Discs Still Preferred to Downloads May 21, 2009 — Physical media like DVD and Blu-ray still dominate U.S. household spending for buying or renting movies. Discs attract 88 percent of spending. For all the hooplah over downloads, they still have only three percent of the movies-on-video market.

The news emerged in the NPD Group's "Entertainment Trends in America" report. Out of an average monthly video movie budget of $25, the lion's share was spent on DVD purchases, at 63 percent. Add another seven percent for Blu-ray and 70 percent of consumers are buying physical media. Throw in another 18 percent for DVD and BD rentals and the total is 88 percent. Of the 12 percent expenditures for non-physical media, nine percent went to video on demand and just three percent to downloads and streaming.

Still, there's a little more programming trickling through the non-disc digital pipeline this year than there was last year. Nine percent of consumers streamed movies in the past three months, versus five percent last year, and eight percent rented a download, versus four percent last year. Game consoles accounted for less than five percent of movie downloads. Even among downloaders, the urge to buy or rent physical media is still strong. In fact, they're more likely to buy or rent DVDs or BDs than the general population.

See NPD press release. Artwork is a closeup of a work by Daniel Rozin via technabob.com.