MovieWatch Digital Pilot Study Provides Early Data on Consumer Interaction with Digital Video Files

The NPD Group today announced plans for a pilot study to monitor acquisition and viewing of movies and videos on consumer PCs. NPD also released data for March 2005 showing an increase in the appearance of video content on PCs, as well as evidence of movie piracy that is not dissimilar to what the music industry has been fighting for the past few years. The monitoring comes from NPD MovieWatch Digital, which NPD plans to further pilot test throughout the summer of 2005.

According to results of NPD's MovieWatch Digital monitoring in March 2005, 13 percent of active Internet-enabled households had some type of video file of at least 150MB - the size of an average half-hour television program - saved on their PCs. That incidence represents a sharp increase compared to the eight percent of households who had video content on their PCs the year prior.

Among the 13 percent of consumers who had a video file saved, each had an average of 15 such files on their PCs. This incidence is nearly double what NPD noted just one year ago, which indicates that consumers are adding to their digital collections.

"What will trouble many, especially in the film and video industry, is that some consumer collections include material that is clearly pirated," said Russ Crupnick, president of the NPD Group's Music & Movies division. "In March, we noted several dozen full-length theatrical films on computers well before their expected DVD release date, including 'Ocean's Twelve,' 'Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events,' 'Million Dollar Baby,' 'The Aviator,' 'The Ring Two,' and 'Team America World Police.'"

Source: MovieWatch Digital is currently being pilot-tested by The NPD Group and is expected to become available for subscription by Q4 2005. It is designed to deliver the most comprehensive view of consumer interaction with digital video files. MovieWatch Digital information is collected continuously from the PCs of 40,000 NPD online panelist volunteers. The data is then balanced to represent the online population.