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Some Blu-Ray, HD DVD Discs Sell Only 200 Copies
An anonymous reader writes "Much has been made of the strong sales for some recent high-def disc releases (such as 'Casino Royale' on Blu-ray), but a new Sony research report reveals some startlingly low sales numbers for other titles released on the next-gen formats. When disc sales of under 1000 can land you on a weekly best-sellers list, you know your format is in its infancy."
People aren't buying into it in droves, because the previous thing they used works well enough for them and the new features offered by it aren't enough of an incentive to 'upgrade'; on the other hand, it is laden with DRM that the previous thing wasn't.
Am I talking about Vista or HD-DVD/Blu-ray?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
FTA: "While we should note that the VideoScan numbers are not all-inclusive (for example, they don't include discs sold at Wal-Mart or some online merchants)"
Yeah cause it's not like Walmart or some online merchants contribute much to home video sales...
I hate to break it to anonymous submitter, but depending on when a disk was released, it may have -zero- reported sales when a summary report like this is generated. And said movies may very well suck anyway, and not be selling for that reason alone.
So much for the sensationalist submission title.
"Casino Royale" is being sold in a bundle with the PS3 in my country. Could this be where many of the sales of that particular movie are coming from?
At the store where I work, BluRay has outsold HD-DVD 8-1 during the last few months.
We have sold 8 BluRay discs and only one HD-DVD disc.
On the other hand, we usually sell at least 50 DVDs on most days.
It doesn't look like these titles are all so new that you'd be correct (and anyway, new releases nearly always have greater weekly sales than ones that have been around awhile). The real story here is in comparing the HD/BD sales to regular DVD sales--the low rate reported here would probably remain quite low.
Even if Wal-Mart isn't on the list, weekly sales of less than 1000 copies isn't good news for the next-generation titles (particularly because all the HD/BD discs I've seen tend to be the "money makers"--not box office flops). Lots of the movies do suck, but that never stopped people from buying them in massive quantities on DVD or VHS.
The more pressing problem is that no one really needs these discs. There are about 30 million HDTV sets, which is still a small fraction of all televisions in this country. Of those, most people think DVDs look good enough. Why buy an expensive player with wacky DRM schemes and maybe-HDCP and all kinds of other bogus crap, only to have to buy more expensive movies that are presently nowhere NEAR the quality difference that DVD had over VHS? I have an HDTV, and I've seen some amazing HD-DVD content, but I was an early adopter of DVD players and I'm just not doing it again for HD/BD players. It's someone else's turn to fund the birth of this industry.
Wake me when I can get the player for $100 and the disc gives me something better than "great high-definition video mastering" on one of my TVs. I can play my DVDs anywhere, and they mostly look pretty good with progressive scan. Maybe that whole "multiple camera angles" vaporware from DVD would be a good thing to include so I could have some fun with my movies.
Over here in Canada, A DVD would be 10-30 bucks. The mode being about 19.95. A Blu ray dist is between 20.00 - 50.00 with a mode around 29.95. It's not that big of a price premium here and most DVD's under 19.95 are often clearance items or really old/bad movies. The 19.95 blu-rays are just older movies. HD DVD seem to be priced a bit higher. I haven't payed as much attention. As for DVD's. A progressive scan DVD player does not hold up well to a Bluray-HDDVD player on a 790(p/i) or 1080(p/i) screen. Even on a 480(i/p) there is a noticeable but much smaller difference. Those who can afford it are migrating. The rest will upgrade eventually. Like how the VHS clung on for years. The luddites/poor migrate slowly. In 6 years you'll be complaining how bluray is good enough and this new fangled online delivery is queer and will not succeed.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
It doesn't look like these titles are all so new that you'd be correct (and anyway, new releases nearly always have greater weekly sales than ones that have been around awhile). The real story here is in comparing the HD/BD sales to regular DVD sales--the low rate reported here would probably remain quite low.
Even if Wal-Mart isn't on the list, weekly sales of less than 1000 copies isn't good news for the next-generation titles (particularly because all the HD/BD discs I've seen tend to be the "money makers"--not box office flops). Lots of the movies do suck, but that never stopped people from buying them in massive quantities on DVD or VHS.
According to Sony, bluray is spread about as fast as DVD did. the early adopters grab it, show their friends, friends go out and but it when it hits their price range. Its what happens. A bit early and silly to call the format a dead end. Remember that for at least a year DVD greatly outsolf by VHS for most releases.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
You mention DRM to most buyers and they will think it's a "feature". I think price has more to do with it then DRM.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
...that even brick-and-mortar distribution allows for titles with modest sales numbers to find an audience. Consider this: you know those giant anime racks at Fry's and Best Buy? While there are many individual SKU's, few sell more than a handful. Teading NewType USA and AnimeOnDVD, I've seen a couple different writers note that many anime titles will sell only a few hundred copies region-wide in their entire lifetime. Production and distribution must be pretty efficient for that to be possible, right?
Having said that... don't cry for me, Argentina, I think the slow Blu-Ray sellers will survive. If you're bemoaning The Fifth Element only moving about 900 copies a week and making the top-10 for it, well, maybe your format needs more appealing films than 10-year-old sci-fi dreck that The Daily Show once called "the gay Star Wars."
Look elsewhere in the thread; Casino Royale is being bundled with many PS3s.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Nice... So if you are bundling the movie with PS3s, how does this constitute a "sale" of the movie? Meaning sony clearly knows what both numbers are.. :-)
Heck, by those sales metrics, people a couple of years ago were just clamoring for the AOL cd... In fact, I suspect it was the hottest cd of all times...
What do you do with an aging format? Try to convince consumers that they need something better, and try to get them to buy the same thing twice. This whole HDVD/BLURAY sounds like another round of DVD-Audio, SACD, HDCD, business. So who's surprised with some low sales figures? The current CD and DVD standards are good enough, and the LCD usually wins.
www.itjerk.com
On the other hand, consider the market, right now, for Blueray/HD: Rich technogeeks and videophiles. Both of which are much more likely to be within the .01% of the market that cares about DRM. Heck, many of the videophiles may have been burned with DAT. Most people with the money do be dumping $3k into an entertainment system will be older, old enough to remember VHS vs Betamax.
From what I understand, even many of the early HDTVs don't have the correct plugs for these players for full resolution.
Format War: Not good
Having to buy movies again(at 2X the price): NG
DRM: NG
~$2k to see the difference at home: NG (yes, I'm including the price for a HDTV; market penetration for those are still bad, after all).
Result: Slow adoption. Could even be termed 'niche market', at least for now. The analysts may have said that blue ray is catching on as fast as DVD, but not faster if you look at it as a percentage. Most of that came from Casino Royale sales. I think that an important point would be that the HD standards require a new TV, DVD didn't. So I think that you have will see a brief surge of (rich or spendthrift) buyers to help justify the HDTVs they already purchased. After that, it'll be much more difficult.
I'd like to have HDTV, ps3, etc... But I baulk at the price tag every time. I could go cheaper if I was willing to have HDTV in monitor sizes (27"), but I want one at least as big as my current 32" TV. Add in that I don't have cable or satellite and you'll see that my available content is limited and expensive. Not time to adopt yet.
Heck, with the whole casino royale best seller thing I wonder how many people bought the HD discs by mistake, thinking they were getting some kind of deluxe version, but still playable on their DVD player?
I don't read AC A human right
Call me a luddite, but I don't really care about the quality of the sound and image. I just like entertaining movies. And I can get movies that I like in the 5$ bin at Wal Mart. Who needs to spend the money on a new TV, new player, new library of discs, and assorted cables and gadgets, when my computer and a handfull of old movies suits me just fine.
The one thing HD discs do better is carry more bits. Already we are seeing movies released in 3 and 4-DVD packages -- that is a lot of disc shuffling that can be reduced. TV series are commonly on 7-disc sets (e.g. Lost, The Wild Wild West) -- one Blu-Ray could hold this.
I think (and hope) future movie discs will have even more commentary tracks, and extras. Already DVDs are a great value, once one has filtered out the 98% of movies that suck. I look forward to Lawrence of Arabia with twice the quality of the current two-DVD package, and one or more commentary tracks. HD "Stuck On You", not so much.
I hope also, perhaps unrealistically, that the commentary tracks are also available in an unencumbered form (even if at super low quality) so I can listen to them while I commute, and work. I can dream, can't I?
I come here for the love
Already we are seeing movies released in 3 and 4-DVD packages -- that is a lot of disc shuffling that can be reduced. TV series are commonly on 7-disc sets (e.g. Lost, The Wild Wild West) -- one Blu-Ray could hold this.
Somehow I expect to see this at about the same time as I see the entire Beatles catalog released on an MP3 CD at 192 Kbs ready to load into your iPod, Zen, iRiver, or Zune. (not counting the release in the flea market from someone's trunk)
The ability to put more data content on a single disk does not mean they will. HD will be reserved for HD content, not collections of SD shows. CD's will be reserved for CD format audio (with a few exceptions of extra DRM digital tracks and DRM player for your Windows PC. To fit on the redundant tracks, the digital content is at low bitrates and the CD holds less music to make space.)
The truth shall set you free!
"Like how the VHS clung on for years" I'm not sure why you're being modded insightful. The adoption of DVD over VHS was the fastest migration to a new format in the history of the world.
I don't want to come off as one of those old "get off my lawn" guys reminiscing
about walking barefoot in the snow to school every day... BUT
When Laser Disc came out, it was definitely a video-phile's format in that publishers
like criterion rushed to make the very best discs possible. They would remaster prints,
add interview audio tracks with directors, create great liner notes, etc, etc.
Discs were made for movie lovers by movie lovers.
DVDs saw the same sort of attention when it was first released, but in my opinion not
to the same degree.
And now we have HD-DVD and Blu-Ray and what's available on this awesome new format?
It's not Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, it's Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai. It's not
The Lord of The Rings, it's Eragon.
Meh.
While you are right, they could just keep the same number of discs, and remove all the copy protection, so that we could just buy the disc, put in on a hard drive, and never have to swap discs again. Until bandwidth increases to the point where downloading isn't a complete pain in the ass, using the standard disc distribution method could work really well.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It also gave us so much more. Computer DVD-ROMs existed from the beginning, and portable (battery-powered) players appeared almost instantly (at outrageous prices initially, but still). We got amazing picture, no degradation with multiple plays, multiple languages/subtitles, special features and extras, interactive menus, scene selection, no need to rewind at the end, a pause button that would actually let you see the frame, and a much smaller physical medium. It also brought us 5.1 surround sound for the first time and crystal-clear picture for any television.
HD/BD gives us better picture (on large enough displays to see it) if we have HDTVs and the right connections. Whoop-de-damn-doo. The picture is pretty amazing if done properly (bad mastering still has artifacts and fuzziness), but come on. We don't have portable playing options (almost no computer playback or handheld devices), and there is zero advantage on a standard-definition set. The movies should have been introduced at the exact same price as DVDs. The player hardware's outrageous prices could recoup the R&D costs. All in all, I'm unimpressed, very much like Laserdisc.
Ah, come on, some good stuff will slip past the guards ;-)
A DVD like "The Corporation" is quite amazing for how much is jammed on it -- 6 hours of interviews plus a 2 hour movie, all on a "2 hour" DVD. And recently companies are putting out 2 movies on one DVD -- "48HRS / Another 48HRS" comes to mind. In an HD world this could be "Batman 1 2 3 4 5" on one HD disc. Sure it wouldn't be the special editions, but it would still be handy for a Batman marathon (even though I only really like the first and last ones. I'm more likely to have a Lethal Weapon, Robert De Niro, Mel Gibson or David Fincher marathon.)
I see the movie studios responding to the market better than the record companies. Yes DVDs started off ridiculously expensive, but now they are ridiculously cheap (unless you like the BBC). Also, the special editions have become the standard editions in many cases. Called double dipping when done too soon after the first release, this is a huge value add and I love it. Run a search on Amazon (I did 500 such searches recently when I was updating my favorite movies page) and you will be amazed at the value.
Like buying a new machine in 2006 to forestall having Vista rammed down their throat, now is a great time to stock up on DVDs. And I think the same will be true with HD discs in a few years. No they probably won't be unencumbered, but they will bring value and I will probably get an HD player. Beethoven's 9 symphonies alone were enough to get me to buy a CD player.
I still like the idea that some portion of HD content is unencumbered. I think it is natural that the more time-consuming stuff to listen to (face it, you never need to watch the extras) like "Making ofs" and director commentaries be available in MP3 form. Make it 24kbps or something, I would be more than happy with that. While you are at it, ban the group commentaries -- those truly suck. If someone has something to say, use all that space to put it on a separate track, or at least manage it like the excellent Bond Double Oh 7 editions do.
I come here for the love
I have a PS3 and an HDTV, I generally buy 2-3 DVDs a week, and although I've had a PS3 for a few months now, I only have 3 BluRay movies- and one of them came with the system. The reason doesn't have anything to do with price (I don't mind paying a bit extra for HD, although I would buy fewer titles overall if I bought more stuff on BluRay- and I would probably be a bit more selective) or DRM (By the time hard drives are big enough that ripping disks is reasonable, the format will be cracked wide open- it's already cracked a little bit). Instead it's the fact that the choices suck. The reason some of these titles are only selling a couple hundred copies is that there are only a couple of hundred people who actually liked the movies they offer. Part of it is the cost, there are certainly movies that are worth it to me at $15, but not at $25- but more than that there seem to be some movies that are innately "I _want_ to see that in HD!" and other movies no so much. The problem is they aren't really selling many of those must see in HD titles. They aren't even selling many of the "If I'm going to buy it anyway, why not get it on BluRay" titles. Instead, they seem to be selling a bunch of "why in the name of $diety would I waste my time or money on that crap" movies, and hoping that people will buy it anyway because they don't have any choices. Of course, they do have a choice, since regular DVDs still work. A great movie is often even more amazing in HD, but a crappy movie in HD is still a crappy movie. If they really want to get the format moving, why in the world can I get Ultraviolet and Dinosaur on BluRay, but not the Lord of the Rings or Godfather trilogies?
Based on what I've seen on the shelf at best buy, HD-DVD offers better movies, but I'm reluctant to fork over the $200 for the 360 HD-DVD add-on for a format that seems to be sinking even worse than BluRay.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
When The Matrix came out on DVD it was a big factor to getting people to finally switch formats. Lots of people who didn't previously buy DVDs picked that one up first.
A movie with the potential to do the same would probably be 300. I'll be very interested in seeing if it doesn't kick start this format war into the next level.
Sigs are awesome huh?
I couldn't disagree with you more. The new format is meant to replace the old not supplement it. I am 99% sure that if/when hd and blu-ray take off that non high def content will be put on them. It is simply a matter of being efficient. Why waste money buy producing thousands of regular dvds when you can make a single disc and still charge the same price? Right now it is better to keep them on regular dvds but once production cost comes down on the other formats be ready to buy all your tv shows over again.
WTF?
I wonder how Netflix fits into all of this. For no extra charge, one can have bluray and HD-DVD versions of movies sent to their home. I've never bought a HD-DVD but I am a rather heavy consumer of them. I have rented 34 titles so far from them. All of my friends that have HD-DVD and BluRay players do the same thing. The cost of the movie is prohibitive, but Netflix charges no more for the privilege.
I may well be in the minority here - but when I buy a DVD, 99 times out of 100, I have no interest in the extras and commentary. I buy it to watch the movie. That 1 time out of 100, I'll buy the collectors edition.
Of the people I know who have recently bought big-screen flat-panel sets: one of them invited us to watch a movie with them. They didn't perform any deliberate setup steps. They popped the DVD in and played it. It happened to be a 4:3 "full screen" DVD, and their settings, whatever they were, simply stretched it to fill a 16:9 screen. They seemed unaware of any issues with this. After about five minutes I was going bonkers and finally got up the courage to ask them whether they could change the setting. They pushed a few buttons on their remote, got a few all-black screens and error messages, and finally put it back the way it was and told me to stop being so picky. (I settled for moving my chair way to the side...)
Another couple I know recently bought what called a "high definition" set. They were proud of having gotten a good deal on it. They mostly used it to watch DVDs and standard-definition broadcasts. They thought the picture was great. When they weren't around, I, curious to see whether HDTV was really the mind-blowing experience it was supposed to be, tuned the set to the local NPR affiliate. The picture looked good but not all that great... not the sort of 35mm cinema experience I was expecting. On closer inspection I saw that something on the set's faceplate said something like "Enhanced Definition" or "Enhanced Digital" or something like that. I sneaked out their instruction booklet and leafed through it. It wasn't a high-definition set at all. It was a regular set with some kind of electronic sharpening effect. They didn't know and didn't care. I didn't tell them.
I don't think the average consumer understands high definition or cares about it. They buy a set, the picture looks "good" because of technology improvements--the perfect geometry, high brightness, and high contrast of solid state screens compared to picture tubes... and because it's digital, and their cable company's analog signals were crap.
They will probably buy HD DVD or Blu-Ray players someday, but they'll hardly know that they are buying them. They'll buy them when high definition essentially comes for free: when the nice-looking name-brand high-quality $129.95 players just happens to include high definition, and the only ones that don't are $39.95 el-cheapo deluxe models. They'll probably refer to them as "DVD players." And as long as they pop a disk in it and it plays, they probably won't even notice whether it's high or low definition... any more than my friends noticed whether the DVD they rented was 4:3 or 16:9.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Why would anyone buy their TV shows again? Just keep a flipping DVD player around and watch them on that. It's not as though the magic of HD is going to do anything for the majority of TV shows on DVD.
1: Lack of theater-worthy releases. So far I've bought The Departed, Stargate, Total Recall and Casino Royale. I'll get Terminator 2 soon. But for the life of me, I can't find a reason to buy Click or Along Came Polly on Blu-Ray. I didn't get HD to watch people share their feelings; I want to see explosions and lasers, goddamnit! 2: Concept of storage space is lost. TV producers have yet to realize that for some shows, HD really isn't necessary. Here is where you introduce the "one-disc box set": it reduces your cost while people will accept a good amount of markup for the luxury of an entire season of episodes on one disc. 3: Not actually HD. Ooh, I can see genuine film grain! I can hear pops and hiss with stunning clarity! Nice job remastering your old movies for the new millenium, assholes. It's good to know I'm getting that commitment to quality for my extra $15.
I just don't want to sit through the DVD title sequence and previews.
I just want to put the disk in and watch the movie (not juggle though disabled buttons until I find the one that skips the previews and find that nothing will skip the crappy menu sequence (and the don't steal video)).
I stopped buying DVDs for this reason. It's mine: I don't want to go through the same shit every time I put it in.
Whenever I see BlueRay or HD-DVD in the stores, I've been very unimpressed. It looks almost worse than DVD in some ways. Now, I know that's not technically true, but I also know that electronics stores know nothing about calibrating their TVs so that everything looks like junk. For instance, sharpness should be at or near 0, it's artificial noise.
HD/BD aside, half the time, you don't even know it the source is HD or not. At one big electronics store, a salesman told me that the signal came off a central hard drive and it was heavily recompressed. WTF? HD TVs should be showing nothing but a high quality HD feed.
So my advice to the Sountrack/Ultimate, Best Buy and Circuit City, get the best signal you can and spend some time calibrating your sets so that when I walk by, I can by wowed and say that looks better than my crappy 8 year old HDTV. Maybe then I'd upgrade my TV or get a Blueray player. Just telling me it's great isn't enough. Hire someone who can actually afford the TV to set it up for you. I'm not going to spend several thousand dollars for a product on the advice of someone who can barely afford beer and gas.
Yup, my cheap Blu-Ray player (or expensive PS2 and PSone game machine) plays conventional (and burned) DVDs just fine. It actually is slightly nicer to use than my dedicated DVD player; so I watch movies in the PS3 and leave TV-on-DVD in the DVD machine so "resume play" works. (It doesn't remember last-play position after eject. Hmmm, I think the PS3 does, maybe the dedicated DVD player is completely useless now.)