Every week Home Media Magazine reports the latest Nielson VideoScan numbers for the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD battle. They include three figures: Weekly, Year-to-date, and Since Inception. Weekly numbers examine discs sold at retail over the course of just the current week, the YTD numbers look at sales from the first week ending in 2007 to the present, and the since inception numbers show the relative performance of Blu-ray and HD DVD discs since the formats' respective births.
Nielson VideoScan Data for Week Ending 12/16/07
Source: Nielson VideoScan via http://www.homemediamagazine.com/
Weekly sales: Blu-ray leads HD DVD 61% to 39%, 100:63.9, or 1.56:1
YTD sales: Blu-ray leads HD DVD 65% to 35%, 100:53.8, or 1.86:1
Since Inception sales: Blu-ray leads HD DVD 62% to 38%, 100:61.3, or 1.63:1
Well, with Home Media Magazine taking a week off for the holidays they're now a week behind with the Nielson data. Unofficially, the following week's data was also 61:39, but I'll wait and discuss that once everything's official.
For the week ending 12/16 however, Blu-ray pulled out another win (of course) despite HD DVD having the big exclusive of the week, "The Bourne Ultimatum." The other big release for the week were the Harry Potter films released on both formats, which doesn't seem to have done quite as well as hoped. Another nice victory for Blu-ray with no major exclusives for the week, though.
Nielson VideoScan Top 10 for Week Ending 12/16/07
Source: Nielson VideoScan via http://www.homemediamagazine.com/
Well, Bourne definitely stole the week, though it wasn't nearly enough to push HD DVD to victory. 7 of the top 10 titles last week were on Blu-ray, although I suppose it's good to find out that Universal is still in business (don't see them make the list much, huh?)
Digging Deeper
Since the big topic of discussion is on what Warner will do in the near future, it's worth looking at their top titles specifically.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Blu-ray outsold HD DVD 1.2:1
Harry Potter Years 1-5 Boxset: Blu-ray outsold HD DVD 1.3:1
300: Blu-ray outsold HD DVD 3.63:1
Planet Earth: HD DVD outsold Blu-ray 3.11:1
Obviously, looking at anything but the outlier (Planet Earth), Blu-ray consistently leads HD DVD in sales of the same title. Confusion over the HD DVD name, combined with Oprah talking about Planet Earth seems to have created a lot of sales for the HD DVD version of the title... likely among people who don't have HD DVD players. Expect a lot of returns on that one.
Just for fun, let's also look at some previous "big exclusives" and compare the longevity of sales on the two formats.
Spiderman 3 (Blu-ray) vs. Transformers (HD DVD): BD wins 1.21:1
Casino Royale (Blu-ray) vs. Transformers (HD DVD): BD wins 1.33:1
I would have compared the BD titles to Shrek 3 on HD DVD also, but it's fallen so far it doesn't even rank any longer! It's also worth noting that Transformers was released more recently than either of the Blu-ray titles.
Here's hoping Warner's statisticians see the same pattern!
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