According to research from the IHS Screen Digest, we may have finally reached the point when streaming video services have become ubiquitous enough to take over American households.
The researcher forecasts that 3.4 billion movies will be legally consumed over streaming services this year, more than double the 1.4 billion that were viewed last year over the internet. The number will also beat out DVD and Blu-ray viewership, which is estimated to come in at 2.4 billion this year — a 7.7 percent drop from 2011.
…the numbers appear to be inflated by unlimited streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video. Such services accounted for 94 percent of all streaming viewership last year, according to the IHS, with only 1.3 percent coming from pay-per-use services like iTunes and others. The dominance of unlimited services explains why movie studios may not be so happy to see more and more of the market shift to streaming — the researchers say that customers paid an average of 51 cents per movie watched online compared to $4.72 for those purchased on physical media.
via The Verge
// Photo by Ross Catrow