Blu-ray’s share of the videodisc market grew slightly in the week ending Oct. 11, to about 17 percent ($32.7 million). That represents an increase of more than 195 percent from the same period last year.
Meanwhile, standard DVD sales continued to trend downwards, albeit slowly, registering nearly $157 million for the same Oct. 5-11 period. That’s down about 9.9 percent over last year’s same-week count, according to Home Media Research.
But while faltering sales of standard DVD titles in recent periods have brought overall videodisc sales down too, the most recent sales numbers point to an overall increase in overall disc sales (also known as “packaged media”) of 2.4 percent ($189.5 million) from a year ago.
Still, at least one studio exec is disappointed in Blu-ray sales to date, and has said so publicly. Disney CEO Bob Iger told an Oct. 17 audience at USC in Los Angeles that since Blu-ray players are backwards-compatible, most DVD consumers do not find an urgent need to go out and replace each of the 80 or so standard discs they have collected (on average) with Blu-ray titles, according to a Business Week blog.
