Some movie studios such as Warner Bros. or Sony are large enough to engage in DVD manufacturing and duplication in-house or through subsidiaries. Sony DADC, a subsidiary of Sony Corp., is one of the largest DVD replicating companies in the world. In the duplication process, the manufacturer provides the replicating company with the master disc, label design, and possibly graphics and promotional materials. If this process is kept in-house, it helps smooth the overall DVD production process. Studios also benefit from having well-developed distribution networks to get these discs to retailers. Some studios contract out their DVD manufacturing. Technicolor was the largest independent distributor of DVDs and CDs in 2007; it replicated 1.7 billion DVDs and 175 million CDs. Technicolor and Cinram are the major replicators for the Hollywood studios. In 2007 the major studios were split in their support of the next generations of DVD technology: HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Some studios announced that they would only release their movies on HD-DVD and others announced they would only release movies on Blu-ray disc. By the middle of 2007, the home video market was at an impasse. Manufacturing costs may help determine which format will become the industry's new standard. DVD replication machines require more modification to produce Blu-ray discs than to produce HD-DVD discs; this ultimately makes the discs more expensive for the manufacturer to produce.

When the DVD movie first came to market, they were available to rent through the local video store and to purchase through a retailer. These are still the two primary channels for consumers to obtain DVDs. However, the distribution of DVDs and movies has changed considerably since the 1990s.

The Video Store

As stated, with the VHS medium, video stores were charged up to $100 per tape and then had to rent the tape as much as possible to recoup their investment. Most retailers could only afford to purchase a few copies of popular titles. Consumers frequently complained about the long wait to rent such titles. In 1998 Blockbuster and other video chains entered into revenue sharing agreements with their suppliers. Under such an agreement, a supplier charges a retailer a wholesale price per unit plus a percentage of the revenue the retailer generates from themovie rental. Under the old arrangement, the retailer paid the high tape price and kept all revenues. The new agreement lowered the price considerably, but half the revenues went back to the studio. The revenue sharing agreement included both the VHS and DVD format.

Netflix

In 1997 Netflix founders Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph decided to start a company that rented movies by mail. The rent-movies-by-mail plan was not feasible while movies were only available on bulky video tape. However, the DVD, which had just come on the market was small and light and could be shipped through the mail. The two men conducted tests to determine how quickly the DVD could be shipped through the U.S. Postal Service and to determine the most suitable means of packaging DVDs to minimize damage to the disc in transit. Netflix opened in 1998 with 30 employees. It offered 928 titles. As more titles became available on DVD, the company's catalog expanded. Online video rental has become very popular. Customers who rent movies through the site no longer have to deal with late fees or go back to the store to return the movie. Movie rental sites have various subscription plans to accommodate the needs of the renter. Netflix had 6.3 million subscribers and a library of 70,000 titles at the end of 2007. It ships an estimated 1.575 million DVDs each day. The company has 42 distribution centers across the United States and employs 1,300 people. Blockbuster launched its own online site and has been stealing customers from Netflix. In the first quarter of 2007, Netflix added 480,000 new subscribers while Blockbuster added 780,000. In the second quarter, Neflix lost 55,000 customers while Blockbuster added 525,000. As of the middle of 2007 Blockbuster had 3.6 million subscribers and a library of more than 70,000 titles.

According to Netflix there will be approximately 12 million online DVD renters in the United States at the end of 2007. The DVD distribution industry has been affected by the Internet in other ways as well. Consumers can purchase and download DVD-quality television programs, movies, and other video content to play on their computers. The films are usually available for purchase on the same day that they arrive in the stores. Apple found great success with music downloads since it launched the iPod in 2001. In January 2007, the company made video content available for download on its iTunes web site. Users may keep the video on their computer hard drive or transfer it to their iPods to watch. Amazon.com launched its Unbox service to compete with iTunes in September 2006, but the programming on its site is coded with Microsoft Digital Rights Technology, which means downloaded video can not be played on Macintosh computers or iPods. Netflix began offering streaming video of approximately 1,000 titles on its site in early 2007. By the middle of that year Netflix reported that its subscribers had downloaded 5 million movies and television shows using this newly offered digital, streaming video service.

Many of these sites also offer streaming video for rental as well. A user downloads a film and then is issued a license to view the film for a specific amount of time, such as one day, seven days, or a month. Wal-Mart launched a downloading site in February 2007. It created a stir in the motion picture community by undercutting the prices charged by iTunes. It has also worked out deals with all the film studios. Apple's iTunes only has deals with Disney and Paramount. Amazon has deals with Lionsgate, Warner Bros., Fox, Paramount, MGM, Sony, and Universal.

According to the Entertainment Merchants Association Annual Report, mass merchandisers had a 43 percent market share of DVD sales in 2006. Mass merchandisers include stores such as Target and Wal-Mart. Consumer electronics retailers such as Best Buy or Circuit City had 16 percent of sales. Online retailers represented 12.5 percent of sales. Blockbuster Video is still the king of video rentals. It represented 43 percent of the movie rental business. Online rental stores had 16 percent of the market.

Other movie rental stores had 39 percent of the market.

First the good points: the tone of the video game was captured brilliantly (largely due to the extensive use of the game's soundtrack,) and there were some reasonable action sequences. Let's be honest here; who doesn't enjoy a mindless assassination movie? Olyphant did a pretty good job portraying Agent 47. His movement was rigid and calculated - which isn't really Oscar worthy acting, but it mirrored the game well enough. When you've got an iconic look like 47's black suite and red tie you're bound to succeed in recreating a character. The Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat movies failed in this regard - perhaps because those characters were wearing costumes that don't translate into outfits that you'd find in reality.

Oh, and the kids playing  Hitman in the hotel when 47 is running from the Russian secret police? Love it. It's always refreshing when a movie or show is consciously self-referential.

Now for the bad parts.

“How will I find you?”

“Don't worry, I'll find you.”

Really? Come on. I will grant that the screenwriter might have been playing off the stereotypes of his genre, but hackneyed lines like that are so overused. It's like throwing declawed felines on a rust-covered chalkboard. Maybe the point was to be hokey, but the movie could have garnered more respect.

In fact, the entire tone of the movie was cookie-cutter, down to the obligatory love interest. “Shut up or I'll gag you,” says 47. “Oh you,” she smiles to herself. Though I did enjoy the unnecessary nude scenes.

The sword fight on the subway was a great idea. I don't know if there wasn't enough space, or time to practice, or proper choreography, or perhaps they just wanted to try something “creative,” but the way that they shot that scene just ruined that great idea. It was stomach wrenching how they sped up the film to hurry the pace of the fighting between 47 and the last surviving Agent. And none of those guys looked like trained killers.

One last thing. I'm not sure if I missed a scene somewhere, but was there a reason that the whole “set up” took place? Without spoiling it for anyone, the plot just ended with no explanation about what the bad guys were trying to accomplish. And the framework with the Interpol detective trying to catch his ghost was just tagged on to add a second perspective, I didn't really get all that invested in his search.

In short, the movie version of “Hitman” seemed like a gamer's attempt to write a script. I'm sure that he thought it was totally awesome, but when it comes to cinema it fell short. Way short. If you've got no discerning tastes about what a good character arc should be then there's no problem. But there could have been a really fantastic story in there about the abductee-turned-killer searching for redemption.

Maybe that's just not what the point was. And, like I said, I'd still recommend the movie. But next time, guys, try hammering out a good story before producing another video game clone for the big screen.

Come with me as I investigate how it began and where it is presently.

Computer games have been around for nearly 30 years. Starting out on large wooden arcade machines they were quickly developed to be used within the home. The first ever computer game was Pong (1972,) a simple tennis like system that was very popular at its time. The interest in these games from the public was very high and manufacturers placed a lot of money in developing them, making them bigger and better.

Pong was followed by classics such as Centipede (1980) and Pac-Man (1980), but soon died out when consoles like the Commodore 64, the home console, was released. This gave the public the ability to play games in the comfort of their own homes.

Since this pioneering technology consoles have leaped from generation to generation breaking new ground with graphics, sound and game play.

After the successful release of the Nintendo consoles and its hit game Super Mario Bros. Hollywood saw the potential of these characters and stories and began its venture into transferring games into films.

In 1993 the first ever film to be based on a computer game was released. Super Mario Bros. starred Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as the hapless plumbers/superheroes.

The story was very different to the game itself, the writers creating such a place as Dinohattan, a parallel universe where dinosaurs evolved into humans (seriously!) as opposed to apes evolving into humans.

Dennis Hopper was the evil King Bowser of the Koopas and other characters such as Princess Peach and Toad appeared.

The film stunned the public when released and created a lot of curiosity about how the game could have been transferred. Unfortunately for the producers the film was a major flop. The amount of wrongs certainly outweighed the rights. For starters Danny DeVito was clearly the best choice for Mario. Don't get me wrong Bob Hoskins is a great actor, but a bad choice for him. Also where was Luigi's mustache, it's the minor differences that can make or break a film. But we can't have a go at the makers, they tried something that had never been done before and failed. This would be the point where you would think, "okay, if we do this again let"s try and keep it as close to the source material as possible'. But they didn't

One year later another group of producers attempted to do what Super Mario Bros. couldn't. This time the concept was taken from the hugely successful Street Fighter (1994).

The film stars Jean-Claude Van Damme (No surprise there), Raul Julia and strangely Kylie Minogue, certainly a strange choice. In my view apart from Raul Julia she's one of the high points of the film.

It was again another flop, it seemed making a film from a game was a clear risk and should never be attempted again, although Raul Julia gave a fantastic performance as Bison, unfortunately Julia died just after the film was completed. Not a good note to go on.

Exactly one year later Paul W. S. Anderson adapted the Street Fighter copy Mortal Kombat (1995), it seems he saw the potential and was hoping it would do better. In a way it did, becoming the most successful video game adaptation to date.

Eight years had passed and once again someone new was ready to step up to the jinxed podium of game to film and have a stab at it, or in this case stab it…to death.

That man was (regrettably!) Paul W. S. Anderson …again! The game was another hugely successful story, even more so than Mario and Street Fighter.

Resident Evil (2002) stunned audiences with its engaging game play and creepy storyline. Everything about the game was perfect and didn't need adjusting in anyway.

The film was rather successful, but still was not considered a decent adaptation. Hyped up to be one of the greatest game to film adaptations ever, people were soon struck down after witnessing what Paul. W. S. Anderson had done. The story was drastically adjusted and popular characters were removed. However it did gain two sequels both considered average RE: Apocalypse and RE: Extinction (2004, 2007). This could've been a one off for Anderson until Alien vs. Predator (2004) was released and we all began thinking "Is he doing this on purpose?"

He may claim he loves games and think they have interesting concepts and fantastic stories, but bear in mind that's only fifty percent, the rest is game play. The one thing that can't really be put into film, otherwise it would be a game. So if you change that concept or story you're pretty much screwed.

I'm sure by now everybody must have heard of Uwe Boll, if you haven't consider yourself one of the luckiest people alive. I must admit I have not seen any one of his films, the reason being the trailers actually put me off.

For those of you who don't know Uwe Boll is renowned for making the worst game to film adaptations, his tainted resume consists of House of the Dead(2003) Alone in the Dark (2005), Dungeon Siege (2008), Far Cry (2008) and Postal (2008).

I'm not sure whether I should mention the Tomb Raider films (2001, 2003), I mean everyone agrees they weren't very good, they were pretty bad. Saying that though Angelina Jolie was the perfect choice for Lara Croft and so I feel as though that balances out the bad points

Then out of the mist came a man, a man who believed he could eliminate game to film sceptics and make them believe again. Christophe Gans was prepared to take on the game to film concept with a different type of game, Silent Hill (2006). The game has a main focus on story and horror and Gans managed to keep true to the idea, yet much of the story was converted to accommodate a female lead rather than a male starring in the game. The horror was there with a good, yet sometimes confusing narrative. The film did well becoming more successful than previous tries, but still did not do as well as expected.

Recently we've seen Hitman (2007,) many a review were negative and so it's clear some games don't make good films. Maybe it's like books; they say the worst books make the best films.

By looking at the films and the stages they have gone through it's clear producers are understanding that if you stay true to the game the film succeeds. Don't get me wrong though, I love games and I love films and I would love for them to make a film from a game that is just as good as the source material, but it seems Hollywood just can't do that.

1. City of God - Don't be fooled by the title, this Brazilian movie has nothing to do with religion. Rather it deals with the children who make up the violent street gangs of Rio. A word of warning: some of the violence in this movie makes The Godfather look like Sesame Street.
2. Open Your Eyes - If you've seen the American remake, Vanilla Sky, promptly forget all about it. This surreal, intelligent Spanish film makes the viewer question the reality of the characters, as well as his own. Plus, Penelope Cruz is a lot less annoying in her native Spanish.
3. The Celebration - This Danish film was one of the first of the Dogme 95 movement - film without the frills. It depicts a large family getting together for a birthday celebration. Slowly, the family is torn apart as hidden secrets are revealed. Shot on a real location, using real lighting, some of the extras hadn't even read the script before shooting. As a result, their reactions are as shocked as yours will be.
4. Run Lola Run - This German film presents the viewer with a scenario: Lola's boyfriend loses a small fortune and she must replace it in 20 minutes, or he will be killed. Taking place in real time, the film shows us three possible outcomes for Lola and her boyfriend. If also show us the different possible fates of the people that Lola encounters on her way.
5. The City of Lost Children - Before he made the sunny crowd pleaser Amelie, French Director Jean -Pierre Jeunet made this darker, but more beautiful film about a man, The Inventor, who cannot dreams, so he kidnaps small children and steals their dreams. In this dark, surreal city, a man and an orphaned girl search for The Inventor's most recent captive.