More Proof DVDs Are a Dying Medium

While Screenland pushes Blu-ray as the next-generation entertainment format of choice, new search suggests that IT Crataegus oxycantha be wasting its metre peddling the optical disk format. In a research note to clients, BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield notes that Google searches for rental services such as Redbox and (especially) Netflix have skyrocketed and searches for DVDs have flat-lined.

Greenfield suspects that the rise in Netflix's popularity has a great deal to do with the rise in along-need content, as consumers are nobelium longer interested in ownership. If this is the case, it could spell worry for Blu-ray: Hollywood is banking on the proposition that physical media still has a couple of years of life left.

Google Searches Predict the Future?

Searches for DVD terms such as "DVDs," "movies on Videodisk," "newly Videodisk releases," and "top DVD rentals" were off some 45 percent since their late-2008 pinnacle, reported to Google data. Contrast this with "Netflix," whose query ontogenesis has eclipsed 90 percent in each of the past two years. Has the full term Netflix become similar with home video, as Google has with search?

The entertainment service's originate in search queries does match up pretty well with its recent, dramatic subscriber growth. However, the Google research paper that Greenfield cites in his report likewise notes that live subscribers themselves were increasingly using the terminal figure Netflix in their personal searches.

If that's the case, maybe my Google analogy isn't that far cancelled.

It's Full Stream Ahead for Hollywood

More of Netflix's growing seems to follow ascribable online streaming. Greenfield notes that numerous players are either solidifying or throwing their hats into the space–HBO's GO service is a good example–which likely way that we're in the primaeval stages of a serious ramping up of interest in this format.

But let's get back to Blu-irradiate and its prospects. Gross revenue data shows that the format has only in real time reached a equivalence with traditional DVD in player gross revenue. While explore group NPD says that about 77 percent of movie viewers still take in movies on DVD, streaming has get along more than much popular.

Match this against the growth in interest of Netflix (at to the lowest degree according to Google), and the ship's company's winning fight to streaming smug, and Screenland has to be a teensy upset.