Laser-Disc Videos Doing Healthy Business Over Last Year

Just how popular is the laser-disc video format? Figures released for the first quarter of 1995 by the Laser Disc Association, based in Los Angeles, indicate that the format is getting more popular all the time.

The association breaks down its figures into four areas: theatrical, meaning movies, etc.; music, meaning music videos and concerts; karaoke, those specialty sing-along discs; and nontheatrical, which means just about everything else. In each of those three areas the discs are broken into three price categories: discs under $30, $30-$59.99 and $60 and higher.

We’ll look at the theatrical area, since the vast majority of people use their laser-disc players to watch their favorite movies.

In the under-$30 category, $3.8 million worth of theatrical releases were sold during the first quarter of 1994. For the same period this year, the discs sold totaled nearly $4.5 million, a 17.86 percent increase. For $30-$59.99, $50.6 million worth of theatrical releases were sold in the first quarter of ‘94. For the first quarter of this year that figure jumped 9.09 percent, to $55.2 million.

But the best growth category for theatrical releases was for discs that cost $60 and higher, which usually means they are special editions or collectors editions. In the first quarter of ‘94, $6.9 million worth of such discs were sold. But for the same period in ‘95 that figured jumped to $10.3 million, a 49.4 percent increase.

The theatrical area as a whole saw more than $61.3 million worth of discs sold during the first three months of ‘94. For the same period in ‘95 the total was more than $70 million, a healthy 14.18 percent rise.