Sunday's New York Times has an article as part of a ppecial section: The DVD Comes of Age on the increasing importance of DVD sales for Hollywood's bottom line. The heaviest buyer tend to be males who buy action movies to show off their home theater systems (well, it doesn't mention the show off part or go into the online communities like Home Theater Forum).

Home video sales accounted for more than 58 percent of Hollywood's income last year, more than twice as much as box-office revenues. Sales of DVD's to consumers are the biggest, most profitable and fastest-growing component of that revenue.

For studio executives, that means the home video market is no longer the afterthought it was when renting videotapes dominated the business. "It is becoming, in a lot of ways, the primary market in determining whether to green light a movie or not," said Chris McGuirk, vice chairman of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

What the studios are finding so far is that DVD's are a man's world, where the films that get the biggest bounce from the box-office sales are movies like "Rush Hour 2," "The Bourne Identity" and "XXX." "The male-oriented action movies are the ones that have worked well on DVD," said Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of the Miramax Films division of the Walt Disney Company. "It is almost like buying records when you were a kid and running out to get the new Led Zeppelin. Men tend to be a little more compulsive."

Personally, my DVD collection is mostly musically related (Stop Making Sense, Singing in the Rain, Hedwig), classics (Citizen Kane) and a few more interesting action films (Matrix, Fight Club, Fellowship of the Ring extended edition). But I've been buying less DVDs, partly because I belong to Greencine, partly because I've been broke.

While even bad action films sell well, better films don't:

Since 1997, the home video revenue of films that earned more than $50 million at the box office has doubled, while the home video revenue of films earning less than $10 million at the box office has fallen, according to a study by Adams Media Research.

The James Bond film "Die Another Day," for example, has sold 3.41 million copies on DVD since its release in June, according to the trade publication Video Store Magazine. At the other extreme, "Frida," a film about the artist Frida Kahlo starring Selma Hayek, sold just 250,000 since its release the same month. [Though I'm sure the Bond DVD had a much bigger marketing budget than Frida].

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