Dvd Sales Speed Past 1998 Mark

In less than eight months, more movies and other video programs have been sold on the DVD format than all of last year.

Although overall DVD unit sales declined about 5% last week to 345,369, they were enough to lift year-to-date sales to more than 9.4 million units, surpassing sales of nearly 9.3 million units in all of 1998, according to the VideoScan tracking service. At this point last year, only 3.72 million DVDs had been sold.

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment's "There's Something About Mary" remained the top-selling DVD last week for a second week in a row, easily outdistancing Academy Award winner "Shakespeare in Love" from Miramax, which premiered on DVD and VHS last week. After just two weeks in release, "There's Something About Mary" starring Ben Stiller is already the 18th-best-selling DVD title of the year behind "The Siege," which has been in stores for 17 weeks.

However, "Shakespeare" was the best-renting DVD title last week, with "True Crime" and "The Deep End of the Ocean" ranking fourth and seventh, respectively, according to the VSDA VidTrac tracking service.

The only other new DVD releases to rank among the top 75 best-selling titles of last week were Warner Home Video's "True Crime" (sixth) and Columbia TriStar Home Video's "The Deep End of the Ocean" (11th).

Last week's DVD sales of Buena Vista Home Video's "Enemy of the State" nosed the title ahead of Buena Vista's "A Bug's Life" as the third-best-selling title of the year, with nearly 130,000 copies. New Line Home Video's "Blade" should also move ahead of "A Bug's Life" in a couple of weeks.

VideoScan data represents sales at roughly 70% of retailers selling DVD software.