The digital distribution of movies is taking the network society by storm. According to Rick Burgess on the website Techspot: Technology News and Analysis, “Americans will watch 3.4 billion movies online in 2012 as opposed to 2.4 billion DVD and Blu-ray discs expected to sell.” Well-known and highly trafficked websites such as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and iTunes are changing the way consumers experience moving pictures. The business of home video entertainment once required a trip to the local brick and mortar video store to rent or purchase the movies of your choice. Now, with ever-increasing catalogues of movie titles, websites such as the ones mentioned above are providing instant and immediate entertainment satisfaction. It is called Video on Demand, or VOD.

The advancement presented by VOD technology changes our temporal experience of acquiring and consuming visual media. Access is instantaneous and divorced from the expectation of watching movies in the living room of one’s home. Mobile phones and tablets have become new, transportable platforms for movie viewing anywhere with an Internet connection. The cost of consumption is negligible when compared to physical media. The quality, given current streaming standards, is high. The materiality of the medium, represented by tangible home movie collections that take up space on shelves, is dissipating into immaterial, computer accessible files that accumulate on hard drives.

Kevin Zhu writes that, “Not since the introduction of the videocassette recorder has a disruptive technology so threatened the very heart of Hollywood”(273), in his article “Internet-based Distribution of Digital Videos: The Economic Impacts of Digitization on the Motion Picture Industry.” Though written in 2001, Zhu’s article is able to quickly identify and consider the rapidly changing release style of movies, drawing on early examples of VOD websites such as Atomfilms, Sightandsound, and Mediatrip. In addition to access, the ability to stream VOD effectively requires a decent connection to the network. Sungjoon Nam, Puneet Manchanda and Pradeep K. Chiintagunta consider neighborly word of mouth impact on acquiring VOD in the home in their article “The Effect of Signal Quality and Contiguous Word of Mouth on Customer Acquisition for a Video-on-Demand Service.” They find that “contiguous word of mouth effects about 8% of the subscribers with respect to their adoption behavior”(690). Anirban Mukherjee and Vrinda Kadiyali analyze the choice between the multiple home viewing platforms in their article “Modeling Multichannel Home Video Demand in the U.S. Motion Picture Industry,” shedding light on patterns of choice when consumers must select between several viewing options. Internet piracy, always a hot button issue, is scrutinized in Michael Smith and Rahul Telang’s article “Competing with Free: The Impact of Movie Broadcasts on DVD Sales and Internet Piracy” as well as the article “Analysis of Security Vulnerabilities in the Movie Production and Distribution Process,” by Simon Byers, Lorrie Crano and Eric Cronin. Both of these articles consider the perceived cannibalization of the profit shares represented by “free” movies.

As a struggling filmmaker the ways movies reach consumers, provide opportunities for exposure, create profit, and encourage the continuation of film production, are of great importance to me. VOD represents a significant alteration in the way movies are dispersed and experienced. The marketplace and the cinematic playing field are undergoing major adjustments while simultaneously opening up exciting channels of expression that have yet to be seen. Paired with the reduced expense of creating one’s own movies, the ability to broadcast and experience the viewpoints of a greater multitude through the VOD experience makes for increased diversity and a rapid influx of material. Certainly, this means navigating through a higher volume of poor products, but the potential for finding specific, niche market material also increases. VOD represents a voyage into the immaterial connectivity of content made possible by the network society. My essay will depict the evolution and history of the VOD medium while analyzing the current highly saturated state of this ever-changing new form of experience.

Burgess, Rick. “Online Movie Streaming Will Overtake DVD Sales This Year in U.S.” Techspot: Technology News and Analysis. March 23, 2012.

Byers, Simon, Lorrie Crano, Eric Cronin. “Analysis of Security Vulnerabilities in the Movie Production and Distribution Process.” September 13, 2003: 1-18.

Mukherjee, Anirban, Vrinda Kadiyali. “ Modeling Multichannel Home Video Demand in the U.S. Motion Picture Industry.” Journal of Marketing Research (2010) 1-11.

Nam, Sungjoon, Puneet Manchanda, Pradeep K. Chintagunta. “The Effect of Signal Quality and Contiguous Word of Mouth on Customer Acquisition for a Video-on-Demand Service.” Marketing Science 29.4 (2010) 690-700.

Smith, Michael, Rahul Telang. “Competing with Free: The Impact of Movie Broadcasts on DVD Sales and Internet Piracy.” MIS Quarterly 33.2 (2009): 321-338.

Zhu, Kevin. “Internet-based Distribution of Digital Videos: The Economic Impacts of Digitization on the Motion Picture Industry.” Electronic Markets 11.4 (2001): 273-280.