81:19 Nielsen/VideoScan Weekly Sales Numbers

[atomik kinder]

Originally Posted by DetroitSportsFan

From High Def Digest -


March 25, 2008

* Bonnie & Clyde (Warner)
* Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics (DVD International)
* Star Trek: The Original Series - Season Two (Paramount)
* UFC: The Best of 2007 (First Look)[/color]

If I am not mistaken, wasn't Star Trek Season 2 postponed indefinitely? Probably because the first one sold so poorly.

[sj001]

Originally Posted by atomik kinder

If I am not mistaken, wasn't Star Trek Season 2 postponed indefinitely? Probably because the first one sold so poorly.

Nope, looks like it is still scheduled to come out late March, according to HDD. I don't know why they bother, they'll sell another measly 7-8k.

[dakota81]

Originally Posted by sj001

Nope, looks like it is still scheduled to come out late March, according to HDD. I don't know why they bother, they'll sell another measly 7-8k.

When one weighs $150m versus 7-8k in sales numbers... season 2 is being released.

[Clark Kent]

HD DVD will never win a week in sales again. It's that simple. This Christmas season ended any hope of that. History will show the only week they ever really had a chance at was Transformers release week but we all know how that turned out. I'm not that surprised at Bourne's relatively poor performance. For an action movie it skews older than something like Transformers. Pirates 3 obviously had very good legs.

[jebel]

Originally Posted by Terjyn

People, insiders included, claimed the Transformers number was insane because it was slightly greater than a 2.0 multiplier.

Why is this suddenly completely correct?

Should we turn around and believe Paramount's 190k number?

You are right, I don't have insider numbers.

But something, somewhere, changed. Either all numbers prior to Pirates week make no sense or all numbers since don't.

Why?

Did Neilson's revamp their formula?

Do you have the numbers? Do you believe Paramount's 190K for Transformers number? Why should I suddenly believe Vaughn's 2x multiplier now when people called it insane for Paramount?

WHAT THE HELL CHANGED?

Nothing "changed". Paramount simply overestimated/overexaggerated the number of copies of TF sold. They didn't sell 190K - per several third party sources, it was probably closer to 115K-120K. They were either including units sold to rental channels, or total shipped, or just overexaggerated.

Dave Vaughn simply quotes VS numbers. If most studios normally publicly announce honest #s for titles, such as Pirates, and the multiplier to reach total sales appears to be between 1.5 and 2.0, that makes logical sense, considering that VS numbers incorporate 50-60% of the market. And then TF comes along and per Paramounts announcement it's suddenly a 2.2 multiple - you can either assume that the VS numbers are wrong, or DV misreported them, or Paramount overexaggerated sales. Especially with multiple third-party sources disputing Paramount's announced numbers, it's logical to assume the latter. There's every reason to believe the VS numbers were exactly what DV reported.

[kowhite]

Originally Posted by Clark Kent

I'm not that surprised at Bourne's relatively poor performance. For an action movie it skews older than something like Transformers. Pirates 3 obviously had very good legs.

Bourne sold very well, what do you mean relatively poor performance? Relatively speaking, it sold fantastic. It's the relative part that hurts...HD-DVD overall sold poorly, only buoyed by the fact that Bourne did indeed fact sell very well.

[Joon]

Get ready to hear nothing but this from DUD'ers. "Warner is speaking at CES for HD-DVD, they are on the invitation." This is the big thing right now.

[blitz6speed]

Originally Posted by kowhite

Bourne sold very well, what do you mean relatively poor performance? Relatively speaking, it sold fantastic. It's the relative part that hurts...HD-DVD overall sold poorly, only buoyed by the fact that Bourne did indeed fact sell very well.

Bourne sold poorly. It only sold 1.5 times of the RISIDUALS of POTC3's 2nd week. For a huge blockbuster, thats got all the goodies (IME, net crap, lossless audio, an entire trilogy out on the hardware, etc), it sold piss poor. It sold GREAT compared to HD DVDs normal releases, but it got nowhere even near transformers level.

[jdc115]

Originally Posted by DetroitSportsFan

From High Def Digest -

March 04, 2008

* Aquarium Impressions (Navarre Corporation)
* Fireplace Impressions (Navarre Corporation)
* Mystic Forests (Navarre Corporation)

I think the week of 4th March HD-dvd will be able to win and end this war

[punkguy03]

when will the nielsen numbers be up for the next week?i really want to see the harry potter numbers for blu ray vs hd

rock on blu ray!!!
o and i bought the potter gift set

[punkguy03]

the week of march 4th hd will win?um no sorry there going to lose!ive never even heard of those 3 movies that you posted maybe im out of date but i see most movies in theaters so ya.

[cueman98]

Originally Posted by punkguy03

the week of march 4th hd will win?um no sorry there going to lose!ive never even heard of those 3 movies that you posted maybe im out of date but i see most movies in theaters so ya.

Dude.. I think the guy is being sarcastic, there's no way hd-dvd will win that week, not with that line-up

[Porfie]

Originally Posted by cueman98

Dude.. I think the guy is being sarcastic, there's no way hd-dvd will win that week, not with that line-up

LOL I think he is just being sarcastic.

[LeoneFan]

Originally Posted by Terjyn

If Warner doesn't decide by the end of January, then they aren't going to shortly thereafter, it'll probably be another 6 months at best.

For some reason these companies refuse to step up to the plate and do what's good for themselves in the long term.

I'll still buy Blu-Rays. I will stop buying half-assed PQ/AQ Blu-Rays. I'll definitely stop buying Warner Blu-Rays, as if they refuse to help themselves long term, I refuse to help them short term.

I agree with you 100%. I have bought many Warner titles but if they don't anounce exclusivity by the end of January then I will not buy any more of their garbage hand-me-down ported discs. They can go screw themselves as far as I'm concerned.

[punkguy03]

ya know it kind of sucks too warner supports both but i want v for vendetta alot and batman begins. so hopefully they release those sometime

[kwhiplash]

Originally Posted by sj001

Nope, looks like it is still scheduled to come out late March, according to HDD. I don't know why they bother, they'll sell another measly 7-8k.

I would have bought them all for my husband had they been released on Blu.

[terjeber]

Originally Posted by greekjgg

I think if they announce blu only in a couple of weeks, the media will portray them as "bloodsuckers" asking people to spend $110 for HP boxsets, etc for a format they know will be done with in a couple of weeks.

Easily fixed by Warner, and at relatively moderate cost in reality. Just offer people upgrades to Blu with some sort of time limit. "You ship is your HD DVD and a self-addressed envelope we'll send you the Blu version". Less than 20% will take them up on the offer, which means cost is low, and they win in the eyes of everybody. Well, except for any fan-boys.

I also think going exclusive is a good business move for Warner. Going Blu exclusively will end the war instantly. Staying format neutral or going red is going to prolong the format war for at least 24 months. The only result of the format war is a slower up-take in the sales of HD hardware and therefore software.

If Warner goes exclusively Blu they will help sell a lot more players and therefore a lot more movies. That means theyæll make a lot more money.

[kwhiplash]

Originally Posted by punkguy03

the week of march 4th hd will win?um no sorry there going to lose!ive never even heard of those 3 movies that you posted maybe im out of date but i see most movies in theaters so ya.

He just forgot to use the sarcasm face.

[darinp2]

Originally Posted by UltimateFighter

SON OF A #$%#$!!!!!!!!!!

I'm guessing that Dana White is a fan of porn.

We can look at what happened with Joone of Digital Playground where he was trashing Blu-ray last year and now has decided to release one of their porn titles (Pirates) on Blu-ray January 4th, and with HD extras instead of SD extras like the HD DVD version. And the reason I saw that Joone guy give was that Playstation people were emailing asking for it. I think this is a case where petitioning to Dana White and the UFC could help. Dana seems like a guy who would understand the advantage of having enough space to do everything in HD (including the behind the scenes stuff) going forward and he definitely should understand the overlap between PS3 fans and UFC fans (especially with the SGBU demographic, which is stuff-gets-blown-up with the clean version).

I'm normally not a fan of petitions, but like I said, I think it could work in this case. And even if not a petition, somebody should contact Dana White or somebody else at the UFC and explain the situation to them (especially how another producer of content who disparaged Blu-ray decided after giving HD DVD exclusivity a chance, that releasing their content on Blu-ray made sense).

--Darin

[Neo65]

At this point, it's becoming to clear to even people who have a red bias that the price of BD players will follow the HD DVD players downwards with time. In fact, BD players today are priced below that of HD DVD players in June, meaning that within 6 months, there will be BD players at 199 and below. By black-friday 08, there will be door-crasher specials a $98 or below.

Note the parallels, when betamax-hifi players broke the $300 barrier, VHS-hifi players followed, and we know how that one ended.

The reason is a simple rule of mass production and economies of scale which BD has now shown. The blu-ray drives IS now much cheaper to make.

On the BD disk manufacturing side, the same rules will follow. Yields continue to march upwards, price continues to decline towards DVD levels. Outside of the AACS as an adder, cost to make each disk will be very close to DVDs.

If (and this is in doubt as there's indications WB mght have to decide sometime next year) this continues on, and assuming that not enough money is available to buy more major studios, the only hope that HD DVD could follow is the improved multi-layer-combo one, where both DVD9 and HD30 are on one side. There might be some demand for this as combos' problem is primarily a price one, if it was priced the same as non combos, without the production lapses in QC, there might be interest in this path. It won't be enough to overcome BD's lead, as even when you price combos same as a BD, people still pick BD. There's just more people with BD players out there.

Paradoxically, if D9/H30 were to happen, people can needle HD DVD endlessly about their yields, cycle time as it will take them an unknown length of time to get out of manufacturing hell, for yields to become reasonable. The first releases will likely be 9/15 or 5/30 as even 3 layer is not proven to be manufacturable yet. As long as combos are priced above normal DVDs, they will always be a non factor as a trojan horse, so that argument doesn't wash --- unless you can price this same as a DVD.

BD could do the spec one upsmanship by either going after a 3rd ayer or by increasing density per layer up, or perhaps 4:2:2 or even 12bit video to go down that rabbit hole of deep color.