Re: ABI Research : DVD upconverters growing faster than Blu-Ray. Choosing Blu-Ray was a mistake

It wasnt a mistake. The people wanted true HD movies. They got, and are still getting, what they paid for. If blu ray dies it won't matter.

And yes Blu-ray sales have been awful since HD DVD was officially discontinued. The numbers are so bad that the NPD will not release them. The sales have to be unimaginably bad for the NPD to refuse to release them.

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And yes Blu-ray sales have been awful since HD DVD was officially discontinued.

That's for sure. I have both an A-35 and a BD-30 and, quite honestly, I have been very reluctant to buy new BD disks at the prices they are currently asking. I have bought several used BDs from Newbury Comics and online and will continue to do so until the prices go down. Those numbers don't show up on NPD anyway. Of course that might exclude an occasional new release that I REALLY want to see.

You know, if you go back to the late 90's, the average price on most DVD players was around $400 to $500, which most Blu-ray players you can get now are at the same price scale. In the late 90's the average price for a DVD was anywhere from $20 to $30 as it is now for Blu-ray discs. Even then the market for DVD as the standard took a bit of time to really take off, as it is now for hi-def.

There could be a multitude of reasons why there is a slow down in the hi-def sales, as many of us have been shouting economy issues and lack of knowledge to the consumer. I think it's a combination of both, but I don't see some kind of death gate for Blu-ray, as it is obviously the trend to move forward. We need to remember that we are still in the early stages of this new technology, much like DVD was back in the late 90's. Even then it took a while for everyone to jump on that bandwagon and it will take time for everyone to jump on the new bandwagon of hi-def.

The biggest issue in this market is the not the price of the players, but the investment it takes just to get into the market by buying the TV, extended warranty, monster surge protectors, and HDMI cables -- when you put all that together you're already dumping anywhere from $3000 to $4000 -- some of the newer set I've seen are up to $10,000! The difference is back in the late 90's we could get the DVD player and not worry about investing on a new TV to utilize it. Therefore, what we have today is not just buying some toy, but rather making a big investment that's a big chunk of change for many familys. As it is with anything in new technology and electronics, prices will come down in due time, and when it does, you're going to see a huge shift in hi-def sales just like it was for DVD.

FYI... (latest sales report)

> Blu-ray Market Share Remains at 6% < and presented here...

It seems Home Media Magazine has made further changes in how they report the HD Media market share.The weekly market share versus HD DVD is still reported (this week it was a new record 93:7), though that is the last remaining information on HD DVD sales. For sales charts there is now simply a Top 20 chart for Blu-ray titles. In the market share summary there is a nice change - the HD DVD/Bluray since inception ratio (which really is redundant now) has been replaced with a spending summary, which includes the revenue and unit sales numbers as well as the comparison to the previous week.

In any case, this week we see that Blu-ray maintains at 6% market share compared to the top 20 DVDs. Sales for Blu-ray for the week were $9.2M, with 250k discs sold (at an average sale price just under $37!), which apparently is down 7.23% compared to last week. This change will soon be reflected on the Market Share page, if it becomes clear that they are sticking with this format!

Something to consider is that only half of the Top 20 DVDs are out on Blu-ray. Perhaps an important addition to help Blu-ray’s market share versus DVD will be Day and Date titles from Universal and Paramount, considering Cloverfield and Charlie Wilson’s War not out on Blu-ray yet but are in the top 3 DVDs.

In the Blu-ray Top 20, the top titles were once again AVP:R, Juno and I am Legend. The Orphanage did well for a foreign title, coming in the 8th position and One Missed Call just made the cut at number 20 in the chart. -[END]-

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-JIMI McLovin (the Voodoo Child)

And Super Upconversion makes sure that Toshiba can contain Blu-Ray market share to less than 10%.

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And Super Upconversion makes sure that Toshiba can contain Blu-Ray market share to less than 10%.

Umm... Blu-ray is more than half-way there already, and that's with only half the new releases compared to standard DVD! And besides, there is no such thing in the market as "super upconversion".

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there is no such thing in the market as "super upconversion".

The Brooo-ray player I bought says "Super" in it's title, does that count?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8504709&productCategoryId=abcat0102003&type=product&tab=1&id=1186004964788#productdetail

Hey there Deadmeat... check out this report (and numbers) about the latest growth in Blu-ray sales - very good despite the recent few months (annual tax time, both property and income taxes due between Jan and April 15), as well as the somewhat softer economy overall (recently)...

> Blu-ray Sales Surging on All Fronts - and notice further down some of the "relevant sales figures" (just for North America alone - even higher worldwide)...
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-from the May 5, 2008 Scott Hettrick blog

Holy moly, it appears that some bloggers and media outlets were so anxious for any juicy new post-format-war story last week that they left all credibility behind and wound up sounding like bitter HD DVD format losers when reporting on and getting sucked into a couple of industry reports clearly designed to grab headlines about late 1Q hardware sales numbers that – no duh! – were lower than January sales.

A few quick reference points:

• Late 1Q numbers of almost anything, particularly electronics products, are almost always lower than immediate post-holiday numbers, which is when people traditionally run out to buy new gadgets on sale with their Christmas gift money.

• No one seemed to know enough to make the appropriate comparison of February/March 2008 vs February/March 2007, not January 2008.

• No one bothered to look at 1Q software sales to gauge the acceptance of Blu-ray by current customers.

• Once again, the media completely ignored sales of PlayStation 3 machines when discussing Blu-ray players even though the PS3 has been far and away the top-selling and most-used device for playing Blu-ray movies since it hit the market in late 2006.

So, let me provide a few relevant figures:

• There are more than 6 million Blu-ray players in the North American market alone (PS3 and stand-alone) – that’s up 50% from the 4 million just four months ago in December.

• More than 4.7 million copies of Blu-ray movies were sold in the first four months of the year in North America alone, a nearly 400% increase over 2007 and nearly half of the 10.8 million sold since inception, according to Home Media Research compiled by the Redhill Group.

• Blu-ray is growing from 2% of the total DVD business in 2007 to a projected 8% this year, with the percentage of Blu-ray vs DVD sales increasing even further on most new titles.

• 107 new Blu-ray titles were released from January through April, according to the DVD Release Report, and nearly 100 more are scheduled in May and June, according to High-Def Digest. The number of new releases this year will match last year’s total of 292 by the end of third quarter, before the busiest three-month selling season even begins.

All that amidst a suddenly and unexpected surge in demand for all things Blu-ray that caught suppliers offguard when HD DVD threw in the towel in mid-February, and a push to get the latest and most robust iteration of Blu-ray player models in the market this spring that offer Internet-connectivity in addition to all the previous interactive and picture-in-picture features.

What does all this mean? Blu-ray is surging strongly as expected and will take off even stronger in the coming months. And you can bet you’ll see all those same analysts and media outlets that generated last week’s headlines back with new headlines saying the exact opposite of what they reported last week. -[END]-



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-JIMI McLovin (the Voodoo Child)

Salad anyone?

How about a fresh cob?