Recent figures released by the DEG Digital Entertainment show that the Hollywood home entertainment recovery continued in 2011. Total consumer spending on home filmed entertainment for the second half of the year rose nearly 1%, fueled by a strong third quarter in which spending was up 5%, which marked the first quarterly increase since 2008. While overall spending for the category was slightly down 2% for the year, the industry’s performance clearly stabilized in 2011.
According to the DEG, the recovery continues to be driven by high margin products that are gaining a foothold among consumers, such as HDTVs, Blu-ray Disc players and discs, as well as the expanding offerings through electronic sell-through (EST) and video on demand (VOD) services. These these higher margin businesses showed the strongest growth rates.
Some highlights for the year included
- Blu-ray Disc and EST continued to perform remarkably well with consumer spending on Blu-ray sell-through up 20% and EST up 9% for the year. Additionally, consumer spending on VOD was up 7%.
- Blu-ray Disc has evolved to become the standard for home entertainment with both new release and catalog sales seeing growth of 20% in 2011.
- Studios launched their first Blu-ray Disc titles with UltraViolet in 2011, with the DEG estimating that more than 100 UltraViolet titles will be available in 2012.
- Blu-ray penetration continues to grow rapidly, increasing 38% last year (including BD set-tops, PS3s and HTiBs) to a total household penetration of all Blu-ray compatible devices now at nearly 40 million US homes.
Consumers enhanced their home viewing experience by purchasing more than 27 million HDTVs during 2011. HDTV penetration is now at more than 74.5 million US households. Consumers continue to show a keen interest in 3D TV, with a dramatic year-over-year increase in titles and unit sales of 3D Blu-ray Discs. Available 3D Blu-ray Disc titles more than tripled in 2011 compared to 2010, growing from 20 to 65, while unit sales increased more than six times in the same period. Some of the major movies now on 3D Blu-ray disc include Avatar, The Lion King, Cars 2, and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The bestselling Blu-ray Disc titles of the year hit major milestones with five titles selling in excess of two million discs.
