Rather than hunkering down in their brick and mortar stores, traditional retailers are transitioning from their established role of selling and renting packaged DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, and video and computer games by embracing digital delivery, according to the report Discs & Digital - The Business of Home Entertainment Retailing, released by the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA).

It finds traditional retailers joining other established and emerging Internet-only retailers by engaging in streaming, video-on-demand, and electronic sell-through and assisting consumers in migrating their DVD and Blu-ray Disc collections to cloud-based Ultraviolet accounts.

Other notable findings include that Blu-ray Disc sales increased nearly 10% in 2012, even though the average price paid by consumers for a Blu-ray title declined to $19.97 per unit, and that spending on digital video game formats (full game and add-ons, subscriptions, mobile, and social network) increased 16% last year.

US consumers spending on home video is expected to decrease only slightly over the next five years - from $18.5 billion in 2012 to $17.9 billion in 2017, according to IHS Screen Digest.

DVD unit sales were down 7.2% in 2012, but overall Blu-ray unit sales were up 22.6%, according to data supplied to Home Media Market by Graham Gee, VP and GM of Nielsen. He said more than 70% of all disc sales came from mass merchants. The top 10% of disc buyers each averaged $572 on content.

Story filed 24.06.13