Andre Yoskowitz
17 Sep 2008 15:31
According to a new NPD Group study, physical media is still king despite the flat growth of standard definition DVD sales, and digital downloads will continue to lag behind.
The report says the average U.S. consumer will spend 80 percent of his entertainment budget on buying or renting physical media (DVD, Blu-ray) and that only 0.5% of the average American's entertainment budget is spent on digital downloads (full downloads, streaming of movies or TV).
The results were based on answers from 11,000 consumers and was presented yesterday at the DisplaySearch HDTV 2008 conference in LA.
“Everyone is guessing when video on demand (VOD) and digital downloads will spell the end for packaged media,” said Russ Crupnick, senior industry analyst for entertainment with The NPD Group. "At this point, digital video is still an extremely small part of overall consumer entertainment spending."
To get more specific, the report showed that of of money budgeted for movies and video, 41 percent was spent on purchasing DVDs/Blu-rays, 29 percent was spent on DVD rentals (most notably Netflix), 18 percent was spent on going out to the movie theaters, while the remaining percentage was spent on buying TV boxsets on DVD/Blu-ray.
How did the average consumer watch a full-length movie in the past three months? 67 percent watched a DVD/Blu-ray they already owned, 50 percent rented, and 18 percent opted for Video-on-Demand. Only 2 percent paid for a digital download from services such as iTunes or Amazon VOD.