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

[JohnGalt]

It would be pretty much impossible to know but a related statistic that I believe would be more telling would be profits derived from sales of each type of media. E.g., a 90% DVD, 6% Blu-ray, & 4% HD DVD breakdown along units sold might equate to something more like 80% DVD, 13% Blu-ray, and 7% HD DVD on the profit side since HD media might be more profitable per unit after one-time costs are factored out. In the end the profitability will drive the issue.

[jorg]

Originally Posted by 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

actrualy i remember reading that hd media acounts for up to 4% of dvd sales on a big week while in japan blu-ray acount for like 34% of dvd sales!!!

[NutsAboutPS3]

Originally Posted by welwynnick

So how about ignoring week by week sales percentages, and think about what fraction of total DVD sales are achieved by the respective formats?

I agree, and I'm sure the studios look at this. It allows you to compare for different titles, giving more points of reference than just Warner titles for the relative performance of Blu-ray and HD DVD. Transformers and Spiderman 3 will have different sales figures, because the movies themselves have differing levels of popularity, but % of high def sales vs dvd sales gives a way to compare different titles such as these.

[richard lichtenfelt]

I thought that the movies were closer to 7% of dvd sales and the hd players account for about 30% of disc players sold now.

[welwynnick]

Originally Posted by welwynnick

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.

My bad wording I guess; I wasn’t trying to tell everyone what the actual sales ratio was, I just quoted 1% as an example value.

The suggestion is that the sales ratio or percentage (whatever its value may be) could be a useful figure of merit for assessing relative market penetration of the new formats. By taking a number of contributing factors out of the equation, it may give us an intrinsic measure of success. Then we won’t have to apply so many qualifiers to all the statistics in order to make fair comparisons.
Of course sales percentage is likely to have its own patterns and trends. For example, more recent releases (to an increasingly larger buying market) should have progressively bigger percentages. Catalogue releases may have a lower percentage than releases that are concurrent with DVD. And hopefully we should see a clear trend between the formats, and that trend should be more stable and less volatile than simple sales figures or rankings. If there’s a correlation between the formats, it should stick out like a sore thumb.

I’m not bothered if Spiderman 3 didn’t sell as much as Transformers; I don’t think it did as well on DVD or at the box office either – that’s nothing to do with formats, and it would help to take that out of the equation.

Nick

[spicynacho]

This would be very useful for new releases, but it would be a harsh comparison for catalog titles.

For example I would like to know if ratios looked like this:
300 - 94:4:2
Transformers - 98:0:2
SM3 - 96:4:0
Rat - 96:4:0
HP - 94:4:2

Or whatever it might be...

[gand41f]

Originally Posted by welwynnick

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

Glad to hear someone else interested in this. In my opinion (for the reasons you stated), I think this is the most important metric. I started collecting this info a while back but got discouraged by the lack of interest. It's also very hard to get reliable numbers.

Last time I checked, for new release blockbusters BD usually accounted to about 2% of DVD and HD 1%. I'll try to dig up my old info and post it here later today.

enjoy
gandalf