Although Blu-ray's overall share of the video-disc sales pie lately have been hovering around 16 percent, Blu-ray numbers fell to 14 percent in early November on the brink of the holiday sales season—only to climb to 17 percent in the latest tracking poll.
For the week ending Nov. 15, sales of Blu-ray movie titles eclipsed $41 million in the United States, which is a jump of more than 164 percent over the same week last year. Standard DVD sales, although five times' greater at nearly $204 million, were down more than 15 percent from the same week in 2008, according to Home Media Research.
Unlike overall standard DVD title sales, Blu-ray discs sales (known by some industry insiders merely as "packaged content") tend to skew heavily towards younger consumers—especially since many Blu-ray drive owners are PlayStation 3 users). Thus, the release of even one title that's popular among the young can have a dramatic effect on weekly sales tallies for both Blu-ray and DVD.
Total DVD/Blu-ray disc sales for the same one-week period this month was just under $245 million, which was down about 4.3 percent over a year ago.
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