When the videocassette recorder was launched on the consumer market in the mid-1970s, it transformed home entertainment. Bringing together complementary but also competing interests from the consumer electronics industry and the film, television and other copyright industries, video created a new sector of media business. Two decades later, DVD reinvented video media for the digital age. DVD provided consumers with an innovative form of entertainment technology and almost instantaneously became the catalyst for a huge boom in the video market. Although the VCR and DVD created major markets for video hardware and software, the video business has been continually shaped by industry conflicts and tensions. Repeatedly the video market has become divided when faced with the introduction of competing formats. Easy reproduction of films and other works on cassette or disc made video software a lucrative market for the copyright industries but also intensified struggles to combat the effects of commercial piracy. 'Video and DVD Industries' examines the business of video entertainment and provides the first study looking at DVD from an industrial perspective. Detailing divisions in the video business, the book outlines industry battles over incompatible formats, from the Betamax/VHS war, to competing laserdisc systems, alternatives such as video compact disc or Digital Video Express, and the introduction of HDDVD and Blu-ray high-definition systems. Chapters also look at the formation of international markets in the globalization of video media, the contradictory responses of the Hollywood studios to video and DVD, and the legal and technological measures taken to control industrialized video piracy.

Analyses the impact of digital content creation, distribution and use on value chains and business models of the film and video industry and explores the policy implications of these changes to identify how digital content may affect the function and position of participants in the industry.

Film and video products take a huge variety of forms from modest training or promotion audio-visuals to blockbuster feature films that earn very large amounts of money from worldwide distribution. Production and distribution for any film or video product involve an extremely wide array of commercial interests often with quite different strategies. The study focuses on commercial entertainment products and production and distribution of films and television programs. It analyses the impact of digital content creation, distribution and use on value chains and business models of the film and video industry and explores the policy implications of these changes to identify how digital content may affect the function and position of participants in the industry along the value chain. About the authors Graham Vickery is Head of the Information Economy Group, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, OECD. He has published extensively on the information economy, technology strategies, sector developments and government policies, and directs the bi-annual OECD Information Technology Outlook and OECD work on digital content. Dr. Richard Hawkins is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy at the University of Calgary. He is also the Senior Fellow at The Centre for Innovation Studies and Associate Senior Scientist in the Innovation Policy Group at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). He has authored numerous papers and policy reports on subjects related to digital content, electronic business, electronic services, standardisation, defence procurement and knowledge transfer.

This book demonstrates, in contrast to statistics that show declining consumption of physical formats, that there has not been a mass shift towards purely digital media. Physical releases such as special editions, DVD box-sets and Blu-Rays are frequently promoted and sought out by consumers. And that past formats such as VHS, Laserdisc and HD-DVD make for sought-after collectible items. These trends are also found within particular genres and niche categories, such as documentary, education and independent film distribution. Through its case studies, this collection makes a distinctive and significant intervention in highlighting the ways in which the film industry has responded to rapidly changing markets. This volume, global in scope, will prove useful to those studying the distribution and exhibition of films, and the economics of the film industry around the world.

Videoland offers a comprehensive view of the "tangible phase" of consumer video, when Americans largely accessed movies as material commodities at video rental stores. Video stores served as a vital locus of movie culture from the early 1980s until the early 2000s, changing the way Americans socialized around movies and collectively made movies meaningful. When films became tangible as magnetic tapes and plastic discs, movie culture flowed out from the theater and the living room, entered the public retail space, and became conflated with shopping and salesmanship. In this process, video stores served as a crucial embodiment of movie culture’s historical move toward increased flexibility, adaptability, and customization. In addition to charting the historical rise and fall of the rental industry, Herbert explores the architectural design of video stores, the social dynamics of retail encounters, the video distribution industry, the proliferation of video recommendation guides, and the often surprising persistence of the video store as an adaptable social space of consumer culture. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, cultural geography, and archival research, Videoland provides a wide-ranging exploration of the pivotal role video stores played in the history of motion pictures, and is a must-read for students and scholars of media history.