Home video
[1] The term originates from the VHS and Betamax era, when the predominant medium was videotapes, but has carried over to optical disc formats such as DVD and Blu-ray.
[2] Released in 1978, LaserDisc (LD) is another home video format, which never managed to gain widespread use on North American and European retail markets due to high cost of the players and their inability to record TV programs (unlike the VHS), although it retained some popularity among videophiles and film enthusiasts during its lifespan; the format had greater prevalence in some regions of Southeast Asia such as Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia where it was better supported.
released on digital media (both optical and download-based), replacing the largely obsolete videotape medium.
[5] After the quick failures of these early attempts at home viewing, most feature films were essentially inaccessible to the public after their original theatrical runs.
"[8] Some very popular films were given occasional theatrical re-releases in urban revival houses and the screening rooms of a few archives and museums.
Viewers were accustomed to the fact that there was no easy way to record television shows at home and watch them whenever desired.
[citation needed] Eventually, longer, edited-down versions of feature films were issued, which increasingly came in color and with a magnetic soundtrack,[citation needed] but in comparison to modern[specify] technologies, film projection was still quite expensive and difficult to use.
[12] Magnetic Video agreed to pay Fox a royalty of $7.50 per unit sold and a guaranteed annual minimum payment of $500,000 in exchange for nonexclusive rights to 50 films, which had to be at least two years old and had already been broadcast on network television.
[13] Film studios and video distributors assumed that the overwhelming majority of consumers would not want to buy prerecorded videocassettes, but would merely rent them.
[14] According to Douglas Gomery, studio executives thought that the handful of consumers actually interested in purchasing videocassettes in order to watch them again and again would be similar to the small community of film buffs who for decades had willingly paid hundreds of dollars to purchase release prints.
[16] The home video market grew rapidly along with the widespread acquisition of affordable videocassette recorders by the majority of households during the 1980s.
[19] The pre-1980s conventional wisdom that consumers had no interest in watching the same films again and again at home turned out to be entirely wrong with respect to children.
[19] This spectacular success "catapulted the head of Disney's video division, Bill Mechanic, into executive stardom.
Another executive, Bob Chapek, would later ascend through the ranks of Disney's home video division to become chief executive officer of the entire company in 2020, and for that reason (before his sudden 2022 departure) was called "the home entertainment industry's single biggest success story.
They were created specifically for niche audiences in the so-called "sell-through" channel, to be purchased at retail or ordered directly by consumers and viewed exclusively as home videos.
A DVD consists of a single disc, which is spun at high speed, while VHS videocassettes had several moving parts that were far more vulnerable to breaking down under heavy wear and tear.
The relative mechanical simplicity and durability of DVD compared to the fragility of VHS made DVDs a far better format from a rental store's perspective.
[citation needed] In July 2016, the last known manufacturer of VCRs, Funai, announced that it was ceasing VCR production.
Following the launch of various streaming services during the early 2020s, in particular those operated by the major Hollywood studios, home video continued to decline.
One of the most prominent examples of this effect was with Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment which, following the launch of Disney+ in 2019 and its international expansion in the following years, began to discontinue physical distribution entirely in certain regions such as Latin America, Asia (excluding Japan), Australia, New Zealand,[34] Portugal and Hungary, or to outsource its activities to other regional distributors (like Divisa Home Video for Spain, Eagle Pictures for Italy, Leonine Studios for Germany,[35] and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment for North America.
[36] A time period is usually required to elapse between theatrical release and availability on home video to encourage movie theater patronage and discourage copyright infringement.
[37] Christmas and other holiday-related movies are sometimes not released on home video until the following year, when the holiday occurs again.
[39] Exceptions to the rule include the Steven Soderbergh film Bubble, which was released in 2006 to theaters, cable television, and DVD only a few days apart.
[citation needed] After the passage of the Video Recordings (Labelling) Act of 1985 in the United Kingdom, videotapes and other video recordings without a certification symbol from the British Board of Film Classification on their covers – or on the tapes themselves – were no longer allowed to be sold or displayed by rental shops.
