TNL.net is designed for modern browsers but the content is still readable in older ones. If you want to ensure the best experience, please install a browser that was developed after 2009.

tnl.net

Streaming held back

Film

Over the last cou­ple of weeks, I’ve looked at avail­abil­ity of movies and TV shows that came out in the past year. But what about movies that came two years ago? Are those more avail­able today than they were a year ago? Let’s look at the data.

2010: Box Office Win­ners availability

A year ago, I went through the list of box office win­ners and looked at their avail­abil­ity online. I pulled the infor­ma­tion again in Jan­u­ary 2012, a full year after the ini­tial data set. The 2012 data looked like this:

Rank Title Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu DVD
1 Toy Story 3 Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
2 Alice in Wonderland  No Yes Yes Yes Yes
3 Iron Man 2 Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
4 The Twi­light Saga: Eclipse No Pur­chase only  Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
5 Incep­tion No No No No Yes
6 Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows: Part 1 No No No No Yes
7 Despi­ca­ble Me No No No No Yes
8 Shrek For­ever After No No No No Yes
9 How to Train Your Dragon No No No No Yes
10 Tan­gled Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
11 The Karate Kid No No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
12 Clash of the Titans No Yes Yes No Yes
13 Grown Ups No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
14 Tron Legacy Yes Pur­chase only  Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
15 Mega­mind No No No No Yes
16 Lit­tle Fockers No No No No Yes
17 The Last Airbender Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
18 True Grit Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
19 Shut­ter Island Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
20 The Other Guys No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
21 Salt No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
22 Jack­ass 3D Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
23 Valentine’s Day No No Yes No Yes
24 Robin Hood No No No No Yes
25 The Expend­ables Yes Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
26 Due Date No No No No Yes
27 The Chron­i­cle of Nar­nia:
Voy­age of the Dawn Treader		 No No No No Yes
28 Date Night No No No No Yes
29 Sex and the City 2 No No No No Yes
30 The Social Network No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
31 The Book of Eli No Yes Yes No Yes
32 The Town No No No No Yes
33 Prince of Per­sia:
The Sands of Time		 Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
34 Red No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
35 Percy Jack­son & The Olympians:
The Light­ning Thief		 No Yes Yes Yes Yes
36 Para­nor­mal Activ­ity 2 Yes Pur­chase only No Pur­chase only Yes
37 Yogi Bear No No No No Yes
38 Eat Pray Love No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
39 Unstop­pable No No No No Yes
40 Dear John No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
41 The A-team No No No No Yes
42 Knight & Day No No No No Yes
43 Black Swan No No No No Yes
44 Din­ner for Schmucks No No No No Yes
45 The Fighter Yes Pur­chase only  Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
46 The Bounty Hunter No Pur­chase only  Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
47 The Tourist No Pur­chase only  Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
48 Diary of a Wimpy Kid No No  No No Yes
49 The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Yes Yes  Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
50 A Night­mare on Elm Street (2010) No No  No No Yes
51 The Last Song Yes Pur­chase only  Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
52 The Wolf­man No Yes Yes Yes Yes
53 Get him to the Greek No No No No Yes
54 Res­i­dent Evil: Afterlife No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
55 Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Mar­ried Too Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
56 Tooth Fairy No Yes Yes Yes Yes
57 Sec­re­tariat Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
58 Easy A No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
59 Tak­ers No  Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
60 Leg­end of the Guardians:
The Owls of Ga’hoole		 No No No No Yes
61 Life as We Know It No No No No Yes
62 Let­ters to Juliet No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
63 Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps No No No No Yes
64 Preda­tors No No No No Yes
65 Hot Tub Time Machine Yes No Yes No Yes
66 Kick-Ass Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
67 The King’s Speech No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
68 Killers Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
69 Saw 3D No Yes Yes Yes Yes
70 Cop Out No Yes Yes No Yes
71 Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore No No No No Yes
72 Edge of Darkness No No No No Yes
73 Death at a Funeral No Yes Yes Pur­chase only Yes
74 Step-Up 3D Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
75 The Last Exorcism Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
76 Legion No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
77 The Cra­zies Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
78 Gulliver’s Trav­els No No No No Yes
79 Bur­lesque No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
80 For Col­ored Girls Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
81 The Back-up Plan No Pur­chase only No No Yes
82 Vam­pires Suck No No No No Yes
83 The Amer­i­can No No No No Yes
84 Green Zone No Yes Yes Yes Yes
85 Mar­maduke No No No No Yes
86 Devil No No No No Yes
87 Here­after No No No No Yes
88 When in Rome No Yes Yes Yes Yes
89 Love and Other Drugs No No No No Yes
90 She’s Out of My League No Yes Yes Yes Yes
91 Scott Pil­grim vs. the World No No No No Yes
92 Char­lie St. Cloud No No No No Yes
93 Morn­ing Glory Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
94 Day­break­ers Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
95 How Do You Know No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
96 Nanny McPhee Returns No No No No Yes
97 The Switch No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
98 Brooklyn’s Finest Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Yes
99 Machete No No No No Yes
100 Ramona and Beezus No No No No Yes

Aggre­gate Rental data

When you tally it up, the rental only chart (exclud­ing movies you can pur­chase) looks as follows:

Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu DVD
Top 10 3 1 1 1 10
Top 25 9 4 4 2 25
top 50 13 7 6 3 50
Top 100 26 15 15 15 100

The data seems to show that hits from over a year ago are still dif­fi­cult to get. Net­flix fares best, cap­tur­ing 26% of the titles but pay-per-view ser­vices like Ama­zon, iTunes, and Vudu turn in a pal­try offer­ing with only 15% of the 2010 box office win­ners being avail­able for rent on these services.

So, hav­ing run the data for 2 years in a row, are we see­ing improve­ments in the market?

Rank­ings 2010 2011 Dif­fer­ence
Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu DVD Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu DVD Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu DVD
Top 10 1 7 7 7 8 3 1 1 1 10  +2  -6  -6  -6  +2
Top 25 2 14 14 15 18 9 4 4 2 25  +7  -10  -10  -13  +7
Top 50 4 26 25 26 35 13 7 6 3 50  +9  -19  -19  -23  +15
Top 100 10 50 46 47 75 26 15 15 9 100  +16  -35  -31  -38  +25

The pic­ture here actu­ally shows some­thing fairly dis­as­trous to peo­ple who hope that things are improv­ing in terms of avail­abil­ity of movies along the long tail. While Net­flix turns in a stronger per­for­mance, more than dou­bling avail­abil­i­ties of 2010 box office win­ners from 10 to 26, all other online ser­vices are see­ing avail­abil­ity drop by 31% or more. This means that almost one third fewer 2010 box office win­ners are avail­able this year as rentals as com­pared to last year. The strat­egy here seems to call in ques­tion the exis­tence of a long tail in terms of media avail­abil­ity as far as rentals are concerned.

While the cost of stor­ing a movie is a mar­ginal one, it appears stu­dios pre­fer to not make titles avail­able as rentals online. There is some humor in the fact that what­ever cor­ner DVD rental place is still in exis­tence near your home prob­a­bly has a higher selec­tion of avail­able titles from 2010 than could be found last year because ALL 2010 box office win­ners are now avail­able on DVD.

Aggre­gate Rental and Sales data

So, with a strong sus­pi­cion that sales num­bers may be bet­ter, let’s see what hap­pens if we had movies that may not be avail­able for rent but can be pur­chase (ie. are more expen­sive to get)

Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu DVD
Top 10 3 5 4 5 10
Top 25 9 15 15 15 25
top 50 13 27 22 26 50
Top 100 26 56 51 54 100

The first one notices here is that the num­ber of titles legally avail­able online is still rel­a­tively low a full year after all the titles have been released. While DVDs have come out, legal online stream­ing ser­vices online offer a bit over half of the 2010 box office win­ners, with Ama­zon hav­ing the most exten­sive cat­a­log. The avail­abil­ity of legal movie streams, when com­pared to DVD, is still a challenge.

But have things improved since last year? To fig­ure that out, let’s look at the avail­abil­ity of the same titles over the last cou­ple of years:

Rank­ings 2010 2011 Dif­fer­ence
Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu DVD Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu DVD Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu DVD
Top 10 1 7 8 8 8 3 5 4 5 10  +2  -2  -4  -3  +2
Top 25 2 16 16 17 18 9 15 15 15 25  +7  -1  -1  -2  +7
Top 50 4 29 29 30 35 13 27 22 26 50  +9  -2  -7  -4  +15
Top 100 10 58 59 58 75 26 56 51 54 100  +16  -2  -8  -4  +25

My ini­tial hunch was that we would have seen improve­ments in the sales of legal streams from one year to the next, just as we would would have seen for DVDs because of availability.

But the pic­ture is actu­ally sur­pris­ing as the avail­abil­ity of legal streams for 2010 box office win­ners has dropped in the last 12 months. On their face, one might expect sales of legal online streams to see pat­terns sim­i­lar to sales of DVDs, even if they would trail the plas­tic medium. But what’s sur­pris­ing here is that it appears stu­dios have decided to pull their movie cat­a­logs back offline.

There is still a long way before legal online stream­ing matches DVD sales as it appears movie stu­dios are still addicted to sell­ing pieces of plas­tic than they are to sell­ing movies in any form available.

Originally published on January 28, 2012 in Business, Media, Technology . You may find related thoughts pieces under the following terms: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

  • Mario Flo­res

    Hey, 

    This was inter­est­ing, but some charts/visualizations would def­i­nitely help your audi­ence digest your con­tent bet­ter and be more eager to share it with oth­ers.  I’d share this on twit­ter, but 90% of peo­ple I know aren’t going to take the time to read through your tables.

    • http://www.tnl.net Tris­tan Louis

      Good point. Maybe I’ll add more visu­als when I run through those next year (I tend to be more of a words than graph­ics guy. Guess I should run those things through Excel :) )

  • Peter

    Hi! Great post. The avail­abil­ity of film and TV online is sim­i­lar in the UK. We (Open Rights Group) did a sur­vey a bit like this late last sum­mer here — sim­i­lar results: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ourwork/reports/cant-look-now:-finding-film-online

    eg: 43% of the best 50 British films can be bought or rented online. Sim­i­larly, only 58% of the BAFTA Best Film award win­ners since 1960 have been made available. 

    Thanks,

    Pete

    • http://www.tnl.net Tris­tan Louis

      Wow. Awe­some data. Thanks for shar­ing it.

  • Pingback: Studio Disconnect | Definitive Items of the Utmost Unimportance

  • Pingback: GNC-2012-01-30 #738 The Voice - Geek News Central

  • Mike

    Great job com­pil­ing this data. I agree with your con­clu­sion that the data clearly shows con­tent providers push­ing their lat­est shows/movies and pulling older stuff. As you said in your last post, the con­tent providers seem more inter­ested in crim­i­nal­iz­ing piracy then with pro­vid­ing the cus­tomers legal means of get­ting the con­tent. They could have got­ten behind efforts like GoogleTV and Boxee, but instead they fight. Per­haps they haven’t noticed what iTunes did for the music indus­try. Maybe there’s more money in the lawsuits. Such a shame for the consumer.

    • http://www.tnl.net Tris­tan Louis

      Indeed.

  • http://www.vodtoday.nl vod­to­day

    Very nice com­pi­la­tion of all the data. I’ll take this in con­sid­er­a­tion in my next post about online con­tent for video on demand :)

    • http://www.tnl.net Tris­tan Louis

      Great. Do share that post when it’s writ­ten :)

  • Jason

    I think it’s a lit­tle mis­lead­ing that you have a “pur­chase only” indi­ca­tion, but fail to point out that although some movies are avail­able from Ama­zon, they are not avail­able as part of a Prime mem­ber­ship which means there is still an extra cost. Even if it’s not a pur­chase, it’s still a 4$ rental. Sure, it’s avail­able, but I think most peo­ple con­sider the con­cept of “value”.  Just 2 rentals from Ama­zon is a month of Netflix.

    • http://www.tnl.net Tris­tan Louis

      Actu­ally, where I indi­cated pur­chase only, I mean that the movie is NOT avail­able for rental at all. In none of the Ama­zone cases here were movies avail­able for rental either via primie or on pay per view.

  • Pingback: TV-Sender und Studios schaffen sich ab: alternative Inhalte besiegeln ihr Schicksal | Digitaler Film