After staying in the double digits in regards to market share for all of October, for the second week in the row Blu-ray only manages just under 10% of the top 20 home media market share, according to Nielsen VideoScan courtesy of Home Media Magazine. The good news for Blu-ray is that sales were up 83.49 percent to over $20 million, which is up from about $11 million last week. The fact that Blu-ray didn't manage more of the market is what we'll refer to the panda affect. While we're not exactly sure how well Kung Fu Panda did on Blu-ray -- because the title market share chart only listed the top 10 this week -- last week it was less than 6 percent. Assuming this trend continued, and the fact that the panda movie held the number one and number three position on the DVD charts, it appears Blu-ray's number one title, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, was no match for it. Next week we'd be willing to bet we see much of the same because while WALL-E has a much broader appeal then animated fighting bears, it probably won't be enough to break Blu over 10 percent all on its own.

Again the affects of the Blu-ray demographic can be felt on this week's Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of Home Media Magazine as Kung Fu Panda debuts at number five. While the animated feature managed to sell 88 percent as many DVDs on one day -- thanks to a Sunday release -- as Get Smart did in an entire week, on Blu-ray it only managed about 44 percent, or about 5 percent of the title's total sales. This is far below the weekly share of 8 percent that Blu-ray managed overall and way less than the 13 percent Journey to the Center of the Earth managed. Speaking of which, although the Blu-ray Journey managed to steal more sales away from DVD then Get Smart, overall it wasn't able to sell more copies. Looking ahead to next week, we expect that Blu-ray will still have revenues in the double digits, as it has for the past 6 weeks or so, but we doubt it'll go up when the biggest title will probably be Hellboy II.

For the first time in over a month Blu-ray dips below 10 percent market share in the Nielsen VideoScan numbers courtesy of Home Media Magazine. This is clearly due to the lack of interest in Tinker Bell by the Blu-ray crowd, which on Blu-ray was outsold by Journey to the Center of the Earth by over 2:1, but on DVD perform almost exactly the opposite. In fact the Blu-ray version of Tinker Bell couldn't even mange 3 percent of DVD's share, and even Journey only managed half of what the Hulk did last week at about 10 percent. For the most part, these are the only two new releases that did anything as none of the others that week managed to crack the top 5 on the Blu-ray chart. The Polar Express was barely outed at number 6, only managing to sell 18 percent as many copies as the number one title. Next week will probably be very similar as Kung Fu Panda will be about as popular on Blu-ray as ol' Tinker, but we'll be looking to see if any of the Ape movies can move the charts.

Who'd a thought that The Incredible Hulk would sell so well? We sure didn't, as we predicted sales to be down more than 1.26 percent, on this week's Nielsen VideoScan chart courtesy of Home Media Magazine. Thanks to the Hulk, Blu-ray managed to net $17.71 million this week, which makes October the biggest month in history. In fact, consumers spent $76.86 million in October alone, which is more than all of August and September combined -- it will be very interesting to see if Blu-ray can keep this up through the last two months of the year though. For whatever reason the green monster was a hotter seller on Blu-ray than DVD, as it outsold Indiana by about 4:1, which is about twice as much as the DVD version managed against the same competition. This showed up on the Blu-ray title share chart, as the Hulk stole over 18 percent away from its DVD version, which to our memory is the best of any day-and-date title ever. The fun is over next week though, as there are only so many comic book movies around, and the next one isn't due for about a month. But when the latest Batman does hit the shelves, watch out, as it should easily outsell every Blu-ray title to date including the mighty Iron Man.

For the third week in a row Blu-ray has managed over 10 percent of the home media market share of the top 20 titles according to Nielsen VideoScan data courtesy of Home Media Magazine. The numbers this week were delayed a bit for whatever reason, and at the same exact time, we only got to see the top ten, instead of the top twenty titles. But no matter, the undisputed top seller this week was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull -- wow, what a mouth full. Indy's latest adventure easily outsold the competition leaving the three week old Iron Man in the dust by about three to one. The truncated chart does make it impossible to see how many choose the Blu-ray version though; but one thing is for sure, it wasn't more than 17 percent. We do know that the DVD version outsold Iron Man by closer to five to one. As expected, the latest Matrix box set did pretty well this week, as the DVD re-release was tied at number eleven on the DVD charts, the Blu-ray version not only hit number three on its respective chart, but also managed over 95 percent of the market away from the SD version. There is little doubt that next week's sales will be down, but that is assuming that all the Bond movies won't sell well and at the the same time, the Incredible Hulk won't sell as well as Indy.

What a week for Blu-ray where -- according to Nielsen VideoScan data from Home Media Magazine -- revenues were an all time high and over twice as much as any other week, ever. Looking at the top twenty it's very apparent this was due to Iron Man, which sold like 20 times more copies than any other release. Iron Man was also able to steal 17 percent of the sales from DVD, which is the highest we've seen from any other day-and-date non-boxset release, ever. This is a great start to the fourth quarter for Blu-ray and while next week doesn't have any titles anywhere near as popular as Iron Man, it does have a wider array that will appeal to a broader audience. This combined with the historical tread that shows that home media sales are up during poor economic times, should make for a very Blu Christmas.

So much for the theory that only movies that fit in the Blu-ray demographic can hit number one on the Nielsen VideoScan charts -- thanks Home Media Magazine for the data -- as Sex and the City: The Movie easily beat any other title by almost 35 percent. This might sound like a lot but it's nowhere near as much as the DVD version, which outsold Leatherheads by almost 92 percent. This one title easily explains the low market share for Blu-ray this week at 6 percent, in fact the Blu version of S&TC only managed 3.37 percent of the share from DVD -- which is about a third of what a title like Forbidden Kingdom manages. The other interesting thing this week is that while Leatherheads was number two on the DVD charts, it's only number five on Blu, with older titles like Speed Racer and Transformers easily outselling it. This week is fun and all, but next week is when the real fun starts because Iron Man has reportedly already outsold every other Blu-ray Disc to date. Because of the predicted success of just this one title, we'd be so bold as to expect the Blu-ray market share to be the best in record, which would put it over 12 percent.

What a disappointing week for the studios as the new releases that appeared to be big titles didn't sell well at all. Although they didn't sell well on Blu-ray, it's hard to say how well they fared against DVD as Home Media Magazine didn't publish the market share per title chart this week. We suspect it's about the same, as DVD isn't up this week either. As many might have predicted, the number one title fits right in the so-called PS3 demographic as Speed Racer outsold the much older Transformers by almost two to one, and more interestingly outsold the new release 88 Minutes by even more. Weinstein's first Blu-ray release didn't do too well either as The Mist came in at seven and 1408 at eighteen. What's more telling this week though, is the random titles on the Blu-ray charts, we're betting that his is from a combination of weak new releases and promotions directed at titles like Troy and A Clockwork Orange. We expect next week to be better as The Godfather Collection, Deception, and Leatherheads will all be counted and should be enough to move the charts. But hold on to your seats for the week after that as Iron Man is released and is expected to beat every Blu record to date.

Packaged media sales go up and down every week depending on the titles -- as documented by our weekly VideoScan post -- but for some reason, the 13 percent drop in Blu-ray sales last week got a lot of attention. What we can't figure out is why the 30 percent increases during the two weeks before (combined) went unnoticed. It boggles the mind why so many so-called tech evangelists only pick up on the bad weeks, but either way, let's go back and take a look at the facts since HD DVD called it quits about seven months ago.

Blu-ray sales were back down again this week to 8 percent, on the Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of Home Media Magazine. The past few months have made it harder and harder for us to find new things to talk about as the trend is so solid we can almost predict the results weeks before they are official. The good news for Blu-ray is that even when it is down, while DVD stays flat, the more popular titles like The Forbidden Kingdom still garner 11 percent of the market for Blu. For those who don't think Blu-ray has a demographic, you might finally start believing this week as Baby Mama (barely) outsold Forbidden Kingdom on DVD, at the same time it hardly managed fourth place on the Blu-ray charts only stealing 2.5 percent away from DVD. Next week should be a little better, but not much, as Speed Racer, 88 Minutes, and the duo from Weinstein should help out a bit.

As expected, not much going on this week as everyone in the home media business is waiting on the holiday season to release the hounds. Sure, both DVD and Blu-ray volumes are up this week, but both are still relatively low because Street Kings -- and other titles this week -- just weren't that interesting to consumers. The number one titles on Blu-ray this week was easily Street Kings, out selling any other titles two to one, but overall that title wasn't very popular with Blu-ray as less than ten percent of those who bought a disc containing the movie last week bought it on Blu. And who says parents don't buy their kids Blu-ray discs, as the latest Hannah Montana movie takes fourth overall on the Blu-ray charts -- but at the same time only managing to steal four percent away from DVD. Looking forward once again shows much of the same for next week, as we continue to wait for all the studios to ramp up for the holiday season.

Deja vu this week, as once again Blu-ray sales are down. Sure, it's only another ten percent, but we realized how big of a deal this was when we went back through every Nielsen VideoScan post, courtesy of Home Media Magazine, and couldn't find another week with revenues that low -- that data has only been reported since April. While last week there was some debate as to weather Blu-ray was slacking, or the fact that it was simply a weak slew of releases to blame, but this week there is no doubt, as DVD took a bigger hit than Blu-ray. We expect much of the same for the foreseeable future though, as we are right in the middle of TV series release season and it'll be at least a few weeks before the studios start to release all of the titles that should sell well this holiday season.

We had a feeling that August was going to be a rough month for Blu-ray, but we had no idea the Nielsen VideoScan numbers courtesy of Home Media Magazine would be this bad. If you think that being down 26.88 percent over last week is bad, have a look at the revenue, at only 6.89 million we had to go back over three months to fine Blu revenues that low. The obvious reason is that the releases have been weak, but DVD didn't do as badly because of Nim's Island. In a movie you'd expect to see from Disney, Fox's kid title was easily the number one DVD, beating the two week old comedy in second by two to one. Meanwhile, the very same title only mustered 2 percent of DVDs sales and couldn't even sell half as many copies as a much older Batman Begins on Blu-ray. Although we doubt next week will be as bad as this one, we don't expect things to get much better until the fourth quarter, which is when the studios finally start to let some of their big titles out.

Both DVD and Blu-ray are up on this week's Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of our friends at Home Media Magazine. The interesting thing this week is that Blu-ray managed a 10 percent share against the top 20 DVDs, but the two biggest titles on both formats Blu-ray didn't fair as well. The comedy Harold & Kumar was number one on the DVD charts, but the HD version only managed to steal about 7 percent away from DVD. Meanwhile the latest Stargate, was easily the number one title on Blu-ray -- and was barely surpassed on DVD -- but the HD version still didn't manage 10% of the market. This of course means that a few catalog titles made up the difference for 'ol Blu, and most of that money went to Paramount. In fact four Paramount catalog titles made the Blu-ray top 20, including Top Gun which was at number six and our personal favorite, The Hunt for Red October at nine. No way can either format see another increase next week though, as the slate of titles was anything but impressive. But if you look much further in the future into October and beyond, we really can't wait to see how Blu-ray sells through this holiday season when the true market indicators are exposed.