81:19 Nielsen/VideoScan Weekly Sales Numbers

[Terjyn]

Originally Posted by scott1256ca

No matter how you slice it, the more you charge for a product, the fewer you will sell, perhaps with the exception of a rare few types of items with a snob factor. Also $60 is not what most people will see in a B&M.

High Definition discs are pretty much the definition of Snob Factor at this point in time.

There is no such thing as an early adopter who is not willing to put forth money.

Saying that Heroes sold poorly because of price ignores historical fact. Nearly all TV shows have done poorly in the past, regardless of price. Not nearly as many people want to buy TV shows as compared to movies...probably because TV shows do not have the "Sit down with some popcorn and some friends" factor.

The most successful selling TV Show DVDs are generally the more expensive ones, because the more expensive ones are better done versions with extra exclusives...on more successful shows.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by Terjyn

High Definition discs are pretty much the definition of Snob Factor at this point in time.

There is no such thing as an early adopter who is not willing to put forth money.

Saying that Heroes sold poorly because of price ignores historical fact. Nearly all TV shows have done poorly in the past, regardless of price. Not nearly as many people want to buy TV shows as compared to movies...probably because TV shows do not have the "Sit down with some popcorn and some friends" factor.

The most successful selling TV Show DVDs are generally the more expensive ones, because the more expensive ones are better done versions with extra exclusives...on more successful shows.

I'd agree with you, substituting "snob" with "enthusiast".

It's unclear to me whether the mass market will ever care enough about HD quality to pay a premium over DVD. And with the holes in AACS, and commercial software available to strip the protection, and no region coding, there is ZERO incentive left for studios to too much to encourage a transition to HD DVD, and hence allow HD DVD to ever achieve DVD pricing.

Blu-ray remains a possibility for the studios if BD+ can be shown to be effective. But, production costs will need to be show to be in-line with DVD to allow them to bring prices closer.
Gary

[Slapper]

Originally Posted by Terjyn

Saying that Heroes sold poorly because of price ignores historical fact. Nearly all TV shows have done poorly in the past, regardless of price. Not nearly as many people want to buy TV shows as compared to movies...probably because TV shows do not have the "Sit down with some popcorn and some friends" factor.

How many TV shows are on the shelf where one season's SRP is $99.99? I think the plateau on TV shows should be an SRP of $59.99 for a season. You go above that and you will seriously hurt sales to mainstream consumers and the fanboys.

I agree with you 100% that TV Shows DO NOT have the "sit down with some popcorn and some friends" factor. There's just too much time that has to be invested in actually watching the whole thing. For most people it's just easier to sit down after they come home from work and watch an episode of their favorite program as it's being broadcast. This takes the casual buyer/casual viewer out of the equation up front and leaves you with the true rabid fans of the show purchasing the product.

Heroes on HD-DVD did not sell as many copies as it could have if the SRP was the same as the DVD - $59.99. If you agree with that, then price IS a factor.

I'll bet there are more than a few HD-DVD owners who didn't want to shell out the $100 bucks that Best Buy was charging for Heroes Season 1 on HD-DVD and DID end up buying the DVD of Heroes Season 1 (which was $34.99 that first week).

To say price is NOT a factor in overall sales of ANYTHING ignores historical fact. Where would Toshiba be right now if their players started at $499? They would have been dead in the water long ago and this war would already be over. And just think of where Blu-ray would be if Sony had a player with an SRP of $299. Price is a factor in everything.

[WickyWoo]

Saying that Heroes sold poorly because of price ignores historical fact. Nearly all TV shows have done poorly in the past, regardless of price. Not nearly as many people want to buy TV shows as compared to movies...probably because TV shows do not have the "Sit down with some popcorn and some friends" factor.

TV on DVD is the single fastest growing sector of the business. Not only that but it's extremely profitable since by and large all the shows are paid for before the DVD is even made and you're just covering authoring compression and replication.

How many TV shows are on the shelf where one season's SRP is $99.99? I think the plateau on TV shows should be an SRP of $59.99 for a season. You go above that and you will seriously hurt sales to mainstream consumers and the fanboys.

Quite a number, especially in the early days. X-Files was $149.99 SRP and they sold like 300,000 of them (they were hoping they'd move 30,000). Needless to say people at Fox were having a money fight

The biggest sets like Chappelle's Show and Family Guy have moved a million units. Favorites like Firefly have moved 4-500k by now.

The biggest problem at the moment is volume. A 22 episode set costs $200,000 easy on Blu before the $20 raw cost of pressing, advertising, overhead on each unit. Needless to say with the low volume (Heroes has moved well under 10,000 units) they're probably hoping for break-even at this point.

I agree with you 100% that TV Shows DO NOT have the "sit down with some popcorn and some friends" factor. There's just too much time that has to be invested in actually watching the whole thing. For most people it's just easier to sit down after they come home from work and watch an episode of their favorite program as it's being broadcast. This takes the casual buyer/casual viewer out of the equation up front and leaves you with the true rabid fans of the show purchasing the product.

That was the biggest fear about TV initially, sabotaging the syndication packages. Until they found out that people bought the set and still watched the broadcasts anyway. Most people get a TV set and blitz it over a short period of time, and after that do favorite episodes in small marathons, but still watch The Simpsons with their dinner

[shug7272]

Ok, am I missing something. Earlier today people were making predictions and I come back now and there are no predictions no numbers.. WTF? NM I didnt go far enough back. Forgot it was already Saturday here.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by shug7272

Ok, am I missing something. Earlier today people were making predictions and I come back now and there are no predictions no numbers.. WTF? NM I didnt go far enough back. Forgot it was already Saturday here.

60:40

This week

homMMDDYY for each Sunday date.

[Slapper]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Quite a number, especially in the early days. X-Files was $149.99 SRP and they sold like 300,000 of them (they were hoping they'd move 30,000). Needless to say people at Fox were having a money fight

The biggest sets like Chappelle's Show and Family Guy have moved a million units. Favorites like Firefly have moved 4-500k by now.

I'm not saying that TV on DVD does NOT sell well. I know it has done great. During the "early years" of TV on DVD the studios were charging a lot of money and they had no trouble getting the money because it had never really been done before. Heck, I actually have a bunch of the X-Files episodes on LD (2 episodes per disc if I remember) and I paid $34.99 per disc. My intent was to get the whole series on LD. Alas, DVD came upon us too quickly. I still have those LDs packed away.

These are no longer the early days and I don't know of any TV seasons that retail for much more than $59.99. Family Guy, Firefly, Chapelle all retail for under $59.99 and can be had for $19.99 if you're patient and can wait for a sale.

To go above that pricing structure now in hi-def is to go above what people are used to seeing now and has the effect of stearing people back toward the DVD because it's cheaper. DVD is still considered to be a very high-quality product in the eyes of consumers and I think it will be hard for most people to justify spending $99.99 on the hi-def version of a TV series when the DVD version is only $34.99.

With that said, though, I will be purchasing Prison Break and Lost Season 3, but I consider myself to be an exception to the rule. Again, I have alot of X-Files on LD...

[WickyWoo]

These are no longer the early days and I don't know of any TV seasons that retail for much more than $59.99.

BBC stuff mostly. Hugely expensive. Doctor Who $99 a season, Spooks/MI5 $79.99 until this season

You're right that people are used to seeing those prices, but at the same time you can't ask the studios to lose their shirt while volume of customers increases.

[Rob71]

Originally Posted by Slapper

I'm not saying that TV on DVD does NOT sell well. I know it has done great. During the "early years" of TV on DVD the studios were charging a lot of money and they had no trouble getting the money because it had never really been done before. Heck, I actually have a bunch of the X-Files episodes on LD (2 episodes per disc if I remember) and I paid $34.99 per disc. My intent was to get the whole series on LD. Alas, DVD came upon us too quickly. I still have those LDs packed away.

These are no longer the early days and I don't know of any TV seasons that retail for much more than $59.99. Family Guy, Firefly, Chapelle all retail for under $59.99 and can be had for $19.99 if you're patient and can wait for a sale.

To go above that pricing structure now in hi-def is to go above what people are used to seeing now and has the effect of stearing people back toward the DVD because it's cheaper. DVD is still considered to be a very high-quality product in the eyes of consumers and I think it will be hard for most people to justify spending $99.99 on the hi-def version of a TV series when the DVD version is only $34.99.

With that said, though, I will be purchasing Prison Break and Lost Season 3, but I consider myself to be an exception to the rule. Again, I have alot of X-Files on LD...

I have these and paid $19.99 a season. I also just finished getting all the Babylon 5 seasons and movies for $19.99 also. With the B5 it took me about four months to get them all, Best Buy rotates their sales, so if your patient you can get them cheap. Now if they would just start doing that with BD.

[scott1256ca]

Orignally posted by me.

No matter how you slice it, the more you charge for a product, the fewer you will sell, perhaps with the exception of a rare few types of items with a snob factor. Also $60 is not what most people will see in a B&M.

High Definition discs are pretty much the definition of Snob Factor at this point in time.

In the context in which I was posting you would have to show that the sales of the item would increase if the price went up to say something had the snob factor. So it still doesn't apply here. If they dropped the price, sales would increase. If they raise the price sales will decrease.

I've seen people whine about the price of gas for a powerboat (this was years ago when gas was less than $1/gallon). So being able to afford it was not the issue. Value for the money spent was the issue. Same with Heroes. Obviously HD DVD consumers didn't feel they were getting sufficient value for the money they had to lay out. Otherwise we'd have seen higher sales. That was my only point

[Neo65]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

...
(Heroes has moved well under 10,000 units) they're probably hoping for break-even at this point.

Wicky, did you get definite numbers of Heroes' sold numbers? The << 10,000 number I estimated by working backwards from assuming the typical 1%-2% for HDMs of DVD's 1st week. 300 is the only disk to have broken that rule so far as week1 300 combined sold something like 5% of DVD's week1. So Heroes estimate should be from 4000 to 8500 boxes if the 1-2% range holds.

It would be nice to get later disk numbers after that monster week in 300, but I suspect the unit sales after that week has been rather tepid just on how high a percentage the old releases have suddenly been getting compared to the #1 disk.

[WickyWoo]

I'm basing it on what the typical HD title moves in the first couple weeks on HD DVD. It's been pretty consistant. Even Blu-Ray only averages 5-8000 first week

[soniqstylz]

http://www.dvdempire.com/Content/Fea...99365744096500

Blu-Ray ahead this week, by a smaller margin, (52 - 48).

[Merlins]

Originally Posted by soniqstylz

http://www.dvdempire.com/Content/Fea...99365744096500

Blu-Ray ahead this week, by a smaller margin, (52 - 48).

The week is not final yet. The first numbers were 33:67 for Blu-ray. Next update was 50:50 and now it's 52:48. The final numbers will be updated then they finally update them on Tuesday. For some interesting reading about these number take a look at this post on HHD:
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showthread.php?t=18153

[WickyWoo]

The DVD Empire numbers are simply unreliable. People see this pattern every week.

HD DVDers obviously do their shopping on weekends, plain and simple

[Anthony P]

The DVD Empire numbers are simply unreliable. People see this pattern every week.

I would not call them unreliable. The final numbers are reliable (for that one store) and often if you compare one week to the next they are simillar to Neilsen (tend to move in the same direction). But their early numbers (as quoted above) tend to always favour HD DVD for some unknown reason (i.e. like Merlin pointed out).

No one should pay attention to them until the official corrected numbers come out.

[dakota81]

The Amazon numbers have fallen back into place, as expected. Blu-ray is holding steady while HD DVD has taken another nose dive.

[What'sHD]

I find Troy's rank interesting. 96 vs 774

[ra1024]

Originally Posted by What'sHD

I find Troy's rank interesting. 96 vs 774

I believe Troy has been out on HD DVD for a while so the only ones who are probably buying it right now are new player owners and those wanting the new cut.

[dobyblue]

My prediction for the last week of the year.