Nielsen/VideoScan sales ratios and Top 5

[kali]

Hi,

I've been enjoying the boards for the past couple months and I thought you might like to see some better numbers.

I just saw this over at avsforums on VS Forum > Blu-ray & HD DVD Areas > HDTV Software Media Discussion

(Yay thanks to whoever enabled links for me

Here is a link to the avsforum thread.

And here is a link to the source

It is in a lame pseudo magazine format so you have to page through until you find the article

Cheers
Christy

Nielsen/VideoScan sales ratios and Top 5
At last! Some figures have begun to be posted on the digital edition of Home Media Magazine. To access the digital edition, scroll down the page. On the left you'll see a box entitled "This Week's Digital Edition", and underneath the text "Read It Now! Click Here". Click that.



They are giving relative percentages between BD and HD DVD, both year-to-date and "since inception", as well as the weekly top 5 for BD and HD DVD, as well as their relative sales within each format.

So, without further ado...

Week ended Jan 14
YTD: BD 100.00, HD 38.36
SI: BD 92.40, HD 100.00

Week ended Jan 7
YTD: BD 100.00, HD 47.14
SI: BD 85.05, HD 100.00

[glocks out]

Finally some real numbers!

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by kali

Hi,

I've been enjoying the boards for the past couple months and I thought you might like to see some better numbers.

I just saw this over at avsforums on VS Forum > Blu-ray & HD DVD Areas > HDTV Software Media Discussion

I would provide link but I need to do 10 posts first

Cheers
Christy

This isn't sales info, this is the exact same as DVD Empire's stuff.

We are missing the critical piece which is the actual numbers, percentages do you no good without knowing the actual numbers.

Also are they counting Movie Sales or Players?

[glocks out]

Originally Posted by Gnome

This isn't sales info, this is the exact same as DVD Empire's stuff.

Do yourself a favor and learn who Neilson VideoScan is. Their numbers are based on actual sales from many different retailers throughout the country.

Originally Posted by Gnome

We are missing the critical piece which is the actual numbers, percentages do you no good without knowing the actual numbers.

Yes, they do plenty of good in determining what is selling more. All you do with actual sales numbers (no. units sold) is compare them in ratios anyway.

[Thulium]

Hm. If I'm reading those numbers correctly, it looks like, although HD DVD still maintains a slight (but quickly fading) lead over time. Blu-ray is now outselling HD DVD by MORE THAN 2:1.

DVD Empire's 60/40 numbers are actually too kind to HD DVD.

[imdaly]

Originally Posted by glocks out

Yes, they do plenty of good in determining what is selling more. All you do with actual sales numbers (no. units sold) is compare them in ratios anyway.

If one format sells 50% more than another, how are we to know if that's 6 titles compared to 9, or 600,000 titles compared to 900,000.

Percentages are great to use to look at after you take into account what those percentages mean.



Look at it this way:

The past month has only seen a small handful of HD DVD releases. Right now it's in a bit of a dry spell before the onslaught of releases starting March-ish. This same month has seen more Blu-ray movies released than any previous month, so Blu-ray's had a big month.


So to see that when Blu-ray gets a great month, and HD DVD has it's slump month, is it really that impressive that Blu-ray has been slightly outselling Blu-ray for this month?

I mean, if HD DVD can practically take a month off, it still takes one of Blu-rays biggest months of releases to slightly outdo them.

Heck, if anything, I'd say that just shows the strength of the HD DVD format.

[kali]

imdaly,

Your argument would make sense if the sales numbers were from say "Cartman's l33t DVD St0re" who sell about 10 discs a month.

However in the case of VideoScan (according to the avsforum thread) we are talking about data from something like 65% of DVD retailers in the US (or is it North America.) I dare say that we have a representive sample and further more I dare say it accounds for a significant amount of the sales volume.

I find it amazing whenever I read about surveys (political and the like) and how small a sample size is required to get a valid survey. I wonder how that applies to sales data.

[glocks out]

Originally Posted by imdaly

Heck, if anything, I'd say that just shows the strength of the HD DVD format.

Seriously, at this point not a day goes by where I don't hear the most absurd thing ever. Yesterday people were telling me that the more PS3s Sony sold, the worse off they'd be. The day before that people were telling me that selling over 90% of shipped stock was an utter failure for Sony.

Today you're telling me that Blu-ray selling at over two to one "just shows the strength of the HD DVD format." There is no logic to that. There is no linear thinking involved in that.

You, sir, are absurd. Congratulations.

[Nighthawk]

Direct from today's The Digital Bits:

"The first official retail tracking data from Nielsen VideoScan seems to show Blu-ray Disc outselling HD-DVD in unit software sales by a more than 2 to 1 margin, and the gap is widening. According to data reported in Home Media Retailing (you'll find it on page one of the digital edition available on their website) for the week ending 1/7/07, Year-to-Date tracking indicated that for every 47.14 HD-DVDs sold there were 100 Blu-ray Disc titles sold. Just a week later, ending 1/14/07, the same YTD tracking indicated just 38.36 HD-DVDs sold for every 100 Blu-ray Discs sold. What's more, tracking by Nielsen VideoScan since the inception of both formats appears to indicate that Blu-ray Disc is quickly erasing the sales lead HD-DVD enjoyed as a result of launching months earlier in 2006. On 1/7, HD-DVD's lead was 100 discs for every 85.05 Blu-ray Discs sold, while just a week later on 1/14, that lead had been reduced to 100 HD-DVDs for every 92.40 Blu-ray Discs sold.

Specific unit volume numbers are not available, but one would guess they're still fairly low. No doubt much of the sales surge has to do with the arrival of Sony's PS3 game system in November. We'll have to watch closely over the next few months to see if these trends are affected by specific new software/title releases on both formats from week to week. Still, this data seems to bear out claims made by the BDA at CES, to the effect that their format was outselling HD-DVD as of December 2006 and that the margin could grow to as much as 3 to 1 in early 2007. It'll be interesting to see how continuing sales of the PS3 (and new dedicated players for both formats) impact these numbers as well."


Here's the link:

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents

[bruceames]

That sucks. But that doesn't include Amazon's sales or does it? Most people I know buy at Amazon because it's cheaper there.

[bruceames]

Question: isn't a PS3 game on a Blu-ray disc? The videoscan numbers are saying Blu-ray discs, but fail to mention that the Blu-ray games have been extracted from those numbers. I would think that if they took out the PS3 Blu-ray discs, then they would have said so.

[Gnome]

After doing more research into Nielsen VideoScan I will definitely say that they are a good representative sample of the market, I am however more interested in actual numbers than Percentages though because you have own 90% of the HD market but when the HD market is only 1% of the overall Movie Market that doesn't mean squat.

This is however a much better resource for the BD arguments that they are outselling HD DVD (no surprise here on that).

[hstewarth]

Originally Posted by bruceames

Question: isn't a PS3 game on a Blu-ray disc? The videoscan numbers are saying Blu-ray discs, but fail to mention that the Blu-ray games have been extracted from those numbers. I would think that if they took out the PS3 Blu-ray discs, then they would have said so.

Yes the PS3 games disk are on the Blu-Ray disks. By the way the 360 HD DVD can't be used for games. Which is too bad - because it could be used as replacement drive for games if the main DVD drive ever failed. Maybe Microsoft will update the 360 firmware for this one day.

[bruceames]

I'm wondering why this thread isn't 120 posts long already.

Where are you Blu-ray Fanboys?!

[zzap64]

Originally Posted by bruceames

That sucks. But that doesn't include Amazon's sales or does it? Most people I know buy at Amazon because it's cheaper there.

The picture doesn't look any prettier for HD DVD on amazon:

http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/