2.1 million households let the DTV transition pass them by
Nielsen posts
NAB disputes Nielsen's numbers, claims only 1.75 million unready for transition
With less than 24 hours to go until analog TV goes dark for a certain segment of American, and the NAB wants to make sure everyone is aware that Nielsen's unreadiness claims aren't accepted by all. The point of contention is a mere 1 million people and really comes down to those who are "almost ready." Meaning, the NAB doesn't count respondents who claimed to have already started getting ready, but aren't in any hurry to make the actual switch until the very last minute. Differences in opinion aside one thing is for sure, at some point tomorrow every TV watcher in the US will be digital ready, or they will no longer be a TV watcher.Nielsen's final pre analog shutoff survey finds 2.5% still unready
In the last update before analog TV goes off after June 12, Nielsen's results indicate 2.5% of, or 2.8 million U.S. homes are still completely unready and will be cut off after it goes through. That's around three million less than it was the last time we were this close to the DTV transition, hopefully all reading this are on the digital television ready side (six easy steps right here.) Don't forget, many stations are switching at different times, so check your local broadcasters before rescanning so you don't have to do it twice, Friday night / Saturday morning is probably your best bet.Nielsen stats find 33% of U.S. households with at least one HDTV
One month to analog shutoff: DTV Unreadiness drops below 3 percent
DTV preparedness now more than 95-percent
Here we are, a little more than a month away from the Number of DTV unready homes drops to 3.8 million
The number of DTV unready homes continues its slide downward, with Nielsen reporting an additional 610,000 prepared as of April 1, leaving 3.8 million to go. Representing 3.4% of U.S. households still unready, that's only a slight uptick over the pace of previous months, but with coupons rolling out it certainly seems that everything is moving smoothly towards the new June 12 deadline.Number of DTV unready households dips below 4 percent as of March 1
More good news for the digital TV switch, as Nielsen's latest update pegs just 3.9 percent, an improvement of 570,000 homes over last month. The older you are, the more likely you're prepared as the over 55 age group is down to just 2.2 percent unready. Now that the coupon program is funded and running again we wouldn't be surprised to see even more drastic drops before June 12, we're just waiting to grab a set that lights up.Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending February 22th, 2009
The good news for Blu is that for the fourth week in a row it has seen an increase in revenue, the bad news is that after three weeks of single digit market share, it still isn't anywhere near as good as it was at the end of last year. The reason of course is the slate of releases -- isn't it always -- which have been anything but focused on the Blu-ray demographic. Now there has been some debate about what exactly the Blu-ray demographic is, but one thing is for sure, it isn't kid movies. We witnessed this last week with Madagascar and now this week with the latest High School Musical. Just to put things into perspective, the Blu-ray version of High School Musical 3: Senior Year only managed 6 percent away from DVD, while Body of Lies managed 21 percent. Next week should be even better for Blu-ray though because there aren't anymore kid movies on the schedule, so we're going to be so bold to predict about a 15 percent overall share.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending February 15th, 2009
This week's Nielsen VideoScan chart is the easiest to analyze to date because it really came down to one movie; Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. You see although this title was released the week before, it was late enough in the week that most people obviously didn't get counted until this week, and boy did they. Blu-ray fans picked it up by almost 3 to 1 over the second place new release, Miracle at St. Anna, but only 8 percent of the overall population chose the Blu-ray version over the DVD -- which is exactly what Blu-ray's share was for the week of the top 20. We suppose the only good news for Blu-ray this week is that its revenues are up over 33 percent when compared to the same week last year -- this time of the season is always slow for disc sales. We don't expect next week to be much better either, but it really comes down to how many choose to pick up the Blu-ray versions of Changeling and Body of Lies.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending February 8th, 2009
Whoa, some movies are just no friend to Blu-ray fans as two titles helped push the overall Nielsen VideoScan market share down to half of what it was last week, which is the lowest in six months (when the Sex in the City Movie was released). Space Buddies was really the title that push the charts down with only 3 percent of the overall sales going to Blu-ray, but the other one was The Life of Bees which was also only at 3 percent. This was just too much for Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (9 percent) and Zach and Mari Made a Porno (11 percent) to overcome. Blu-ray is still up when compared to last year and we don't see this one week as a start of a trend. Next week should definitely be better considering the solid slate of great catalog titles for Blu-ray that were released, but with no blockbusters on the calendar, we really aren't about to try and make any predictions.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending February 1st, 2009
Who knew that Blu-ray fans were so desperate to get their hands on The Bourne Trilogy? We sure didn't, but either way Universal has to be happy. The real news this week though is that neither Sony or Warner could be too pleased with the performance of Lakeview Terrace or Pride and Glory on Blu-ray -- at least according to the Nielsen VideoScan data courtesy of Home Media Magazine. At the same time it's funny to us to think that a Blu-ray disc managing 17 or even 9 percent away from DVD could be a bad thing in an economy like this. Speaking of which, HMM has something a little new for us. It is a graph that charts the sales of physical media against itself last year and we find it interesting how similar the graphs are, but as expected, things are slower this year. Because although Blu-ray revenue was up over 61 percent this year over last, it was only enough to make up 4 of the 24 percent drop in DVD over the same period. The immediate future is going to much of the same, as Hollywood almost never releases its blockbusters in the spring. But that being said, Blu-ray does seem to be holding its own, but needs to do a little better in order to do its job of making up for slowing DVD sales. More charts over the break, including the top 20, BD title share and top 20 DVDs.
Latest Nielsen figures put DTV unreadiness at 5.1%
As of February 1, Nielsen is calling 5.8 million homes still completely unready for the DTV transition, 5.1 percent of the population. That's up 700,000 from last month, but still apparently enough to put the kibosh on a February shutoff across the country. Albuquerque-Santa Fe still leads/trails all markets, we'll see if they get any special attention from the FCC and others over the next few months.Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending January 25th, 2009
Another week, another record for Blu-ray on the Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of Home Media Magazine. The big news here is that after the holidays Blu-ray seems to be getting stronger and stronger when you compare the amount of money spent vs DVD. Now some would say this is only part of the picture, and that it's great and all that 17 percent of the home media market's revenue last week went to Blu-ray, but what they really want to know is how many discs were sold. Now don't get us wrong, we'd love to know it as well, but the fact is that this information is provided to us by Nielsen via Home Media Magazine, and we don't get to choose the stats. That being said, we understand that including both unit sales and revenues would be more complicated, and if we had to choose between the two pieces of data, we'd easily choose revenue. After all, the entire point of starting a business is to make money and you can't do that without revenue. This week the big title that shocked us was Max Payne, which easily hit number one while The Express didn't even make the top 20. The good news for Blu though is that over 20 percent of the cash spent on old Max went to the Blu version.The really good news is that at this point we expect even the worst releases to manage 6 percent, and anything but double digit market share for the week seems a distant memory.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending January 18th, 2009
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.
