Americans’ spending on home videos has finally emerged from the recession — helped by more purchases of higher-priced Blu-ray discs and greater outlays on cut-rate rentals from Netflix and Redbox.
For the three months through September, home movie spending rose nearly 5 percent from a year earlier to $3.9 billion, the first increase since early 2008, according to industry organization, The Digital Entertainment Group.
Buying digital copies of movies and ordering them from set-top box video-on-demand services also rose.
People bought fewer DVDs and made fewer trips to brick-and-mortar video rental stores, cutting into the gains.
For the year overall spending is down about 2 percent at $12.3 billion.
The industry is struggling to cope with a weak economic recovery and the gradual wane of the DVD era. The digital discs, once revolutionary for their clarity and durability, were shown the exit once Blu-ray became the industry’s high-definition standard in 2008. Compared to a year ago, DVD sales dropped by 15 percent, or about $230 million, to $1.32 billion.
Blu-ray disc sales rose by about $156 million, to $423 million. That didn’t make up for the DVD drop, even with the help of the popular re-release of the six “Star Wars” movies on Blu-ray, which racked up $38 million in North America in its first week of sales in late September.
There’s still room for Blu-ray to grow. Although Blu-ray player households rose by 52 percent to 33.5 million, that’s still only about a third of the TV-owning homes in the U.S.
Brick-and-mortar store rentals fell by $142 million to $353 million, but they were more than replaced by a $152 million gain in new delivery methods, such as online streaming, video-on-demand, mail-order subscriptions and cheap rentals from kiosks. Revenue from those rental methods rose to $1.70 billion. Kiosk rentals made up more than half of those gains.
Netflix Inc.’s price hike to customers on Sept. 1 may have bolstered the numbers, and Redbox said it was raising its nightly DVD rental fee to $1.20 from $1, which will likely add to the current quarter’s totals.
The smallest segment remains digital purchases of movies, which rose by about $15 million to $136 million. Movie studios have been concerned that people aren’t purchasing digital movies because they are worried the files won’t be easily transferable to various devices, a concern it hopes to ease with its UltraViolet view-anywhere standard, which Warner Bros. launched this month.
For Documentaries At Sundance, Oscar Nominations (and Wins) Often Follow
The Sundance Film Festival welcomed back three Oscar-winning documentary filmmakers to help kick off the annual independent film showcase in Park City, Utah.
On Thursday night at The Ray Theater, "20 Days in Mariupol" filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov, who won the Oscar last year, debuted his latest dispatch from Ukraine, "2000 Meters to Andriivka," a harrowing journey to the front lines of a 2023 counteroffensive. A few hours later, at the Eccles, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, who won an Oscar for "Summer of Soul" in 2022, unveiled his Sly Stone portrait, "SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genuis)." Earlier, "One Day in September" filmmaker Kevin MacDonald also showcased his film "One to One: John & Yoko," which debuted last year at the Venice Film Festival and will get an IMAX release on April 11 before hitting Max later this year.
Some critics reflected that "2000 Meters to Andriivka," a joint production between The Associated Press and PBS Frontline, was even more powerful than "20 Days in Mariupol." "SLY LIVES!" (on Hulu Feb. 13) was called "sublime" and "illuminating" in its examination of an underappreciated, shapeshifting genius.
"I've been coming here since 2000 and I thought the coolest thing you could do would be to DJ an after party," Thompson said before the screening. "I never dreamt this for my future, so this is really humbling."
It was a full-circle end to a day that began with a slate of documentary Oscar nominations all connected to the Sundance Institute in some way. Some were supported by the Institute, some debuted at the festival as recently as last year.
"Black Box Diaries," in which a Japanese filmmaker investigates her own sexual assault, had its premiere in Park City last year and was supported by the... Read More