Figures released by the Digital Entertainment Group show that total US consumer spending topped $8.4bn in the first half of this year, compared to $8.3bn in the same period in 2011. The home video market is picking up as consumers increase the numbers of movies and TV shows they stream online and buy more Blu-ray discs.

Blu-ray continued to grow steadily at double-digital rates with consumer spending on discs up 13.3% in H1, compared to the same period last year. Catalogue titles increased 26%, further confirming, if needed, that Blu-ray has become the standard in home entertainment.

The number of Blu-ray homes continued to rise, with 1.4 million Blu-ray players (inclusive of BD set-tops, PlayStation 3s and HTiBs,) sold in the second quarter, bringing the total household penetration of all Blu-ray compatible devices to more than 42.1 million US homes.

Total physical sell-through, which includes DVD, dipped 3.6% to $3.7bn from $3.8bn last year. When factoring in electronic, total sell-though declined nearly 2% to $4bn from $4.1bn.

Digital distribution, which includes electronic sellthrough (EST), transactional VoD and subscription VoD services such as Netflix, surged more than 77% to $2.4bn compared to $1.3bn last year.

Notably, EST increased nearly 22% to $329m compared to $270m last year. Additionally, transactional VoD was up 11.6% to $983m compared to $881m in the mid-year of 2011. Subscription VoD revenue topped $1.1bn, up 430% from $208m last year.

With the exception of increasingly popular kiosks, the rental business continued to decline, with total revenue, including VoD, dropping 17.6% to $3.2bn compared to $3.9bn last year.

Kiosks, spearheaded by Redbox, grew revenue to $990m, up nearly 23% from $805m last year. High street video store revenue fell more than 33% to $597m from $896m, while by-mail disc rentals plummeted 50% to $671m from more than $1.3bn last year.

As for cloud-based digital locker platform UltraViolet, it recently surpassed 4 million household accounts.

Story filed 30.07.12