(Phil Lelyveld comment: No 3D-specific data)

Consumer spending on movies on disc was down once again through the first three quarters, off by 4% to $12.6 billion, with overall purchase and rental transactions in stores and online flat.
But once again spending on Blu-ray Disc was up, a whopping 80% to $1 billion on disc sales alone, compared to an 8% decline in sales overall. Blu-ray hardware sales were even stronger with more than three million set-top units sold for an increase of 104%.
The total installed base of Blu-ray Disc playback devices in the U.S. is up to 21.1 million units, compared to 91 million homes with DVD players, 68% of which have more than one.
Blu-ray rentals were also up by 40%, according to Rentrak Corporation’s Home Video Essentials, while overall rental spending was down 4.4% to $4.4 billion.

Another bright spot is digital distribution, which includes electronic sell-through (EST) and video-on-demand (VOD). EST climbed 37% to $432 million and VOD was up 20% to $1.2 billion, a combined growth of 23 percent to $1.7 billion.

“While we continue to encounter tough market conditions, there are a number of positive trends emerging, particularly in some of the industry’s key growth areas,” said Ron Sanders, President, DEG and President, Warner Home Video. “Blu-ray continues to show strong growth in every category, new release packaged media sell-through is up, and digital distribution is gaining significant momentum as we move into the fourth quarter.”

Blu-ray Discs shipped to retail in the first three quarters of 2010 topped 98 million, up 57% over the comparable period in 2009, according to figures compiled by Swicker & Associates on behalf of the DEG.

With another 12.7 million HiDef TVs being sold so far this year, the number of households with HiDef TVs stands at 53 million.

By Scott Hettrick

original post: http://hollywoodinhidef.com/2010/10/blu-ray-sales-up-80/