DVD News Digest

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DVD NEWS DIGEST
(July 5, 2004)

July 10 issue - Billboard: Top 10 DVD Sellers in US

1 - First Dates (Widescreen Special Edition) Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment
2 - First Dates (Pan & Scan Special Edition) Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment
3 - Simpsons: Complete Season 4 FoxVideo
4 - Lord of The Rings: Return of The King (Widescreen 2-Disc Edition) New Line Home Entertainment
5 - Along Came Polly (Widescreen) Universal Studios Home Video
6 - Mystic River (Widescreen) Warner Home Video
7 - Mystic River (Pan & Scan) Warner Home Video
8 - Along Came Polly (Pan & Scan) Universal Studios Home Video
9 - Lord of The Rings: Return of The King (Pan & Scan 2 Disc Edition) New Line Home Entertainment
10 - Chappelle's Show Season One Paramount Home Entertainment

July 5 - Newsweek: The 10 Best-Selling DVDs All Time

TITLE UNITS SOLD (MILLIONS)

1 “Finding Nemo” 21.5
2 “LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring” 18.9
3 “LOTR: The Two Towers” 17.3
4 “Pirates of the Caribbean” 16.4
5 “Spider-Man” Special Edition 13.4
6 “Monsters, Inc.” 12.0
7 “Shrek” 11.5
8 “Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets” 10.9
9 “Harry Potter & the Sorcerer”s Stone” 10.8
10 “The Matrix Reloaded” 10.4

July 3 - AP: New Technology Guards DVD screeners

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has endorsed a plan to distribute about 6,000 special DVD players to members. Specially encrypted discs, known as screeners, would be earmarked for a specific academy voter and would play only on their machine.

Several studios said they may participate, but none has made a formal commitment.

Similar watermarking technology used last year on lower-quality videocassettes helped authorities track and convict an Illinois man who had obtained screeners from an Academy member and duplicated hundreds of illegal copies.

The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents studios, last year banned the distribution of screener DVDs and videotapes over bootlegging concerns. Many of the screener copies are of films that are in movie theaters or are still unreleased.

July 1 - IDG News: DVD Recorder Prices Expected to Plunge

The average selling price of DVD recorders is expected to fall by as much as 50 percent later this year as Taiwanese shipments of DVD recorders increase sharply, a government-backed market research firm in Taipei says.

Taiwanese hardware makers excel at producing large volumes of IT hardware products at low cost. The ability to produce large volumes of IT products at low cost has made Taiwanese hardware makers the production leaders of many hardware components and devices, such as laptop computers. And Taiwanese companies will take a larger share of the market for DVD recorders as prices fall, Market Intelligence Center (MIC) says in a statement.

Taiwanese companies could ship up to 2 million DVD recorders during the second half of this year, bringing the total number of DVD recorders shipped this year to 3 million units, MIC says.