Our friends over at Home Media Magazine like to enjoy some time off during the holidays, so once again the Nielsen VideoScan numbers are a little later than we'd like. But late is better than never and the third week of December was pretty good to Blu-ray. Sure it was down over 23 percent from the week
The Dark Night was released, but at $46 Million the Blu disc still managed to rake in more revenue then it used to during an entire month not that long ago, and about twice as much as it did the week
Iron Man was released. The latest in the Mummy franchise did pretty well its first week out, all things considered, but it was no match for
The Dark Knight's sophomore week, which outsold it by over three to one.
Mamma Mia was the only other new release that week that manged to even come close, which kinda bucks the PS3 demographic theory. The Blu-ray share chart is once again useless this week, as we wish HMM would filter it down to only show Blu-ray titles that were released day-and-date with DVD. Looking forward there No way Blu-ray can keep up these numbers though, because at this point just about everyone must already own a copy of TDK, but it will be interesting to follow the revenues post Christmas to see if all those Blu-ray players that flew off the shelf have the affect that Hollywood is hoping for.
Here we are in the first week of the so called "5th quarter" and Hollywood is obviously trying to get your gift cards out of your pocket with a few day-and-date releases. The funniest of the lot is also the one we picked as the title of the week as the hilarious combo of Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen once again come together, but this time to bring us Pineapple Express. The other day-and-date releases to pay attention to are The Wackness, Righteous Kill, Babylon A.D. and finally Banqkok Dangerous. None of these are anything spectacular, but most definitely worth a browse over to IMDB to see if one of 'em is up your alley. Also this week is a few box sets TV fans will appreciate, the first season of Dexter and Atmospheres - Earth Air Water from NatGeo. Next week looks to be really slow though, as there are only two titles worth mentioning and one is Appaloosa, which was supposed to be out this week.
In an announcement that has many sports fans in the Orlando and Tampa Bay area saying "about time," Bright House Networks and Fox Sports Florida has finally signed a carriage agreement. This isn't a moment too soon either as there are about 77 Orlando Magic games on the schedule each season. Although there is no mention of the HD channel in the release, we can only assume it's an oversight. Of course we're not sure how anyone could forget something as important as the HD channel number. Either way the SD version will be on channel 50 and will require a subscription to the digital tier.
It's been a weird week with the holidays so this week we have a few titles from last week mixed in with the new releases for tomorrow. While most of this week is full of catalog titles -- that are probably meant to help you use up all those gift cards you got over Christmas -- there is at least one day and date title, The Duchess. But this isn't the only title for Paramount, in fact over half the movies out this week are from said studio. This includes a few of our old favorites like Days of Thunder and The Truman Show -- and although we aren't looking forward to it, we're sure someone really wants to see Ghost. Universal continues it's trend of catchup titles on Blu-ray with the Sci-Fi cult classic Serenity. Also, Sony had the latest Resident Evil last week and finally Warner has the hilarious Wedding Crashers which will go very nicely on the shelf next to Old School from a few weeks ago.
Even the most optimistic analysts didn't predict that The Dark Knight would be able to single-handedly save packaged media sales in 2008. But thanks to the 13.5 million units sold, packaged media income was only down 3% to $22.9 billion in revenues -- that's with a B. This is hardly the doomsday loses predicted and down right impressive when compared to the US economy as a whole and many in the industry are thanking Blu-ray for this. While some predicted that digital downloads would be the next saving grace, it is actually Blu-ray that is showing promise. Now to be fair it should be noted that The Dark Knight won't be available in HD on digital download services until tomorrow, but then again that is part of the problem. And while we know that the Blu-ray version of The Dark Knight 
The holiday travel plans were just too much for us so we're canceling the show this week. We should still be on for next week though. We wish everyone a merry Christmas -- or whatever holiday you might be celebrating this time of year -- and a happy New Year.
With about a week to go until Christmas and a week after The Dark Knight, it's no wonder this week's lineup is way less than exceptional. So because there really isn't anything to get too excited about we're going to prop up a title that we'd bet will be a classic one day, Old School. If you haven't seen this one and you enjoy a good laugh, what are you waiting for? If you have, and can't wait to enjoy it all over again for the first time in HD, then say it with us, "You're my boy blue!" Also this week, Criterion's long awaited titles finally hit the street along with plenty of catalog titles form Paramount and Universal. Universal has what is arguably the biggest day-and-date title with The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, but it's IMDB score of 5.2 has us unimpressed. Next week slate isn't much better, but it does have one we're looking for with Burn After Reading.
