| PS360ForTheWin said: good stuff, @ TheBigFatJ - DVD has been on the market alot longer and has more titles and players sold, so its not a fair comparison, compare this to DVDs second xmas would be more fair, this is actually very good for blu-ray. |
They're claiming dominance of the video market.
Even if you think their statement is ridiculous (hey, they're PSU so they're prone to overplaying small or non-victories), it still makes sense to compare BD performance to the rest of the market. How well is it doing? Well, you can't possibly say without knowing what the rest of the market looks like.
Further, comparing the /raw/ numbers to DVD would be silly. You need to compare market percentage. BD players began shipping in June 2006, so that makes this BD's third Christmas (Christmases 2006, 2007 and 2008).
DVD was released in late 1997 in the US and 1998 in Europe. So if we we were to compare the performance of BD and DVD, we'd look at their approximate market shares in the beginning of 2000 and in the beginning of 2009.
The home video market really launched with DVD. Before DVD, you had VHS which was expensive, lower quality, harder to take care of, etc. People bought many fewer VHS movies.
Let's be very generous and just look at the raw numbers:
http://www.movieweb.com/news/NECoxHEGdHLwGG
So DVD sold more units than BD and HDDVD combined in the first two years and its adoption increased very rapidly after that.
I'd be willing to bet you that in 2000 nearly half of all home videos sold were DVDs. I'm not talking about total marketshare overall, I'm talking about just for that year.
And if you look at most DVD vs BD "market share" comparisons today, they literally compare the revenue brought in by each format, not the actual market share:
http://www.thehdroom.com/news/Blu-ray_Increases_Market_Share_vs_DVD/4030
If you read the article won't be entirely clear that they're comparing revenue, since market share is measured in units, not revenue, but yet the numbers they come up with line up in terms of revenue.
With average BD prices being 2x that of average DVD prices (I'd guess $29 vs $14), the actual market share would be closer to 7% for BD's best week, not 14%.
