There seems to be a change coming when it comes to U.S. home entertainment spending, as more and more consumers seem to be leaning more towards streaming services, and less on general entertainment-oriented items.

A report from DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group indicates that total consumer spending on home entertainment did rise an estimated 2 percent in the second quarter, but that wasn’t quite enough to make up for the entire 3.2 deficit from the first quarter of 2014.

Total home entertainment spending for the first half of this year came in with an estimated $8.58 billion, which is only down less than one percent from the $8.65 billion spent in the first half of 2013.

However, disc sales showed an impact, with spending on Blu-Ray and DVD mediums dropping down 8.2 percent to $3.26 billion, down from $3.56 billion from last year. Home Media Magazine, however, has a conflicting report, stating that the number of discs sold to consumers in the first six months of the year actually increased by more than two percent.

Meanwhile, digital distribution grew heavily, with digital HD products and electronic sell-through rising 37 percent in the first half of 2014, coming in with an estimated $671.4 million. That’s a huge increase from the $490.6 million reported in the first six months of 2013.

The entire digital sell-through category rose thanks to those numbers, to $3.93 billion, just down 2.8 percent from the $4.05 billion spent on home entertainment in 2013.

Blu-Ray discs are picking up a bit in general, with a 10 percent increase in sales for the second quarter alone, proving that physical media is far from dead. However, it’s hard to ignore the streaming numbers, especially Netflix’s.

The video-on-demand service helped increase subscription based services to $1.91 billion in the first half of 2014, compared to the $1.51 billion spent in the previous year.

We could very well see a new trendsetter in home media come this time next year, if not sooner.

Source: Variety