Digital Entertainment Group reports disc revenue's down, transactions up
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Oct 21st 2009 5:37PM
posted Oct 21st 2009 5:37PM
The latest DEG numbers reporting the 3.2 percent decrease in disc revenues this year over last, weren't really that interesting to us. Sure some might argue that is actually good considering overall consumer spending, but what is really interesting is that the number of transactions (sales and rentals) are up 6.6 percent. This should probably be interpreted as rentals are up while sales are down, but the bottom line is that more people then ever are still watching movies on round discs. All of this added together with the latest DRM technologies coming, makes us wonder what the home media landscape will look like in a few years. One thing is for sure, it seems Blu-ray has given packaged media the life extension that the studios had hoped for.
"One thing is for sure, it seems Blu-ray has given packaged media the life extension that the studios had hoped for." Wow! you guys have to rank as some of the best spin meisters. The facts are that BD has only 6% of the home entertainment market, as compared to the 20% that the studios had hoped for: http://www.thewrap.com/article/crack-blu-ray-pot-gold-8564
Interesting article, but I really don't think it makes your point. Who really cares what the studios "hoped for?" I don't. I mean if they really thought that packaged media sales would go up forever then they were smoking something. The way I see it is that if it wasn't for Blu-ray, they'd be down even more.
My point was that more people are renting and sales are not bad. Personally I'm just glad I can rent high quality content
And if it wasn't for Blu-ray there probably wouldn't be high quality streaming services like VUDU's HDX or (hopefully) Xbox's 1080p streams.
You can spin it however you want, but the fact is that Blu-ray is at 6 percent and that it is helping packaged media (which I really don't care about, I just care about quality).