88% of movie sales still physical: NPD study
updated 04:20 pm EDT, Tue May 12, 2009
Most money goes to BD, DVD
Researchers NPD Group today said that 88% of the money consumers spend on home entertainment goes towards purchasing and renting movies on DVD and Blu-ray discs. Of the $25 each US consumer spends on average in a given month, 63 percent was found to be spent on DVD purchases, 7 percent on Blu-ray discs, and 18% went towards renting DVD and Blu-ray movies. The remaining 12 percent was split between video on-demand (VOD) services (9 percent) and digital downloads and online streaming (3 percent).
Still, watching full-length streaming movies is a growing trend. In 2009, 9 percent of those with Internet connections at home streamed movies online, which is an improvement from the 5 percent last year. Online rentals accounted for 8 percent of users polled, while less than 5 percent watched movies they downloaded via a game console.
Downloaders were also found to purchase or rent more movies than the average poll-taker, at 80 percent versus 50 percent. To a lesser extend, the same holds true for buying and renting Blu-ray discs, at 25 percent versus 5 percent overall.
"While many in the home video industry worry that digital consumers might walk away from packaged media, that hasn't happened yet," said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD."
Direct-download movie purchases and rentals have nonetheless contributed to growth in the past year in part through the rapid expansion of Netflix's Internet streaming service, which can now be accessed on the Xbox 360 as well as Roku's Internet Player, TiVo DVRs and multiple Blu-ray movie players. Rentals through iTunes and other services like Amazon VOD and VUDU have also contributed to the increase. [via HomeMediaMagazine]
