Our DVD and Blu-ray sales estimates are based on weekly retail surveys, which we use to build a weekly market share estimate for each title we are tracking. The market share is converted into a weekly sales estimate based on industry reports on the overall size of the market, including reports published in Media Play News.

For example, if our weekly retail survey estimates that a particular title sold 1% of all units that week, and the industry reports sales of 1,500,000 units in total, we will estimate 15,000 units were sold of that title. The consumer spending estimate is based on the average sales price for the title in the retailers we survey.

We refine our estimates from week to week as more data becomes available. In particular, we adjust weekly sales figures for the quarter once the total market estimates are published by the Digital Entertainment Group. Figures will therefore fluctuate each week, and totals for individual titles can go up or down as we update our estimates.

Because sales figures are estimated based on sampling, they will be more accurate for higher-selling titles.

Blu-ray Sales: Parrots Hold Off Alien Invasion

August 24th, 2011

Despite six new releases in the top ten on the Blu-ray sales chart this past week, Rio was able to remain on top with 261,000 units / $7.30 million over the week and 1.29 million units / $28.67 million after two. More...

DVD Sales: Rio Remains Perched on Top

August 24th, 2011

New releases were particularly weak this past week, and none of them were able to unseat Rio on the DVD sales chart. It sold an additional 636,000 units and generated $9.53 million more dollars in sales, pushing its running tallies to 2.27 million units and $34.01 million. It is already in six place for 2011 (fifth place if you don't count Despicable Me, which was released in 2010). More...

DVD and Blu-ray Releases for August 9th, 2011

August 9th, 2011

This week's list is highly frustrating for two reasons. Firstly, while there's a pretty big list of first-run releases, many of which had some pre-release buzz, almost none of them matched expectations. Secondly, my internet access kept cutting out, so it took till 4:30 a.m. to get this done, and by the end I was swearing nearly constantly. (Even 15 minutes of the Smooth Jazz Nyan Cat wasn't enough to calm my nerves.) Moving on... There were two main contenders for Pick of the Week, Paul on Blu-ray and Stargate: Atlantis: Complete Series Megaset on Blu-ray. In the end I went with the latter, partially because the screener for the former hasn't shown up yet. More...

Four Hops to the Top of the Per Theater Chart

April 5th, 2011

The Four Times led a group of three films that topped the $10,000 mark on the per theater chart this week with $16,192 in its lone theater. My Perestroika was next with $13,498, also in one theater. Meanwhile, the overall box office leader, Hop, was the final member of the $10,000 club with an average of $10,490. More...

These are Limited Releases?

April 1st, 2011

Normally limited releases open in only a couple theaters and even six theaters is quite a lot compared to the average. However, this weekend, we have a film opening in nearly a dozen theaters, another opening in a few dozen theaters, and even one opening in more than 100 theaters. It's always risky to open a film in that many theaters, and to make matters worse, most of the films opening in limited release this week are not earning spectacular reviews. But let's hope we have continued success on the limited release front. More...