According to a new report released by the The Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), Blu-ray sales increased 28.5% for Q1 2013 (over the same period last year). Sales of new release titles on Blu-ray were up 37% in Q1 from a year earlier. Similarly, sales of catalog titles on the HD format experienced robust growth with a 16% gain from the first quarter of 2012. Overall total spending on home video entertainment was up 5%.
Strong consumer demand for Blu-ray movies and an appealing slate of new release titles including:
Skyfall,
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, and
Argo helped the format achieve impressive growth for the first three months of 2013.
According to DEG data, the number of Blu-ray homes continued to rise as well, with 3.2 million Blu-ray Disc players (including BD set-tops, PS3s and HTiBs,) sold in the first quarter. The total number of US homes with at least one Blu-ray compatible device is now estimated to be 60 million climbing from 42.1 million at the end of June 2012. The DEG also indicates that 9.4 million new HDTVs were sold to U.S. consumers in Q1.