What are the Consumer Options for Video on Demand today?

There was a time when Video on Demand was limited to a library of VHS tapes or a membership to a video store. Yes, this was generations ago, but today many family rooms are still cluttered with old VHS tapes and newer format DVDs. The question is when will our video entertainment become as portable as our music has become on iPods or MP3 players? Considering the recent lawsuits between RealNetworks, MPAA and six Hollywood movie studios over the launch of RealDVD, the legal DVD ripping application, it doesn't look like porting existing media libraries onto portable drives or home entertainment systems will be promoted by Hollywood. Some people argue that the popular HDTV formats make former video formats obsolete. Yet it seems that Hollywood isn't convinced, and considering what iTunes did for music distribution business, it is easy to understand why Hollywood wants control.

Children repeatedly watch the same old videos without noticing the quality of the cartoon rendering or the resolution. In an attempt to rid living rooms of these old loved VHS tapes, parents have bought VHS to DVD recording machines that don't work when the copyright is detected by the recorder. These copyrights also prevent people from converting their legally purchased VHS tapes or DVDs into a digital format on a hard drive without investing in hard to find Digital Video Stablizers. This is why the concept of pulling legally purchased video media onto one home entertainment drive can be more challenging than using an iPod or MP3 player to centralize the home audio library and then even make it portable.

Cable companies offer DVRs, which make it possible to record movies and store them for a period of time. Verizon's Fios offers a centralized DVR that can be accessed from any room, which makes much more sense than the distributed movie storage across various DVRs throughout the home.

Although the words 'time shifted viewing' or 'Tivo' imply the ability to control viewing schedules, it still doesn't enable a user to have seamless portability for video entertainment over various viewing devices. Will true portability of video entertainment actually happen? If it does, this also raises the question of how audience is measured today and how it will be measure in the future. If the audience is in total control, are they willing to pay for unsponsored content since they are already paying many hundreds of dollars a year for cable?

If Technology makes us so efficient why do we have so little free time?

Technology has changed the way we communicate and entertain ourselves. We are un-tethered and mobile. We don't have to plan every detail of our lives in advance because we have smart phones to call and look things up at the last minute. We don't even have to print directions or carry a map, we have portible navigators.

Entertainment on the go is easy too. All your music can fit on a small hard drive that is portable and easy to use, leaving out the requirement to select music for the gym or travel. You don't even need to go to a video store to rent a movie, because it can be selected on-demand through cable or the Internet. No planning required.

With so many efficiencies, why do we have so little free time?

TechyTainment