Consumer spending on home entertainment products rose 3. 8 percent in the third quarter from previous year. To date, sales are up 2.5 percent in the first three quarters of 2016, according to the third Quarter 2016 Home Entertainment Report compiled by the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG). Consumers continued to show their interest in Blu-ray Disc movies and TV shows with spending up nearly six percent for the quarter and about eight percent for the year, says DEG's report, which is compiled by DEG members, tracking sources and retail input.

Consumers also continued to embrace next generation 4K Ultra HD products with robust sales for 4K Ultra HD TVs, Ultra HD Blu-ray players and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Discs.

Highlights for third quarter 2016:

• Total U.S. home entertainment spending was nearly $4.2 billion, bringing the year-to-date total to more than $13 billion.
• Consumers continued to transition their collection of filmed entertainment to digital with Digital HD – or Electronic Sell Through (EST)–up nearly 10 percent over the same period last year.
• Blu-ray Disc continues its positive trend, up eight percent for the year.
• Video-On-Demand (VOD) platforms continued to grow, up about five percent in the quarter from a year earlier driven by strong growth of iVOD.
• An additional two million 4K Ultra HD TVs were sold in the U.S. market, up 104 percent from the third quarter of 2015 and bringing the total number of sets purchased to 9.9 million. Seventy two 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray title releases are now available.
• HDTV penetration is approaching the total number of U.S. households. The DEG estimates that 85 ercent - 104.5 million - of all U.S. homes have at least one HDTV. Blu-ray playback devices (including set- tops and game consoles) are in nearly 87 million U.S. households.