As the nattering nabobs of video-business negativism like to say, that light at the end of the tunnel just might be a train … or perhaps a downward-trending foreign market.
Screen Digest released dour figures Monday, revealing that international sales of DVDs, Blu-ray discs and other packaged media slid about 3 percent in 2009 to $17.1 billion.
Even worse, the London-based research firm predicts a sustained slide to $14.5 billion for the movie-disc business by 2014.
While U.S. sales of Blu-ray titles increased 70 percent last year, Screen Media attributed slow adoption of the format to its premium price amid a tough global economy.