On Friday nights my wife and I often consider renting a movie. Until recently that involved walking two blocks, grabbing a bag of popcorn from the free popper at Channel Video, and a pleasant 15 min wander through the isles.

But that's over. Channel video is gone. Closed. And Hollywood Video is gone as well (two blocks further south).

So we've become VOD customers. Well, sort of . You see, Time Warner VOD is pretty cool monday at 3pm, or wednesday at 11am. But, as the phone operator informed us - "everyone wants to watch a movie on Friday night." Hmmm, ok. "There's too much demand, so lots of the movies won't play." Right. The operator suggested that we could have a free month of The Movie Channel - less people watch that. Now the truth is - we've attempted Time Warner VOD before, and always found it to be spotty at best. But i figured that was just part of the early adopter pain i so often am inflicted with. But VOD isn't early any more. Now it's here. And it isn't reliable. And that's not a good thing.

If they can get VOD to the point where the customer experience isn't terrible, they'll have a product. But if i can connect my computer to the TV first, and download a movie i want without having to be tied up in shared bandwidth on a Friday night... then they're going to lose the race.

Meanwhile:

On the flip side, i found myself cruzing around channel 1900 the other day (really, there's a channel 1900) and stumbled into a TON of VOD channels that i didn't know existed. Court TV, TNT, Food Network, HGTV, Speed vision, Time Out NY, in fact almost every channel seems to have an "On Demand" counterpart.

Here's the full list:

AOL Music On Demand, PBS Kids On Demand, G4tech TV On Demand, Comedy Central On Demand, Food Network On Demand, DIY On Demand. HGTV On Demand, Golf On Demand. A&E On Demand, BBC America On Demand, CNN Showcase On Demand, Court TV OD, TV Guide On Demand, Anime Network On Demand, National Geographic On Demand, Oxygen On Demand, Fine Living On Demand, GAC On Demand , TBS On Demand, TNT On Demand, Adult Swim On Demand, Sportskool On Demand, Exercise TV On Demand, Speed On Demand, NY1 On Demand, Manhattan On Demand, Time Out New York On Demand, driverTV On Demand , Movie Trailers On Demand