DVD NEWS DIGEST
(August 2, 2004)

August 7 issue - Billboard: Top 10 DVD Sellers in US

1 - Butterfly Effect (Director's Cut) New Line Home Entertainment
2 - Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London MGM Home Entertainment
3 - Bourne Identity (Widescreen Extended Version) Universal Studios Home Video
4 - Cold Mountain (Collector's Edition) Miramax Home Entertainment
5 - Never Die Alone FoxVideo
6 - Bad(der) Santa (Unrated Version) Dimension Home Video
7 - Barbershop 2: Back In Business (Special Edition) MGM Home Entertainment
8 - Bourne Identity (Pan & Scan Extended Version) Universal Studios Home Video
9 - Secret Window Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment
10 - Uptown Girls MGM Home Entertainment

July 30 - China Daily: Americans Arrested for DVD Piracy

The arrests were the result of a joint sting by Chinese and US law enforcement departments.

A total of six suspects were arrested, all charged with being involved in manufacturing and sales of pirated DVDs in Shanghai.

Shanghai police also demolished three warehouses where more than 210,000 copies of pirated DVDs were stocked.

Chinese police said manufacturing and selling pirated DVDs carries penalties of at least five years in prison.

July 29 - VideoStoreOnline: Previously Viewed DVD Market Poised to Grow

As multiple players become more common in households, previously viewed DVD sales are poised to grow.

In the 2004 Consumer Home Entertainment Study conducted by Video Store Magazine, nearly one-third of all consumers who had purchased a DVD in the past year had also bought a previously viewed disc, with the average PVT [previously viewed disc] consumer purchasing 9.9 PVT discs in the past year.

DVD consumers most likely to have purchased a PVT disc in the past year were multiple DVD player households, high-volume buyers and high-frequency renters.

High-frequency DVD renters, (households that rent at least once a week) were the most likely renters to have purchased a PVT disc in the past year (45 percent).

July 27 - WalletWatch.com: Global DVD Penetration to Double by 2010

A study conducted by the London-based research firm Informa Media Group, has forecast the global DVD player penetration to reach 46% cent by 2010, compared to 3% in 2002.

The report said about 70 million homes were expected to buy DVD players in 2004, taking the number of homes having DVD player to about 232 million by the year-end. Another 68 million homes were forecast to be added in 2005 alone, with the total reaching 493 million by 2010.

By 2010, North America would only account for 23% of the world's total but would remain the largest DVD nation, with over 100 million homes.

Asia Pacific was expected to keep a 35-39% share, thanks initially to fast take-up in Japan and helped in the longer term by rising penetration in China and, to a lesser extent, India.

Europe was expected to increase its installed base by 50% cent in 2004 to 46.5 million.

July 23 - Evening News [UK]: Crackdown on the DVD pirates

The British government has announced a fresh crackdown on film and CD piracy amid fears that organised criminals and even terrorists were cornering the £500 million market in fake DVDs.

Estelle Morris, the arts minister, and Lord Sainsbury, the science minister, will jointly chair a new creative industries forum on intellectual property to figure out ways to stamp out the pirates and get the message across to the public about how wrong it is to buy pirated material.

Ian Bartram, assistant head of Trading Standards at Norfolk County Council, said: "We have had an issue with immigrant Chinese who have been on the streets selling DVDs from suitcases.

"It is extremely difficult to deal with them because they just turn up. They don't speak any English and they use the money to pay off the people who brought them here."

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