Posted Tue Nov 1, 2011 at 11:00 AM PDT by Dick Ward
DVD spending is down significantly, but Blu-ray helped pick up the industry as a whole - if that's not great news for the format, we don't know what is.
The Digital Entertainment Group's latest survey indicates that high definition packaged media is on the rise in a big way. And yes, when they say "high definition packaged media" they clearly mean Blu-ray. Unless there are still HD DVDs floating around out there, but we're just going to go ahead and make the assumption.
Blu-ray disc sales rose by 58 percent this year, with a 60 percent increase in catalog titles like 'Citizen Kane,' 'The Big Lebowski' and, of course, 'Star Wars.' That's great news, but giant sales numbers for titles like this doesn't necessarily mean that the format as a whole is on the rise. We need something more solid, and we got it.
Blu-ray player sales increased by 52 percent over last year. Certainly there are some upgrades in there, but the majority of that seems to be first-time Blu-ray owners, marking a huge shift in mainstream consumer adoption. The DEG puts the number of Blu-ray enabled homes at a whopping 33.5 million.
So how much did Blu-ray help the overall increase in entertainment spending? A lot. Blu-ray was up 58 percent, electronic sellthrough was up 13 percent and VOD increased by five percent. DVD sales are
way down again, rental revenue is down again and brick and mortar stores are hurting. Only one format is truly thriving, and that's Blu-ray.
Source: Home Media Magazine
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