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DVD-ISASTER SALES
By BRIAN GARRITY

December 4, 2007 — Just in case Hollywood didn’t have enough to worry about with the writer’s strike, here comes the latest horror to scare Tinseltown: Shrinking DVD sales.
The DVD businesses, one of the movie industry’s biggest sources of profits, is expected to post a year-over-year sales decline for the first time since the format’s rise a decade ago.

DVD sales, which were flat a year ago at around $16 billion, were down over 4 percent through the end of November, and analysts expect a full-year drop of around 2 percent.

Total home video revenues which include sales and rentals of both DVD and VHS are forecasted to come in at around $23 billion down from $24 billion in 2006.

Even though the industry still has a number of heavy hitters on the way, including the latest installments of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Bourne” and “Harry Potter,” and the film adaptation of “The Simpsons,” they would have to power a big surge in total DVD unit sales just to break even with last year.

Drew Borst, an analyst with Sanford Bernsetin, notes that barring a heroic quarter, year over year growth could be a stretch.

Even big box office hits aren’t an automatic slam-dunk on DVD. Alan Gould, an analyst with Natixis Bleichroeder, notes that DVD sales for latest sequels in the “Spider-Man,” “Fantastic Four” and “Shrek” franchises, all fourth quarter releases, have come up short.

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"Natixis Bleichroeder, notes that DVD sales for latest sequels in the “Spider-Man,” “Fantastic Four” and “Shrek” franchises, all fourth quarter releases, have come up short."

It would appear that kids go to the movies and adults buy DVDs. Any decrease in DVD sales can be attributed to horrible crap Hollywood is putting out. I can count all the good movies I've seen in the last few years on one hand and still have enough fingers left to go bowling.

If they want me to buy DVDs, they need to agree on a freaking format and then put out everything in 1080i (or 1080p if they can do that). If the quality is better, I’m much more inclined to watch something of mediocre entertainment value.

I’m constantly surprised how much stuff I’m willing to watch on any channel in HD because of the ridiculous quality of my Mistubishi 1080p 65” TV. The Weather Channel is almost bearable (very small parts of it....). And the Discovery channel just plain rocks.

And being able to watch all of the NFL games in HD via DirecTV even makes a Chiefs or Browns game attractive.

I’d watch (or at least rent) more DVDs from Hollywood if they looked as good as the reruns of movies in HD on HBO/Showtime/Etc/Etc.