Although Blu-ray's sales numbers could change markedly with the release this week (April 22) of "Avatar"--the 1080p video disc format held on to its typical share of the overall revenue pie, which has hovered in the low- to mid-teens for many months.
Adding to Blu-ray's unnerving stall in sales (as compared to standard DVDs) is the fact that its movie-title revenue in the same week a year ago was actually 5 percent higher than this year. This broke the weekly pattern of Blu-ray sales (despite their relatively low shares) in outdoing what they did a year earlier.
Blu-ray's 13 percent accounted for about $18.5 million in title sales for the week ending April 11--compared to DVD sales of $120 million, which was down nearly 60 percent for DVD over mid-April of last year, according to home Media Research.
Overall sales of both disc formats slid to about $138.5 million--down a whopping 56 percent over the same week in 2009.
