According to a report from Bloomberg 2012 will see legal streaming of movies overtake DVD and Blu-ray consumption for the first time.

Researchers IHS Screen Digest have claimed that streaming media will more than double in the United States this year over 2011, leaping from 1.4 billion films viewed to over 3.4 billion. In contrast DVD and Blu-ray sales are expected to shrink slightly, dropping from 2.6 billion to 2.4 billion units sold.

IHS senior principal analyst Dan Cryan said in a statement, “We are looking at the beginning of the end of the age of movies on physical media like DVD and Blu-ray. But the transition is likely to take time: almost nine years after the launch of the iTunes Store, CDs are still a vital part of the music business.”

Amazon and Netflix accounted for 94% of legal video streaming in the US in 2011.

Source: Tech Crunch