After attracting a record box office in 2013, Hollywood studios got more good news on Tuesday.
For the second straight year in 2013, revenue from the once-beleaguered home entertainment front increased, according to a report.
Sales of DVDs and other forms of movies and TV shows increased 0.7 percent last year to $18.22 billion, according to the Digital Entertainment Group.
That compares with the 2013 record box office of $10.92 billion, according to Boxofficemojo.
The fastest-growing piece of the home entertainment piece is again digital sales, said California-based DEG, a trade group aimed at connecting Hollywood with device makers.
The much higher-margin electronic sell-through business grew 47 percent in 2013, to $1.1 billion. The growth was bolstered by earlier release of titles in digital format versus hard copy.
Even so, the sale of packaged goods still dominates the sector, accounting for $7.8 billion in sales, an 8 percent decline from the prior year.
Consumers continued their interest in renting versus buying Hollywood content, too.
The report named a handful of titles among the best selling: “Despicable Me 2” (Universal); “Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2” (Summit); and, “The Hobbit: Unexpected Journey,” (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment).
“Despicable Me 2” has spent the past three weeks at the top of the DVD charts.
In bad news for Outerwall, owner of Redbox, kiosk rentals were down 1 percent, with consumers spending $1.9 billion at kiosks.
Meanwhile the DEG reported that 15 million UltraViolet accounts have been activated since the service launched in October 2011. At the end of 2012, there were 9 million accounts.
UltraViolet allows consumers to keep digital copies of movies they already bought in hard copy in cloud lockers.