HD Format War Update: Sales Through 01/27/2008

Sales of HD-DVD recovered 1% from last week, but that's not enough to stop the juggernaut of Blu-ray sales to dominate with an 82% slice of the pie.

The sales numbers have looked bleak enough for HD-DVD in January that Gartner, a major market research company, has declared HD-DVD will be dead by the end of 2008:

"Gartner believes that Toshiba's price-cutting may prolong HD DVD's life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format. Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over, wrote analyst Hiroyuki Shimizu in Gartner's Semiconductor DQ Monday Report.

And where the analysts go, the money goes. Ouch.

For the third week in a row HD-DVD titles are absent for the top 10 HD disc seller charts, and with no really big releases for the time being, it will probably remain so for the next few weeks:

1. Saw IV (Blu-ray)
2. The Game Plan (Blu-ray)
3. 3:10 to Yuma (Blu-ray)
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Blu-ray)
5. Good Luck Chuck (Blu-ray)
6. 300 (Blu-ray)
7. Planet Earth: The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
8. Ratatouille (Blu-ray)
9. War (Blu-ray)
10. Superbad (Blu-ray)

Ugh, Saw IV? Really? Guess even HD disc buyers can have no taste in movies.

Home Media Magazine, February 3, 2008 - February 9, 2008 [Home Media Magazine]