The market of standard DVDs is nearing its peak and while it is not declining, it is not going to grow significantly, according to research firm In-Stat. One of the driving forces for the market could be ignition of high-definition DVD, but consumers will turn more and more attention to pay-per-view services, according to the firm. Furthermore, in about three years from now only 40% of households in well-developed countries will adopt HDTV sets.

“The migration to next-generation High Definition optical disc formats is not going smoothly. The PC industry is chomping at the bit to provide downloaded movies that might compete with DVD sales, and Pay-TV services want to add movies to their Video-On-Demand (VOD) services, to their new disk-drive-equipped set top boxes, and to their emerging High Definition TV (HDTV) services,” said Gerry Kaufhold, In-Stat analyst.

According to the most-recent forecast by In-Stat, 41% of U.S. TV households will be watching movies on HDTV displays, over 40% of Japanese households will have wide-screen HDTV sets by 2009, and Europe and other Asian markets are already seeing robust sales of HDTV displays.

In-Stat also predicts that by 2009 a worldwide retail value for annual sales of Hollywood video content sold at retail will reach $50 billion. In-Stat also claims that sales of HD DVD content will not have much impact on the Hollywood “packaged goods” business until late in the decade.