We keep trying to keep on top of the changing video watching market. Another of those wonderful articles from the New York Times came onto our desktop on Sunday, about how cable is being cut. It is no wonder the people at Hulu are getting pressure.

“So many of my friends treated cable as a utility, that it wasn’t a home until it was set up,” said Nick Jackson, 24, who lives on the Lower East Side and works in publishing. “I basically chose Internet over the cable.”

They are right, cable isn’t a utility. Internet, unless you use it for business, as we are doing(if you call blogging business), isn’t a utility. But, if you have to choose, internet clearly can bring you much video-watching pleasure. One percent of adults view televisions shows online daily, and eight percent watch shows at least once a week, up from six percent last year. This number can only grow, and the eight percent of adults who watch video online “strongly agree that they now watch TV less often.”

The cable companies are receiving more calls from people who are evaluating their bills and looking to save.

In the DVD market, rentals are doing better than sales. The emerging consumer tendency to rent rather than buy their movies is not good news for studios, because they keep a relatively small share of each rental dollar. Fox is even trying to convince people to buy instead of rent by selling stripped down versions to rental outlets and keeping the premium extras for buyers. One of the first discs with this treatment will be Slumdog Millionaire, where extras like deleted scenes and commentaries go retail only on the DVD. So far the Blu-Ray versions aren’t affected, but that may be coming,

Not everyone is with us, but we like extras. But we can see why a rental copy may make sense. Most people want to see the movie, and don’t bother with deleted scenes or director’s commentary. We think it is value-added though, and there is certainly a place for it in the market.

Disney is trying to get in on rentals, by launching a subscription-based online movie and TV rental service from the company’s huge video library.

And the cable and satellite companies continue to be interested in preventing their customers from dumping service by starting their own online on-demand services. As DirecTV sees it… “in the past, when a company tries to stop or block something from happening, it’s usually failed.” It might even get us the ala carte level of programming, if they offer pick-and-choose options that the standard cable service never would offer.

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• NYT Confirms Drop in Cable Subscriptions (mymediamusings.com)
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• Fox’s Rental DVDs Will Be Crippled, Lack Special Features [Fox] (i.gizmodo.com)