenix" (and all Potter SKUs, to give them even more credit than they cited).
Nevermind that Harry Potter is not the core demo for either high-def format and primarily appeals to the same consumer who is also only interested in players priced at the bargain-basement $99 and $199. Even at that, 55% still preferred to purchase "Potter" on Blu-ray in the first week.
To be fair, Mr. Graffeo is correct in noting that HD DVD did, in fact, make inroads the week ending Dec. 16 by narrowing the gap slightly from the typical and yearlong overall 65% - 35% sales advantage for Blu-ray to a 61% - 39% advantage for Blu-ray that week.
But it's a little sad to consider how desperately weak you have to be to point out that even on your best week with your biggest titles and everything going for you in terms of slashed prices on hardware, "Hey, HD DVD got slaughtered a little less badly than usual last week."