American consumers spent more than ever on home video in 2000, with rentals and sales of VHS and DVD hitting the $20 billion mark for the first time in home video’s 20+ year history. On the rental side of the video business, the total combined revenues of both DVD and VHS video formats rose 2.2% in 2000 over 1999. A major impact on this mark is the remarkably popular new DVD video format. The announcement was made today by Bo Andersen, president of the home entertainment industry’s international trade group — the Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA).

According to VSDA’s VidTrac program — the video industry’s most accurate video rental retrieval system, based on actual rental transactions — video rental revenues for 2000 totaled $8.25 billion, with VHS contributing $7.68 billion and the rapidly emerging consumer-favorite DVD format contributing $0.57 billion. These figures are up 2.2% from 1999’s rental revenue total of $8.07 billion.

Worth noting is that DVD rentals accounted for just over 4% of all rentals in January of 2000 and steadily increased to an average of 12% in December of 2000. The 2000-year also saw the biggest rental title of all time — “The Sixth Sense” — released by Disney’s Buena Vista/Hollywood arm, which earned over $135 million total last year, with almost $126 million in VHS, rental revenues and another $9 million in DVD rentals.

On the sales or “sell-through” side of the video industry, Adams Media Research recently estimated 2000 year-end video sales revenue at $11.67 — an almost 27% increase over 1999 sales of $9.26 billion. The growth in DVD software sales in 2000 jumped a whopping 269% over 1999, totaling DVD year-end 2000 sales of $4.03 billion.