While last quarter’s media sales were still up, the NPD Group is expecting US consumers to spend less on entertainment this year compared to 2007, mainly because of the recession. Although the recession in 2001 didn’t cause any decrease in revenue, it was in the time of the relatively new DVD format and new gaming systems like the PlayStation 2.

This year doesn’t have high flyers like these, although the HD-DVD failure may help the overall HD disc sales. Afterall, consumers don’t like two formats and are now sure they’re not buying something that will be useless in a year or two.

The NPD research shows 37% was anticipating to spent less on entertainment, while only 18% expected to spent more. It is however, just based on a survey. People don’t do the same things as they say or even think. You may even question how much they really know about what they spent. I could answer a question about my spending on DVDs last year and what I’m expecting this year, but you won’t get any scientific conclusions from it.

So far for my little rant.

Videobusiness.com takes a wider look at the DVD and Blu-ray sales we reported on earlier. Being released at the end of the first quarter of this year, ‘I Am Legend’ still managed to take the first place for units sold, followed by ‘Enchanted’.

The sales however, didn’t satisfy Warner Home Video’s Ron Sanders. What else can you want than money? Yes, more money. “We were a little disappointed on the performance of I Am Legend. There was more buying over Easter; still, we are a little behind what we thought,” he said.

An interesting pie chart shows how we actually divided our money last quarter:

Just like in the theaters (grossing over $200 million), ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ is again showing its box office power. For the second week in a row it was the number one DVD seller.

But it didn’t make the first place for the rentals. Bringing in a fast $8.5 million, ‘There Will Be Blood’ was the most rented movie last week. That’s almost 1/4 of what it did in the theaters, where it only made about $40 million.

‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ came in second with $7.2 million, followed by ‘Lions for Lambs’ with $6.8 million.

In High-Definition land, ‘I am Legend’ was the number one seller. Since the amount of cash it made probably wasn’t impressive, no number was given for this title.