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 HD DVD camp has claimed a victory in the high definition video wars citing record sales for the first week of release of the kids action flick Transformers in the format. But do the sales figures tell the entire story?
Transformers, released by the exclusively HD DVD Dreamworks and
Paramount studios, sold 190,000 HD DVDs in its first week, a record for
any high definition video, according to HD DVD backers.
Additionally, in the first week alone, over 20%
of consumers have connected to the web-enabled features available on
the Transformers HD DVD, according to the format's advocates.
However, the success of the Transformers in the HD DVD space is also
very much a factor of the overall success of the title, which has
become a smash hit since the feature film was released earlier this
year. The film has grossed US$700 million at the box office and DVD
sales since October 16, when it was released to video, have reached 8.3
million units.
The relative sales success of Transformers on HD DVD demonstrates
starkly that availability of content could well be a determining factor
in the fortunes of the opposing Blu-ray and HD DVD high definition video
formats.
At present, Blu-ray still has the edge in major studio support, with
Sony Pictures, MGM, Disney, 20th Century Fox and Lionsgate all
supporting the format exclsuively in the US. However, HD DVD is not out
of the race, with exclusive support from Universal, and the recent
defection for a wad of cash by Paramount and Dreamworks. Warner
Brothers currently offers support for both formats.
The point has been made, however, that outside the US exclusively
Blu-ray and HD DVD titles are often released by distributors on both
formats. It will be interesting to see if Transformers makes it to
Blu-ray outside the US.
Another factor is of course the penetration of high definition players.
Blu-ray currently has a significant advantage in this regard because of
the inclusion of a Blu-ray player in the PS3 games console, which has
now sold more than 5 million units worldwide, including about 2 million
in the US.
While HD DVD players are still significantly cheaper than Blu-ray
players, the cost of the player is relatively minor compared to the
most expensive component of a high definition video system which is a
good quality high definition TV monitor.
Despite the bouyant initial HD DVD sales of Transformers, the news begs
the question, how many more Blu-ray sales did Paramount and Dreamworks
miss out on by going exclusively HD DVD? Recent Paramount top sellers
Disturbia and Shooter were released in both formats and figures showed
that Blu-ray discs accounted for more than 58% of sales of Shooter and
more than 64% of sales of Disturbia.
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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