Blu-ray Disc News: September 2008

Sony has officialy announced the smallest and lightest Blu-ray enabled notebook yet. The 11.1" Vaio TT series is set to replace the existing TZ series as Sony's smallest ultraportable notebook computer. The line measures only 10.99"x7.87"x0.93" thick and weighs in at only 2.87lbs.
The top of the line model features an internal Blu-ray burner (the first in such a small notebook), marking the first machine to be released with an ultra-thin 9.5mm BD drive.

The highest end model (VGN-TT190UBX) features a carbon fiber casing, 11.1" 16:9 LED-backlit (1366x768) screen, HDMI and VGA outputs, 2x 128 GB SSDs in a RAID configuration, Intel Core 2 Duo SU 9400 1.4GHz processor, Wirelessi-N and Gigabit ethernet, bluetooth, and 4GB DDR3 RAM in addition to the 2x BD-R/RE burner. Given the $4,345 price tag, it also essentially comes with a steal me sign and a second mortgage, but customizeable models should be available within a month or so that allow you to get the BD burner but not the dual SSDs for substantially less.

Equally interesting, is that 9.5mm BD burners for notebooks have gone into mass production, giving substantial weight to rumors that "a certain other notebook manufacturer" will be announcing BD burner options in their new notebook line to be announced on October 14.

In case you didn’t have to look at enough charts due to the campaign season, here’s some that are actually interesting.

Methodology: Due to the disparity between the number of DVDs available vs. Blu-ray Discs available, Nielson VideoScan has chosen to compare only the Top 20 selling DVDs to the Top 20 Blu-ray Discs to track Blu-ray vs. DVD sales. While this method results in interesting results for comparing the top selling discs on both formats, it is inherently biased towards Blu-ray as it is comparing an equal number of titles on both formats. Whilst Blu-ray has over 700 titles released in the U.S., DVD has tens of thousands of released titles.

Source: Nielson VideoScan via www.homemediamagazine.com

Oddly, Blu-ray managed to shoot up nearly 30% vs its own sales from the previous week, yet didn’t actually pick up any ground on DVD, which was just up 3% from the previous week. In the end Blu-ray managed just 6% of overall sales volume among the top 20 titles on both formats.

Source: Nielson VideoScan via www.homemediamagazine.com

Nothing too exciting this week, with the new catalog release of The Nightmare Before Christmas leading the way on Blu-ray. New titles Heroes: Season 2 and What Happens in Vegas fared alright as well, but the chart falls off quickly from there. Comparing new releases to their DVD counterparts, Heroes: Season 2 managed to do 8% of its sales volume on Blu-ray Disc, but What Happens in Vegas did less than 4% of its volume on Blu-ray.