As of this week, Video Business has apparently stopped treating widescreen and fullscreen DVDs as separate releases on its sales chart. I’m not sure if this just a new policy, or a mistake. Regardless of what it is, I certainly don’t like it. How are the studios going to know which version sells more copies? This change could possibly affect the future of widescreen releases. If a studio conducts its own surveys, instead of relying on industry sales stats, the results could be skewed in favor of pan & scan.
In light of this, I will begin looking for a new source for my sales tracker. Billboard magazine still differentiates between widescreen and full screen, but it charges a $20 per month subscription fee for the full list, which tracks the Top 50 releases. You can get the Top 10 releases for free on its web site, but that’s not very valuable, as it usually includes only one or two dual releases. I’m going to try to work it out so that I can get the complete list, but we’ll just have to see what I can do.
In the meantime, I have included first week sales data for many of last year’s blockbusters on my sales stats page, sort of a history of the year’s biggest releases. The history chart will stay on the page, regardless of any other source I decide to add to the page.