Home entertainment softwarerevenues will peak at $60bn in 2008 before sliding slightly to $57bn in 2010 asthe DVD sector replaces VHS then settles into a pattern associated with amature industry, according to forecasts released yesterday by Informa Media. The figures compare with a total home entertainment market worth $52bn in 2003.

The slowing growth figures are sure to provide a key talking point at the forthcoming DVD: Home Cinema Summit conference organised by Screen International later this week. Informa, however, forecasts a differentboom; it predicts that recordable DVD players will be installed in 334million homes by the end of the decade.

The group's predictions, published in its Global DVD& Video Forecasts, show DVD continuing to replace VHS and retail growing atthe cost of rentals. But though it sees the installed base of DVD playerscontinuing to grow, Informa says that new homes willnot be such prolific buyers of software as the early adopters have been. Discpurchases per household per year will drop from 9.97 in 2000 to only 4.94 in2010.

DVDsell-through revenues will climb from $25bn in 2003 to $38bn in 2010, but totalsell-through revenues increase only from $37bn last year to $43.3bn in 2010.

"TheDVD recorder market is set to take off extremely quickly for exactly the samereasons as the DVDplayer - low retail prices," says the report's author SimonMurray. He forecasts that the recorder market will soar from five millionhouseholds worldwide at the end of 2003 to an astonishing 334 million in 2010with the Asian region accounting for nearly half or 145 million.

SimpleDVD players will also continue to grow in Europe outside the big five territories and in Asia, notably Japan, India and China. Informa predicts that theinstalled base for DVD players will finally overtake the VHS park in 2009when473 million homes have DVD and 443 million have VHS - although the companynotes that the two are not mutually exclusive.