According to estimates by Home Media Retailing, video purchases fell 4.3% in the first quarter of 2006 as compared with last years totals, and at the same time rental fell by 4.4%.
On the other hand "the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is one of a number of DVD successes that have been steadily performing well, it has sold approximately 4 million units, the first day it was offered in stores.
In spite of this great individual series of successes, overall it has still been a continuous downturn in the industry as Home Media Retailing research shows that overall consumers purchased $4.3 billion and rented $1.98 million which is down 4.4% from last years first quarter.
They also estimate that the final total for consumer spending at the end of February was as $2.3 billion which is down an extraordinary 13.1% in comparison to the $2.65 billion that was spent in January and February of last year.
The statistics also reveal that the number of new DVDs coming out for the market are slowing down significantly.
The DVD Release Report numbers show that in the first quarter of this year there were 2,743 unique DVD title whereas last year there were 3,199 DVD titles released, a huge 14.3% drop.
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," was the number one selling DVD of the first quarter at 9.7 million units.
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