DVD and BD (Still) Dominate Home Video Movie Viewing and Spending

The NPD Group, Inc., a market research company, said consumers are still using DVDs and Blu-ray Disc (BD) to watch movies more than all digital-video options combined.

Over the past three months, 77 percent of consumers reported watching a movie on a DVD or BD, which is unchanged from last year. Those who viewed movies from physical discs reported watching an average of four hours per week, which is also unchanged from the prior year. By comparison 68 percent watched a movie on a TV or cable network channel, 49 percent at a theatre, and 21 percent used paid video on demand through their TVs.

According to data from NPD’s Entertainment Trends in America report, when asked about their recent spending on home video, consumers reported that 78 percent of their home video budgets went to the purchase and rental of DVD and BD, including online and in-store retail purchases and rentals, while 15 percent was spent on video subscription services like Netflix that offer a mix of physical and streaming rentals. Digital video downloads, paid streaming, paid transactional video on demand (VOD), and pay per view (PPV) comprised the remaining 8 percent. Overall per-capita spending on home video fell by 2 percent.

"With the well publicized struggles of Blockbuster and retail video stores closing around the country, and with media attention increasingly focused on the newest digital home-video offerings, the value and importance of physical formats to the home video industry and to consumers is often overlooked," said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for The NPD Group. "Even though DVD sales and rentals are slowing, there is no evidence that consumers are abandoning physical discs for watching movies, even as the choices for viewing are expanding."

In addition to video store closures, many consumers have already built DVD collections of their favorite catalog video titles and are becoming more comfortable using various digital video options. Year-over-year physical disc purchases and rentals fell 9 percent (not including rental subscriptions). Even so Crupnick notes that, as with CDs in the music industry, physical discs are not disappearing anytime soon.

"We expect strong growth from many digital sectors, driven by connected devices, improving selection, and the consumer’s endless quest for convenience," Crupnick said. "For now, though, physical discs continue to lead overall engagement and spending by home video viewers; and even with increasing use of VOD and other digital formats, the primacy of DVD and Blu-ray in home video will continue for the foreseeable future."

Note: Information in this press release was derived from an online consumer tracking study conducted in March 2011. It is based on 9,636 completed responses from U.S. consumers, and final survey data was weighted to represent U.S. Web users age 13 and older. All data was tested for statistical significance at 95 percent confidence level.