Online movie watching will surpass discs this year

For the first time ever, Americans will watch more movies digitally than through discs in 2012, according to a report by researcher IHS Screen Digest. This is why one Blockbuster in my town is now an opticians and the other is a Panera Bread. 94% of those digital movies are coming from unlimited streaming services like Netflix and Amazon.

From Bloomberg:

The report highlights the price disparity between online purchases and movies sold in retail shops. Consumers paid an average of 51 cents for every movie consumed online, compared with $4.72 for physically purchased videos, IHS found.

My oldest child is my 11-year-old son. When he was little, I remember putting videocassettes in for him to watch (Maisy, Kipper, a little Barney in moderation). We didn’t even get a DVD player for a few years there. My youngest child is 3-years-old and I don’t know that she’s ever seen a VHS tape and, to her, DVDs are these puzzling shiny things that you use to watch a show if you can’t, for some reason, get Netflix or YouTube to work on the various devices around the house. She’s growing up digital. But it’s not like her brother is THAT much older, he’s only 11! That’s how far we’ve come.