Optical (Blu-ray/DVD) and Digital (EST/UV) Sales Thread

[Kosty]

Originally Posted by mikemorel

Interesting comparison:

June 22, 2005

DVD Player Revenues Projected To Decline

Originally Posted by bruceames

So DVD player sales revenues peaked two years before sell through software revenue did. If that's any indicator then software sales would peak next year. Perhaps this year, considering that in 2005 DVD players sales were only down 1 percent vs. Blu-ray down 11 percent last year.

Some caveats to that comparison should be noted though. First off that was a projection and not sure what the final numbers were but also that was a global projection not just North America and most of the world lagged the USA in DVD adoption just like its lagging now in Blu-ray hardware adoption so the USA revenue peak for DVD hardware revenues could have been earlier,

Plus obviously revenues does not equal units sold , or household adoption as DVD player prices declined over time and households added additional players.

[Kosty]

Originally Posted by bruceames

Well that just goes to show how bad last year was, if a DTV title topped the leaderboard.

Well this year the $35 M and $37 M titles this year were not that dominant, the DTV Treasure Buddies this year did 2nd place with a 92.77 Index number. It almost beat the $35 M (Drive) title and actually did beat the $37 M title (In Time).

Its not like a mid $30 M title is really that overwhelming if a DTV release can beat one and almost best another.

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/top...k-ended-020512

[chipvideo]

Last year 1st quarter was HORRIBLE. Anyone trying to downplay it is in an Altered State of mind.

[mikemorel]

Originally Posted by Kosty

Some caveats to that comparison should be noted though. First off that was a projection and not sure what the final numbers were but also that was a global projection not just North America and most of the world lagged the USA in DVD adoption just like its lagging now in Blu-ray hardware adoption so the USA revenue peak for DVD hardware revenues could have been earlier,

From last August:

The Western European market for DVD and Blu-ray players and recorders has remained in decline in the first half of 2011. Sales of DVD and Blu-ray players plummeted by more than 40% in some countries, e.g. Spain, however the drop in Germany has been comparatively moderate at 12%.

The main cause for the decline has been the heavy reduction in demand for traditional DVD players, with 29% fewer units sold in Western Europe. In contrast, the Blu-ray player market developed much more positively, with a 20% increase to around 1.5 million unit sales. However, as a result of the considerable reduction in average prices of Blu-ray players, sales revenue only increased by 5%. Blu-ray recorders continue to be a niche product. At around 34%, the share of 3D-capable Blu-ray players is considerably higher than the share for 3D televisions. This is partly attributable to the fact that former high-end features, such as 3D and network connections, can now also be found in mid-range Blu-ray players. In general, it transpires that 3D televisions are usually purchased together with a compatible 3D-capable Blu-ray player.

[mikemorel]

Originally Posted by Kosty

Some caveats to that comparison should be noted though. First off that was a projection and not sure what the final numbers were but also that was a global projection not just North America and most of the world lagged the USA in DVD adoption just like its lagging now in Blu-ray hardware adoption so the USA revenue peak for DVD hardware revenues could have been earlier.

In-Stat, From 2007:

DVD Recorder Sales Rise as Player Sales Fall

Japan reached its peak for DVD player sales in 2003, while North American and European DVD player shipments peaked in 2005, and shipments will continue to decrease in those regions this year.

[bruceames]

Originally Posted by Kosty

Well this year the $35 M and $37 M titles this year were not that dominant, the DTV Treasure Buddies this year did 2nd place with a 92.77 Index number. It almost beat the $35 M (Drive) title and actually did beat the $37 M title (In Time).

Its not like a mid $30 M title is really that overwhelming if a DTV release can beat one and almost best another.

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/top...k-ended-020512

I see. So DTV Treasure Buddies and DTV Beverly Hills Chihuahua II basically cancel each other out and we're left with box office power again, with Blu-ray up 27.1% and box office up 415.2%.

From the Nielsen First Alert last week:

New release / recent release (2-4 weeks) / older release (5+ weeks old) ratios for weeks ending 2/6/12 and 2/7/11

2/6/12: 62.8% / 18.7% / 18.5%, $118.5M TBO
2/7/11: 36.8% / 34.4% / 28.8%, $23.0M TBO

Difference: 26.0% / -15.7% / -10.3%, $95.5M TBO (415.2%)

So this year had much more new release power show up in the top 20. And that includes DTV, TV, concerts, whatever it may be.

[Kosty]

Originally Posted by bruceames

I see. So DTV Treasure Buddies and DTV Beverly Hills Chihuahua II basically cancel each other out and we're left with box office power again, with Blu-ray up 27.1% and box office up 415.2%.

From the Nielsen First Alert last week:

New release / recent release (2-4 weeks) / older release (5+ weeks old) ratios for weeks ending 2/6/12 and 2/7/11

2/6/12: 62.8% / 18.7% / 18.5%, $118.5M TBO
2/7/11: 36.8% / 34.4% / 28.8%, $23.0M TBO

Difference: 26.0% / -15.7% / -10.3%, $95.5M TBO (415.2%)

So this year had much more new release power show up in the top 20. And that includes DTV, TV, concerts, whatever it may be.

Those ratios are by title count right?

They are not by weighted unit sales based on index numbers if I understand you correctly.

[bruceames]

Originally Posted by Kosty

Those ratios are by title count right?

They are not by weighted unit sales based on index numbers if I understand you correctly.

They are weighted by the index numbers. Nielsen doesn't provide title counts of course.

It's a little time consuming to do it that way because the Blu-ray top 20 chart doesn't have a column that shows when the title was released. So I have to cross check with the OD top 20 and elsewhere if necessary (usually Amazon), if the title doesn't show up there. Then I just mark each title with a 1=new release, 2= recent release and 3 = older release. Then the list is sorted by that new column and the resulting percentages are obtained by taking the sum of each group's indexes and dividing it by the total sum of the indexes. I thought the cut off for recent releases should be after week 4 because that's 4 weeks of sales and week 5 makes it more than a month old.

I think next time I'll show how much of that new release ratio is non-box office titles. I could add the OD top 20 ratios as well, as those would be easy because all the info needed to do the math is there.

[Lee Stewart]

[Kosty]

Originally Posted by bruceames

They are weighted by the index numbers. Nielsen doesn't provide title counts of course.

It's a little time consuming to do it that way because the Blu-ray top 20 chart doesn't have a column that shows when the title was released. So I have to cross check with the OD top 20 and elsewhere if necessary (usually Amazon), if the title doesn't show up there. Then I just mark each title with a 1=new release, 2= recent release and 3 = older release. Then the list is sorted by that new column and the resulting percentages are obtained by taking the sum of each group's indexes and dividing it by the total sum of the indexes. I thought the cut off for recent releases should be after week 4 because that's 4 weeks of sales and week 5 makes it more than a month old.

I think next time I'll show how much of that new release ratio is non-box office titles. I could add the OD top 20 ratios as well, as those would be easy because all the info needed to do the math is there.

Thanks for the explanation. The weighted by index number information makes sense to me to use. The-Numbers has accurate information on the release dates or weeks of release for the DVD titles and that's with the few exceptions we know about the same as the Blu-ray weeks of release. That's in an easy to use form.

I agree that break after 4 weeks makes sense. The standard industry tracking for the studios and retailers is 4 weeks and 8 weeks, and anything beyond 8 weeks for the current year. Pretty much anything 8 weeks is considered older releases or catalog. Few titles re emerge on the Top 20 list after 8 weeks unless they are heavily discounted or major titles that see a bump during the holiday gift buying season. It would make the most sense but would be probably unneeded work to have a release week, 3-4 week, 5-8 week and 9+ grouping but most titles attrit heavily past the 4 week mark anyway. But the standard accounting groupings are release week then weeks 1-4, 1-8 and 9+ and beyond.

Generally though the long tail of sales refers to the sales after the 8 week mark in week 9 of release and beyond. The first 4 weeks is considered the primary sales window with release week and week two being the most important planning weeks.

Most forward pushed inventory for a new release or major catalog title is designed to cover the first two weeks to a high certainty and for the most part the initial projected 4 weeks of demand. After 8 weeks for most retailers the DVD sales go to maintenance levels and inventory management decisions at the local level and for the retail kick in to move excess inventory around.

For Blu-ray its slightly different as the beyond 8 weeks sales rate has a larger routine base rate of sales and for a new to Blu-ray or new release Blu-ray initially stocked in lesser quantities than DVD are usually projected to have a much longer viable active sales period with a much longer tail. DVD sales are front loaded more into the initial 8 week period and then drop off a cliff while Blu-ray titles tend to have a much longer sustained sales tail compared for a much longer period than 8 weeks and often are kept for much longer on the shelves or sold to exhaustion for the most part.

[bruceames]

Originally Posted by Kosty

Thanks for the explanation. The weighted by index number information makes sense to me to use. The-Numbers has accurate information on the release dates or weeks of release for the DVD titles and that's with the few exceptions we know about the same as the Blu-ray weeks of release. That's in an easy to use form.

I agree that break after 4 weeks makes sense. The standard industry tracking for the studios and retailers is 4 weeks and 8 weeks, and anything beyond 8 weeks for the current year. Pretty much anything 8 weeks is considered older releases or catalog. Few titles re emerge on the Top 20 list after 8 weeks unless they are heavily discounted or major titles that see a bump during the holiday gift buying season. It would make the most sense but would be probably unneeded work to have a release week, 3-4 week, 5-8 week and 9+ grouping but most titles attrit heavily past the 4 week mark anyway. But the standard accounting groupings are release week then weeks 1-4, 1-8 and 9+ and beyond.

Generally though the long tail of sales refers to the sales after the 8 week mark in week 9 of release and beyond. The first 4 weeks is considered the primary sales window with release week and week two being the most important planning weeks.

Most forward pushed inventory for a new release or major catalog title is designed to cover the first two weeks to a high certainty and for the most part the initial projected 4 weeks of demand. After 8 weeks for most retailers the DVD sales go to maintenance levels and inventory management decisions at the local level and for the retail kick in to move excess inventory around.

I think 3 categories/groups are sufficient for the top 20. I if do one for weeks 5-8 then it would be a rather trivial cat. and would see small (single digit) percentages on average. A Tuesday release generally suffers about 70% attrition in week 2, so week 2 sales would be much more in line with those in weeks 3 and 4.

I would be nice to see what the long running averages are for each group, but I would guess about 60/20/20. I plan to make and maintain another table which will have the unit sales distribution among those three groups, as well as overall BD top 20 market share and a few other things as well (such as the ratios for the OD top 20).

For Blu-ray its slightly different as the beyond 8 weeks sales rate has a larger routine base rate of sales and for a new to Blu-ray or new release Blu-ray initially stocked in lesser quantities than DVD are usually projected to have a much longer viable active sales period with a much longer tail. DVD sales are front loaded more into the initial 8 week period and then drop off a cliff while Blu-ray titles tend to have a much longer sustained sales tail compared for a much longer period than 8 weeks and often are kept for much longer on the shelves or sold to exhaustion for the most part.

I'd like to see some evidence to support your theory that DVD sales fall off a cliff after 8 weeks. All the data I see, leading up to week 8, and even beyond in top titles, indicates otherwise, with the DVD increasing market share after weeks 1 and 2.

[Kosty]

Originally Posted by bruceames

I think 3 categories/groups are sufficient for the top 20. I if do one for weeks 5-8 then it would be a rather trivial cat. and would see small (single digit) percentages on average. A Tuesday release generally suffers about 70% attrition in week 2, so week 2 sales would be much more in line with those in weeks 3 and 4.

I would be nice to see what the long running averages are for each group, but I would guess about 60/20/20. I plan to make and maintain another table which will have the unit sales distribution among those three groups, as well as overall BD top 20 market share and a few other things as well (such as the ratios for the OD top 20).

I agree. I think that your current split is a good one.

I'd like to see some evidence to support your theory that DVD sales fall off a cliff after 8 weeks. All the data I see, leading up to week 8, and even beyond in top titles, indicates otherwise, with the DVD increasing market share after weeks 1 and 2.

Again I think we have that data with the long term Blu-ray marketshare from the BD Title share charts. Basing it only off the Top 20 Sellers charts biases it toward the week 1-4 and 5-8 week groupings and away from the 9+ week groupings where Blu-ray longer sales tail starts to come into play. I do not disagree with you that DVD sells more units in weeks 1-4 and weeks 5-8 nor that DVD percentages rise in weeks 2-4 after the release week initial volumes, but its in weeks 9+ where the longer sales tail of BB takes effect. Many Blu-ray titles have substantial unit volumes 10,000+ a week for many months but do not hit the 30,000 unit threshold to break into the top 20 list again, but do show up on the Top 50 lists.

If you only look at the Top 20 Sellers list you bias it to higher volumes of 30,000 units or more and that's in the first 8 weeks of release or on weeks when the titles are heavily discounted on sale for DVD and thus your calculations bias toward DVD.

But I think we have enough long term BD title share data which includes titles on the Top 50 Sellers list to show that after 8 weeks Blu-ray unit marketshares tend to rise in the longer term and have a longer sales tail. When referring to the sales tail its usually meant to mean after the 4 or 8 weeks of the initial release.

Blu-ray recent releases are much more actively placed in inventory as well when retailers are expanding their Blu-ray sections to displace DVD skus on display and that also leads to long tail sales.

After 8 weeks a DVD release competes with a lot more DVD titles in previous release while since Blu-ray has much less titles in release or in active rotation at the retail level the unit sales tend to be a bit higher and gain a larger Blu-ray unit marketshare over time beyond the 8 weeks of release.

But just look at any week's BD Title Share chart tab and you can routinely see many titles on that list that are long in release that routinely have more Blu-ray marketshare than they had in the week 1-8 periods.

As you go even deeper for titles that so not even place on the Top 50 list but still are stocked at retail for the Blu-ray versions while the DVD versions may fall away and for new to Blu-ray releases it increases even further, but the public data we have off the BD Title Share charts should be enough to see the trends after 8 weeks. Even if they do not get to 30,000 + volumes to place on the Top 20 Sellers charts consistent sales about base DVD sales rates add up over time. DVD is at full market saturation and declining usage while Blu-ray is growing so its not surprising that Blu-ray marketshares long after release would grow over time.

But let's look at the data in the near future.

[PSound]

Originally Posted by bruceames

I see. So DTV Treasure Buddies and DTV Beverly Hills Chihuahua II basically cancel each other out and we're left with box office power again, with Blu-ray up 27.1% and box office up 415.2%.

That seems like very weak growth based on box office lead-in.

Indeed, BDs YoY growth of 12.6% is very weak based on the box office lead-in strength 2012 vs 2011.

[Kosty]

Originally Posted by PSound

That seems like very weak growth based on box office lead-in.

Indeed, BDs YoY growth of 12.6% is very weak based on the box office lead-in strength 2012 vs 2011.

Its pretty close in TBO through 5 weeks in the raw difference. $708 M to $586 M. An average over just over $24 M per week bigger without big releases is not much. TBO is a pretty rough indicator. Its magnitude and genre not only percentage, besides cakefoo's point on the Dec 2010 being stronger than Dec 2011 releases.

[PSound]

Originally Posted by Kosty

Its pretty close in TBO through 5 weeks. $708 M to $586 M. An average over just over $24 M per week bigger without big releases is not much. TBO is a pretty rough indicator.

This years TBO is more than 20% higher than last year (YTD). That is not close. Indeed, if it was down more than 20% you would be touting that as the excuse for Blu-ray weakness.


BD growth is actually TRAILING TBO lead-in strength. Spin away as you must, but don't expect others to ignore the facts.