Business

Love those videos: US spending bump a first since ’06

Americans love watching videos at home — again.

Money spent on buying and renting TV shows and movies ticked up in 2012 for the first time in seven years, fueled by a 35 percent increase in digital transactions.

Digital business, which is dominated by Apple and Amazon, rose to $811.5 million last year from $603 million the previous year, according to figures released yesterday by the Digital Entertainment Group, whose members include the Hollywood studios.

DEG tracks sales and rentals of TV shows and movies at retail, via cable and e-commerce sites.

Video-on-demand rentals grew 11.4 percent, to $583 million.

That’s good news for Hollywood studios, which were already celebrating a 6 percent uptick in 2012’s box office, to more than $10.8 billion.

Total spending on home entertainment last year inched ahead 0.2 percent, to $18 billion. While that still trails 2004’s record $21.8 billion, the industry will gladly accept any increase.

Ron Sanders, president of both DEG and Warner Home Video, told The Post: “What you are seeing is, finally, the growth of businesses we’ve been investing in, such as Blu-ray disc sales and electronic sell-through [such as sales via Apple.]”

“We are excited when we can get the customer to own it,” Sanders said.

He added that Hurricane Sandy had an undeniable effect on fourth-quarter sales, which fell off dramatically, with 15 percent of retailers being forced to close during the period.

Without access to TV sets, many Northeast residents turned to their mobile phones to satisfy their video urges. So-called digital electronic sell-through rose 50 percent in the final quarter of the year.

Perhaps not so good news for the studios was the jump in spending on cut-price kiosks like Coinstar’s Redbox.

Kiosk rentals rose 15.6 percent, to $1.25 billion, while physical DVD sales fell 5.5 percent to $8.46 billion.