For the past six weeks or so, I've been collecting sales rank data from Amazon.com to compare how both formats are doing. I've compared both the hardware and the software; I've decided to put this here for discussion as it seemed the most likely place.
As a retailer, Amazon is large enough to give us a broad sense of how products are selling but still small enough that they don't exactly mirror overall sales. Comparing their most popular books and albums, for example, does not give you a bestseller list or a Billboard albums chart.
Amazon.com's sales rankings work by ranking each product within a category against all other products: Blu-Ray and HD DVD players are ranked against all other electronics, and software is ranked against all over DVDs. There is no information regarding unit sales, and the lower you go in rank, the more unreliable the numbers become. It's best to think of sales in logarithmic sections: the Top 10, the Top 100, the Top 1000, etc. Ranking is also constantly updated as the day goes on: if sales pick up in the afternoon, a rank is likely to increase, for example.
Given these inaccuracies, I thought it would be interesting to see how HD DVD and Blu Ray were doing on Amazon. Here are my results:
Hardware (and some Software)
First, I tracked hardware sales of Toshiba's two models, the RCA, the Samsung, and Sony's, which is only a pre-order at this time. Second, I tracked these against Oppo's OPDV971H player, which is one of best selling upscaling DVD players on Amazon.
Finally, I also tracked the best-selling title on disc for HD DVD and Blu-Ray. I did not have a chance to check each of the dozens of titles every time, but generally a few titles always sell very well for each format and Amazon ranks the titles as "Bestsellers" per format although (frustratingly) it doesn't correspond to the titles ranking.
The average sales rank from 7/25/2006 to today is as follows:
Oppo OPDV971H: 157
Toshiba HD-A1: 501
Toshiba HD-XA1: 7,500
Samsung BDP-1000: 8,754
Sony BDP-S1: 9,312
RCA HDV5000: 11,765
HD DVD Bestseller: 680
Blu-Ray Bestseller: 3,720
It's also in chart form:
Software (across all three formats)
I also wondered how well movies released in all three formats (DVD, BRD, and HD DVD) sold. I began tracking titles as they became available in all three formats. I hope as I get more data on this trends may emerge or we might see something meaningful. The big drop on DVD's line was the cause of added catalog titles which sold well in the new format but were not new releases on DVD. I'm continually adding titles and am now tracking twenty.
For some reason, that chart won't display in this post, so I need to link to the
Sales of Titles Available in All Formats chart.
I know this is not "hard" data but I hope it's a bit enlightening and can promote some healthy discussion until we get more concrete data from outside sources. I will keep the most recent charts and anything else I can think of on
HD Charts.
