John Linton
One of the first meetings I attended when I returned to the office was with a prospective supplier of VOD services.
Exetel has looked at VOD for around 18 months but has never proceeded with offering a service due to the cost of each title to the end user and the lack of 'new release' titles.
Over time these two major negatives continue to get closer to a viable service and the latest discussions are as close as I have seen - while still not meeting what I would think would be required by most people.
While I was away I was in contact with an old acquaintance from my IBM days who went to work with Sony in the late 1970s and is now a very senior person within that organisation. He mentioned that Sony had been looking at VOD (directly/semi directly by Sony) as an additional part of its distribution process for some time as a counter to the growing loss of business caused by internet piracy. Sony, and any other major studio's concerns are obviously on not disturbing their current main source of income which is their distribution by the cinema chains and secondly by the DVD rental and sale chains.
He made the point that a "Sony Direct" VOD was not possible in the current distribution environment and because of that the cost of using a third party plus the time restrictions on protecting the current distribution arrangements would continue to make VOD a non-starter from a major/established studio's viewpoint though the pressures to do something about piracy via the internet were growing stronger each quarter.
In the meantime Exetel will probably begin a trial of VOD with one of the current suppliers in the near future to determine the 'popularity' of such a service within the current negatives and to more accurately determine how to address those negatives.