Demand for On Demand Grows
Ken Belson writes in The New York Times about Fiddling With Format While DVD’s Burn. He makes the point that the protracted battle between Blu-Ray and HD-FVD disk formats could become moot because people are adopting other ways to view on demand.
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The percentage of cable customers who watch on-demand television has doubled in the past year, to 23 percent, according to the Leichtman Research Group.
The factoid hints that on-demand viewing is starting to catch on.
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Comcast, the country’s largest cable provider, already gives its 20 million subscribers access to 3,800 movies and television shows. The 44 percent of Comcast’s subscribers who have the set-top box needed to see on-demand programs have watched more than a billion of them so far this year.
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A poll by the Starz Entertainment Group this month showed that 60 percent of those who watch on-demand video buy fewer DVD’s, while 72 percent of those surveyed are renting fewer movies.
Starz has also broadened the definition of on-demand with Starz Ticket, which lets users download movies to their laptops or other devices for $12.95 a month. The service includes a rotation of 300 movies that can be watched repeatedly and, like a digital video recorder, can be paused, rewound and fast-forwarded. Like store-bought DVD’s, they also include directors’ cuts, foreign-language versions and other bonus material.
“We’re on the verge of another major shift in terms of how consumers receive video,” said Tom Southwick, a spokesman for the Starz Entertainment Group. “What’s happening in the video arena is just like what is happening in the MP3 market. Over time, there’s going to be so much available with cable on-demand and the Internet that having a library of tapes that you buy or borrow will become inconvenient.”