DVD, Blu-ray sales strong despite down economy

[gadgtfreek]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i5dab627a6e5e9f674598128170626f30

Blu-ray sales alone should amount to at least three times what digital downloading is expected to bring in this year. In the first six months of the year, consumers spent $194 million on Blu-ray purchases, according to studio estimates -- a gain of nearly 350% from the $43 million that came from HD disc sales in the first six months of 2007, when growth was stymied by a format war between Blu-ray and rival HD DVD.

Unit sales of Blu-ray Discs in first-half 2008 were up 340% from the first six months of 2007, according to Nielsen VideoScan data. Nielsen numbers are based on point-of-sale data from most big retail chains with the notable exception of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club. Factoring in Blu-ray Disc sales at those two retail chains, studio estimates peg the number of Blu-ray Discs sold in the first six months of this year at 7.4 million units.

 

[meStevo]

I dont think this is as good news as the article states. Saying BD is going doing 3x better than digital downloads because BD did 3x the revenue means that there were probably as many if not more digital downloads than BD purchases since BD is probably on average 3-4x as expensive as the $2-$6 download costs. This is article is good for Blu-Ray, good for PR and SEO, not good for the consumer.

Also, nice to see sales numbers... tacked onto the bottom. #1 selling BD sold just 305k units... that's less than 7% of all sales for that title.

No Country for Old Men which was claimed to do so well on BD only sold 137k units... though it's DVD version didnt make it into the top listing they made here so no parallel can be made. I suspect it didn't do all that great on DVD so the ratio that Sony likes to tout looks better.

 

[gadgtfreek]

I agree with what you're saying and they should have stated revenue totals. Lets face it though, it does not matter if BD costs more than digital, its makes studios more and at the end of the day and thats what matters. One thing to also notice is, BD alone has tripled digital purchases. This means DVD and BD combined are slaughtering it still, which lets you know digital downloads aint even close to being there. This opposes how a certain software companie and fanboys would have you think. Optical media has plenty of legs left.

I also posted an article awhile back comparing AppleTv rentals to Netflix. I think Netflix ships more movies every day than Apple tv rents in a month. Ill try and find it.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Found it, it was itunes, not just Appletv.

Itunes expects to sell 18.25 mil movies this year, Netflix ships around 1.9 mil per day .

I think if you put optical rental/sales totals and revenue together, then compare it to what xboxlive, vudu, appletv and the new ps3 deal will do, its not even close.

 

[navychop]

I wonder if some folks would complain that a baby is not born fully grown and with a college degree already.

Blu-ray is doing just fine, thank you.

 

[gadgtfreek]

I wonder if some folks would complain that a baby is not born fully grown and with a college degree already.

Talk about painful

 

[diogen]

So, studios made $194M in the first 6 months when just a month ago they reiterated the conservative estimate to make $1B by year end.
That means making 4.15 times more money in the second half of 2008 than they made in the first half.

If they didn't claim a bad economy is good for BD sales I'd say this prognosis is delusional...

And what is that about $1/4B of downloads worth? Is that serious? If it is, BD will be dead much sooner than I thought...

Interesting, how regular DVD sales are brought forward every time BD only sales look sh!tty in retrospect...

Diogen.