April 10: The big news in movie delivery across all media is that bricks and mortar rental giant Blockbuster announced it may file for bankrupcy--in the past year sales fell 20% and losses mounted to $558 million. Blockbuster is working with its bankers and closing marginal stores, so is unlikely to disappear entirely, but it's in for tough times ahead. This has not as yet impacted Blockbusters' mail or video on demand services, which should remain the most profitable sector of the business.

March 10: We've completed a major scrub of the site, updating inventory sizes (several of which are very hard to discern as the companies who are behind tend not to advertise them), prices, and such. These six companies continue to be the major players in legal video on demand, but if any other large outfits emerge, then we'll add them, with the eventual goal of getting a top ten best VOD sites.

February 10: We understand Netflix will allow streaming through the Wii soon, just as they already do for the Xbox 360 and PS3--with over half of Netflix's 12 million subscribers downloading at least one program in the fourth quarter of 2009, this expansion to the Wii should dramatically expand their domination of the legal VOD industry.

January 10: Amazon's video on demand inventory is up to an unmatched 50,000 titles (much more than Netflix's 16,000, probably because content owners aren't too happy with Netflix's all you can eat subscription model compared to Amazon's pay per view system. With this massive expansion, we bumped them up to number two on our charts, but we keep Netflix higher simply because free downloads from their more limited inventory still trump Amazon's wider, but costlier selection.

December 09: As the Christmas season approaches, be on the lookout for some good films to add to your VOD service of choice's queue.

November 09: No major new developments to report, but we have added Netflix's dramatically expanded range of DVD and Blu-Ray players which support streaming--they've really stolen a march on Blockbuster, which only has buy-in from Samsung.

October 09: Nothing new to report this month.

September 09: Back to school time, but no updates to the website this month.

August 09: It's the depths of summer, and lows in visits to this site as people are out enjoying the weather or on holiday. Rest assured when you get back we'll be bringing you the latest in VOD developments.

July 09: We've been hearing tons of additional rumors about the PS3 adopting a film streaming service, more to come when confirmed.

June 09: Things remain pretty quiet in the world of VOD.

May 09: Again nothing new for May to report in the VOD realm--perhaps summer will hold more news to pass on.

April 09: Nothing new to report in the world of video on demand this month, especially not after the major content and site design updates of March.

March 09: We've just completed a redesign of our website, widening every page from 800 to 1,000 pixels. Our tracking shows that only 3% of visitors have a monitor with under 1,000 pixels, so we felt it was a good time to upgrade. This allows us to include extras like a sidebar beside our main table with definitions for the fields in the table. We can also use some larger fonts, larger screenshots of the various sites we review, etc. and hope the site is more functional and more modern looking as a result.

We also did a major site update, checking all the sites, updating film and HD film inventory numbers, pricing, and generally adding new info. We removed Movielink, now absorbed by Blockbuster, and added a review on Blockbuster's own new VOD service, which didn't impress us unfortunately.

February 09: We've added a few new tidbits, like the excellent little Roku box now streams Amazon's entire inventory as well as Netflix.

We also launched a new blog on video on demand. We've backdated all our site updates listed below, and have added some stories of interest which haven't made it into the reviews.

January 09: Little new to report as yet in the new year, but we'll continue to watch the Video on Demand market closely. We did note that LG announced that its Blu-ray disc players will allow for direct streaming of CinemaNow content, another welcome means of bridging the gap between the net and the living room.

Happy streaming in 2009!

December 2008: According to Movielink's site, its service will be fully subsumed by Blockbuster as of 15 December. We'll do a new review of the Blockbuster service in the coming weeks to see how it measures up.

November 2008: The big news is Netflix has teamed up with Tivo after a four year courtship to finally offer their VOD service through the Tivo DVR. With 3.2 million Tivo owners out there, this should be an excellent new venue for bringing VOD to the mainstream.

October 2008: Not much to report this month in the world of VOD, but our site visits are increasing nicely.

September 2008: We launched the Video on Demand Service guide, follow up to our successful DVD and video game rental guides, to examine the next step in digital entertainment distribution. These are exciting times in the realm of VOD, which is just coming into its own (see our VOD industry commentary). We've just seen the relaunch this month of Amazon's service, and large inventory increases this year across the board for the other services. We're starting up with the six main VOD services as we see them, but will be adding more as we go along and have time to test them.

Just as with DVDs and games, we'll guide you through the various services, so you pick the best!

Happy VODing!