Why are some new movies no longer available on demand?

[leo8877]

Hey all, does anyone know why some movies are no longer available on demand?  I'm talking relatively new movies like 'The Hunger Games' or 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'?  I've gone to rent these lately and found that they are only available for sale.  When they were first released they were available for rental.  I've checked multiple services and they are all the same.  Does anyone know why this is?

[wonderpug]

At least with Instant Netflix, I remember someone explaining it happens when a movie is going to be shown on cable tv or something.  They get some exclusivity or some such and it goes off of streaming services for a bit.

[kronovan]

We get the same thing on Netflix Canuckistan, but what I've noticed disappearing  most are TV series. My son and I were about 2/3rds of the say through the anime series Claymore, when they nixed it!    I've noticed the odd movie coming and going quickly too. Crap, we get so little in the way of new additions on the service here that it really kind of pisses me off that they don't at least keep what's already there.

[TheEgoWhip]

It has to do with separate rights for movies for each distribution type.  Managed competition for each market.

The standard release routine for a movie is regulated by a business model called "release windows". The release windows system was first conceived in the early '80s, on the brink of the home entertainment market, as a strategy to keep different instances of a movie from competing with each other, allowing the movie to take advantage of different markets (cinema, home video, TV, etc.) at different times.

In the standard drill, a movie is first released through movie theaters (theatrical window), then, after approximately 16 and a half weeks, it is released to DVD (entering its video window). After an additional number of months it is released to Pay TV and VOD services and approximately two years after its theatrical release date, it is made available for free-to-air TV

[leo8877]

Thanks all.  I found out there's this service called EPIX that is causing these problems.  Luckily I can watch The Hunger Games for free with a 14 day trial.  And I wanted to give them money to watch.  Oh well!