Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
The move last month of Paramount and Dreamworks to give the Blu-ray HD video format the flick in favour of HD DVD for some easy money looks slightly ridiculous in the face of the latest sales figures from video mag site Home Media Magazine based on Nielsen VideoScan First Alert data. It turns out that of the top 10 best selling videos for the week ending August 26, the only two on the list from Paramount and Dreamworks were in Blu-ray format!
In fact, Blu-ray videos dominated the best
sellers list as reported by Home Media Magazine, with 8 Blu-ray titles
of the top 10. In fact, the two HD DVD titles in the top 10 - 300
(Warner) and Planet Earth: The Complete Series (BBC Video) - were both
also available in Blu-ray format and outsold the HD DVD version. The
top selling video was 300 in Blu-ray, with second place going to 300 in
HD DVD.
Interestingly, the normalized figures of both formats aggregated by
title on the list show that although the Blu-ray version of 300 clearly
outsold the HD DVD version, it wasn't a complete walk-over. 300 in
Blu-ray comprised a bit more than 57% of HD sales of the title, while
the Hd DVD version accounted for slightly less than 43% of sales.
The perplexing decision of Paramount and Dreamworks to drop Blu-ray
seems even more puzzling when studying the figures for the studios'two
top selling HD titles Disturbia (Para/Dreamworks) which was number 8 on
the best seller list and Shooter (Paramount) which was number 9. Both
top sellers for the studios were in Blu-ray format. What's more,
aggregate sales of both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs of both titles
indicates that Blu-ray discs accounted for more than 58% of sales of
Shooter and more than 64% of sales of Disturbia.
Which ever way you slice and dice the figures, Blu-ray discs are
clearly outselling the same titles in HD DVD format, sometimes by as
much as two to one. No doubt, the move by Paramount and Dreamworks will
help the cause of HD DVD but, based on the latest sales figures, it
could come at a cost to both studios.
The saving grace for Paramount and Dreamworks is that HD video
currently accounts for just 2.5% all video sales so the studios may
have figured that passing up a reported US$150 million from the HD DVD
camp when DVD still dominates and can be played equally as well on the
HD players of both formats would be stupid. The studios can always
return to the Blu-ray format if it prevails a couple of years down the
track and if HD DVD somehow wins the war, Paramount and Dreamworks will
have been vindicated in their decision.
Meanwhile, the bad news for HD DVD supporters last week is that
Blu-ray's strongest supporter among the studios, Sony Pictures,
dominated the aggregated best seller's list with four titles in the top
10 - Black Hawk Down (4), Perfect Strangers (6), Casino Royale (8), and
House of Flying Daggers (10). Blu-ray exclusive studio Disney also
figured strongly with second placed Wild Hogs.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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