Blu-ray holds 88% of HD market, but only 6% of movie sales

[admin]

The latest issue of Home Media Magazine showed that Blu-ray romped to a 88% share of the HD movie market for the week ending 23/3, as HD DVD releases have all but dried up and some stores are returning stock back to suppliers instead of selling them at a discount.

In a first for HMM, they now show the Blu-ray/DVD sales ratio. For the week ending 23/3, DVDs held 94% of all discs sales, Blu-ray holding a meagre 6%. This despite a week where the news has been suggesting that Blu-ray sales are on the up (a few titles, including Oscar Winner No Country for Old Men, had Blu-ray sales at more than 10% of total sales during the first week), the sobering figure of the actual BD/DVD ratio show just how much Blu-ray has to do before it can even come close to competing with DVDs, let alone replace it.

The Blu-ray owner demography is distinctly different to DVDs, with Blu-ray owners more likely to spend more and pre-order any title they can get due to being classified as "early adopters", and with DVD owners more willing to wait for eventual price drops within 3 to 6 months. This might explain why NCFOM sold so well on Blu-ray, yet the total Blu-ray sales percentage compared to DVD was so low.

Time for the BDA to bring out the promotional bandwagon again, because just because they have won against Toshiba's HD DVD, the real war for Blu-ray's survival and acceptance is just beginning.

You can read the current issue of HMM here:

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/questex/hom033008/index.php

[BR7]

I think the promotional bandwagon has started.I have seen some bogos and a lot of price drops.At Amazon you can pre-order V For Vendetta for $19.95.I have also seen jr.com sell a bunch of BRs as low as $7.99 and $13.99.They have had this type of blow out sale twice in the last 4 months.

[admin]

I think more is needed on the hardware front ... relying on the PS3 to be the number one Blu-ray player is not a very long term solution ... got to get the people who don't want a game console as their movie player to buy one, as that's the kind of people still using DVDs.

Bring back the free movie redemption deal would be a good start.

But I think for Blu-ray to truly hit mainstream, they have to have players that will compete in price with DVD players to make buying DVD players a silly thing to do when a Blu-ray player costs a little bit more. Of course, this is not good for the hardware manufacturers, but I think if the sales ratio is to decrease from 16:1 to say 5:1, then this will have to happen first (and get the Chinese manufacturers involved too, maybe they will make some region-free players for us unlucky region B users).