DVD Success Story

2m sold in 2001 3m sold since 1998 Price halved since 2000 Owned by one in 10 families

The animated film Shrek was the best-selling video overall last year, with 2.75 million copies bought since its release in November - 25% on DVD.

In second place was the movie version of Bridget Jones's Diary, notching up sales of 1.8 million, 532,000 of which were on DVD.

The film Cats and Dogs was the third bestselling video, with 1.7 million copies, 300,000 of them on DVD.

Lavinia Carey, director general of the British Video Association (BVA), said: "Since DVD was introduced in Britain, in 1998, it has become the fastest growing consumer entertainment product of all time."

The DVD video choice is growing in stores

Last month, Warner Home Video reported that almost three million DVD units had been sold in the product's first three years.

It took the compact disc (CD) player and video recorder seven years to achieve similar sales.

DVDs offer higher quality pictures and sound than video recorders, plus extra features

'In demand'

Chris Jenkins, editor of Total DVD magazine, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It's a technology that people want.

"There's a long history of failed systems and formats that just goes to show that if people are buying DVD, it must be giving them what they want."

But Professor Harold Thimbleby, director of University College London Interactive Centre, speaking on the same programme, warned: "The problem I can see is that the DVD is much better - that people will probably end up throwing away their old televisions, old two-channel amplifiers and old CD players."

It would be easy to "end up spending an awful lot of money on a system that makes everything you've got at home obsolete," he warned.

Since 2000, the price of a player has halved, to an average of �180.