M+E Daily
DEG: UltraViolet Conversions Contribute To ‘Electronic Sell-Through’
Story Highlights
By Terence Keegan
DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group, says that consumer “conversions” of DVDs and Blu-rays from their home collections into UltraViolet downloads contributed to the “electronic sell-thru” category in its latest status report on consumer home entertainment spending.
While the trade group counts sales of DVD and Blu-ray disc packages that contain UltraViolet access codes as part of the $3.7 billion in packaged goods sell-through for the first six months of 2012, use of Walmart and Vudu’s disc-to-digital service is included within the $329 million consumer spending figure for electronic sell-through platforms during the same period.
The electronic sell-through category also includes all-digital sales of movie downloads via online retailers such as Vudu and Apple’s iTunes.
Consumer spending on electronic sell-through during the first half of 2012 rose by 22% over the same period in 2011, according to the DEG. The trade group did not break out sales during the period of UltraViolet packages (which commonly retail for between $10 and $25), or of disc-to-digital conversions (which cost $2 or $5 each).
In any event, it’s still early days for UltraViolet. To date, some 4 million households have created an UltraViolet account; 1 million of those accounts had been activated prior to the April launch of the Walmart/Vudu program.
