Streaming growing, but consumers still love DVDs
Online and digital video options continue to grow in popularity, but people still love their “old fashioned” physical discs. According to new data from market research firm NPD Group, the overwhelming majority of video consumers still watch …
Context & Ripple Effects
NPD Group has been tracking the slow erosion of packaged media since at least 2007, when its research showed DVD copying was rare enough to give Blockbuster a sigh of relief and its music statistics already flagged consumers burning CDs and DVDs for each other. The firm's latest reading lands at a pivotal moment for home video: Netflix is pushing streaming hard, yet NPD finds the overwhelming majority of video consumers still watch physical discs.
The significance is in the gap between growth and dominance — online and digital video are gaining popularity fast, but they have not displaced the disc as the default way people watch movies at home. For an industry still built around pressing plants, retail shelf space, and mail-order queues, that gap defines how much runway the old business model has left.
First-order effects
- Studios and disc retailers keep their primary revenue base intact for now: with most viewing still on physical media, packaging and distribution investments made for the DVD era continue to pay off.
- Streaming-first services like Netflix face a demand ceiling — their catalogs reach only the minority of viewing hours not anchored to owned or rented discs.
Second-order effects
- Rental and retail players such as Blockbuster get a longer window to reposition than doomsday forecasts implied, since disc demand declines gradually rather than collapsing.
- Studios must fund dual distribution channels simultaneously, pricing and release windows to protect disc sales while building the digital catalog that NPD shows is growing underneath.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, home video enters a long hybrid era in which digital grows steadily off a small base while discs retain the majority of consumption — forcing the industry to plan transitions measured in years, not quarters.
The trend: Home entertainment is in a gradual migration from packaged discs to digital delivery, with consumer habit — not technology availability — setting the pace of the shift.