DVD rental is a dying business, is online video replacing it?

Brenton Currie
Saturday, 08 October 2011 05:14

Your IT - Entertainment

An article from Sydney Morning Herald's Sacha Molitorisz about the decline of DVD rental marketplace suggests that the Internet is killing DVD Rentals. However the article gave only vague hints on how traditional Brick and Mortar stores was facing competition from the net,  spending more time talking about DVD rental machines from RedRoomDVD  and Oovie.

Foxtel on Xbox now unmetered for Telstra customers (Credit: Foxtel)

If we take piracy out of the equation, just who is providing online video to Australians. Since we do not get Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime (or any of the major video streaming/retail operation except Apple iTunes), who is providing legal video for download or streaming (or even physical disk renting)?

FetchTV. When I reviewed FetchTV, I found that the video rental side of the device to be quite strong for movies, and pretty weak for TV shows on demand and somewhat stronger for IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) channels .The fact that it is also a great PVR and it is combined into a single box can make FetchTV a strong player once its secures more content. BigPond Movies. Telstra's clone of Neflix recently sold its DVD rental assets to Quickflix, and is concentrating on online movies. Only available to Windows users, and some smartphones have a subset service. While bundled into its Bigpond ISP banner, the service is open to all for internet users in Australia. Bigpond TV. Sister service to Bigpond Movies, it offers limited channels for its propriety T-Box as well as some LG and Samsung devices. Channels include sport channels TVN, NRL and AFL , and Bigpond branded News and Sports News. Foxtel. With its Download service  Foxtel has for its subscribers and non subscribers content to watch on computers. Service is only for Windows users and some Telstra smartphones have some content available. Quickflix is currently providing DVD rentals via mail. It is currently seeking distribution deals (recently gaining access to IPTV enabled Sony TV). News of the streaming service should be coming by the end of 2011. Free to Air. Each of the established television broadcasters has an online catchup service, from iView (ABC) Fixplay (Nine) Catchup TV (TEN), Yahoo7 Plus7 (Seven) and SBS Online (SBS). Xbox360/PS3. Microsoft has teamed with Foxtel to allow Foxtel content on the Xbox 360. Plus7 from Seven Network is also available on the PS3, as well as ABC iView  and Sony's own Movie store iTunes. The only US based company that has extensive video content available for Australia. Video can be rented or bought The bought prices are exorbitant, mirroring physical media prices without the flexability of device choice (computers that support iTunes or iOS devices like iPod, iPad and AppleTV). Youtube. You should never underestimate the power of Google's video service, as it had allowed Australian creators like Natalie Tran to have quite a nice lifestyle. For many, cat videos and people getting punched in the goolies is a popular pastime and represnts proberbly the most video streaming service in Australia (although I do not have stats at the moment).