Movie Box Office Beats DVDs

For the first time since the wide-spread adoption of the DVD, Americans spent more money in 2009 going to see movies in the theaters than they did on DVDs and Blu-ray discs. According to a report from Video Business Magazine <http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2010/01/04/report-2009-us-box-office-beats-home-video-spending> , the box office in '09 was $9.87 billion (+ 9.8% from '08), while home disc sales accounted for $8.73 billion (- 13.3% from '08).

It's important to note that the latter figure is just for home disc sales. Rentals in '09 continued to be an enormous chunk of the business. Overall spending on movies last year was flat at $28.4 billion. This number also includes video rentals, pay-per-view, video-on-demand and digital streaming.