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Media
Information > Media DVD Coverage 
Archive
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| Updated November 27, 2005 DVD
NEWS DIGEST
Oct. 4 - Reuters: US DVD Sales Seen Growing by 12% in 2005 U.S. DVD sales were expected to grow by 12 percent in 2005 despite a box office slump this summer that saw double-digit drops in ticket sales, said media analyst Tom Adams of Adams Media Research. Adams forecast DVD sales of $17.3 billion this year. He expects home video sales, which make up about 3 percent of home entertainment sales, to decline by 61 percent, to $475 million in 2005. Adams forecast that DVD sales would rise by 9 percent to $18.9 billion in 2006, while home video sales would drop another 33 percent to $324 million.
As the critical fourth-quarter DVD selling season gets under way, studio executives are cautiously revising revenue forecasts upward. They're predicting as much as 10% growth in the three-month period ending Dec. 31 from fourth-quarter 2004. That's
enough to push total consumer spending on video purchases and rentals
for the year past $25 billion for the first time.
A man convicted in China of selling pirated DVD's now faces multiple charges of copyright infringement in the United States, federal authorities said. Chinese officials expelled the man, Randolph Hobson Guthrie, turning him over to United States authorities in Los Angeles. The inquiry that led to the charges dates to September 2003 when an undercover customs agent bought counterfeit DVD's at a Mississippi flea market, the agency said. Mr. Guthrie, of New York City, and another man, Abram Cody Thrush, were sentenced to up to 2.5 years in prison in April along with two Chinese co-defendants. They were accused of using the Internet to sell more than 180,000 counterfeit DVD's to buyers in 25 countries.
As part of a broad strategy to combat video piracy in two major overseas markets, Warner Bros. Entertainment and NBC Universal are expanding their efforts to sell cheap DVDs in Russia and China. In November, an initial batch of about 15 Universal movies will be introduced by retailers in China, joining a crop of some 200 Warner Bros. DVDs already on sale there. Since early this year, the Time Warner Inc. unit has been selling legitimate videos in China at prices ranging from $2.65 to $3.38 each, prices intended to compete with illegal DVDs, which sell for as little as $1 on the street. But making a dent in the country's robust pirated-video trade has proved difficult so far, and the company is still hoping for a breakthrough. Separately
in Russia, Universal's international-distribution arm for home entertainment,
Universal Pictures International, will begin selling Warner Bros.
videos with an initial introduction of 20 titles sometime this fall.
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