Total U.S. spending on home entertainment content rose...

Total U.S. spending on home entertainment content rose 2.1 percent in Q2 to $4.03 billion, the Digital Entertainment Group said Tuesday. Standouts in the quarter included a 31.5 percent rise in electronic sell-through spending to $448.7 million and a 25.9 percent increase in subscription streaming spending to $982.1 million, the DEG said. Content rentals as a segment continued to perform poorly, especially brick-and-mortar rentals, which are marching closer to oblivion. Spending in that sector fell 32.4 percent in the quarter to $171.3 million, the DEG said. Spending on sell-through of packaged content fell 1.1 percent in Q2 to $1.4 billion, an improvement from the 13.2 percent slide in Q1, the DEG said. It didn’t give a format-by-format breakout on physical media spending but said overall Blu-ray sales jumped 10 percent in Q2 and Blu-ray new theatrical release spending rose 18 percent.