'Avatar' shatters DVD Sales record

'Avatar' Blu-Ray Breaks Records

Despite the 2D presentation and complete lack of special features, the Avatar Blu-ray has sold 2.7 million copies in just 4 days, surpassing the previous record of 2.5 million copies held by The Dark Knight. The combined DVD/Blu-ray sales also surpassed the
 combined DVD/Blu-ray sales of New Moon, making Avatar the biggest DVD release of the year by a considerable margin.

Although the Blu-Ray disc doesn't include any extra features, it does have one thing going for it: spectacular video and audio quality. Reviews of the disc have so far been routinely citing it as one of the best looking and best sounding yet made.

According to Blu-ray.com, the disc is, "Reference quality. Demo worthy. Grade-A eye candy. Whatever you want to call it, Avatar on Blu-ray is the kind of material that not only sells discs, it sells entire home theater systems. It's a visual showpiece from start to finish, and if the big box stores start playing Avatar on their floor displays—maybe they already are—I guarantee they'll see a spike in HDTV and Blu-ray player sales. I don't want to gush. I'm not a gusher by nature. But put quite simply, Avatar's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer—framed in James Cameron's preferred 1.78:1 aspect ratio, filling up almost the entirety of a 50 GB disc, and coasting along at an extremely high bit rate—is nothing short of superlative in nearly every objectively measurable or subjectively eye-balled category."

The reviewer at HighDefDiscNews.com concurs: "It should really come as no surprise, this earns a perfect “5 Star Rating” for overall video quality and is the utter definition of 'reference quality' in terms of Hi-Def visuals, be it 2D or not."

A special edition Blu-ray is expected to be released in November. Until then, there will be a theatrical re-release in August featuring 6 minutes of additional footage.

by David Humphreys