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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.
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.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending January 11th, 2009
That Pineapple Express is obviously pretty good stuff as it not only moved enough discs to take the number one spot, on the Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of Home Media Magazine, but it also outsold the mighty Dark Knight by almost three to one in its third week. Seth Rogen's latest comedy also topped the new Blu-ray rental chart -- which is new this week and posted after the break. For now we're going to skip posting the top 20 market share chart because it's useless until Nielsen will provide HMM a version without all the catalog titles. Blu-ray's top 20 market share was down this week to 13 percent, which would normally be a good week if we weren't comparing it to last week's record breaking 16 percent. At this point we're tempted to predict both formats being down next week, but after Pineapple Express surprised us this week, we'll wait and see how Appaloosa does rather than risk looking stupid again.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending January 4th, 2009
The fourth quarter was very good to Blu-ray and from the looks of this, the so called fifth quarter is going to be even better. According to the Nielsen VideoScan numbers, courtesy of Home Media Magazine, the market share of the top 20 titles for Blu-ray set a new record at 16 percent -- previous record was 14 percent the week The Dark Knight was released. The real encouraging part of these numbers though is the fact that only one new release made the top 10 (Eagle Eye), while the rest were more than likely new Blu-ray owners burning through their gift cards. Of course this begs the question of what will happen after the gift cards run out, but we believe that once you go Blu it's nearly impossible to go back to DVD.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending December 21st, 2008
Our friends over at Home Media Magazine like to enjoy some time off during the holidays, so once again the Nielsen VideoScan numbers are a little later than we'd like. But late is better than never and the third week of December was pretty good to Blu-ray. Sure it was down over 23 percent from the week The Dark Night was released, but at $46 Million the Blu disc still managed to rake in more revenue then it used to during an entire month not that long ago, and about twice as much as it did the week Iron Man was released. The latest in the Mummy franchise did pretty well its first week out, all things considered, but it was no match for The Dark Knight's sophomore week, which outsold it by over three to one. Mamma Mia was the only other new release that week that manged to even come close, which kinda bucks the PS3 demographic theory. The Blu-ray share chart is once again useless this week, as we wish HMM would filter it down to only show Blu-ray titles that were released day-and-date with DVD. Looking forward there No way Blu-ray can keep up these numbers though, because at this point just about everyone must already own a copy of TDK, but it will be interesting to follow the revenues post Christmas to see if all those Blu-ray players that flew off the shelf have the affect that Hollywood is hoping for.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending December 14th, 2008
The Dark Knight didn't disappoint anyone this week as it clearly outsold any other title (this week and the history of Blu-ray) by an unprecedented level according to Nielsen VideoScan numbers courtesy of Home Media Magazine. Although TDK didn't make the top 10 on Blu-ray's market share chart this week -- thanks to a number of catalog titles, which are obviously availability at a great price somewhere -- based on our estimates it managed just under eight percent of DVD's share. This is barely half of what Blu managed overall, which was at an all time high of 14 percent -- the highest before this was October 5th (Iron Man) at 13 percent, but that week had less than half the revenue at $26 million. Speaking of revenue, this is the most money ever spent on Blu-ray in one week, and by a long shot. In fact this is close to what Blu-ray would make in a month. It truly does look like a Blu Christmas especially if you consider how many more DVD players there are out there. We can't say we blame anyone, with Blu-ray players selling for a little as decent upscalers, why not enjoy some real HD?
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending November 30th, 2008
After Home Media Magazine took a week off from analyzing the Nielsen VideoScan numbers -- probably due to the short week -- Blu-ray manages to finally do in the last week of November what it did during every week in October: gain double digit market share of the top 20 titles. This was mostly due to Hancock which managed over 14 percent of the market from its standard-def brother. The other big help was from old favorites like Transformers and the latest Indiana movie. In fact the only other new release this week that managed to make the Blu-ray top 20 was Fred Claus at number 15. The very same title was at number 7 on the DVD charts and only gave up about 4 percent of its share to Blu-ray. It's hard to judge how well WALL-E did its first week, but based on its performance this week, we'd assume not very good on Blu-ray. But with all the solid catalog titles like The Shawshank Redemption due next week, we'll go out on a limb and predict that Blu-ray will stay over 10 percent, and just watch out the for the week after where we expect The Dark Knight to bring Blu-ray to new heights.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending November 16th, 2008
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.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending November 9th, 2008
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.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending October 26th, 2008
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.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending October 19th, 2008
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.
Is Netflix a better indicator of Blu-ray's success than Nielsen?
During a recent earning call, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that about 500,000 subscribers would be paying the new $1 Blu-ray fee. This is about six percent of Netflix's customers -- up from one percent 18 months ago -- and a number we're actually surprised with. The reason why we find it surprisingly low is because according to the Nielsen VideoScan numbers, Blu-ray sales have managed to steal away closer to 10 or 12 percent from DVD and we just figured there were more renters than buyers. The apparently incorrect reasoning was simple, it is a new format and renting is a the safer bet. Because as in any packaged media ecosystem, you spend way more money on the discs than on the player and we assumed consumers we're hedging their bets by renting. So while the so called Netflix effect isn't there, these numbers do show us some insight to the Blu-ray customer base, and we'll be looking forward to the next Netflix earnings call for indications of Blu-ray growth. [Via Format War Central]
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending October 12th, 2008
Once again Iron Man topped the Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of Home Media Magazine, but that is the most surprising news this week. Although Sleeping Beauty isn't exactly the quintessential example of a Blu-ray demographic title, we expected it to garner more than a nine percent of DVD's market share. For starters has mass appeal, but more importantly, the Blu-ray version included the DVD as well. Considering you got all that for about $10 more, it lead us to believe it'd sell better on Blu-ray then it did. Obviously the combination of getting both versions for a few dollars more wasn't as popular as many expected. We're not saying say Blu-ray had a bad week, because the revenues for this week were only second to last week (all time). We do expect next week to be better though, because Kingdom of the Crystal Skull should sell pretty well. Sure, it won't sell anywhere near as well as Iron Man did its first week, but that isn't saying much, as Iron Man is the current record holder. A record it will continue to hold until December 9th when the Dark Knight is released.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending October 5th, 2008
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.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending September 28th, 2008
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.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending September 21st, 2008
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.