Based on VideoScan sales to date, and analysis of recent new-release title sales, projected 13-week sales for Avatar on disc could reach a total of 14m copies, with 3.9m Blu-ray discs expected to sell to US consumers, plus 10.1m DVDs (in addition to those bundled with a BD purchase), falling a bit short of The Dark Knight's first 13-week DVD sales of 11.6m but more than doubling its BD sales of 1.8m units.

The growing percentage of major hits now selling on the BD format (projected to be 28% for Avatar versus 13% for The Dark Knight) can be attributed to the huge growth in the number of US households that own a BD player. Just over 3m homes had a dedicated set-top player when The Dark Knight shipped in December of 2008 compared to 10m when Avatar hit stores this April, while the number of homes with a BD-compatible PlayStation 3 game console jumped from 6.5m to 10.5m over that time.

Avatar's BD record is particularly impressive given the fact that this first Avatar release was a plain vanilla version with no extra features (the second disc in each BD package held a DVD copy of the movie instead) and Fox has announced it will have a special-edition released in time for holiday sales and a 3D version in early 2011. There was some concern that the promise of more and better versions to come might put a damper on early disc sales.

In addition, some 3D movies coming to video have underperformed comparable 2D titles in converting box-office performance into video sales. We think this "3D effect" can be attributed to 1) box-office dollars that are inflated by the premium charged for 3D tickets, thereby inflating the box-office denominator in the conversion ratio, 2) consumer concern that the 2D version won't be as compelling - and thus have the "must-own" status - of the 3D theatrical version.