Instant Movie Rental on TV Gets Tryout in Newport

Consider: No more driving to your video store on Friday or Saturday afternoon, only to find that all the copies of the latest releases are already rented; no more return trips to take back the tapes that are available.

For the first time in Orange County, thousands of cable television subscribers will soon be able to rent popular movies on the spur-of-the-moment, with just a flick of two buttons on their remote control unit.

Not surprisingly for an entertainment service whose major advertised selling point is “instant gratification,” Comcast Cablevision has chosen tony Newport Beach as the test market for its “impulse pay-per-view” system. Comcast, which began installation in April, claims 85,000 subscribers in Orange County, including Seal Beach, Santa Ana, Fullerton, Placentia and Buena Park. “We hope to expand (impulse pay-per-view) to Fullerton and Placentia later this year, based upon viewer response,” said Dave Barford, vice president of Comcast’s Orange County operation.

Ranging in price from $1.99 to $3.99 for one-time viewing, the movies will be available within weeks of their arrival at video stores but several months before they are shown on premium movie channels such as HBO. Subscribers purchasing the movies, shown on two of Comcast’s channels, will be able to tape them for additional home use, Barford said, because the signals are not currently being scrambled or coded to prevent taping.

Several other cable systems in the county offer pay-per-view movies and special events, such as the upcoming Sugar Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns title fight, but they require the subscriber to call the cable company to place an order. Industry research cited by Comcast has determined that subscribers on the impulse system are between two and five times as likely to order a movie than those on systems requiring a telephone call.

The slogan of Cable Video Store, the Philadelphia-based company that has pioneered impulse pay-per-view, is “Push a button. Rent a movie.” This month’s offerings include “Crocodile Dundee II,” “Crossing Delancy,” “Gorillas in the Mist,” “Cocktail” and “Stealing Home.”

“We’re a video store,” said Ken Nimmer, Cable Video Store’s vice president for programming, at a Newport Beach press conference Tuesday called to announce the new service. “Only we’re on cable.”

Nimmer explained that the impulse system requires pressing two buttons to rent a movie to avoid an accidental purchase. An optional feature of the system is a security code to prevent unauthorized use. The system’s technology was developed by the Jerrold Division of General Instrument Corp., Cable Video Store’s parent company.

In addition to the Cable Video Store, Comcast is offering two other national pay-per-view services--Viewer’s Choice and Rendezvous--on a second channel. Rendezvous, an adult service that this month offers such films as “Twenty-something” and “Talk Dirty to Me,” takes over the second channel from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. A third channel on the Comcast system previews movies available on the other two.

Of Comcast’s 16,000 subscribers in Newport Beach, the 9,000 who currently purchase only the basic package will be charged $2 a month if they want impulse pay-per-view capability. The remaining 7,000 who already buy at least one “premium” service will pay nothing for the hookup. Comcast officials said they expect to complete installing the technology throughout the Newport Beach system within 6 months.

Similar impulse pay-per-view systems featuring the Cable Video Store and the Playboy Channel are operating in the San Fernando Valley and San Diego, company officials said.

At the Western Cable Show in Anaheim last December, one of the hottest panel discussions at the annual industry gathering was entitled “Pay-Per-View and Home Video: Can They Live in Peace?” Panel members also questioned whether pay-per-view would cannibalize the market for movie services like HBO, with viewers renting only the movies they want to see, rather than buying monthly packages.

Supporters of pay-per-view, such as Hal Krisbergh, a vice president of General Instrument, a Philadelphia-based electronic component and equipment manufacturer, insist that pay-per-view “does not cannibalize existing pay channels. For example,” Krisbergh wrote in an industry magazine, “once a subscriber realizes that he can get 40 or more films a month on a premium channel for the same price as two or three pay-per-view films, the perceived value of the pay service is strongly enhanced.”

“We’re hoping a lot of people will upgrade to the pay channels,” said Comcast’s Barford.

Tom Adams, an analyst with Paul Kagan Associates of Carmel, said Tuesday that he thinks that video rental stores will probably give up more of a market share to impulse pay-per-view than would the movie-package channels. A critical factor, he said, is how soon after films arrive in video stores will they become available through pay-per-view, since convenience and availability are pay-per-view’s primary selling points.