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Blu-ray Dominates Black-Friday (1 Viewer)

Lyle_JP

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And therein lies a critical flaw in your reasoning. They are not the same movie. They do not necessarily have the same audience. On one hand, you couldn't pay me to watch Transformers, my loathing for both that stupid afternoon cartoon and Michael Bay being what they are. On the other hand, Spidey 3 was the worst of the Spidey films, yet I still liked it enough to buy it. You could find 100 other people here on this forum who would disagree strongly with both of my sentiments about both films. Comparing the sales figures of both leads nowhere and proves nothing.
 

FrancisP

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The critical flaw in your reasoning is refusing to acknowledge the one similarity. They were both blockbusters and appealed to a wide audience. It is a good test to see what the potential sales in each format could be. The only reason that some bluray people don't like it is because it doesn't come out to this 3-1 advantage bluray supposedly has in weekly sales. It may not be perfect but it is far less manipulative than weekly sales figures are.
 

BrettB

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The useful data gleaned from an S3 TF comparo is just short of non-existant when you have dual format titles to look at.

High-def sellers, aggregate by title as of Aug 5, 2007 (BD + HD)*

300 204,400 ( 134,200 + 70,200)
The Departed 116,300 ( 73,300 + 43,000)
Planet Earth 97,600 ( 44,700 + 52,900)
Happy Feet 51,300 ( 32,000 + 19,400)
Superman Returns 43,200 ( 27,800 + 15,300)
Goodfellas 34,400 ( 17,300 + 17,100)
Letters from Iwo Jima 32,800 ( 20,200 + 12,600)
Babel 31,000 ( 16,400 + 14,600)

*courtesy zombieflanders
 

Sanjay Gupta

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If you really want to fairly compare the HD sales of these two titles, ie. 'Spider-Man 3' & 'Transformers', then the only way to do so is to look at what numbers each has sold compared to the DVD versions of the same title. I am sure if compared in this more appropriate manner, you will find that Spider-Man 3 has quite handedly outsold Transformers on HD media. Also, if instead of looking at only the first week sales of each title, if you look at the longer term sales, two - three months maybe, you will see that as a percentage of the DVD sales 'Spider-Man 3' on Blu-Ray will easily outsell 'Transformers' on HD-DVD.
 

Chuck Anstey

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Okay let's do that.
Transformers (hard numbers available) : HD 190K, DVD 8.3M
Spidey 3 (soft on DVD) : Blu 135K, DVD 4-5M, assume 4.5M

Transformers: 190K / 8.3M = 0.022 = 2.2%
Spidey 3: 135K / 4.5M = 0 = 0.030 = 3%

So from this we can attempt to draw conclusions:
A. Blu has a bigger install base so sold a higher percentage.
B. Blu owners are so desparate to win with weekly sales numbers they went out and bought a movie they didn't like (on average).
Without significantly more data about # of players (Blu,HD, and DVD) in the markets, demographics, and such there is no way to know for sure if either of those conclusions are correct.

However, neither of those is really as likely as a third conclusion. Since more than 1/3 of Spidey 3's count comes from boxed sets (50K), it is reasonable to assume that some of those simply came along when the buyer was really after 1 and 2. How much? Well let's just use the DVD sales numbers for popularity. 4.5M / 8.3M = 54% so about 46% of the Spidey 3 sales in the boxed set might be tagalongs (=23K) . Redo the numbers.
Spidey 3 : (135K - 23K) / 4.5M = 2.5%

C. Spidey 3 and Transformers sold nearly parity numbers of copies on HD compared to DVD.

That is not to say the conclusion C is correct, just the one that is most likely without getting significantly more data on those sales.
 

Sanjay Gupta

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First of all the 190K numbers for Transformers are incorrect. The correct numbers are reportedly closer to approx 115K. Secondly these are numbers for just the first week of sales, it would be more appropriate to compare the sales figures for atleast 2-3 months. The idea is not to figure out which title is more popular but rather which format sells how much. The fact that Transformers' sold almost twice as much as Spider-Man 3 on DVD clearly establishes the far greater popularity of Transformers as a title.

I am not sure I understand the statistical logic behind your calculations. How in the world does dividing the DVD sales of Spider-Man 3 by the DVD sales of Transformers on DVD give you an approximation of how many may have bought the Spidey boxed set only for Spidey 1 and/or 2 ? At most all that tells you is that Transformers was approx 84% more in demand (popular) than Spiderman 3 in their respective first week of sales.

In the end all this is only speculation and one could juggle these figures around to suit one's own point of view. But the fact is, if you look at 'NEW' titles released on both formats, Blu-Ray has consistently outsold HD-DVD by a margin of approx 1.85:1. Thus the theory that Blu-Ray's higher sales advantage only stems from BOGO sales, is hogwash.
 

Adam Gregorich

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The 190K numbers for first week sales of T are actually fairly accurate. The only people who have disputed them are two BD studios who had access to only the VS numbers. It has continued to sell very well since then.
 

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