With so many factors affecting the purchase of High Definition and traditional DVD's it is difficult to identify the reasons for fluctuations in sales. What has certainly emerged over the last few months however is that High Definition DVD sales have been disappointing.

Having won the well documented HD DVD format war by March 2008, Sony's victorious Blu-ray format witnessed impressive sales of 3.8m titles in the US for the first quarter of 2008. The figures have disappointed industry insiders though because they have not got close to making up the shortfall from flagging standard def DVD's. Wholesale DVD revenue has actually dropped from $25 billion in 2006 to a forecast $21 billion for 2008.

There are a number of contributing factors pointing towards the decline of traditional DVD sales and the unspectacular rise of Blu-ray. New technologies such as movies on demand from cable/satellite operators and the possibility of downloading movies via the internet are giving consumers more alternatives for watching films.

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Danny
DVD News Editor
http://www.dvd-and-media.com