The Blu-ray Cover Art Gallery for the week of the 7th of March 2010 features the first Paramount title in a little while - Up in the Air is a great little film and well worth a look.

Other day and date titles for today from Sony and Disney both include DVD and Digital Copy, though neither Planet 51 nor Old Dogs were well received by the critics.

On the more dramatic side, Lionsgate has Precious and The Stoning of Soraya M., while Sony goes with a family movie Hachi: A Dog’s Tale and ultraviolence with The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.

Click on any cover to see the details for the title.

The Blu-ray market share was back up to 13% on a revenue of $20.96M for the week ending February 28th, according to Home Media Magazine.

While it was good to see double figure market share and revenue over $20M, it was a bit of a strange week, perhaps with significant sales promotions for certain titles.

Law Abiding Citizen from Anchor Bay was again in 1st place, ahead of Pixar’s Up in 2nd place - and hint that promotional pricing was in play.

The best selling new title was Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths from Warner in 3rd place, ahead of Star Trek from Paramount and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian from Fox in 4th and 5th.

Other new titles didn’t fare quite as well, with The Informant! from Warner in 10th place,  Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant from Universal in 12th place, and The Box from Warner down in 15th position.

Looking at per title market share, we see almost the exact opposite of last week.

Top selling Law Abiding Citizen had a strong 41% Blu-ray Disc market share while Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths also performed well with 29% share.

New Warner titles The Informant! and The Box sold19% and 18% on Blu-ray Disc respectively, while Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant had 21% share.

Strong signs of promotional pricing were evident with a number of titles outselling their DVD counterparts.

Up had 55% market share, Star Trek an amazing 77% market share, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian had 68% and Inglourious Basterds from Universal squeaked in with 52% Blu-ray share.

I was a little surprised that Everybody’s Fine from Disney/Miramax didn’t get a Blu-ray Disc release, so no market share for that title at all.

Amazon has recently reduced the pricing on a number of television season box sets.

Perhaps the best deal is a saving of 69% on the Star Trek: The Original Series - Season 3 box, now only $39.99.

Additionally you can save 64% on Fringe: The Complete First Season and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete Second Season, both only $24.99.

Further savings on Warner titles include Supernatural: The Complete Fourth Season for $26.49,  Nip/Tuck: The Complete Fourth Season for $26.99 and Smallville - The Complete Sixth Season, Smallville: The Complete Seventh Season or Supernatural - The Complete Third Season for $27.99.

A great chance to add some television titles to the collection!

The Blu-ray market share was only 9% for the week ending February 14th according to Home Media Magazine - the first time it has been single figures this year.

On the other hand, the revenue was a healthy $20.15M for the week.

Top seller for the week was Couples Retreat from Universal, ahead of Zombieland from Sony Pictures in 2nd place.

New release The Time Traveler’s Wife from Warner took 3rd place ahead of strong sellers Michael Jackson’s This Is It from Sony Pictures and Star Trek from Paramount.

New releases A Serious Man from Universal, The Stepfather from Sony and Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic from Anchor Bay placed 12th, 13th and 15th place respectively.

Looking at per title market share, the top sellers were a little lower this week, with Couples Retreat at 19% and The Time Traveler’s Wife at 10% Blu-ray Disc market share, while Zombieland had a healthier 27%.

The Hangover from Warner was also lower than previous weeks with ‘only’ 20% Blu-ray Disc market share.

Top performers were Inglourious Basterds from Universal with 45% market share, and Star Trek with an awesome 56%.

Looking at other new releases, The Stepfather took only 13%, while A Serious Man had 27%  and Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic 34% Blu-ray market share.

Two Top 20 DVD releases that had an adverse effect on the overall market share were The Penguins of Madagascar: Operation DVD Premiere and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Minnie’s Bow-tique, which had no Blu-ray release at all.

Amazon is currently listing Star Trek Original Series discs for $51.99.

Both Star Trek: The Original Series - Season 2 and Star Trek: The Original Series - Season 3 are available at this price, a saving of 60%  off retail.

It is not clear why, but  Star Trek: The Original Series - Season 1 is  more expensive, though still discounted to $55.49.

In any case, this is a good chance to get some classic Star Trek in HiDef, with both the original footage and the new special effects included.

The Blu-ray market share dipped slightly to 11% while the revenue remained a solid $21.16M for the week ending January 31st, according to Home Media Magazine.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment was easily the best selling title, taking the top position in the sales chart.

Disney’s Surrogates had to settle for 2nd place, ahead of the latest in the franchise Saw VI from Lionsgate 3rd position.

The top six was filled out by strong performers from 2009 - The Hangover from Warner, Star Trek from Paramount and Up from Disney respectively.

Summit’s The Hurt Locker took a bit of a tumble to end up in 7th place while Gamer from Lionsgate was in 8th position.

A surprise entry to the top 10 saw WWII in HD from A&E and the History channel take 9th place for the week, ahead of WWII movie Inglourious Basterds from Universal in 10th.

Drew Barrymore’s Whip It from Fox was the last new release to make the top 20 in 11th position on the chart.

It is easy to see why the market share was down for the week, with Michael Jackson’s This Is It taking ‘only’ 21% and Saw VI only 20% market share on Blu-ray Disc.

This in contrast to market shares of 28% for Surrogates and 27% for The Hangover.

The Hurt Locker and District 9 are also doing solid Blu-ray business with 33% Blu-ray Disc market share each.

Top prize though goes to Star Trek with 61% market share for the week, a little ahead of WWII in HD with 58%, not so surprising for a title with a leaning towards HiDef.

Other titles selling more than a third of their units on Blu-ray Disc include Up , Inglourious Basterds and Public Enemies.

I was expecting Whip It to have somewhat lower than its 13% market share, while I Can Do Bad All By Myself was again a poor performer in HiDef, and with 4% market share was the one of only two Top 20 DVD titles that took less than 10% market share for Blu-ray.

All said and done, with only a quarter of the top 20 DVD titles for the week having less than 20% market share on Blu-ray, I think the format is continuing to grow.

The Blu-ray Cover Art Gallery for the week of the 31st of January 2010 reveals a lot of releases, though many of them are pretty basic titles from Anchor Bay.

New Day and Date titles include Zombieland and Amelia, while catalog titles include The Last King of Scotland, Walk the Line, Mystic River and individual releases for The Godfather and The Godfather Part II.

BBC SciFi fans will flip over the range of Dr Who titles, including Doctor Who: The Waters Of Mars, Doctor Who: The End Of Time and the whole shooting match in Doctor Who: The Complete Specials.

Warner also released less expensive ‘regular’ editions of Gone with the Wind and Bonnie and Clyde, along with The Music Man.

Click on any cover to see the details for the title.

Amazon has great new pricing for a couple of recent Paramount Blu-ray titles.

Save 58% when you buy Star Trek or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen for only $16.99.

Additionally, the Universal Studios release of Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is also only $16.99.

Amazon is pretty fickle with their pricing, so get them while you can at these great discounts!

Something that has fascinated me a little lately is the trend towards DTS-HD Master Audio, to the point now where it has become the de facto standard for Blu-ray Disc releases.

A couple of studios have used it from the start - Fox, who also distributes MGM, took quite a bit of flack for using DTS-HD Master Audio on their releases back when there were no players capable of decoding it or even passing it on to a receiver.

Universal Studios has also religiously used DTS-HD Master Audio on their releases, though capable players were abound well before they finally started releasing Blu-ray discs after having been exclusive to the HD DVD format.

Disney and Lionsgate moved to DTS-HD Master Audio from Linear PCM and smaller distributors like Image Entertainment, the Criterion Collection and Magnolia Home Entertainment have started using DTS-HD Master Audio as a matter of course.

More interesting to me though is the defection of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment from Dolby TrueHD to DTS-HD Master Audio in recent times, as well as an apparent similar defection under way over at Warner Home Entertainment.

Sony has certainly already made the move and newly announced Warner titles inreasingly have DTS-HD Master Audio where in 2009 only a handful of titles used the codec.

While Paramount has also been predominantly using the Dolby TrueHD codec, there have been cases of DTS-HD Master Audio releases, especially associated with the Star Trek franchise.

I talked to both Sony and Dolby at CES this year and got differing answers regarding the SPHE move to DTS-HD Master Audio.

Dolby stated that the work flow for titles with TrueHD and seamless branching had difficulties, which pushed some studios to use DTS-HD Master Audio for certain titles at least.

This may be a credible reason that we see DTS-HD Master Audio on the Warner release for Watchmen, which used seamless branching for the Maximum Movie Mode on the title.

However we are seeing DTS-HD Master audio listed for upcoming Warner titles like Poseidon and The Box, which seem like fairly standard releases.

Talking to Sony I got a very different answer - they said that the move to DTS-HD Master Audio was one of consumer preference measured by an internet poll.

Regardless of the reasons behind the moves, it is interesting to see the DTS codec now dominating the Blu-ray landscape with over 45% percent of the lossless audio Blu-ray releases, when at launch it looked like it simply wasn’t ready for prime time at all.

If you have any thoughts on this, feel free to add your comments.

Blu-ray Cover Art Gallery for the week of the 27th of December 2009 - a bit of a quiet week this week, with highlights no doubt being the animated release 9, Jennifer’s Body written by Juno scribe Diablo Cody and horror flick Paranormal Activity.

Click on any cover to see the details for the title.