The focus is shifting. Export is becoming more and more important for the entertainment industry. And while the US might be still ahead, more and more countries are developing wealthy consumers who are ready to take over.

We saw it already with movies like ‘10,000 B.C.’ and ‘The Kingdom of Heaven.’ The last made just $47 million domestically, a flop compared to its $130 million budget. But if you take into account the $164 million it made overseas, it didn’t do that bad after all.

We see the same for 2007, looking at the totals for rental dollars from movie theaters, TV fees and VHS/DVD receipts. The US ended with a negative balance of -8%, not able to grow in any way. The international markets however, were up 9%, making up for the loss in the US.

Home video sales in the US took an even worse beating, down 17% from 2006. This, while international sales were up 5%.

If this trend continues, Hollywood has to let go of the US as its main market. Simultaneous releases into their main worldwide territories would have to become a priority. Not just for some movies, like it is now, but for all movies. We already saw how Sony locked up Jeff Blake, who’s responsible for global distribution at Sony. And I wouldn’t expect it to end there. Hollywood is getting ready to become Hollyworld.

In February, Toshiba’s HD-DVD was defeated by Blu-ray and its supporters. The same month however, Blu-ray player sales were down 40% from January. No sudden burst of people who finally took the plunge. Quite the opposite. NPD’s consumer research shared the same sentiments we were shown yesterday. The current Blu-ray equipment is too expensive and people are satisfied with their DVD players. In March sales were up 2% from February, which means they were still down 38% from January.

Blu-ray seems to be a hard sell. The average Joe doesn’t see the difference between High Definition and Standard Definition (SD) unless he’s up close. For example, after the launch of the PlayStation 3, a lot of people didn’t even notice how they had connected their system in SD. It meant they weren’t getting the HD picture, which was the main advantage of the system. And you can’t compare it to the VHS to DVD transformation. Going from tape to disc was a major step. This is just updating the picture a little. With an average distance to your 32″ TV, it would be tough to see the difference between HD and an upscaled DVD.

I regress, before I turn this into a rant.