Unless we’re talking about a classic like the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I’m really not interested in shelling out money to purchase video content. And apparently I’m not alone. The Diffusion Group reports that roughly 90% of US broadband households rent movies on a regular basis. (ZDNet picked up the stats last week.)
Among consumers who rent from a traditional store:
- 15% also use a pay-per-view service
- 14% use a direct-mail service
- 12% use a VOD service
- less than 2% have rented movies online
In my mind, those numbers mean there’s a heck of a lot of growth potential in both VOD and online video rentals. As Dave has lamented before, Web services seem far too focused on video purchases. Given the Google Video debacle, you’d think that renting flicks would be a safer business bet. (No pissed off customers when you shutter your service) I certainly prefer it.
Ditto.
I’ll be “renting” movies via Amazon Unbox for my Tivo periodically but if they’re seriously expecting me to pay for a DRM encrusted movie they’re dreaming.
And yes hopefully the recent debacle with Google video makes more people aware of what a compromise DRM is for things like this. For rentals I don’t really have a problem with it (if I can still get my content to the desired player). But otherwise, forget it.