US UHD sales up 11%

Boding well for the home entertainment industry was the continuing shift by consumers to next generation 4K Ultra HD TVs, which in turn is expected to drive purchases of new content consumers can enjoy using the state-of-the-art technology. To date, more than eight million 4K Ultra HD TVs have been sold.

Among the highlights for second quarter 2016:

• Total US home entertainment spending was more than $4.3 billion (3.86bn) for the second quarter, bringing the year-to-date total to $8.9 billion, two per cent higher than in the first half of 2015.

• Purchases of physical and digital content were up more than four per cent to $1.7 billion for the quarter pointing to consumers’ continued desire to add content to their collections.

• Overall physical sales grew three per cent with Blu-ray Disc particularly robust with 35 per cent growth for the quarter over the same period last year.

• An additional 1.4 million 4K Ultra HD TVs were sold in the US market, up 119 per cent from the second quarter of 2015 and bringing the total number of sets purchased to more than eight million. More than 45 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray title releases were available in the first half of the year, with impressive sales of some 288,000.

• Digital HD – or electronic sell-thru (EST) – grew nearly nine per cent in the quarter, driven by theatrical content which was up nearly 20 per cent for the first half of the year resulting from a strong slate of new releases.

• VoD platforms continued to grow in the period, up more than seven per cent for the quarter, consistent with first quarter growth.

• HDTV penetration is approaching the number of US households. The DEG estimates that 95 per cent – 104.1 million – of all US homes have at least one HDTV. All Blu-ray playback devices (including set-tops and game consoles) are in more than 85 million US households.