Page 332 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Onl ne D g tal F lm and Telev s on | 11

increasing use of high-speed connections and wireless routers in the home,
viewers can also move about their houses with portable computers and not be
tied down to the location where the larger and immobile TV set resides. In met-
ropolitan areas, Wi-Fi connections are becoming increasingly available for free
or for purchase in cafes, public areas, and trains, making it possible for users
with laptops or other portable Wi-Fi devices to access online video in public
locations as well. Steps also have been taken to make Wi-Fi access possible dur-
ing air travel as well as make video viewable on mobile phones.
The success of on-demand video is part of a history of in-home visual media
consumption marked first by the success of television over the movie theater
and then by the mass-market spread of video rentals in the 1980s. Consumers
responded positively to the opportunity to see a movie at home rather than see
it on the big theater screen at a higher price. With the introduction of thinner
and lighter DVD technology, by the late 1990s, it became possible to establish
different business models such as that of Netflix, an online DVD rental service
that sends discs to customers by mail. This business and cultural model further
focused attention on the home because the spectator did not even need to leave
the home to access a copy of a movie. This cultural practice, however, has been
challenged by the other component of the on-demand concept—spontaneity—
which is still an advantage of traditional video rental stores. Consumers who
cannot wait for movies to arrive by mail or who prefer to decide on a movie on
the spot will still choose to go to a rental shop rather than use an online DVD
rental service.
Both qualities of delivering selection directly to the viewer and the spontane-
ity of on-demand service were part of a broader concept of video-on-demand
(VOD) that has been in development since the 1990s and in wider practice in
the 2000s. While media services such as YouTube and Movielink realize VOD
online where media can be downloaded or streamed, cable television provid-
ers have been developing digital cable to realize the ability to offer movies and
shows on demand. Comcast, the largest cable provider in the United States,
began offering Digital Cable On-Demand in 2001, a service that allows sub-
scribers to watch a selection of movies for free or for pay and to select, play,
pause, rewind, and fast-forward the movie as if using a VCR or DVD player.
Online, a similar viewer experience is available on sites such as archive.org
for free and several other sites for pay. The initiative to create services such as
this has come from the development of VOD, but also from the competitive
success of TiVo, which since 1999 tapped into a user experience that viewers
readily embraced with usage and subscriptions. TiVo offered a digital video
recorder with an electronic programming guide and user interface that accli-
mated users to a VOD paradigm before broadband was developed in the early
2000s. With it, viewers could choose, record, and play back programs with ease.
Online video consumption is also shifting as consumers increasingly are using
video game consoles as digital video recorders and some are subscribing to
services that allow viewers to access their recordings online from any Internet-
connected computer or laptop.