The continuing video-on-demand saga
A New York Times story (registration required) on the continuing video-on-demand saga:
If companies can make it work, the projected market for first-run movies alone is about $640 million by 2006, according to Jupiter Research....
"I've seen various business models for V.O.D. and the numbers just don't add up, so no one is doing it in a large-scale way," said Bill Rosenblatt, president of GiantSteps/MediaTechnology Strategies, a New York consulting company.
There are currently four million cable customers who use video on demand, and another three million are expected to sign up by the end of the year, said Joe Boyle, vice president for corporate communications of InDemand, a company that distributes content to cable operators. But there are about 70 million households with cable television in the United States, and analysts estimate that widespread adoption of video on demand by cable companies will take anywhere from 3 to 10 years.