Firstly let me apologize for leaving the drawing of the Swag contests until today.

Once I discovered that I would be out of town this weekend, I decided to put off drawing the winner so that I could be in contact and get the stuff sent out after the drawing, rather than worrying about it being delayed…

In any case, I have drawn the numbers and the winner is number 5 - Bill!

Thanks for all your contributions - it is of interest to me since now that the site has a life of its own, I want it to deliver what the users want, not just what I want.

Once I work out the logisitics of drawing the results for the Twitter side of the contest, I will do that also later today, so stay tuned - it isn’t over yet!

Update: The two Twitter winners have been selected and contacted via direct message on Twitter. They will need to get back to me in the next day or so to claim the prize - if not I will do another round… Once claimed I will post the winning names.

Just a quick note to let you know that the contest to win a bunch of goodies from CES will be ending tonight at midnight.

I have enjoyed the responses so far and been working a little towards some of the goals set out…

There is still time to enter and make a comment that will also perhaps help change the site for the better, as well as potentially win some things you can’t buy for love or money…!

I personally think the TiVo soft toy is the coolest thing…

Ok, so I have decided to give away one of the bags of swag here on the Blog.

The swag collection is worth in excess of $100, so it is a pretty worthwhile prize I think.

Up for grabs is a TiVo plush, TiVo branded hand sanitizer, a Sony branded reusable bag, a USB to DVI video adapter, two CES 512MB USB thumb drives, a Monster brand ScreenClean for laptop computers and three Blu-ray movies.

The three movies for the Blog giveaway will be Batman Begins (Limited Edition Gift Set), Pineapple Express and Horton Hears a Who!.

The movies for the Twitter giveaway are The Dark Knight, WALL-E (3 Disc Edition) and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (3 Disc).

And it is all wrapped up in a Blu-ray branded bag!

As per usual, there will be a ’skill’ question that won’t influence the selection, which will be made by random choice.

The question is - what should I spend most of my time focused on:

1. Writing in depth stories.
2. More Blu-ray title reviews.
3. Coverage of technologies like Digital Copy and BD Live.
4. Adding more features and functionality to the website.
5. Adding more details to the USA database.
6. More bitrate measuremets and screen shots for the details pages.
7. Adding more details and / or more databases like new countries or adult titles.
8. Make the website look better.
9. Other things… just let me know.

I will let the contest run for a week, so it will end midnight January 21st.

Just leave your answer in comments with a valid email so I can get in touch with you if you win..!

Another year and another fun show.

I must admit I am pretty tired… but it was another great year for CES.

I bet the attendance was down significantly and there were also less exhibitors (and less swag!) but we did see some pretty cool stuff and I met many many great people!

The swag bags are piled high and I will close off elegibility to win those once I land in San Francisco.

Since I last mentioned it I have added a couple of Blu-ray movies for each bag, a Blu-ray bag, TiVo plush, laptop screen cleaner and since DTS didn’t have a new Blu-ray Demo Disc I will put a copy of last year’s disc in each bag.

I am considering actually giving away two bags to the Twitter followers and one bag here in comments… what do you think? If I get enough agreement in comments of this post I will do that. It is looking like a nice pile of goodies..!

In any case watch over the next week or two for news I heard and things I saw at CES. There was way too much for one man to report in real time so it will come out over the next couple of weeks.

Warner has released the artwork for the Batman Anthology expected on March 10th.

Click on the image left for a larger view.

The swag collection is slowly building so be sure to follow on Twitter to be in line to win a bag of swag.

So far I have CES USB Thumb Drives, a USB to DVI Video Adapter, and a Sony ‘green’ reusable bag.

I am hoping to get some more Blu-ray related swag this afternoon at the Blu-ray press conference, and will be watching out for more cool stuff as the week progresses.

I expect to be twittering during the Blu-ray Press Conference which starts at 4:15pm.

CES 2009 is almost upon us for another year and for the sixth year straight I will be there checking out the new tech toys.

For the first time though I will be covering the show for the Blu-ray Stats News Log, which I started shortly after CES 2008.

I am not sure how often I will get to make posts, but stay tuned for Blu-ray and related news from the press conferences and show floor.

That won’t be the only coverage though - I have created a new gallery page that will host images from CES 2009.

The way I have it set up I can snap pictures at the show with my iPhone and upload them wirelessly, giving effectively live updates to the page.

Higher resolution images can also be posted, so not all will be limited by the iPhone camera - though the larger images will be posted offline later in the day.

I am also trying the Twitter approach for the first time, that should be fun with live updates from press conferences and the show floor coming out on that medium.

I am going to have an ‘informal’ contest for my twitter followers - basically three bags of swag - we get all kinds of weird gifts during the show including Blu-ray discs from DTS and Dolby, promotional USB drives, headphones, etc.

I will divide up the spoils into three bags of swag and give them away to three lucky Twitter followers, so there is a little incentive to get on Twitter and follow BlurayStats at the show.

I leave early tomorrow so this might be the last post before Las Vegas….!

If so, I pre-apologise for the potentially slow updates for the week…

Blu-ray Stats is now a Twitter-er. I joined up with the handle BlurayStats in anticipation of the upcoming 2009 CES show.

I will be there along with my Format War Central cohort Tyler and you can be sure that a lot of the very latest information will be going out over Twitter this year.

I will also likely have a contest drawing after CES, taken at random from my Twitter followers at the time, though I haven’t decided what the prize pool will be yet - it will likely include some CES 2009 goodies, as well as some other prizes that I will specify up front as it were.

For now there will probably not be much action (most messages would involve ‘fixing MySQL issues’) but be sure that things will get get more interesting as CES gets closer.

Click here to follow BlurayStats.

The winner of the Dark Knight contest, as drawn at random from random.org is Tim.

According to Tim’s contribution, he has just got his player, so I think I have decided to add an additional disc to the prize to help get his collection started.

Thanks to those those that contributed their ideas - I will make a post later this week to discuss the ideas presented.

Congratulations Tim, hope you enjoy the discs!

I am not sure if it is because everyone has a copy already, but right now your odds of winning are pretty decent!

I have another busy day on Sunday, so moderated comments might not show up until early evening PST…

Thanks to the good folks at Paramount and Disney, I will have some new highlighted titles and perhaps some additional contests as well coming up soon…

As the week of the Dark Knight continues, I see another report on the initial sales, stating that the 600,000 units were US sales and that this represented a 21% market share for Blu-ray for this title.

I think this is better than most anticipated and it will be interesting to see what the market share is after 6 days of sales.

I also received a second copy of the movie due to an internet retailer screw up - instead of returning it, I think I will just give it away!

Contest is open to US residents (sorry international folks) and a valid email address must be used so that I can contact you if you win. Your email address will be kept private of course.

While there is a ’skill question’, the contest will be decided by a random number chosen from Random.org, not judged on the quality of your response.

The ’skill question’ this time is:

What additions would you like to see or what would you change about the Blu-ray Stats Site?

I know that there have been a number of suggestions in the forum and in comments in the past, but feel free to reiterate them here.

Answer in the comments with a valid email address to enter the contest.

Feel free to make additional, off topic comments, as long as the question is answered.

The contest closes midnight PST on Sunday December 14th.

Note that comments are moderated so don’t fret if it takes a while for you comment to post.