Did the buy-a-thon kill Amazon?

[kamiller42]

Originally Posted by slickkeng

I've been tracking amazon sales rank on and off at hidef digest and it looks now that the HD-DVD versions of smallville, planet earth, and 300 have outsold the blu-ray versions! WTF is going on??? If you look at their graphs, HD-DVD has gained alot of ground! Is it because of the whole amazon HD-DVD promo for 8 HD-DVD movies? Do these freebies count toward their sales ranks? Anyway, considering the sale-a-thon I'm kinda shocked that they could catch up so much (well on amazon only anyway). Check it out at http://amazon.highdefdigest.com/, click on custom graphs and pull back for the last 2 days.

There has been a strange HD DVD surge at Amazon. I was checking things out at eProductWars, and it tells the same story. What is even stranger is how the blu line has barely budged in the past couple of days. Maybe most people bought there blu's outside Amazon. I know I did. We will just have to see how the week's numbers look.

In regards to 300, looks like HD DVD is falling. Smallville is still less than Blu. Ditto for Planet Earth.

[The Shrike]

Originally Posted by kamiller42

There has been a strange HD DVD surge at Amazon. I was checking things out at eProductWars, and it tells the same story. What is even stranger is how the blu line has barely budged in the past couple of days. Maybe most people bought there blu's outside Amazon. I know I did. We will just have to see how the week's numbers look.

In regards to 300, looks like HD DVD is falling. Smallville is still less than Blu. Ditto for Planet Earth.

I noticed that too. What IS going on at Amazon? It looks like a steady increase for HD DVD, but I don't see why that would be happening.... Anyone have thoughts?

[Copywriter]

Originally Posted by The Shrike

I noticed that too. What IS going on at Amazon? It looks like a steady increase for HD DVD, but I don't see why that would be happening.... Anyone have thoughts?

It could be that 300 isn't that great of a movie (3 of 5 stars) in a film sense and the obvious demographic that it was made for resides more with 360 owners and their add-ons that with BLU people. Honestly, it was a 3 of 5 for me. You had 5 minutes of story and lots of stop-motion and over-killed lines.

The movie could have been much more than it was. Sorry, I'm not 12 and simply ripping a head off isn't enough to make a film worthy. Troy, Rome (HBO) and others are heads and shoulders above this movie.

Honestly, I'm sad that I bought it on BLU. Should have just got the SD version and upscaled it.

It's hard to say without looking at demographics, but that's my initial take.

[ryoohki]

Originally Posted by Copywriter

It could be that 300 isn't that great of a movie (3 of 5 stars) in a film sense and the obvious demographic that it was made for resides more with 360 owners and their add-ons that with BLU people. Honestly, it was a 3 of 5 for me. You had 5 minutes of story and lots of stop-motion and over-killed lines.

The movie could have been much more than it was. Sorry, I'm not 12 and simply ripping a head off isn't enough to make a film worthy. Troy, Rome (HBO) and others are heads and shoulders above this movie.

Honestly, I'm sad that I bought it on BLU. Should have just got the SD version and upscaled it.

It's hard to say without looking at demographics, but that's my initial take.

Nah, the DVD version is full of Macroblock and EE, i started to watch it on SD DVD to test it, and quickly removed the disc from my PS3, the share amount of MB made me barf.... I mean earlier DVD release were much better than what we get now, the peak of DVD was 1999,2000,2001, after that it slowly got to hell with more and more crappy transfert coming out, i sold all my DVD in 2003 after being pissed off about the quality...

[kamiller42]

HD DVD is about to pass up Blu-Ray in sales of the top 10 products. It is almost as if a bot it out there buying up HD DVD discs like a mad man. Look at the 7 day chart. Very bizarre.

[Rustmonsteru]

Originally Posted by kamiller42

There has been a strange HD DVD surge at Amazon. I was checking things out at eProductWars, and it tells the same story. What is even stranger is how the blu line has barely budged in the past couple of days. Maybe most people bought there blu's outside Amazon. I know I did. We will just have to see how the week's numbers look.

In regards to 300, looks like HD DVD is falling. Smallville is still less than Blu. Ditto for Planet Earth.

I did my purchasing at Warner (25% code), Best Buy ($20.00 reward zone certificate) & DVDEmpire this week.

Amazon is on my sh** list right now; it always takes them like 5-7 days to ship out in stock items to me . DVDEmpire costs me $0.35 a BD more, I get my stuff in three days by free shipping and it ships by 3pm the day it's in stock. I'm not buying into Amazon prime to get treated better either - that's BS.

[kamiller42]

Originally Posted by Rustmonsteru

Amazon is on my sh** list right now; it always takes them like 5-7 days to ship out in stock items to me . DVDEmpire costs me $0.35 a BD and I get my stuff in three days by free shipping and it ships by 3pm the day it's in stock. I'm not buying into Amazon prime to get treated better either - that's BS.

Amazon does seem to be going bad. They used to ship fast on just about everything. Now, I think they are trying to keep inventory levels low to reduce overhead. We are feeling it on this side of things.

It's not just high def DVDs either. About 2 months, my order for Space Ghost Coast to Coast Vol 1-3 went from shipping in 1.5 - 2 weeks to shipping on 2/6/08!! A saw I ordered last month has an estimated ship date of October 2, 2007 - October 19, 2007. Those two orders and one other were all open because of shipping delays. 3 orders which could not ship. Aggravating.

[ryanpatrick]

ordered my 2 last night. House of 1,000 Corpses & The Replacement Killers. got them in the mail today. amazon has always been good with shipping speed. at least with my experience with them.

[DAMNSAM77]

Ordered my 4 (in-stock) BD movies from Amazon about 28 hours ago and they have all shipped as of just a few minutes ago!

[TorpedoShockwave]

Originally Posted by kamiller42

There has been a strange HD DVD surge at Amazon. I was checking things out at eProductWars, and it tells the same story. What is even stranger is how the blu line has barely budged in the past couple of days. Maybe most people bought there blu's outside Amazon. I know I did. We will just have to see how the week's numbers look.

In regards to 300, looks like HD DVD is falling. Smallville is still less than Blu. Ditto for Planet Earth.

Just to let you guys know I bet there was a top secret HD-DVD buy- a-thon that same day. We had no impact on the sales, just look at dvdempire.com, no sales increase on BD; actually it was a decrease in sales for BD. Actually BD sales are going down day by day at that website. Now you guys mention about Amazon, we had no impact there. I guess those HD-DVD owners had purchased a lot films at that very same day.

http://www.dvdempire.com/Content/Fea...99365959436836

http://amazon.highdefdigest.com/

[Manco]

Just to let you guys know I bet there was a top secret HD-DVD buy- a-thon that same day. We had no impact on the sales, just look at dvdempire.com, no sales increase on BD; actually it was a decrease in sales for BD. Actually BD sales are going down day by day at that website. Now you guys mention about Amazon, we had no impact there. I guess those HD-DVD owners had purchased a lot films at that very same day.

Uh...Yeah... Well we talked about the buy-a-thon endlessly for like weeks on end and the threads were pasted all over the internet at AVS and elsewhere.

No real surpise. They knew we were coming. And they mounted a successful counter attack.
It's called...WAR!

[Zyclone]

i know alot of people are'nt big fans of HD DVD but i think increased sales numbers for both formats is good because it atleast shows that people are interested in Hi Def movies. *jumps behind shield*

[Manco]

Originally Posted by Zyclone

i know alot of people are'nt big fans of HD DVD but i think increased sales numbers for both formats is good because it atleast shows that people are interested in Hi Def movies. *jumps behind shield*

Mods: Please ban Zyclone for this unacceptable behavior of supporting HDM. *leaps into fox hole*

[Zyclone]

que benny hill theme and three stooges antics between Manco and me

[CptOzone]

I ordered 2 blu-rays on the 18th from Amazon:

Lethal Weapon
Lethal Weapon 2

Both were in stock.

Neither has yet shipped.

I used to have great success with Amazon, but anymore the service seems to be lacking. I guess I am going to have to find a new place to order from. I still have several titles on pre-order, so I will see how those are handled.

What online sources do others use for ordering blu-rays besides amazon?

[TorpedoShockwave]

Originally Posted by Manco

Uh...Yeah... Well we talked about the buy-a-thon endlessly for like weeks on end and the threads were pasted all over the internet at AVS and elsewhere.

No real surpise. They knew we were coming. And they mounted a successful counter attack.
It's called...WAR!

Therefore it was pointless to have a Blu-Ray buy-a-thon.

[Tee]

I just got my BD today!

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by kamiller42

There has been a strange HD DVD surge at Amazon. I was checking things out at eProductWars, and it tells the same story. What is even stranger is how the blu line has barely budged in the past couple of days. Maybe most people bought there blu's outside Amazon. I know I did. We will just have to see how the week's numbers look.

In regards to 300, looks like HD DVD is falling. Smallville is still less than Blu. Ditto for Planet Earth.

Amazon recently relisted the following deals which may explain the surge:

Get Seven Free HD DVDs with the Purchase of an HD Player
Buy an Xbox 360 HD DVD Player and Get Seven HD DVDs Free

Although Amazon did post a similar deal for the PS3 unfortunately the Blu-ray players didn't get any love this time around.

[TorpedoShockwave]

Originally Posted by rdodolak

Amazon recently relisted the followng deals which may explain the surge:

Get Seven Free HD DVDs with the Purchase of an HD Player
Buy an Xbox 360 HD DVD Player and Get Seven HD DVDs Free

Although Amazon did post a similar deal for the PS3 unfortunately the Blu-ray players didn't get any love this time around.

Based on your comment, this means HD-DVD is selling far more than Blu-Ray. Because that same deal is also available for Blu-Ray and it has no effect on sales, while, HD-DVD does.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.htm...blurayforum-20

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by TorpedoShockwave

Based on your comment, this means HD-DVD is selling far more than Blu-Ray. Because that same deal is also available for Blu-Ray and it has no effect on sales, while, HD-DVD does.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.htm...blurayforum-20

The same deal is only available for the PS3 and not the standalone blu-ray players. The HD DVD deal does include the standalone players.

The highdefdigest numbers only show that more of the same HD DVD titles are currently being sold then previously before at Amazon. The 2 free discs offer started around the time HD DVD started to show an upward trend in the HDD charts.

With the exception of Transformers the HDD charts show that more people are once again buying 300, Batman Begins, and Planet Earth on HD DVD with the first two being elegible in the Amazon deal.

There are two scenarios to keep in mind. The top 10 charts are easily affected if say everyone where to purchase the same ten titles vs. everyone randomly purchasing various titles in the 400+ catalog. In terms of the top 100 titles, it's also much easier to affect the charts when you're starting from an average sales rank of 6000 vs. 2000.

Blu-ray tends to have more of a steady but upward trend on Amazon, while HD DVD tends to have violent upward and downward swings. Again, these charts only show the Amazon sales rank and not necessarily the actual number of copies being sold.

The same thing happened the last time Amazon offered these deals.