In a groundbreaking deal, Comcast and NBCU have announced a 30 billion dollar deal that will give majority control of NBC. Comcast sees this merger as a means to increase DVD profits. This could prove an interesting time for media, specifically electronic and packaged media, but what will actually happen is anyone's guess at this point.

 On a down note, Comcast is considering removing NBC from public telecast and turn it to a pay cable station to accent the cheap and free streaming costs of advertising and viewing, such as the popular hulu.com and other online sites like yahoo, google, youtube and network sites like abc.com. This deal with Comcast seems to also place the final nail for free service in place of a paid service for hulu, which is largely owned by NBC. As mentioned a few weeks ago, hulu has raised the possibility of charging for their service in 2010 which has created an online outcry to those who have already enjoyed its free services. It is likely they will offer free stuff, but the new episodes will undoubtedly be a paid item and it begs the question whether it will drive people back to DVD boxed sets. I personally enjoy DVD sets as I see them in their entirety with no commercial interruption in high quality video. 

So what does this merger mean for the DVD world? Well, nothing at the moment, however, Comcast, being the largest cable network in the world will seek means of creating more on-demand style viewing. In an economy where DVDs are becoming cheaper and consumers are seeking cheaper means of entertainment, packaged media may see a larger slope in the coming years - especially if the economy continues to flounder. While we all love the bargain, having continual bargains on a regular basis is not a way to spike the economy and will give people a means to seek cheap entertainment. Warner and Paramount have both begun to slender their DVD library available to the public, and even Warner is making their DVD-R line bigger every month. With online viewing, entire libraries are at their disposal without any type of physical distribution. Pirating may come in the form of either torrents or possibly sites leeching off these on demand sites.

So we will see in the coming months more specifically how this will effect the DVD market. It is becoming clearer that other means of entertainment of coming to the forefront as a means of viewing than just DVD. Currently, DVDs are still the best means and sales are still strong, even with Blu-ray as a supporting media. If and when portable or merging media of computers, smart phones and video game consoles begin offering on-demand services, we can continue enjoying the DVD market. It may turn the DVD collector into a connasuir of sorts where buying packaged media becomes a luxury and relegated to small niche audiences (where small labels will rule the DVD land).