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Since 2001, BOP has documented the various means through which we consume media. When we launched the How to Spend $20 column, DVD sales were experiencing unprecedented growth. From 2000 to 2001, movie sales from the new format exploded from 16.6 million to 37 million. That number spiked to an almost incomprehensible 1.2 billion by 2004.

The ubiquity of cheap DVD players created the most fertile landscape in the history of the movie industry. 70% of the North American homeowners had DVD players by the end of 2004. $21.8 billion worth of revenue was attained on the home revenue market. The body of that was accrued through DVD. From 2002-2009, home video dollars surpassed monies compiled through theatrical ticket sales. There was a changing of the guard in consumer behavior whose effects are still reverberating today.

The difference as we have discussed ad nauseam over the years is freedom of choice. Until the 1980s, people could watch exactly three channels (plus PBS if your parents were boring). In the early cable television era, options were expanded somewhat but the onset of the digital era is where the cataclysmic change began. With the advent of this technology, consumers were inundated with new entertainment options. The full impact of this is only being felt now as we once again witness movie ticket sales surpassing home video sales.

The reason for this is not improved box office. To the contrary, box office ticket sales have stagnated in the 1.3 billion sales range the past two years. 2012 looks to be better; of course, this year is being propped up by The Hunger Games and The Avengers, two of the top 15 domestic releases of all time. The behavior itself is still the same. People are spending less time watching movies these days. When they do, they oftentimes spend less money. Cheap solutions such as Netflix and Redbox have yet again fundamentally altered how consumers acquire media. Studios are aware of this numbers change on their bottom line and let’s not sugarcoat their fear. They are absolutely terrified by what is transpiring.

Entertainment corporations are as reliable as clockwork when the bottom line is jeopardized. These are the instances when they reconsider their otherwise constant intransigence. Desperation equals motivation in such scenarios. Enter the cloud.

We discussed this emerging technology in our Top Film Industry Stories of 2011. We ranked it as the fifth most important event of 2011, even though clouds were not new last year. What happened is that they expanded in the same manner we witnessed with DVDs from 2000 to 2001. No, cloud movie storage has not become such a technological obelisk quite yet. What has happened, however, is that it has become viable. And that viability is something I have begun to track on a personal as well as a professional level. Over the next couple of weeks, I want to share my experiences with you in hopes that they will be helpful as you begin to consider the same choices.

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