US DVD sales plummet 20%

[marmar]

DVD sales plunged 20% in the US in the first quarter of 2011, with Hollywood studios blaming the timing of Easter and a glut of blockbuster releases in the same period last year for the $500m (£303m) year-on-year revenue slump.

The sale of DVDs and Blu-ray discs fell from $2.58bn to just more than $2bn in the first three months of the year, according to a report by industry body the Digital Entertainment Group. The DEG study also found rentals of DVDs through outlets such as Blockbuster plunged 36% year on year to $440m.

However, consumer spending on streaming and subscription services such as Netflix rose 33% to $695m.

The increase is from a relatively low base and the growth in digital revenues failed to cover a 10% fall in US home entertainment spending in the first quarter to $4.18bn. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/may/03/us-dvd-sales-online-tv

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[spinbaby]

10. Some of us don't have high-speed Internet

No chance of streaming much of anything on our satellite Internet connection. Maybe someday...

[TexasProgresive]

22. I hear you!

It's only dial up or expensive poor quality satellite were we live.

[Name removed]

34. Deleted message

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[DCKit]

2. I've heard that, once the accountants are finished, no movie ever makes a dime.

Having a hard time feeling sad for conglomerates that produce swill on such a massive scale.

They're making more movies than ever, but the production quality of the studios, in too many cases, is beginning to approach that of the SyFi channel.

[BlueJazz]

15. What?...You didn't like "Ma-Toom-ba, Giant Shrimp of the Sea"??

Some of those original films on Sy-fy are so bad they're almost good...Almost.. :(

[Bluenorthwest]

19. That's cute, but not true

Here are some stats for the #1 profit maker of all time, Avatar.
Avatar 20th Century Fox Budget:$237,000,000 World gross: $2,783,556,202
Profit $1,154,778,101

It is easy, even in DC to look up such figures for most any film. Fuzzy accounting, any biz has some, but when last year's topper made over a billion in profit, 'no movie ever makes a dime' becomes a tad hyperbolic, don't you think?

[DCKit]

32. You can put away the badge, copper.

I hope you don't speak to children in that tone.

[jobendorfer]

28. Hollywood output is WAY down from its heydey

Which was, believe it or not, the 1930s.
Any given studio, in the 1930s, released more movies in a month than all of Hollywood summed together releases in a year today.
I'm in total agreement about the quality, though.

My second year in high school, 1976-77:
- Star Wars
- Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind
- The Goodbye Girl
- Looking for Mr. Goodbar
- Saturday Night Fever ( awful subject, but judged as a film -- way above "The Fast and the Furious" )
- Demon Seed
- Kentucky Fried Movie
- Annie Hall
- New York, New York
- Slapshot
- Network
...

I think that most of the real writing, directing, and acting talent has fled out of film production
and has gone over to cable television ( Carnivale, Deadwood, Lost, True Blood, The Sopranos, etc ).

If the studios want to get me back into the theatres, I'd advise them to a) stop writing/directing
films by committee, b) recruit some decent writers AND film what they write, c) stop letting big
name stars drive the process, and d) make something besides remakes, reboots, & comic books.
Oh, and by the way, you can make films on a budget such that a 25 or 30 million dollar gross yields
a respectable ROI. Annie Hall and Kentucky Fried Movie were made on budgets that would scarcely
cover the payroll for Tom Cruise's 19 assistants.

J.

[damntexdem]

3. It could be other tech. But more likely, it's the crap they turned out this year.

When Fast Five is the top-grossing movie, you figure that all of the others must be just as gross.

[L0oniX]

4. Netflix!

[LAGC]

33. Redbox!

(n/t)

[cottonseed]

5. I can't imagine how even 1 DVD is sold anymore.

It makes no sense to me to purchase an actual DVD. Purchase the song as mp3 and store it in "the cloud" or stick with internet radio, Pandora, Lastfm, Grooveshark, etc.. That's music, Netflix or even Redbox for movies and TV.

[Initech]

14. I really can't explain it but I still get satisfaction from owning a physical copy.

[TexasProgresive]

24. see spinbaby's post above- not everyone is fortunate to have HSI

[jmowreader]

27. I think streaming video is going to kill the rental business...

but for movies you're going to watch repeatedly, it makes more sense to buy a DVD or (preferably) Blu-ray.

[Donnachaidh]

6. they keep raising the prices, and then bitch when sales slump

That doesn't even take into consideration the fact that a LOT of the stuff coming out of Hollywood in the last few years is recycled crap.

Watch them scream for re-doubled efforts to go after torrents... :eyes:

[frazzled]

7. I've never understood why anyone wants to buy DVDs

For children, yes: they will watch the same Disney film 100 times.

But although I am an avid cineaste, I have never had a desire to "own" the DVDs (or in the old days, videos) of these films, watching them over and over again. Especially now with the ability to stream films from Netflix, I'm not surprised that sales are down.

[shanti]

9. absolutely

not to mention that they keep changing the technology so often that you end up with useless media. i have tons of disney videos that i planned to give to my grandchildren.

[Arugula Latte]

13. I never got that either. It's just more "stuff" to collect dust.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. The only DVDs I buy anymore are foreign ones that are unlikely to be released here

I order DVDs from Amazon UK and from a place that pirates Japanese TV programs (because DVDs in Japan, like all recorded media there, are outrageously expensive, about $60 a disk, and most non-TV Japanese movies that are worth watching--and some that aren't--make it to DVD releases in the US and show up on Netflix).

Otherwise, it's all Netflix or Hulu for me. Why bother with anything else?

I bought a bunch of DVDs a few years ago when video stores were closing down, and there was one massive clearance sale where I got the entire runs of Upstairs Downstairs, Rumpole of the Bailey, The Prisoner, and The Avengers (Emma Peel episodes) for about $30 each.

Otherwise, if you came to my living room, you would see a bunch of DVDs that are mostly imported from Europe.

[marmar]

12. Yep. Most of the DVDs I buy are foreign flicks and docs.

nt

[Dappleganger]

23. We order many foreign ones...

the last two were "IP" and "IP Man 2".

[Lucian]

11. I haven't bought a DVD in a couple of years.

Why? I have Netflix. I don't want to pay $18 for a movie I'll watch once and set on a shelf for all of eternity.

[GSLevel9]

16. if Hollywood made less CRAP maybe they'd sell more DVD's. nt

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

17. Maybe if they made movies that were keepers, to be watched more than once, sales would go up.

btw.. with this economy, buying dvds is about last on my list of things to buy.

[DainBramaged]

18. Netflix, watching Season 3 of Saving Grace now.

[Urban Prairie]

20. The only DVDs and VHS videos that I have ever collected and purchased

have been live concert and studio-recorded music by artists, groups, and bands. Some are boots, many are pretty rare commercially/professionally recorded/produced and promotional VHS videos from the 80s-mid-90s, some that were never reproduced from the masters onto the DVD/digital format.

[Dappleganger]

21. Of course there is no mention of the CRAP being put out these days.

[Donnachaidh]

26. or the fact that they keep changing technology in hopes people will buy duplicates to keep up

We still haven't gotten a blueray player and have no plans to buy one -- BECAUSE of the planned obsolescence in store down the road.

[SoCalDem]

25. People want easy/fast

and why own a DVD? Unless it's a kid's video that they love to watch over & over, most people don't need to/want to watch the same movies over & over.. download it/rent it/watch it/done.

[jmowreader]

29. New movies people would want to watch more than once plummeted 50 percent

I mean, come on: how many remakes of "A Christmas Carol" do we need?

[LanternWaste]

30. May explain why I'm getting really good deals on used DVD...

May explain why I'm getting really good deals on used DVD these days. Complete seven seasons of Upstairs Downstairs in pristine condition for $45.00. :)

[Luciferous]

31. I don't buy DVDs very much now that I have Netflix. And when I do,

they are usually cheap DVDs for the kids.

[cbdo2007]

35. I have thousands and thousands of DVD's put I don't own any of them - NETFLIX

No reason to buy any more DVDs ever.

[supernova]

We have streaming and DVDs

that we both bought. Let go of cable TV in February for the final time. I now use the connection only for internet and phone. I may let go of the phone at some point because I can port my home number to my new smart phone and why keep two numbers? (The home phone number is sentimental, my parentls had it).

I am entirely happy paying Netflix $8/month to stream whatever I want whenever I want with NO commercials and no breaks. Sure, I'm missing Game of Thrones and the new season of True Blood, but I'll see them eventually. The premium to see them first run is too steep.

Though we are increasingly relying on Netflix (hope there are more services in the future) and the like, we still have DVDs. Primarily because SO is a home theatre nut. :D He likes big industrial CRT projectors. He has one and he has various players for all the different media he's collected over the years: Blue Ray, HD player (red boxes), and laser discs. Yes, all different titles. I think at some point he wants to consolidate and copy all the movies onto a server and access them that way.

And yes, we will watch a lot of them repeatedly. I still watch my LoTR EE. I watch all my Pixars.

As for buying we try to make a distinction between whether or not a movie is visually rich enough and was really filmed in HD to require a Blue Ray. I mean there's no point to buying Blue Rays of Bewitched. Much as I loved that show, it wasn't filmed in HD to start with. The BR will look the same as a video tape. A BR for Iron Man or The Painted Veil OTOH is a good investment.

[supernova]

36. Dupe

I really hope this glitch is fixed in DU3. :P