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Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has released sales numbers for the Spider-Man 3 Blu-ray Disc release in the US. First week sales of the Spider-Man 3 Blu-ray Disc, reached 130,000, which surpasses Casino Royale, the previous best seller for Sony.

This figure is doubly important since first week sales of Spider-Man 3 on Blu-ray Disc surpassed sales of Paramount’s HD-DVD release of Transformers, which generated about 119,000 in unit sales during its first week in release according to Home Media Research (although Paramount claimed 190,000 units).

Sony Pictures is not known for resting on its laurels and this ‘can do’ attitude is reinforced by news of another landmark BD release. Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind celebrates its 30th anniversary this month, and to mark the occasion, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has re-released the film to standard DVD and is debuting the film in High Definition exclusively on the Blu-ray Disc format.

There has of course been a lot of buzz online considering the fact that the film’s release on Blu-ray Disc marks Spielberg’s first theatrical length feature foray into High Definition video. Each version of the film has been re-mastered in High Definition, with approval by the director himself. No matter the cut, the film looks cleaner and sharper than ever seen on any standard definition home video, with colours now given a new appealing vibrancy, texture and shading. For fans accustomed to the look of the film as presented on video for the last couple of decades, certain well-known shots will seem revelatory given the new life breathed into them through digital restoration. All three versions of the film are presented in anamorphic 2.35:1 video, with powerful re-mastered Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS surround tracks.