Four weeks before the all-important Christmas holiday shopping season, Thanksgiving shoppers spiked DVD software sales as they snapped up movies and music videos over the celebratory weekend. Total DVD software sales for the week ended November 28, 1999, were nearly 817,000 units, exceeding last year’s Christmas holiday-week sales (722,000 units) by more than 13 percent, according to VideoScan.

This all-time high represents the digital format’s greatest titles sales for a single week since launching in spring 1997, nearly a 68 percent increase over that which was sold through to consumers during the Thanksgiving week in 1998.

Although many blockbuster titles were released last week, the best sellers were still popular hold-outs from previous weeks. In its 10th week of release, “The Matrix” from Warner Home Video tops the list of the 20 best selling DVD Video titles for the week ended November 28, 1999.

Music videos were also big sellers with Eagles“ ”Hell Freezes Over“ from Geffen topping the best-selling music video titles in the DVD Video format, according to the charts released today from the DVD Video Group and VideoScan.

An additional factor to the spike in sales is the growing number of titles that initially shipped more than 1 million units. ”Titanic“ (Paramount Home Video), ”The Matrix“ (Warner Home Video), ”Saving Private Ryan“ (DreamWorks Home Entertainment) and ”Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me’ (New Line Home Video) have all shipped at least 1 million units, helping to underscore the growing
popularity of DVD.