The optical media people, manufacturers and content producers, have cursed P2P users for hurting their sales. In spite of heavy P2P traffic over fatter pipes to download latest movie rips, the DVD and Blu-ray media sales have surprisingly managed to soar high.

As per the data collected by Home Media Magazine, sales of DVDs and Blu-ray media have shot from $6.8million in early 2007 to $6.87 billion first half of 2008. Reportedly the Blu-ray sales have rocketed by 340 per cent in first half of this year as compared to that of last year's first half. Also DVD rentals spending increased from $3.7 billion to $3.9 billion - basically rocks with 2.6 per cent compared to physical DVD and Blu-ray sales of 1.1 per cent. Factually, therefore, it's clear that online movie downloads haven't affected the physical DVD media sales.

Since last year, various movie download and streaming services have cropped up which form the "packaged media business". Also the gaming console makers like Sony and Microsoft have tied up to offer movie download service on their online gaming networks. There lies a catch where actual DVD sales are slowly being taken over by DVD rentals. Anyone would love watching new movies on their favorite sofa/couch in their own time by renting or downloading from the web.

The best part of DVD rental services is offers such as three DVDs at a time. Such offers clearly attract more customers who'd resist spending time and money in electricity bills as well as Internet bills for downloading movies. Although IFPI and MPAA's efforts to nab P2P sites sharing illegal movies hasn't affected P2P traffic much, it definitely invited a bunch of online movie download service providers.

So why download when you can easily rent the DVDs and Blu-rays. Sales of Blu-ray media have been hampered due to the lack of Blu-ray players available worldwide. Still its growth shows a promising future after the end of format battle with HD-DVD.