Despite the growing popularity of on-demand digital distribution, a new report by the NPD Group has revealed that consumers still spend most of their home video budget on buying and renting DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. According to the report, consumers spent 88% on DVD and Blu-ray Disc purchases and rentals with only 12% going toward video on-demand, digital downloads and online streaming.

According to The NPD Group, a leader in market research for the entertainment industry, watching movies and other video content on DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BD) comprises the lion’s share of home-video acquisition and viewing, even as newer digital methods are beginning to gain a foothold in the consumer market. In fact DVD and BD sales and rentals represented 88 percent of consumer spending on home video content, based on a survey that asked about home video consumption over the previous three months.

Results from NPD’s March 2009 update to the “Entertainment Trends In America” consumer tracking study, which provides an in-depth look at shifts in entertainment consumption, revealed that the average U.S. home video consumer reported spending an average of $25 per month on all types of home video purchases and rentals. When it comes to spending on home video content: 63 percent was spent on DVD purchases; 7 percent on BD purchases; 18 percent on DVD/BD rentals from retail stores, subscriptions or kiosks; 9 percent on video on-demand (VOD); and 3 percent on digital downloads and online streaming.

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Plextor Japan announced this week that it will be releasing an external version of the PlexWriter Premium2 in early June. The Premium2U reads and writes at 52x, rewrites at 32x and sports an 8MB buffer. The drive also supports Yamaha's Audio Master Quality Recording system as well as many of Plextor's advanced technologies, including GigaRec, VariRec and Q-Check.

Plextor has not announced a price yet. However, the Premium2U is expected to run about 19,980 Yen ($207US). While I can't see myself dropping that sort of cash on a CD writer based on a three year old drive design, there are probably plenty of Plextor fans and audiophiles out there that will.

Buffalo Japan has announced a new 24x DVD writer based on what appears to be a drive design from LG (GH24N?). The Serial ATA equipped DVSM-U24FBS is capable of 24x DVD±R, 12x DVD-RAM, 8x DVD±R DL, 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW writing speeds and a maximum DVD read speed of 16x. The drive can also upscale standard DVDs to 1080/60p using the bundled CyberLink PowerDVD 8 software. The DVSM-U24FBS will hit store shelves at the end of May for about 5,800 Yen ($60US).

TDK Corporation announced today the launch in late May 2009 of the SDG2A series of serial ATA(SATA) II compatible industrial solid state drives(SSDs) with a maximum memory capacity of 64 GByte.

These products are industrial SATA Flash discs equipped with GBDriver RS2 SATA controller ICs developed by TDK. They support high-speed access with an effective read speed of 95 MByte/second and effective write speed of 55 MByte/second. They also feature powerful error correction capabilities scalable to 15-bit/sector ECC(error correction code), providing high levels of data reliability. The use of an internal power supply protection function prevents errors in the event of a power interruption. These SATA drives are also equipped with an auto-recovery function that automatically recovers data when read disturbance errors occur from repeated reading of data, making them ideal for use on automotive application such as car navigation systems.

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