Amazon's Top DVD sellers looks great for blu, but..

[canerzi]

Ok as of now, on top 100 DVD's, the blu-ray discs rank as follows:

#13 Planet Earth
#15 Fifth Element
#20 Blade Runner
#23 Spider-Man trilogy
#28 Ratatouille
#32 3:10 to Yuma
#34 Pirates of Carribean: at world's end
#35 300
#38 Underworld
#40 Cars
#58 Close encounters of the third kind
#70 Casino Royale
#73 Superbad
#92 Sunshine

That's a total of 14 items. I know Amazon numbers can be misleading at times but come on...That alone is a significant. And how many hd-dvd's do you think in top 100? Just one...The unexplicably successful planet earth at #29.

I think this is very encouraging for the following weeks' numbers. However, we must not forget that Universal and/or Paramount may not care about Nielsen numbers as much as we do. Even if it is 90 to 10 for several weeks, the 90% is still not such a big loss because the total hi-def pie is not big enough yet. If they are getting paid by Toshiba in some form, and it's impossible that they are not, the incentives they are getting are still bigger than the benefits they would get in short term by switching to blu.

I am really curious as to what the long term plans of Universal, Paramount and Toshiba are. They are undertaking a huge marketing campaign as well as drastic price drops, but what exactly are they expecting? That seeing the huge amount of hd-dvd hardware sold, Fox or Disney is going to switch sides? They probably won't, and even if they did, this would prolong the format war and will possibly be the end of both formats. Is this what they want? I'm not sure. And how about the money spent in marketing by Toshiba? Is it really worth it? How valuable are your existing hd-dvd hardware inventories anyway?

Universal and Paramount's hd-dvd disc inventories should not be that critical in their decisions. I guess, and this is me, they are waiting for the total hi-def pie to get large enough so that it outweighs the incentives they are getting from Toshiba.

I really wish Toshiba would cut its losses and give up already. There should be a rule against what they are doing because they are in some form "cheating" the consumers. Marketing on the advantages of hd-dvd format? Does it even make sense? And what about that "hd-dvd players also upscale your standard dvd's" stuff? What does that even mean? "We know hd-dvd is dead, and so may you, but at this price, what do you have to lose"?

I don't want to go to a movie at the theater and check the producing studio anymore. We used to not care about the medium delivering it and just enjoy the movies. I want to go back to that as soon as possible.

[jw]

I read all of this only to ask myself what did I just read, so I read it again and summing it up it has nothing to do with amazon's numbers , just a complaint on why Para/Universal are still hddvd exclusive? Did I read this right? I think there are numerous threads on this same subject

[canerzi]

Originally Posted by jwbbud

I read all of this only to ask myself what did I just read, so I read it again and summing it up it has nothing to do with amazon's numbers , just a complaint on why Para/Universal are still hddvd exclusive? Did I read this right? I think there are numerous threads on this same subject

It's not like "it has nothing to do with amazon's numbers"; as you can see, I put up the amazon ranks in the first part, which are interesting enough.

But I also wanted to add my thoughts on paramount/universal/toshiba.

[GregBlu5]

I believe that all Toshiba really got from Uni/Para/Dream was their temporary silence about their plans (regarding when) to go Blu. They are still free to make whatever moves are necessary to make the shift to Blu production (whether or not they continue producing the token HD DVD title here and there, for however long that may last).

These companies know fully well what's happening with the Nielsens and whatever other sales data is out there for them. And they know perfectly well that HD DVD player sales and disk sales are now tanking and will continue to get worse rather than improve.

RCA spent five years in the marketplace with their failed CED Selectavision technology in the early-to-mid 80's. They produced over 1700 titles from all studios in that time, and sold players (to me, for one) on sale with a free disk tossed in while CED never really caught on. In contrast, I give Toshiba no more than two years of presence in the marketplace with HD DVD. They may continue to produce HD DVD players, or switch, as Pioneer did after DVD appeared to challenge their own Laserdisc technology, to produce combo players. (You can still buy, directly from Pioneer, a combo Laserdisc/DVD player, and Pioneer was in the Laserdisc business for 20 years.)

This relative silence from Tosh/Para/Uni/Dream is merely a temporary breathing space before we start hearing about massive defections from those remaining studios and the retailers.

As Bill Hunt and others have pointed out, this time of year doesn't generate significant sales anyway. Companies can afford to make lots of significant course corrections--off the radar.

-Greg