Consumers spent $5.65B renting DVDs and Blu-ray discs in 2011, Rentrak says this morning citing data from its Home Video Essentials tracking service. That’s down 3.4% from 2010. But consumer defections from disc rentals appear to be accelerating. In the last three months of the year, rentals were -21.3% from the same period in 2010, as business at kiosks — including Redbox, which charges $1.20 a night — grew by 28%.
“People have many choices when it comes to renting videos, for both digital and physical media, so it’s interesting to see DVD and Blu-ray Disc rentals are still the number one choice for consumers,” said David Paiko, Vice President of Home Entertainment at Rentrak. The company says that Summit’s Red was the most rented title on DVD and Blu-ray at bricks-and-mortar stores, but it didn’t provide sales data.
