Rentrak's home entertainment services incorporate a dual set of unique applications designed to help clients maintain and direct their business practices related to the performance of home video products. Catering to both retailers and content providers, these services measure, aggregate and report consumer rental and retail activity on film (DVD, UMD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray Disc, VHS) and video game properties from traditional retailers as well as the burgeoning online market.
The $24 billion packaged home entertainment industry we know today was conceived in 1977 when a single video store opened on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles with films available to rent on Betamax and VHS for $10 a night. The video rental business, dubbed Hollywood's "aftermarket," caught on with surprising success and soon underwent its first format war, with VHS emerging as the prevailing format.
The entertainment industry's need to measure this emerging multi-billion packaged goods business eventually led to Rentrak Corporation. In 1988, Rentrak revolutionized the packaged home entertainment industry with the development and introduction of our Pay-Per-Transaction® (PPT) revenue sharing system. By 1996, Rentrak became the first company to aggregate and process rental transactions to report U.S. consumer spending and transactions on VHS titles. When the first DVD was launched in the United States in 1997, we were once again at the forefront to report national-level DVD rental spending and activity.
In the years that followed, the DVD format was quickly raised to dominance and transitioned from a rental product to a collectible commodity. As DVD sales became the larger piece of the home video market, the entertainment industry came back to Rentrak, this time to obtain national-level DVD sales measurements.
Since its beginnings, the packaged home entertainment business has undergone significant changes, from a secondary brick-and-mortar rental market to retail sales garnering the lion's share of studio revenue including online ordering/mail delivery and self-serve automated kiosks. As new distribution systems materialize and as the third format war is being played out for high-definition DVD dominance, the need for more comprehensive and accurate measurement is needed. Rentrak continues to remain on the leading edge to measure these delivery systems and now tracks DVD sales and rentals across North America within multiple delivery channels.
