• by Wayne Friedman , August 28, 2015

When it comes to home entertainment -- buying or renting specific movies or TV programs -- few consumers have shifted entirely to digital viewing methods.

Nielsen says just 12% have moved to digital-only access for specific movie/TV content, with over half using a combination of physical and digital. Twenty percent only use physical methods for their movie and TV content.

Although more time is spent by consumers viewing digital content, Nielsen says, the physical transactions of movie/TV discs continue to lead in terms of consumer dollars -- amounting to almost twice as much as digital.

Twelve percent of consumers' entertainment money per month is spent on theatrical movie purchases, according to Nielsen, while 10% of is spent on movie/TV disc purchases, 9% on game purchases and 6% on movie/TV disc rentals.

By way of comparison, 3% of consumer entertainment money per month comes from TV/movie streaming; 3% from game digital purchases; 3% from TV/movie digital purchases; and 2% from movie rentals on pay-per-view/video on demand.

Looking broadly at the home entertainment picture, 47% of consumers' overall entertainment dollars are spent per month on a cable/satellite/telco services.

The study says nearly one in five consumers only buy or rent TV movie content and have not seen a movie in the theater in the past six months.

Long term, Nielsen says consumers are expecting to continue to shift to more digital viewing.

Nielsen’s data came in late March of this year -- 2,828 interviews from people ages 12-74. Among this group, 1,216 of those subscriptions streamed two or more TV shows/movies in the past six months, with 424 digital buyers who bought two or more TV shows/movies digitally in the past six months; 566 video-on-demand users who bought two or more TV shows/movies digitally in the past six months; and 1,103 physical disc buyers who bought two or more TV shows/movies digitally in the past six months.