Yet Another HDM Performance Metric - % of DVD sales?

[welwynnick]

I'm usually mystified by the obsession for predicting and analysing each weeks HD disc sales. Information is great, but sales volumes in themselves don't make great performance metrics as values vary wildly, and the trends aren't clear. Moreover, we are often left comparing apples with oranges, and go round in circles trying to work out what to make of it.

People worry themselves silly about whether film A, from studio alpha, released in year XXXX on format green outsold film B from studio gamma, released in year YYYY on format orange during week 26. One did really well at the box office and went on sale three weeks earlier than the other, but came in a gift set and had a BOGO sale last week.

Impossible to analyse.

It would be useful to take some of the variables out the equation, and look at the underlying trends. We know that HDM sales only account for about 1% of DVD sales, but this value may be useful, as DVD sales are a great arbitrator for all films and all studios. Everyone sells and buys DVDs.

So how about ignoring week by week sales percentages, and think about what fraction of total DVD sales are achieved by the respective formats? Compare sales as a percentage of DVD sales? I suspect it may be that percentage has much less statistical scatter than all the other metrics, and we could use it for more meaningful comparisons.

Sorry, this is only an idea at the moment. I don't have as much time as I used to for this stuff, so I don't have lots of intresting tables and comparisons already prepared, but in the 21st century it can't be that difficult to get that sort of information, andn we might be able to get a clearer idea of where things stand.

I bet the film studios have been doing this all year.

Nick