Movie Blues: Home Entertainment Revs Fade

More problems for the home entertainment industry: Revenues were down almost 10% for the first three months of the year.

Consumer spending for the first quarter sank 9.8% to $4.2 billion, which includes DVD and Blu-ray sales and rentals, as well as digital content, per DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group.

Many problems came directly as a result of weak box-office results of theatrical movies. Disc sales were off nearly 20% to $2.07 billion, mostly from the lack of big, tentpole theatrical releases.

Looking at individual segment results, digital content into the home was up 9% to $613.8 million -- comprised of $473.2 million for video-on-demand cable services and $140.6 million for digital electronic sell-through.

In addition, Blu-ray spending of discs rose 10%. Sales of Blu-ray Disc players, which include game-playing machines like PlayStation3s, rose 13%. Estimates are that nearly 30 million U.S. homes now have some form of Blu-ray Disc playback device.

Home rental disc spending at brick-and-mortar stores was down 36%. But subscription rental from Netflix and others, which includes both disc and streaming, was up 33%. Disc rentals at kiosks were up nearly 31%.

Seven million HDTVs were sold in the first quarter, up 11% from a year earlier. HD sets are now in 64.5% of all U.S. homes.

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