‘Blu-ray and DVD market has halved within five years’

According to the Motion Picture Association of America’s annual Theatrical Home Entertainment Market Environment report, sales of the global Blu-ray and DVD market have roughly halved in the space of five years.

The report states that sales of these video discs in 2014 still amounted to $25.2 billion, while in 2018 it fell to $13.1 billion. Of that $13.1 billion, $5.8 billion comes from the US and the remaining $7.3 billion comes from the rest of the world. For both figures, this is a decrease of approximately 15 percent compared to 2017.

The global physical disc market is still shrinking significantly and is unlikely to change anytime soon, partly because the latest format, the UHD Blu-ray, does not exactly hold a large market share. According to Forbes, relatively outdated DVDs still account for nearly 58 percent of the market, while UHD Blu-rays remain at 5.3 percent.

The number of manufacturers still making UHD Blu-ray players is also declining. Earlier, Oppo announced that it would no longer manufacture these devices, and Samsung was also added not so long ago. It is now mainly Sony and Panasonic that make the players. The Xbox One still has a UHD Blu-ray player and the PlayStation 4 a Blu-ray player, but there too the market seems to be moving more and more towards digital content, as evidenced by the Xbox One version without disc tray that will probably be available soon. is going to arrive.

Looking at the market more broadly, there was a 16 percent growth in home entertainment spending last year. This is due to consumer spending on digital video streaming services, such as Netflix. Those parts are still growing like weed: Last year worldwide, excluding the US, there was a growth of 34 percent compared to the previous year.