Watch out cable TV, watch out Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes, You Tube is augmenting its video business. "YouTube is going to launch VOD-style movie rentals on TVs and connected devices later this year." It is starting to look like movie rentals are becoming ubiquitous, available to everyone across any platform and any service that you connect to. As the video rental stores become less relevant, the need for a DVD rental is now easily replaced with a downloadable rental that exists for your immediate enjoyment.
For the movie industry, the hope is that this on demand business, whether rental or download to own, will replace the revenue and profit earned from the DVD. But just as the DVD replaced the VHS tape, so now the digital copy has replaced the DVD. The world is all about connectivity. Let's only hope we never find ourselves stranded with no internet and no way to watch a video.
