Blackarrow Consulting

Google is pitching Hollywood studios on a pay-per-view service that would enable them to rent videos on YouTube for $5 a piece, according to a report in the Financial Times. But while the service could introduce a incremental revenues to both the online video site and the studios, the question remains whether the service will catch on with consumers.

The importance of on demand television over the internet has grown significantly over the past three years, according to Deloitte and YouGov. Questioned as part of a survey released to coincide with the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, participants were asked how important it was to watch on demand services specifically over broadband internet and named YouTube, BBC iPlayer, ITV.com, 4oD, Sky Player and Demand Five. The question has changed slightly in its wording over the past three years but it is ostensibly the same.

For as long as I can remember, Blockbuster Video has been the nation-wide go-to spot to rent movies. Some of my earliest movie experiences as a child involved movies my family rented from Blockbuster. When the popularity of online music downloads began shuttering music stores, the world realized that Blockbuster's days were similarly numbered. Now it seems that number is quickly approaching zero as the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that an impending bankruptcy could be as close as a few weeks away for the video and game rental giant.

BBC director-general Mark Thompson has committed the corporation to making its iPlayer VOD service available to UK license payers whilst traveling overseas.

Last week an Apple patent application was published and it described how certain activities performed on a iOS device could suggest “suspicious behavior” that could reveal unauthorized usage of that device.