New developments that industry insiders expect will eventually make video-on-demand as familiar as DVDs include:

More outlets: Cable movie channel Starz and RealNetworks, a software firm, this week announced a new alliance that will allow viewers to access and watch an unlimited number of films for a flat monthly fee of $12.95. (www.starz.com)

In 2005, Netflix aims to offer its 2 million customers a chance to download rented movies directly.

According to Netflix spokeswoman Lynn Brinton, video-on-demand now accounts for only about 1 percent of rental revenue; that number is expected to grow fast as technology advances.

Brinton said, "The real meaningful adoption will be enabled by (wireless transmission) to the TV, sending movies directly to your TV."

More in-home capacity: Earlier this year, Netflix top executive Reed Hastings told Reuters, "We're not interested in downloading to the computer," but are counting on more homes to be equipped with TVs connected to the Internet, either directly through digital set-top boxes or through still-developing wireless connections to the home's broadband service hub.

Gregg Graff of Insight Communications said this summer TVs equipped with built-in cable cards will come on the market, eliminating the need for set-top boxes.

Curt Marvis of CinemaNow noted that much higher Internet bandwidth - which translates into speedier delivery of high-quality video - is already available overseas. "The quality of the video is starting to rival DVD and will be at DVD quality in the near future."

More content choices: Rob Howard of Time-Warner Cable said, "More and more networks are understanding the power of on-demand TV. And they all want to contribute and add content for on-demand. ... Oxygen, Speed, National Geographic ... All the programmers are extremely interested in providing content for iControl."

Marvis said the same will happen with movies. "We could have over time an unlimited number of movies on servers to be distributed."

He also predicted a respectable future for the much-feared peer-to-peer technology that allows a single user to give away unlimited free copies of a song or a movie.

"Peer-to-peer has a lot of potential to allow people to trade content, if we can find a way to harness that energy so it can be on a cost basis that is financially beneficial to the consumer but not necessarily free," Marvis said. "For instance, if you paid $3 to see something, you could forward it to a friend for $2."

Margaret A. McGurk