Press Releases

14/03/2005

Video Island continues to lead online DVD rental market

Stellar New Partnerships Launched and over 1.1m DVD rented so far this year London, 14th March 2005: Latest figures from Hitwise* shows Video Island, the company behind ScreenSelect.co.uk, pulling into a clear lead as the UK's most visited DVD rental services. The Hitwise data, collected from the daily surfing of over 9m UK Internet users throughout February, shows that Video Island's platform which includes, its consumer brand ScreenSelect.co.uk as well as branded-partners, including Tesco, MSN and ITV are the most used online DVD rental service in the UK.

Hitwise data confirms that in February 2005, 34.8% of all daily-online DVD rental visits are logged with a service which is powered by Video Island. Its closest competitors trail with 32.77% of all visits going to Blockbuster and 26.71% to LoveFilm.

This latest news highlights Video Island's on-going progress:

• Over 1.1m DVD rentals so far this month [March 2005]
• Video Island, together with ScreenSelect and partners rented nearly 3.5m DVDs which MRIB estimates show would have accounted for over 3% of the total DVD rental market in the UK in 2004 [February 2005]
• Video Island is renting well over 500,000 DVDs per month, which is the equivalent of 100 high street stores. This figure is expected to treble over the next year. [February 2005]
• Launched ITV Movieclub offering 5 DVDs a month for £9.99 with the UK's largest commercial broadcaster [Jan2005]
• Launched significant new multi-channel distribution partnerships for Screenselect.co.uk with Boots.com, Virgin Megastores, RealNetworks, radiotimes.com and Loot.com [March 2005]
• Launched easyCinema rental, with the world's first DVD rental service which offers both no-late fees as well as pay-as-you-go model [March 2005]
• Selected as Top Online DVD Rental Service by Computing Which? [January 2005]
• Short listed for: The Best Online Retailer, Revolution Awards; Best use of e-commerce and Lifetime Achievement (Saul Klein, CEO), The Imperatives; Rental Home Delivery category, BVA Industry Awards; and Red Herring Top 100.

[* Based on a Hitwise daily tracking of online DVD rental websites, week ending 04/03/05]

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