New research released today from marketing research company NPD indicates that digital downloading of movies (the legal kind) is still not mainstream. According to the report, released in March, families reported spending an average of $25 a month on digital entertainment purchase/rentals. Of that, 63 percent was spent on DVD purchases; 7 percent on Blu-Ray purchases; 18 percent on DVD/Blu-Ray rentals from retail stores, subscriptions or kiosks; 9 percent on video on-demand (VOD); and 3 percent on digital downloads and online streaming.
Further details reveal that 9 percent of consumers with home Internet connections reported watching movies streamed online in the past three months, versus just 5 percent last year; and 8 percent rented a digital movie download – an increase of 4 percentage points since last year. Viewing movies downloaded through game consoles attracted fewer than 5 percent of consumers.
These figures are a bit surprising to me, considering all the ways we can consume movie-type media these days. I know we are still renting and/or buying DVD’s (not Blu-Ray) and use subscription service Netflix, as well as RedBox, for most of our rentals. In real terms, the purchase of movies has fallen in our house quite a bit, we tend to rent, then buy those movies that we think we’ll watch again at a later time.
The movie industry has feared the availability of downloading media would be the death of the medium (hard-copy DVD’s), but that hasn’t been the case so far. I am also surprised somewhat at the low percentage of Blu-Ray purchases/rentals. I thought my family was the only one left in the country that didn’t have a Blu-Ray player and a cabinet full of Blu-Ray disks. I’m glad to see we’re not so abnormal.