Worldwide consumer spending on filmed entertainment through 2011 is forecast to grow at an annual rate of 4.9% to $103.3 billion from $81.2 billion in 2006, with the Asia-Pacific region growing fastest, at an average annual pace of 6.8 percent, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers' latest five-year outlook.

Digital cinema and high-definition DVD sales are expected to fuel this growth while Download-to-own services will provide a relatively small but rapidly growing revenue stream in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, while piracy will take a bite off revenue in Asia and Latin America, the Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2007-2011 report said.

Sales of physical DVDs will fall as alternate distribution channels grow but will continue to dominate all types of U.S. home video retail sales, which will grow at an average rate of 5.1 percent to $21.9 billion by 2011.

Currently slowed by a war between competing formats, the next-generation DVD sales will accelerate toward the end of the forecast period but will not produce the boomlet that some studios were expecting, sayd the analyst. US in-store DVD rentals, the forecast's weak spot, will decline at an average of 1.1 percent to end 2011 at $7.1 billion, versus $7.5 billion in 2006, PricewaterhouseCoopers said.

According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the growth of the US online rental subscription business, dominated by Blockbuster and Netflix, is expected to more than compensate for in-store losses. Online-rental revenue is expected to rise, on average, by 23.1 percent a year, to $3.4 billion by 2011, with subscribers reaching 20 million,.

Download-to-own movies sales are expected to expand rapidly to 80 million transaction at an average price of $7 per film by 2011. Total spending on download-to-own movies will grow to an estimated $560 million from $32 million in 2006, while sales of download-to-own TV shows are expected to rise to $600 million, the report said.

Story filed 24.06.07