• by Wayne Friedman , May 21, 2018

Total home-entertainment spending continues, with TV streaming showing more growth.

U.S. home entertainment spending grew 8.7% to $5.7 billion in the first quarter, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, which promotes the home-entertainment industry.

A big piece of this includes TV subscription streaming, which climbed nearly 29% to nearly $3 billion, according to IIHS Markit, which DEG cites.

Among digital rentals of individual movies/TV -- video-on-demand sales were down 4% for the first quarter to $551.6 million. However, this improved from 2017, which was down 7%.

Among other rental areas, brick-and-mortar stores were down 18% to $87 million, while renting from kiosks was off 22% to $279 million. Total rental of individual movies/TV dropped 13% to $1.02 million.

Spending on physical disc sales sank 10% to $1.1 billion in the first quarter. That said, sales of 4K Ultra HD format were up 130%; it accounts for nearly 12% of all Blu-ray disc spending.

DEG says there are now more than 300 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray titles available for consumers. In addition, of the 125 million TV homes that have HDTV sets, about 35 million have 4K Ultra HD capabilities.

Looking at theatrical box-office results, DEG says the first quarter grew 41% to $3.6 billion due to strong titles, including Walt Disney’s “Black Panther,” which was released in the period.