Blu-ray Share Grows as DVD Declines

A glance at a single typical week of video disc sales indicates that Blu-ray Disc continues to slowly-but-steadily grow its piece of the overall disc pie, with the 1080p format now hovering between 10–13 percent, depending on the week.

At the same time, overall video-disc buying was down more than 7 percent from the same period a year ago, dragged down by DVD's sustained decline from its peak a few years ago.

For the week ending March 15, consumers spent a total of slightly more than $171 million on video discs. Blu-ray title sales accounted for $16.75 million (12 percent)—while the remaining $154.31 million were standard DVD packaged media (88 percent), according to Home Media Research. In some exceptional instances, however, Blu-ray's share can be as much as 15 percent of overall disc sales.

Blu-ray's weekly share (March 9–15) was up more than 51 percent from the same week last year, while DVD's share was down nearly 11 percent.

While Blu-ray content cannot be played on non-Blu-ray players, standard DVDs can be used on Blu-ray players.