Not even the Dark Knight could come to the industry's rescue last year, with US consumer spending on DVD/Blu-ray movies falling 5.7 percent to $21.7 billion.
Booming revenues from Blu-ray sales and rentals were unable to counterbalance the 10 percent plunge in DVD-related revenues, reports Video Business.
Consumers spent $488 million on downloading films and TV shows in 2008, a 73 per cent leap on the previous year. Once other factors such as cable Video On Demand are taken into account, home entertainment consumer spending was off just 3.5 per cent from the prior year..
The overall drop in consumer spending is the steepest year-to-year slide for the home entertainment industry since DVD launched in 1997, according to the studios.
