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Media
Information > Media DVD Coverage 
Archive
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| Updated May 8, 2006 DVD
NEWS DIGEST
DVD players and recorders will have a combined number of 176.6 million units sold worldwide in 2010, up from 140.8 million units in 2005, reports research firm In-Stat. For 2006, Europe will be the strongest region for DVD players and recorders with a combined total of 38.4 million units sold, followed by North America with 37.4 million units, the market research firm anticipates. The DVD player segment remained strong. DVD player sales grew from 114.2 million units in 2004 to 126.7 million units in 2005, In-Stat said. The strongest gains were made in portable DVD players (14 million shipped in 2005 as opposed to 11.3 million shipped in 2005), home theater-in-a-box + DVD player (13.8 million shipped in 2005 as opposed to 12.4 million shipped in 2004) and automotive (8.2 million shipped in 2005 as opposed to 7.1 million shipped in 2004), InState said.
Police and trading standards officers in London made five arrests after raiding the largest pirate DVD manufacturing facility ever uncovered in the UK. The premises in Leyton, east London, contained over 500 individual DVD burners capable of producing over 60,000 pirate DVDs per day. DVDs representing 300 different titles (including Ice Age 2) were seized during the raid, which resulted in the arrest of four men and one woman, who are being questioned by police. Officers from the FPU are investigating the finances of the illegal counterfeiting operation, which is suspected to be the work of Chinese organised crime in the UK.
The role of the DVD producer has become increasingly integral in creating a bridge between the director and the fan. It stands to become even more important with the bulging capacity for extras high-def discs will offer. DVD producer Kim Aubry says the impending world of high-def signals an exciting future, even just from a quality standpoint. There’s a chance that high-definition discs will one day mirror or even be better than the theatrical viewing experience, especially for people in smaller communities where there are often less sophisticated movie theaters, Aubry said.
Consumer spending on video purchases fell 4.3% in the first quarter compared with last year, while rental spending lagged 4.4%, according to preliminary estimates by Home Media Retailing. Home Media Retailing market research shows that total consumers spent $4.3 billion on purchases and $1.98 billion on rentals in the quarter, down 4.4% from the $6.36 billion consumers spent on purchases and rentals combined in first-quarter 2005. The research estimates a final tally of consumer spending through the end of February puts spending at $2.3 billion, down 13.1% from the $2.65 billion that was spent in the first two months of last year. The combined boxoffice strength of March DVD releases, however, was so pronounced -- more than $1 billion, up 38.6% from March 2005 -- that consumer spending for the month is expected to be significantly higher than the $1.6 billion figure reported for March 2005.
Some studio executives have called for faster DVD releases to combat rising piracy over the Internet, amid slowing sales of DVDs and a U.S. box office slump. But executives from the world's largest movie theater chain and National Amusements Inc. disagreed with a narrower theatrical window -- the time between when movies are released in theaters and subsequently on DVD. "Shrinking windows is bad for business and I mean everybody's business," said Shari Redstone, president of privately held National Amusements, at a Telecommunications and Entertainment Conference. She said offering a fuller, more entertaining experience to consumers not only generates more revenue, but protects the theatrical window. Another executive said calls for a quicker DVD release were overblown by the media. "I think the hype is greater than the reality," he said, adding that he believed the studios agreed on the need to maintain a window, which he said shrank by just four days last year.
Over the last year, there has been an explosion in the popularity of renting DVDs via the internet. Most providers offer a broadly identical service. For a monthly subscription fee, your chosen DVDs are mailed out to you, and once you have watched a film, you simply post it back in the provided pre-paid envelope. For specialist online DVD rental firms this is marvellous news but for conventional rental chains, the new way of renting DVDs via the internet has posed a few problems. While
its new rivals simply operate from anonymous warehouses, thus keeping
their overheads to a bare minimum, the conventional rental chains
still have to pay for the upkeep of all their shops.
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