American Gangster Tops Hidef Media Chart Week Ending Feb 24
February 29, 2008 by Dave Cowl
closeAuthor: Dave Cowl
Name: Dave Cowl
Email: dave@formatwarcentral.com
Site: http://www.blu-raystats.com
About: Originally from New Zealand, Dave now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Dave's day job
involves developing high resolution LCoS projectors.
Dave also has a strong interest in cinema and film making, and has
always been an early adopter - he still uses his Sony DVP-S7000 DVD
Player and also owns first generation Blu-ray, HD DVD and DTheater
D-VHS equipment.
Dave has been following the HD Disc format war since the beginning,
which resulted in the Blu-ray Statistics and HD DVD Statistics
websites, designed to track the studio progress with features as they
have released HD media product.See Authors Posts (271)
Filed Under: Blu-ray, Format War, HD DVD
In an interesting twist, for the week ending Feb 24, it was an HD DVD title that took the top spot in the HiDef Sales chart, according to Nielsen VideoScan via Home Media Magazine.
New release American Gangster was the top selling title, beating out other recent releases Michael Clayton, Gone Baby Gone and We Own the Night.
However it was the only HD DVD in the top 10, not too surprising since while this week encompasses the day that Toshiba declared and end to HD DVD development, few sales were evident.
Overall Blu-ray titles held a 77% market share for the week.
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Oh well. To late anyway :)
It was too late a looooooooooong time ago. Its the last of the last few HD-DVD discs.
The 23% sales share is that high with all the $10~15 price dumps. Beawoulf comes out new, and its $15 at some places… is an example.
If American Gangster was on Blu Ray during it’s release week, the HD DVD version would have had to take a number 2.
What I found amazing about this is that American Gangster outsold the 2nd best selling HD-DVD (Transformers) with a 16.13:1 ratio!
Looks like the HD-DVD market is becoming saturated for other titles, leaving American Gangster as the must-buy HD-DVD for the week.
This is good news, I still need to pick this title up, it was either this or Beowolf on launch, so I picked Beowulf.
I wonder if the T2 release will make it in the top 10.
T2 is a catalog movie… its OLD, its in the $5~7 price range for DVD.
I’m not sure this is “good news” as it doesn’t change anything in terms of the format. As posted recently, What few remaining titles from Paramunt & Universal are canceled, period. Is Fletch going to be the last HD_DVD title from Universal? That movie blew chunks when it was new, and is not “visually” exciting to take advantage on HiDef… even the crappy US version of Godzilla would look cool on HiDef.
WB only has 11 titles left to release, which I bet will be small runs. Unless they stop early, but I think they’ll hold on to their statements.
But we can see why the studios want to STOP all HD-DVD production. When a NEW movie like Beawolf goes for $15 new, there is very little or no profit. At least they (WB) knows where to ship the last discs out to, Amazon. ;)
PS: Toshiba is on the team on continue development of CH-DVD… which uses HD-DVD technology.
Belard: Beowulf went for atleast $30, do you even know which T2 release im talking about? Its the one thats genrating so much hype, the one that will put the Blu Ray release to shame!
Not so sure on how CH DVD will work, I wouldn’t mind importing one to see how different they are.
Er… okay… of course it didn’t take 5 seconds to figure out what you’re talking about. But for those who care: A german company is releasing one of the LAST HD-DVD movies, its T2, Ultimate Edition. Its supposed to have a better transfer/mastering over the standard $15-$20 version for BD / HD-DVD.
The fanatics are claiming it kicks BD in picture quality, extras, etc 3rd coming of Christ, etc.
Hmmm.. the BladeRunner Ultimate Edition - that IS ULTIMATE. Comes with a metal spinner! ;)
Anyways - as we know, Blu & Red don’t look any different as long a the studio did proper mastering. And while these people comment on how it BLOWS-AWAY Blu-ray version, well then it must blow away the standard HD-DVD version as well - and its NOT like the company is going to make a BD version… “ya - lets make this on HD-DVD and not be a profitable company by not ever making blu-ray versions”, its not the same as the USA release versions… But then again, more room on blu for better quality audio. Remember Transformers? Content or audio?
The hype for T2:German edition - is hype for the HD-DVD crowd. Amazon is not carrying this title. And like fanboys of any genre, only they will now about it. Over 90% of the HD-DVD customer base outside of Germany will know of this particular DVD. It wont be setting any sales records.
Beawulf retauls for $40, but is $25 on Amazon and some stores have sold it for $15 as part of their fire-sale.
Um… for the most part, CH-DVD will look like HD-DVD. Different Codecs (Chinese, no royalties to Japan or west), most movies will be Chinese… if the player ever gets off the ground. The problem was that the people in China didnt want to buy the LAST Chinese-DVD format players, even thou they WERE CHEAPER than US/Euro players - is that they couldn’t play pirated/legit western movies on them.
Ya hate blue so much, you’d spend $200~300 on a player that won’t play your collection? ;)
@Mehar: The short answer regarding T2 is that since it is not a US release it will not be in the US charts.
With regard that it will “put the Blu Ray release to shame” - well, T2 was a very early Blu-ray release - not hard to put those to shame.
For T2 to be done properly it should have both theatrical and extended on the same disc using seamless branching, like Close Encounters has. Does it have that?
It would not surprise me to see this done by Lionsgate some time… in fact since they dropped a number of the early releases to $20 retail, I imagine that they are clearing those out to issue revised versions in the future… though that may just be wishful thinking on my part.
its beowulf. not beawulf
I think it should be B-Wulf