UPDATED: It used to take a good year or more for new releases to hit the local video rental store, but over the decades, that window of time has gradually lessened, until now it seems a movie has barely left the theater before it’s out on disc. At the same time, cable and telco operators have gotten more aggressive about getting new releases in their fast-growing on-demand libraries. It used to be a lot faster to get a new rental from Blockbuster or Netflix, but now many new movies are available through VOD at the same time they come out on DVD.
For example, I learned just recently that Comcast hosts “new movie Tuesday” every week. Not every new movie release is made available, but many are. A quick check of the on-demand menu shows that chick flick “He’s Just Not That Into You” is available as of today. And yes, today is also the day the movie came out on DVD.
There isn’t a whole lot of promotion for new movie Tuesday, but upcoming new releases for VOD are listed on the Fancast site. Watch’em now, or maybe save them up for the weekend.
UPDATE: Comcast just announced that as of this month subscribers can keep some VOD movies for a full 48 hours rather than the typical 24.
[...] on-demand, including sports clips in support of events like the Olympics and March Madness, day-and-date movie releases, and the offering of full seasons of TV programs to get more viewers caught up and engaged in a [...]
[...] content offerings on cable VOD have improved dramatically of late, including many same-day-as-DVD movie releases and longer rental windows. Since movies actually make money for the cable operators, it makes sense for them to start [...]
[...] collapse of release windows is one sign that economics are now working for the VOD model. Another sign is the increasingly [...]