DEG Q1 2012 Report

Lee Stewart

According to the DEG EOY 2011 report; " BD PBDs in nearly 40 million homes"

Blu Math?

BTW - if that 2.4M is accurate, that is the same number sold in Q1 2011 (see post #4). Weren't BD players cheaper in Q1 2012 then they were in Q1 2011?

Kosty

Nearly 30 million is a pretty vague phrase. That was the phrase used in post #4.

1Q sales anyway for consumer electronics are not really that significant and don't say much about trendds. For DVD and Blu-ray players its the September through December sales that make the difference in the year. Q1-Q3 are pretty flat and even from year to year are pretty incremental.

The 1Q sales for players don't affect the 1Q software sales as much, they affect things in the future. The report mentions the strong 4Q 2011 Blu-ray player sales as affecting the 1Q 2012 statistics along with the better releases.

The DEG data is talking about Blu-ray players and PS3s together in households. You have made the point that it seems to you that they add up the totals and don't seem to subtract out for a duplicate player or a PS3 and a Blu-ray player in the same household, but I've been told that the DEG data accounts for just that.

The CEA data I cited earlier with a lower household penetration figure does not count PS3s as Blu-ray players in their category of Blu-ray player stats.

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Lee Stewart

Not really. Isn't 29.5M "nearly 30 million?"

So if Q1 player sales are not really significant then you would have to agree that Q1 OD sales aren't really significant either.

So when people buy a new player, they don't buy new BD titles to play? You don't think it's human nature to buy a handful of titles with a new player, especially if they are experiencing BD for the first time?

What you've been told doesn't jive with the last 4 years of data the DEG is publishing 4 times a year. Sorry - your "source" is incorrect.

Do you have a link for that info?

TowerGrove

Checking my google news and Overall lots of positive press for home video today.

Kosty

Sure, but the phrase almost $30 million is a more vague PR phrase.

Not at all. In the case of player sales, they affect the following periods more than the periods that they are in. They are also extremely seasonal in that the last four months of the year are the dramatic heights for the year.

So are movie software sales. But the difference is that the player sales in the 4Q and Christmas holiday season affect the size of the user base and affect movie software sales throughout the following quarters.

I never said that the 1Q player sales are not significant either. But 4Q player sales are more significant as that's where the high volumes are and the 4Q user base expansion affects sales the entire next year long and beyond into the future.

Of course, never said otherwise. That's part of the 4Q surge in software sales is people buying additional titles to go along with their new players. A lot of the Black Friday buying patterns are like that when people pick up a new player and a lot of catalog sale priced new movies to go along with it.


I've been told that my multiple industry people including those that state that they asked that particular question to the DEG.


http://www.ce.org/News/News-Releases...E-Purchas.aspx

Shawn Dubravac, the Chief Economist and Director of Research for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), has told me personally on several occasions (in NYC at the CEA Lineshow and at CES the past two years) that the CEA data does not include PS3 game consoles in the category that they have next generation DVD players - Blu-ray players counted in in their industry statistics, the same as NPD.

He's also specifically mentioned that detail in email to me from time to time as a very clear comment, which implies he may get asked that question from time to time from other people than myself. When they ever use something that includes PS3s them make prominent mention of that inclusion as a combination of categories and would phrase it as something like Blu-ray capable playback devices including Blu-ray players, PS3s, and HtiBs.

That specific report also uses the phrase Blu-ray players and not Blu-ray playback devices.

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Kosty

Well. its going to have some exceptionally large YoY growth figures for digital rental SVOD as the new current Netflix figures get compared to the much smaller figures from the year before when much of the Netflix streaming revenues were considered part of physical disc rental. Its also going to exaggerate in the same manner statistically the decline in physical rentals as well in much the same way as the old data was inflated somewhat by including some Netflix streaming data in that category.

That's just going going to be a funky statistical artifact in those percentages in the YoY comparisons this year.

Its a true trend and does capture the shift of Netflix customers to streaming when they were forced to choose or pay double for both disc by mail and streaming but the percentages each way are going to be statistically twisted.

Probably a good way of looking at it is to say the reason the percentages will be like that in those categories is in the success that Netflix has had in transitioning customers from disc by mail into streaming.

That data is just going to be a bit noisy and dirty for a while as the data set digests that change.

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Kosty

http://hometheater.about.com/b/2012/...-streaming.htm

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Kosty

TWICE

http://www.twice.com/article/483809-...ce=twitterfeed

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mikemorel

From your link, in early April:


From late March:

Centris: Blu-ray Player Household Penetration Reaches 26%

Clearly it does include PS3s.

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Warner Bros, on Ultraviolet - "We recognize that the product is not perfect today,” Mr. Tsujihara said. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting a year until we have everything perfect.”

bruceames

It sure looks like it includes PS3 players, as there have been many (subtle) references that it does, and none that it does not.

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RIP Kosty.

Kosty

I'll check again, but comparing magnitudes and not trends between different sources is always problematic.

First off the CEA data is from a January survey so that is a slightly different period.

But again we always have to go back to the issue of comparing the reported magnitude of the data between two different data sources is always problematic. The trends between data in the same survey or estimate within the same data source is always the best way to compare the data, not between two different sources.

The issue here is insistence that the DEG data is not compensating for multiple Blu-ray players or a PS3 and a Blu-ray player in the same household as Lee contends. I'm certainly not sure that it the case.

I think the Centris data is just a lower estimate than the DEG data or the CEA survey data and its just coincidental that the numbers are that close.

I'll ping the CEA again for confirmation that their data in their 14th Annual Household CE Ownership and Market Potential Study (April 2012) that was conducted between January 26-30, 2012 does or does not include PS3s and Htib in that category for Blu-ray players.

I saw the previous year's version and I know someone that should still have access to the 2011 version and probably will get the new report this year so we can get some confirmation.

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Kosty

40.8 million / 115 million US households = 35.47% Blu-ray playback capable households (Blu-ray players, Htib and PS3) according to the DEG (EOY 1Q 2012)

vs

26% Blu-ray player household penetration according to the CEA (January 2012 Survey)

I see the Centris data as a low outlier that's estimating the same thing as the DEG data but is just a lower estimate.

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Kosty

That Centris data also had a quirky finding that DVD player households also increased 4% and it was a self administered Internet rolling survey where mis-identification of categories is always a possibility. IIRC its also a composite survey the includes multiple months in any report so it has inherent methodology sensitivity to any categories that are significantly changing such as tablets or Blu-ray players.

So its plausible that it is a low estimate for including all Blu-ray playback devices including Blu-ray players and PS3s. Depending on the question wording some people that knew a family member had a PS3 may not have even known it played Blu-ray Discs or knew that their fancy new Christmas gift of new optical disc player that they were playing DVDs on was capable of playing Blu-ray Discs. That stuff happens in self administered or poorly worded surveys.

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/blu...aches-26-26721

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Kosty

Is the real issue here the suspicion that the DEG figure of 40.8 million Blu-ray capable households (about 35.4% household penetration) is implausibly high because its somehow incorrectly allocating or compensating for households that have multiple Blu-ray playback devices in the home such as two or more Blu-ray players or a Blu-ray player and a PS3? Or counting all Blu-ray and PS3 unit sales as separate households?

I see the DEG data including PS3s and CEA not including PS3s to be consistent. The Centris data is the outlier.

Because the CEA finding of 26% Blu-ray player only household penetration is perfectly consistent with the DEG data saying if you add in PS3s and HtiB to the mix and after allowing for multiple devices the Blu-ray capable household figure would rise 9% to 35%.

That would make sense that the Blu-ray marketshare would be around the lower figure in that case since many of the PS3s might be used still for their primary first use purpose of gaming instead of having the same attach rate as dedicated Blu-ray or DVD playback devices.

Blu-ray players and PS3s also have the capability as streaming devices so their growth rate will also also translate into less Blu-ray software sales than in the case of something like DVD player hardware adoption and DVD sales where those DVD players were dedicated single use devices for DVDs and CDs.

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PSound

So the Q1 numbers are in.

We already knew about OD sales - relatively flat (slightly down) based on unusually strong DVD performance in Q1. Strong box office strength playing a role in that figure.

OD Rental is down by quite a bit just looking at B&M and kiosks, and down a massive amount wen factoring in disc by mail.


We already know that OD rental will continue to take a beating, at least for the next two quarters due to the reporting anomalies by the DEG last year.

The big question is whether DVD can continue to save ODs sell-through hide in Q2.

Blu-ray is showing the same declining revenue growth when factoring in box office, so it is not going to do it. We have already seen how low its floor can go without box office strength, and I expect that we will see multiple weeks with lower revenue before Q4.


If DVDs negative growth goes back at all to what is was doing last year, OD sell through is going to have a nasty quarter, couple with what we already know will be continued poor performing quarters for OD rental.