Advanced Television

DEG: ‘Strong demand’ for 4K UHD TVs

May 2, 2016

Preliminary Q1 figures from US industry body DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group suggest that consumer spending on home entertainment was stable for the quarter compared to the year earlier period, but outperforming the box office.

Notably, consumers have purchased more than seven million 4K UHD TVs to date in the brief period since the product came to market, sparking strong demand for content for the next generation TVs.

Among the highlights of the DEG’s First Quarter 2016 Home Entertainment Report:

  • Total US home entertainment spending was nearly $4.6 billion for the first quarter, flat over the same period 2015 and outpacing the box office value on video release by nearly 10 percentage points.
  • 4K Ultra HD players launched in the US market and were quickly purchased. With 26 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray releases available in the first quarter, 4K Ultra HD discs experienced impressive sales with consumers buying more than 80,000 discs in their first weeks of launch. This number is two times that of Blu-ray Discs sales in its first weeks of launch.
  • More than 1.5 million 4K Ultra HD TVs sold in the first quarter, up 210 per cent, bringing the total number of sets sold to date exceeding seven million.
  • VoD platforms continued to grow in the period, up seven percent for the quarter, and reversing the downward trends seen in early 2015.
  • Subscription VoD (SVoD) had strong growth with a 19 percent rise for the first quarter over the first quarter of 2015.
  • Electronic Sell Through ((EST) growth slowed to four per cent in the quarter resulting from a smaller slate of new releases but continues to see robust catalogue growth.
  • HDTV penetration is now approaching the number of US households. The DEG estimates that nearly 95 per cent – 104 million – of all US homes have at least one HDTV. All Blu-ray playback devices (including set-tops and game consoles) are in more than 84 million US households.

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