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Blu-ray Disc Among Top Selling DVDs at Amazon
An anonymous reader writes "In a milestone for the next-gen disc format, the Blu-ray edition of 'Casino Royale' cracked the top ten on Amazon's DVD top sellers list upon its release Tuesday, peaking late in the evening at #8. Of course, the two-disc standard-def DVD still topped the chart at #1, but a strong showing for Blu-ray regardless."
Also in the news, Sony reiterates that it has won the high def dvd wars. The head PR Had the amazon.com stats page open and had this to say "LOOK! LOOK! SEE! WE ARE AUSOM!!!" as he pointed to casino royale.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
...the ob Sony bashing posts complaining that it's a failure because it didn't beat the DVD release.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
They left out this part:
"Barely beating BARBIE MAGIC OF THE RAINBOW and EASTER BUNNY ADVENTURE.."
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Quick, be the first to give a referral link to Casino Royale! We might not be able to find it on Amazon without you!
Sony Employee "Sir, I did what you said and bought thousands of blue ray discs from amazon"
Sony Exec (in Mr. Burns Voice) "Excellent"
This is just like when the SNES was ahead of PS3 on amazon right? I really don't think these numbers mean anything
Well, since there are a total of 3 Blu-Ray titles in the top 100, forgive me for seeing this as a desperate pent-up demand for new titles.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Considering that, at this moment, the Amazon DVD top 100 is composed of 99 DVD (still including Firefly at #81, BTW) and 1 BR.
This says nothing about the format and everything about the movie.
woo a popular bond movie making it to the top of the charts on release?! OMG CALL THE PAPERS!!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
At least at the HMV store in Central, Blu-ray discs occupy at least four times more shelf space than HD-DVD...
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I think a lot of customers are going to be disappointed when their purchase doesn't play in their dvd player.
Yah, well, my dad can beat up your dad!
I know a lot of people probably don't use their PS2's as DVD players, but some do (I do). I think that once the PS3 starts rolling, Blue Ray will pick up some serious steam.
I don't respond to AC's.
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Perhaps cracked is more of an operating word than meant- I have to wonder if increased sales are in any way related to the cracking of the format (people not feeling so locked-in- so they can put the dvd on their ipod, etc).
If you can't tell me how many of these actualy sold then I am not interested. Was it 40 DVD's for #1 and 10 for #8 which means very little in the end. Or was it 10,000 for #1 and 8000 for number #8 spot. Knowing a standing in a chart means extreamly little unless you can give me the actual numbers sold.
also would like to point out that Blue Ray DVD's are much harder to find compared to standard DVD's that are even for sale in the local 7-11 including Casino Royale. This point could explain why it was bought more on amazon, as I can get the standard DVD any ware, but the blue ray and HD-DVD for that matter, are harder to find so would increase sales on things like amazon easily.
and yes this has been beaten to death point, but again more people have blue ray for the simple fact that its stock in PS3, not because a lot of people have bought specific players. From the numbers there is more stock HD-DVD players sold over stock Blue-Ray players. I just hope Sony realizes they need to avoid the fate of there Beta and actulay allow others to make Blue-Ray players, then they are in a position to actully win out.
Yeah, go line up to buy another box of shit from your Sony leaders. After all, they said that they could shit in a box and their fans would still buy it.
Blu-Ray owners are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad. Be assured, HD-DVD is safe, protected.
In capitalist America, Sony anonymous reader writes you!
What I don't understand is the willingness to pay more than $10 over the price of the standard DVD for a disc that costs marginally more to manufacture... that's just signing up to be gouged. And at that price, who can afford more than the occasional purchase?
My mother things BlueRay is a "new brand of DVD player, right?" I'd hate to be Amazon's customer service department explaining to people that they need to read carefully because the new Bond requires a new gadget to be able to play. Maybe if you beat somebody in a high-stakes poker game you'll be able to afford a BlueRay player... or at least the cable for one, which is a start.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
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I'm from the UK and I was surprised to see that most films seem to be released on DVD in both widescreen and fullscreen versions in the US. This doesn't really happen in the UK.
Here almost all the films just come out in widescreen form and if you want to play on a 4:3 TV most DVD players give you the option of playing the DVD either in letter box or plan and scan. Is there a good reason for the difference?
No, that's Electronic Arts.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
...but.. Blu-Ray isn't DVD. Blu-Ray is Blu-Ray. Just like DVD isn't CD, it's DVD. That's like saying that this USB pen drive is the best CD-ROM format thus far.
The PS2 is an AWFUL DVD player. I mean AWFUL. It was so bad I went back to the $30 cheap-ass Chinese knockoff DVD player I bought at Walmart. The picture quality is low, the subtitles are so blocky they are almost unreadable.
Now however, I have an XBox 360 and it does an *awesome* job playing regular DVDs.
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Steve Jobs said that
it should be noted that two other editions of 'Casino Royale' (both standard-def DVD) also cracked the top ten yesterday -- the wide screen two-disc version (at #1) and the full screen two-disc version (at #10)
So, BR version at #8, HD at #1 and HD fullscreen at #10.
(Jack Sparrow) "Humm, that's interesting" (/JS)
The pedant in me wonders what the widescreen breakdown is? I dunno how popular 4:3 is vs 16:9, but owning a 16:9
tv and seeing non 16x9 titles *sometimes* keeps me from buying it on rare occasion.
But, I love how the box states "the black bars are normal"...Uh, no, for my screen the black bar look stupid.
What I find amusing is something like "Fearless" in the original chinese release was 16:9, but the american
release was 4:3...ugh, I'd rather watch the chinese release with subs, than 4:3 with dubbing, personally.
Still, either format is just not tripping my trigger, and even after over a year of ownership of my plasma tv,
if I ever 'regret' buying one, that is easily taken care of by firing up my lowly 480/720p display and putting
in any Pixar flic, Final Fantasy, BSG or Firefly in all their 16x9 glory.
So, while this is good'ish news for BR, I suppose, for the rest of 'us', it is a non event for HD/BR, IMO.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Where is your pr0n to save you now?
What? The ones being seeded or the ones in queue to download?
Seriously, I don't think porn is an issue these days because you can just download it for free or very easily for a small fee at certain sites.
People don't want to go into shady stores to buy porn if they don't want to.
However, I personally believe digital downloads will defeat both BluRay and HDDVD if given the chance by a major corporation.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
A blue ray disc isn't a DVD !
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I recently bought the Superman Returns HD-DVD even though I do not have an HD-DVD player. Why? Because it was a hybrid disc. Why pay $20 for a normal DVD when I can get the normal DVD AND the HD version for a few dollars more?
After that, I decided I am no longer wasting money on new single-format standard DVDs, since anything I buy now will be obsolete in 1-2 years, it would be a total waste of money. I will pick up a few previously played versions, perhaps, but that's it.
I really don't get why we aren't seeing more hybrid HD-DVD releases. It is a MAJOR benefit of HD-DVD. If the format backers pressured the studios to release more titles in hybrid format HD-DVD would gain so much ground against Blu-Ray that Blu-Ray would be dead in the water.
As far as Casino Royale goes - I rEALLY wanted this DVD. Too bad they are selling it Blu-Ray only - now I won't be buying it at all until I can get a used copy.
I am sure I am not alone either. Dumb move MGM.
Over the last few years, we've been seeing the appearance of very high production Porn. The movie Pirates (work safe link) was an example of a high production quality movie that needed to recoup its costs via disc sales. And, having seen this movie, it's definitely interesting to have real costumes, real sets, and real sex. That is probably the future of the porn industry, and so disc sales matter.
But all that aside, the Blu-ray-resists-porn thing was only an unfounded rumor. There are several X-rated releases slated for Blu-ray.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
technically it's a Blu-ray disk, not a DVD.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
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First they have to actively advertise hybrid discs, which they don't seem to do. It's bad enough that people don't really know about HD-DVD, nobody knows about hybrid disks.
Second, they need decent movies available on hybrids. Last I checked in Best Buy (in January), I could only find about 3, and one of those was The Lake House... not compelling stuff. I just went to Amazon and saw that Superman Returns, Happy Feet and The Departed are available on hybrid... so there's 3 movies out of the first two pages worth of HD-DVDs that I looked at.
Third, hybrid discs need to be equal in price (or maybe just a tiny bit above) to the regular HD-DVDs... this is a feature that could help HD-DVD win the format war, it's not something the HD-DVD camp can afford to charge a buttload extra for. I'd like to know how many people out there actually ponied up $40 for the Lake House! (Amazon lists is for $27.99 now, but the original retail price was $40.)
this is my ultimate favorite.
they did it with the US releases of countless anime titles (the worst was saikano)..
so then you get the black bars on the sides AND the top and bottom.. and youre watching the title on a quarter of your screen.. unless of course you have macosX and enable zoom : )
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The article continues: "Unfortunately, 9 out of 10 blue ray Casino Royale disc purchases were returned the next day because consumers had confused them with regular ones."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
their botched up labeling system cost my mother an insane amount of money when she bought what she thought was an audio cd but which turned out to be DVD-A.
I eventually ripped it and reburned it to cd for her.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I see ads on TV for the blu-ray format and blu-ray discs every day now (almost at every commercial break when I'm watching HDNET and other HD channels). I have YET to see a single ad for HD-DVD or an HD-DVD release. Not one.
Blu-ray is beginning to make some name recognition headway. No one even knows HD-DVD exists. Blu-ray is getting new releases all the time. HD-DVD new releases have dried up to almost nothing.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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Those that were too quick to discard blu-ray as the next beta will have a nice ample serve of humble pie waiting for them.
Okay, okay. Blu-Ray isn't the next Beta.
It's the next DVD-Audio, and HD-DVD is the next SACD.
Neither of which has yet managed to convinced the majority of the market to give up the 25-plus-year-old CD format.
Wish I had some mod points...insightful. I'm sick of all the 'anti-conformist'-conformists.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when 300 comes out on home formats. That's going to be absolutely huge. I wonder if an HD-DVD exclusive would have the same effect...
You think Blu-Ray is pounding HD-DVD today, wait another 10 days, and it will decimate it, as another 2,000,000 PS3 units are unlesashed on PAL regions (EU,Australsia).
Game Over for HD-DVD.... funny "The Next Betamax".. Load of people looking pretty silly now...
Perhaps, but saying Blu-ray is a success because the latest Bond film is in the top 10 at Amazon this week is a bit like saying Betamax was a success because a popular movie that was not available on VHS was a top 10 seller in it's first week of release (at a particular video store). It's a measurement that is so narrow in scope that generalizing a broader trend from it is absolutely pointless.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
So Blu-ray is an "Analogue" Video Disk, not a "Digital" Video Disk?
Pedant doesn't work when you don't know jack.
I am an HD-DVD disc, and I am really getting a kick out of some of these replies.
Ye gods, this reads like the old Atari ST v Amiga stuff. WHo really cares about if a film is on Blu-ray or DVD-HD? Who cares which miniscule sub-feature is supported or not? The only remotely pertinant issue is which studios are tied to which format but anyone who'se that obsessive will just buy two players.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
This isn't that much of a surprise. The HD-DVD has not enjoyed the discount that Amazon has offered. I'm perfectly happy with standard DVD for the time being. I'll wait until the two duke it out to the point where things become really affordable.
"To work for libertarianism -- to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual -- used to be
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I too have strong feelings about the way bits are arranged on plastic discs!
Awww... did some AC kick yowa widdle puppay? Whether it is the superior format is arguable and you greatly overestimate the general public if you think they choose based on the superior format. They choose based on marketing and other 'simple icons'. Sony has had a good name in consumer electronics for a long time so it still carries weight with people who don't watch the new or read the blurbs about what Sony's non-marketing people say. Sony's management has said some fairly offensive things, but hey, if you don't mind being treated like a money cow that Sony can milk whenever they want (at least in their eyes and publicly stated opinion), more power to you. It's your money that you're using to reward them for their attitude (and reinforcing it at the same time). You'd better hurry up to get in line to get your next box of Sony Shit(TM).
Right, just wait for the idiots to play it in their current DVD player and then return it because they thought it would "give them excellent picture and sound quality" through yellow, red, and white RCA cables.
It seems that most intelligent, tech-savvy slashdotters are predicting HD-DVD will be the winner, since they know more about the subject than the average consumer. So, naturally Blu-Ray will win ;-)
My rights don't end where your feelings begin.
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I mean, "DVD", WTF does that mean?!! Yeah, we all know it was meant to stand for "Digital Video Disc", and then they realised their mistake (stupid name for a disc if it can hold audio and data too) too late, so had to pretend that it was meant to stand for "Digital Versatile Disc" (what a vile contrivance), and then they changed their mind and said it didn't stand for anything.
But I digress; my point is that 10 years ago, if you'd suggested "DVD" on its own as a marketing name, it would have sounded awful; and it still does when you think about it.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Blu-Ray finally has a recording drives. The blank discs seem expensive: 25GB (1-layer) are at least $9 each, 50GB (2-layer) are over $15 each. The expensive drives are over $480, so the drives are only 60x the price of the discs.
DVD-R drives are about $14, DVD-R discs are about $0.20 each, making them about 70x. That's pretty close to the BD-R ratio, actually more expensive, before BD-R discs are even sold in larger than 2-packs. $480 isn't even that expensive for a new recordable drive (that just replaces an old DVD-R drive in a PC, with new drivers) - they're usually introduced around at least $800.
If this keeps up, BD-R will offer drives below $250 by the end of 2007, and discs in 50 or 100 packs for under $1 each. That's $0.02 per GB, while HDs will be probably about $0.20 per GB. Even including a drive, if in a 200-disc changer, that's maybe $650 for 10TB, which is $0.065 per GB.
--
make install -not war
Let me guess...the Blu-Ray disc is not the one with Woody Allen in it, right?
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
speaking of cows, shouldn't you be getting back to ass banging yours?
I wonder if the number of people who bought it by mistake, not knowing the meaning of Blu-Ray, is significant.
I know everyone else claims they are sitting on store shelves, but I've yet to see one
Middle of the week, middle of the evening, local Costco. ie: long after they were put on the floor, just so no one can claim "but they probably sold within 15 minutes!". I've seen the same volume on the floor at a local Best Buy.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Duh...Blu is the new Black. Everything new is coming in a form of "Blu".
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
This format war may well be decided by titles rather than player sales.
May be?
This is exactly what many of us have been saying ever since the two wars shaped up - it's pretty obvious when you have so many studios exclusive to a formwat which would win. Yet many people took that as a sign of Sony fanboyism, instead of simply pointing out the obvious result of many of the most popular titles going to one format over another.
This war was decided before it began - it would have been over already had either Microsoft or Universal not decided to carry forward a hopeless battle. But Universal wanted control over the next gen format they could not have with Blu-Ray, and Microsoft would not let go of the menuing system they created.
At least Microsoft helped to not prolong the war any longer by shipping the 360 with an HD-DVD drive - that would have drug out the war about a year or two longer, instead of seeing HD-DVD collapse this year before Christmas sales heat up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Cheaper player will not even help if more titles do not arrive. There have been no new HD-DVD releases since around the 27th of last month, and will not be any until around the same time this month!
Forgot super-hot movies, HD-DVD has trouble just getting any movies - and if sales continue to fall for HD-DVD versios of movies few titles will risk a release on HD-DVD which may not sell very well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The BD developers order a ton of each disk the moment it comes out, for testing. Suspect Casino Royale had a problem with BD-J so they wanted to throw as much manpower at it as possible. There are also a lot of copies of Speed being bought, as you can see. The main thing they're working on is BD+. If you see a BD disk spike on your hot list, it's probably a BD+ being bought up for testing.
But what you'll see if you've been following the comparison trends at:
http://eproductwars.com/dvd/
is that Blu-Ray passed HD-DVD early this year, and the sales gap is generally widening. It's not just a fluke of the Casino Royale release.
Couple this with the anemic release schedule for upcoming HD-DVDs compared to Blu-Ray, and it looks like Blu-Ray is on a pretty solid path to trouncing HD-DVD. I say this as the owner of an HD-DVD XBox addon (but not PS3 or any other Blu-Ray).
I might start buying Blu-Ray (or HD for that matter) once the DRM can be reliably bypassed. Until then, I am JUST ... NOT ... INTERESTED.
The day that I, without protest, let some company dictate what I can do with my legally-purchased product would be the day the free market died.
The automobile, ala DRM: "You can only use our brand of gasoline, and if we don't like the way you drive, we will shut off your engine."
Yeah, right. I don't think so.
I prefer to buy my shit in bags.
Bingo.
I've been reading through these comments and people seem to have become very attached to either one format or the other, but my personal suspicion is neither will matter in the long run. I have to wonder why people get so obsessed about supporting the eventual "winner" though. It's an awfully odd thing to get so wrapped up in it.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
To be more accurate. DVDs sell for $15.99 on week one, then usually sit at $19.99 thereafter, until they start getting into the discount bins.
BluRay and HD-DVDs aren't getting that first week sale price, and the sort of stuff that is selling at 9.99 or 11.99 as DVD is still priced at 19.99 in the new format. When HDTV first started getting programming, there were people watching pro lacrosse on HDNET just because it was HD. Same applies to the movies, so it's propping up the price. That won't change for a couple years.
So personally, I evaluate the release and make a decision. For Casino Royale - I liked the movie and I think it will be better viewing in HD, so all my future 007 purchases will be BD. For MI-III - the $14 first week special coupled with Tom Cruise meant that I picked the dvd option over the $30 ($35) price I saw on the bluray release at Circuit City. In terms of genre, adventure films with a lot of outdoor footage is more like to be worth the price than romantic comedies with a lot of talking indoors. (esp for pg rated movies)
One (or both) of these formats will represent 100% of the market, but it could well take two decades for it to happen. This is very much like the LP->CD transition, accept the players (including the TV) are much more expensive.
The cake is a pie
Your analogy is pretty weak. Most people consider Blu-Ray to be new format of "DVD." Probably has something to do with them having identical form factors and serving the same purpose, which is to be a "digital video disk." That and Blu-Ray players playing DVDs. If you could play a CD-ROM with a USB port, your analogy would be a little closer to the mark.
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
An employee suggested to me that we load Casino Royale on a few machines here as an evaluation. I was skeptical at first but he explained the benefits of using it for our employee's day-to-day tasks. So I decided to let him install the disk onto 5 machines to see how the users got on. Besides, our Blueray servers had been running fine up till now, why not try it on the client machines?
Once he'd got the machines up and running with Casino Royale we let the users try it out. It all seemed fine to start with: Daniel Craig was a pretty good replacement for Pierce Brosnan and the users could still do their work as normal.
Alas it did not stay that way. After a few days, I had lost count of the number of complaints received from users who could not find things they were used to (Moneypenny even!??) or tasks they could not perform that they previously could while watching Bond movies. The final straw came when one employee lost several hours work when Bond shot that guy in the back and he spewed coke all over his keyboard.
I made the employee delete Casino Royale from the machines and lets just say he's not with us anymore.
Except that neither DVD-Audio or SACD gives appreciably better sound quality for an undiscerning ear, whereas the picture from a Blu-Ray disc is instantly recognised as better than the incumbant (DVD) by any Joe Sixpack with more than zero eyes.
I'm guessing you've never actually seen Blu-Ray content displayed on an HD TV yet.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Pretty much all widescreen/HD TVs have the zoom feature. I tried it on an HDTV with the Star Wars "original" Trilogy DVDs, which are exactly as you describe normally.
I hope all of you technology whores end up losing out on your ridiculous BR and HDVD "standards" all together. I mean seriously here.... think about it..... your a bunch of retards!
Except that neither DVD-Audio or SACD gives appreciably better sound quality for an undiscerning ear, whereas the picture from a Blu-Ray disc is instantly recognised as better than the incumbant (DVD) by any Joe Sixpack with more than zero eyes.
I'm guessing you've never actually seen Blu-Ray content displayed on an HD TV yet.
It should also have better menu customization options vs DVD. However it's entirely up to the content provider to use the expanded abilities.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Every person gets invested into the choices they make. GM vs toyota, LV vs Prada, Xbox vs PS3 vs Wii, Mac vs PC, Vi vs Emacs, etc.. any place where people have a choice lead to those people investing some personal weight in that choice. It's human nature. It gets even worse is someone switches because now they need to justify their switch.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
What the hell makes you think there's any correlation between the cost of the player and the cost of the disc ?!?
I would not predict doom though for HDDVD quite yet. The article stated that this list is updated every hour. So a BluRay disc tops the top 10 for just one hour. Big deal. Its a huge movie and is going to sell well when it first goes on sale. My question is where did it stand in sales an hour later, the next day, and so forth. Is it even still in the top 100?
The easiest way to keep track is to watch the running sales ran graphs on eproductwars.com.
Sales rank for Casino Royale is still 8.
I have no connection to the site owners, I just think the data is interesting.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Amazon isn't just "a particular video store", it's the world's largest online retailer. You are the one making inaccurate analogies. Of course, in this case, you are doing it on purpose.
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
I'm surprised I didn't find this question already in the comments. It seems likely to me that many people who are buying this have no idea what it is and will be disappointed that it won't play in their DVD player.
Who's to say that insects aren't actually doing better than humans at this point?
More importantly there's a huge difference between comparing two extremely similar technologies in a market with space for one, to comparing two entirely different species in a market with space for billions. Numbers will indeed determine the outcome in the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD race.