Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending January 18th, 2009
by Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Jan 25th 2009 at 10:38PM
As the reality of the so called 5th quarter hits home and both the old and new forms of package media come back down to reality, Blu-ray continues to hold its own. We assume this is because of all those Blu-ray players sold over Christmas, but it could just as well be all the sales on discs out there. The really good news from Nielsen VideoScan courtesy of Home Media Magazine though isn't the 12 percent market share, the real good news is all the new data. There are two new charts this week that are of particular interest so we're including them after the break with the usually top 20 chart. Both of the new charts are just updated version of the old ones, but updates that provide some very insightful information. The first is the Blu-ray market share vs DVD, which now thankfully only includes the top 50 Blu-ray titles rather than sorted by the share of each title. This brings us new data like the fact that even after a month, The Dark Knight still moves about 30 percent of its discs on Blu-ray. The second new chart also brings us per title market share, but this time of the top 20 titles on DVD. This makes it easy to see which titles still aren't on Blu-ray despite being released on DVD, as well as how well some of the less popular tiles on Blu-ray stack up. Like for example the fact that while My Best Friend's Girl made its debut on at number three on the DVD chart, on Blu-ray it only managed to steal away 8 percent from the incumbent. This of course will be more interesting as we move along, but for now we're just really thankful that Nielsen and HMM made the changes we've been clamoring for.
Filed under: Blu-ray
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bozster @ Jan 25th 2009 11:51PM
By the way things are going, I think we can expect return to 6-8% of DVD top 20 with Blu-Ray in the next couple of weeks. I'm not sure if there are any new releases that will appeal to Blu-ray demographic.
Ed @ Jan 25th 2009 11:54PM
Suffering a 4x great dip than DVD is Blu-ray holding its own? *confused*
DVD4ME @ Jan 26th 2009 12:29AM
It's called spin.
WebDev511 @ Jan 26th 2009 1:11AM
What are you saying? that a 44% drop in consumer spending is bad? Are you some kind of HD DVD fan boy?
In all seriousness, it just shows that people are putting the brakes on spending across the board and that the gift cards have probably all been spent.
3dpenguin @ Jan 26th 2009 12:31AM
Anybody else notice a downward patter since Christmas?
DrXym @ Jan 26th 2009 9:45AM
Yeah, it's almost as if Christmas represents the high point in sales in any given year and that once its over and those residual gift cards get spent and the new releases dry up the sales drop.
3dpenguin @ Jan 26th 2009 11:16AM
This goes for both DVD and Blu-ray, so if Blu-ray sales were stable even with a dip in sales it should be able to maintain a certain sales percentage week after week, you know like it was doing when it was getting 8% a week.
DrXym @ Jan 26th 2009 12:16PM
I don't know why you expect the formats to exactly track each other. There will be weeks where the type of releases is going to sell differently from one format to the next by virtue of various factors.
Brian Kaempen @ Jan 26th 2009 12:35AM
Did Battlestar Galactica come out on HD DVD at all? It's strange that it's in HD on Sci-fi and available from several sources in HD including iTunes, yet no blu-ray despite it's popularity.
-Brian
steveo @ Jan 26th 2009 12:43AM
Yes, Season 1 came out on HD DVD.
darklighter @ Jan 26th 2009 2:22AM
I read somewhere that, since the series was so close to being done when HD-DVD died, they're holding off on a Blu-ray release until after they're finished and they'll do a giant Blu-ray box set.
DVD4ME @ Jan 26th 2009 3:56AM
Where's all the die hards who said blu ray was definitely going main stream this Christmas holiday period, there was plenty of regulars here making that call a few months back, come on out of the wood work you lot!
DEEZNUTZ @ Jan 26th 2009 9:40AM
WTF, are you serious with your comment? What are you, in grade school?
Go watch your stale HD DVD collection and leave the adults alone.
Multi-format-mayhem @ Jan 26th 2009 12:27PM
We all know that it took a couple of record selling titles (Iron Man & Batman TDK) to spike the sales results last year.
....and that the true sales numbers last year were that Blu-ray took just 4.45% of the total movie retail disc market in the USA.
(elsewhere the numbers were much smaller as HD TV adoption trails the US by several years in some instances)
So, who cares about Nielson's weekly fantasy 8%, 12%, 14%, 20% or 30% nonsense.
It's either, at best, the most vague trend info or, at worst, just cr@p divorced from any credible reality to be sucked up by the fanboys, who will believe & parrot any old rubbish - even when EngadgetHD publishes the true numbers.
Until a couple of massive sales hits come along the real situation is that Blu-ray
(in the depressed market that 2009 is guaranteed to be)
will be lucky to get anywhere near 2008's true numbers.
Gus @ Jan 26th 2009 6:59PM
C'mon Deez , I seem to recall you saying it was make or break time this holiday season for blu ray and if it didn't make it now it was destined to remain a niche.
Sounds like a little harmless fun may have struck a nerve?
DVD4ME @ Jan 27th 2009 3:00AM
Yeah, ya big girls blouse Deeznutz, just stirring the pot, got ya, :-)
Besides, I thought if anyone was going to bite it would have been xym, according to him blu was going to be about 80% market share by this stage with everyone dumping DVD like it was smallpox and flocking to buy Funais for their CRTs in massive droves.............3, 2, 1
Mike @ Jan 26th 2009 5:03AM
i like that chart showing bd percentage of top 20 movies.
I see nothing wrong...bd sales taking a break but I can't wait till some good new releases come out.
DrXym @ Jan 26th 2009 6:19AM
You only have to look at the titles coming out to see why sales are dipping. It's going to be March or so before sales pick up in any significant way and the second half of the year where the growth occurs. The reason is obvious too - because that's when the blockbusters get released. It's the same every single year on every format and no surprise whatsoever. It's quite lame to see people reading anything more into it than that.
Bozster @ Jan 26th 2009 7:14AM
So instead of growing, the only real numbers on Blu-ray are present when there's a blockbuster on the shelves? That's hardly growing IMO. When it falls back to similar numbers only a few months back and when there are no movies out that cater to a specific PS3 crowd, I wouldn't consider "base" growing, it's pretty much the same with only larger percentage of Blu-ray owners buying a specific title because of it's appeal. So if it's not a blockbuster action flick, or a Disney/Pixar movie, you can pretty much forget about it, no?
DrXym @ Jan 26th 2009 7:43AM
The simple fact is that when a week does not contain popular new releases it will have less sales than weeks when it does. Especially so when you choose to compare sales at their peak in December to those in January. I'm surprised that you are having trouble comprehending this. It happens every year to every format. Sales of Blu and DVD aren't going to pick up again until some major titles start appearing.
squiggleslash @ Jan 26th 2009 9:41AM
DVD sales will also be down in weeks without blockbusters.
What we saw this week was a disproportionate drop in BD sales. It looks like, at this point, that BD sales are still highly dependent upon the PS3 demographic. Unless specific types of blockbuster have been recently released, BD sales plummet.
That said, I have to give it credit for remaining around 12% (by dollars) of the total market. I'll be interested to see whether it stays there or drops further once the influx of new BD owners has settled and BD owners start to look at the relative prices of BD vs DVD, vs the perceived quality they see when viewed on their TVs.
Bozster @ Jan 26th 2009 9:47AM
I understand what you are trying to say, but your view is not really valid IMO. DVD has nowhere else to grow. It's already pretty steady and massive. As we can see, the difference is huge even on non-hot-release dates. It only dropped, less then 12% while Blu-Ray dipped close to 45%. It should be completely different by logic. If Blu-Ray was expanding, by any logic, you would have to constantly see bigger numbers and positive trend in growth percentage just because it's a smaller market. Yet we don't see that,we see actually the opposite. It seems that Blu-ray even with player sales, can't seem to significantly improve numbers and I think it's pretty late now too. This year it will get worse and worse due to economy (for both DVD and BD).
Don't get me wrong, I really have no interest in Blu-ray failing. It's great quality, I buy them and have a fully equipped home theater, 106" screen, Sony projector, PS3, Samsung BD players (1500 and 2500). I'm just extremely dissapointed with pretty much everything around it. Players, movies, TV shows whatever. The content still seems sparse. They should be pumping catalog titles, TV shows, and whole bunch of other stuff on Blu-ray, but they don't. Why? I have no clue (replication costs? technical issues?), but that's why numbers look like they look like as well. Unless it's a sure thing and a blockbuster you won't see numbers jump. Simple as that.
DrXym @ Jan 26th 2009 11:24AM
Bozster there are plenty of Blu Ray releases coming out but it's mostly catalogue and filler material. That's just the time of year it is. Studios released all the good stuff for Christmas, not now. Catalogue stuff might be interesting or not depending but its not going to mean a surge in sales unless it were something like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Sales are gone to run along the bottom for the first half of the year with some spikes in March (holiday movies like Quantum of Solace, maybe Twilight), and June (for Fathers day) and then climb steadily from late August/September onwards. The same sort of pattern happens the same every year.
Blu Ray probably is more sensitive to blockbusters because traditionally people want to get the whizz bang movies to show on their new format and traditionally it's going to be affluent males who drive new formats which is why Twilight will be an interesting title to watch.
daaper @ Jan 26th 2009 8:39AM
I love the games of reverse mad libs people always play in these blu-ray articles. We'll give you the following words and you just form sentences around them:
PS3
fanboy
HD-DVD
spin / lies
niche
recession
Honestly, why do so many of you bother to post the same thing over and over? Do you think there are that many new visitors every time that haven't seen all this crap before?
Bozster @ Jan 26th 2009 5:23PM
Or it could be Grubert that the prices are higher and the 2 for 1 deals and stuff like that are gone so this account for a rise of 2-3 percent?
Grubert @ Jan 26th 2009 10:32AM
Individual sales ratios are revelatory.
Comedies now selling on BD around 10 percent of DVD (and action movies doing upwards of 20 percent) is quite good.
Last year, movies such as First Sunday or The Bucket List were doing 3%.
National Treasure 2 or Vantage Point were doing 7-9%.
Now we see figures that are 2-3x that.
Jimmy @ Jan 26th 2009 2:45PM
Very good point Grubert. "My Best Friends Girl" and "Horton Hears a Who" are both 8% of disc sales. Those are great numbers for blu-ray. Its very, very early to try and predict this years sales but they look good for blu-ray.
Last years numbers show that about 4.5% of all movie disc sales were on blu-ray. This years numbers should be anywhere from 6%-10%. My guess is that this time next year we will have people on here talking about blu-ray not being mass market yet because they only sold 7.3% of the disc market.
Gus @ Jan 26th 2009 9:12PM
You lot keep forgetting, it is still only a percentage of retail $ volume, it could be 100% and still get a numbers volume flogging, and it is still only comparing the top 20 and not the entire market.
Clearly blu rays numbers have doubled in the last 12 months which is a good thing, but the continual BS about 10-15% is wearing thin, all it is is cherry picking a cross section of information suitable to the spin doctors, 4% is closer to the truth, why the FK don't they just run with that??
We all know why, it is deception plain and simple, just give us the facts and stop the continual BS!
mitchelljd @ Jan 27th 2009 11:44AM
with Blu-Ray being 12% compared to DVD, it is a very good indicator it is growing nicely. The user base has started to grow and ... yes there is a lul in the big ticket titles coming out, but there are some niche classics and big family titles coming over the coming two months.
Titles like:
Office Space, Groundhog Day, The Bourne Trilogy, Any Given Sunday, Napoleon Dynamite, Sideways, Taxi Driver, Madagascar 2 (hit hit), Amadeus, Donnie Darko, Little Miss Sunshine, Pretty Woman, Raging Bull, Gandi, French Connection (1 & 2), Futurama:Into the wild green Yonder, Ronin, The Silence of the lambs, Australia, Pinnochio, Batman Anthology, Rachel Getting Married.
Now, there are alot of naysayers going on here. i just don't get it. the numbers for blu-ray are moving in one direction. up. from below 10% of current title marketshare, to 12% now. this is interesting growth. sorry but i think blu-ray will be close to 20% market share if not higher by christmas of 2009. in a year, january of 2010 blu-ray will be closer to 25%
Bozster @ Jan 27th 2009 2:59PM
"with Blu-Ray being 12% compared to DVD, it is a very good indicator it is growing nicely."
I really get upset with this spin.. This is nothing. It's not 12% of marketshare.. It's NOTHING.. it's 12% of the top 20 DVD titles sold in REVENUE. Of course it will be wack numbers cause Blu-ray costs more and it's cherry picking titles to show progress.
Blu-ray's marketshare is 4.5% of DVD in US and about 1% worldwide. Deal with real numbers please.
Ben @ Jan 27th 2009 3:01PM
Bozster,
You are the one who has to deal with the numbers. Revenues are what matter and since the revenue on blockbusters matter the most, the number is very important.
You sir, are the one who tries to spin things against Blu-ray. You can expect more of the same here, so perhaps you can save yourself some frustration and just skip this post from now on.
Multi-format-mayhem @ Jan 27th 2009 3:47PM
What's up Ben?
Is it that hard to take when the truth is pointed out?
Are you so desperate to puff some wind up Blu-ray's skirt that
(even when EngadgetHD publishes the true sales split = 4.45% in the USA last year)
you're now going to warn off anyone who dares point out the truth!?
Chr!st on a bike, I knew the Blu-ray PR was getting desperate but that is just ridiculous.
What's up with being told the bald truth?
Why would anyone cheer on the obvious manipulation?
Bozster @ Jan 27th 2009 3:47PM
"You sir, are the one who tries to spin things against Blu-ray"
How is that? Explain to me how the percentage you look at it valid? It's about unit sales. You compare DVD market to the fullest with the Blu-Ray market to the fullest. I've never seen any company talk statistics based on a top 10 or 20 items? It's beyond silly.
Imagine if Ferrari said they own 20% of market share because their top 3 ferraris make more money then top 3 Honda models and based on that you deduce that Ferrari's market share is getting closer to Honda's. It's completely ridiculous.
Gus @ Jan 27th 2009 7:21PM
Ben, you obviously have never worked in retail, you can sell millions of $ of product and still go broke eg GM & Chrysler.
Revenue means zero, zip, nada, net profit is the ONLY consideration that counts at the end of the day. Volume is the absolute key to mass market sales success, many many sins can be forgiven if you shift enough product.
Costs are higher with blu ray, so obviously these figures are distorted, and comparing $ value might be good for the studios because they are the ones currently making the cream by raping the consumers with exorbitant prices, but the people pushing the format desperately need volume, Sony in particular about $4 billion in the red and counting.
The CE producers work on small margins and high turnover, to keep reporting this BS which is high margins and low turnover is too keep hiding the truth, and with Sony in massive financial trouble, the day may come where everyone misses out on high def media as a result.
Have a look at the prices of blu ray where I live in the following link and this is one of the cheaper sites!!, no wonder blu ray is 1% everywhere else and battling, to date I have not bought 1 single movie, I and everyone else simply refuse to.
The format is now 3 years old and should be able to stand on it's own merits, there is nothing healthy about the long term survival of blu ray comparing $ revenue, blu ray is most surely going to be the next Chrysler if it continues to do so.
http://www.dvdcrave.com.au/products/search_results.jsp
Gus @ Jan 27th 2009 7:31PM
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
With the above link, you may need to put blu-ray as written with the hyphen into the search engine and press 'enter' to see the the pricing.
Mike @ Jan 28th 2009 2:02AM
MFM,
those year end numbers showed dvd sales down 15% and blu ray up 350% (2008 vs 2007) so just depends on how you read the numbers.
So you focus on what percent of total sales were blu ray... and I will look at which format is growing, and blu rays growing very fast.
Bozster @ Jan 28th 2009 12:53PM
@Mike
That's true.. and I have no problem them saying, hey we've grown 350% internally.. You know it's easy to double and triple number when your initial comparison numbers are small. They've grown from pathetic to bearable and that's fine. But if you are talking MARKETSHARE you compare straight number with straight numbers and unit sales and number or titles and so on.. those are true measurements of one's growth on the actual market. Not some BS where you take certain amount of titles and then compare how much more money you make and then take that as some kind of growth.
It's not how you look at the numbers. One is a completely misleading and illogical way of measuring marketshare while the other is what it should be (unit sales, and all titles again all titles). But we all know why this is happening. Hype, because there's simply not enough Blu-ray sales to even compare to overall DVD sales, and second the only real numbers that don't look awful for Blu-ray is revenue. It's still awful though but when people hear millions they think they are doing super awesome, when DVD made billions.
The fact they are trying to mislead and lie (that article about how it's selling better then DVDs - pure lie) is telling you a lot about all companies involved with the format.
mitchelljd @ Jan 28th 2009 1:45PM
Bozster,
I don't get where you are coming from, the article did not effusively promote it as Blu-Ray succeeding more than DVD. it was stating that Home Media Magazine, the "bible" of the home video business, is starting to offer better charts. Now charts will show on all titles if they offer a BD version of a title and the Percentage of sales BD when compared to DVD.
It is helpful in showing which titles get better sales when compared to DVD. some titles like Batman do great in % sold against DVD, and others do about 6-8%. so it is interesting to know better the developing consumer base for Blu-Ray discs.
Nowhere in the article was it at all a Fanboy praise of BD, but it is showing that it will be easier to track each title and how it does compared to DVD. this is a good thing, some titles will do better than others and the charts will show that info now.
why does everything have to be a fanboy or attack on something??? chill out.