‘Avatar’ Sets Blu-Ray Sales Record, Won’t Play Disc

This week is again “Avatar” week, with the movie setting yet another impressive record, this time for sales on Blu-ray Disc, as Nielsen numbers can confirm. While Fox is boasting about the achievement on all available channels, fans are gutted to note that many players don’t actually play the disc because of DRM-related issues. Ironically, the same issues have boosted downloads of pirated versions of the film, Contact Music informs.

Good news first: “Avatar,” James Cameron’s latest film and, so far, the biggest selling production of all times, has officially become the highest performer in Blu-ray sales as well. Until it came into the picture (pun intended), “Dark Knight” was in the lead, but “Avatar” managed to pass it by a huge margin. As far as release on all formats is concerned, “Avatar” is sitting comfortably at number 7, with “Finding Nemo,” “The Dark Knight” and “The Incredibles” occupying the first three positions of best selling movies in all formats of all times.

“Teen vampires, caped crusaders and giant, shape-shifting robots all stepped aside last week as James Cameron’s box office smash ‘Avatar’ continued to set new records – this time on the home entertainment front. According to Nielsen’s VideoScan First Alert data for the Week Ending 04/25/2010, ‘Avatar’ sold more Blu-ray disc units in its first week of release than any other movie in history. 49% of total unit sales for ‘Avatar’ were generated by the Blu-ray/DVD combo disc with the remaining sales coming from the DVD – a significantly higher Blu-ray ratio than any other major release to date,” Nielsen informs.

With such amazing sales, perhaps it comes as little surprise that Fox is trying to squash negative buzz rising because of a complaints page set up by Amazon specifically for “Avatar.” According to many angry fans who have bought the Blu-ray Disc, their player will not run the film because of issues with the DRM. Fox initially responded to this by telling them they needed to download new firmware that would fix a glitch in the DRM software of the player. Even that changed nothing in terms of some players’ refusal to run the film.

Ironically enough, it’s precisely these issues that have made illegal downloads of “Avatar” flourish, says Contact Music citing TorrentFreak. “TorrentFreak.com observed on Tuesday that Avatar ‘is on its way to becoming the most pirated Blu-ray film to date.’ It counted more than 200,000 downloads in the first four days following the film’s release on Blu-ray and noted that ‘DRM issues... could also have boosted download numbers a little’,” Contact Music states.