I think the movie industry is paranoid at the moment, or perhaps the press is just presenting it that way.

The media finds any story and blows it out of proportion. Like John said, "people need to chill out and wise up."

Man... it's like when Nine Inch Nails came out with "The Fragile". It sold, I don't know how many millions of copies, on the first week. Then it sold next to none, after that. So the industry called it a failure. Does that make sense? All it meant was that all the fans (and a hell of a lot of fans there are) all got the CD, right away. With a fan base like that, how could people call it a failure? The same thing goes with the DVD "slump". The industry needs to understand that the people who want it, will get it right away, if they can. Unless they're people like me, who can't afford all the DVD's, so they have to wait until Christmas or something.

it drives me nuts how every time i hear the record industry complain about sales they never take into account how people are buying more DVDs, and that DVDs are more expensive than VHS were...

maybe the movie industry should be more concerned with their questionable strategy of packaging a new (and better) version of the same movie every other month to wring the customers dry. it's no wonder consumers are cynical about the studios.

and warner bros needs to stop being cheap and get rid of the paper clasp cases. i know it's really superficial, but i refuse to buy any dvd's in paper clasp cases.

Maybe the industry should be more concerned about next generation DVDs, like Blu-ray and HD-DVDs. I sure as hell don't want to continue to buy DVDs when I know that what I buy today, I will have to buy in a new format a few years from now. Especially those movies you are on the fence about in the first place.

As someone who works for the home video division of a major Hollywood studio, I can tell you that the studios know far better than you about sales curves on new releases. This stuff is not as haphazard as you suggest. The slump is real and there are several reasons for it, not the least of which is that catalog sales are underperforming this year as more titles get released, competing for limited shelf space. Also, the DVD market is now seen as "mature," meaning that household penetration of DVD players has pretty much peaked and continued sales growth in double digits year over year seems to be a thing of the past. Studios were hoping that high def DVDs would reignite the marketplace, but with two competing formats that ain't gonna happen.

re spike: i'm sorry, but even if studio's do know better, that's not what they will present to the public. how many industry sponsored studies have they counducted that have shown that cd sales have gone down, and then other independant studies show that they figures have incresed, or been interpreted differently, or for selected regions etc. it has gotten to the stage, where i just can't believe them anymore.

it sounds to me like they simply overestimated demand. finding nemo and shrek were incredibly successful if i recall. after the followup films did well at the box office (although less so than previous films?) and lack of obvious competition could let them ship out too large a quantity of dvds than could be sold, forcing them to take some back, and blame the shortfall on piracy which is the favourite scapegoat of the day.
or maybe this is just my conspiracy theory, but i wouldn't put it past them...