For a lot of people, on-demand Internet-delivered video services like Netflix, Hulu or iTunes have replaced TV channels as their source for movies and serialized dramas. Until now, these services have been, if not content, so at least willing to put up with, being a second-tier provider, offering programming weeks or months after it made its first appearence in cinemas and on television (and with holes in the catalogue to protect the interests of the traditional outlets).

This could be about to change: Netflix have just announced that they have acquired the exclusive rights to the American remake of the BBC mini-series House of Cards, currently being under production by David Fincher, and starring Kevin Spacey. They made this deal directly with the show's producers, bypassing other distributers, and House of Cards will be shown only on Netflix, starting late next year.

It will be interesting to see if it stays exclusive after the first season has been released. For this high-profile landmark project, it actually might, but for less spectacular deals that are sure to follow, there is really no reason to prevent DVD rentals and TV re-runs. I could see how Netflix would not want to allow it on Hulu or iTunes, though (but I suppose that these agreements are only for a certain time and after that the production company can negotiate new deals).

I am also wondering if Netflix will also deliver House of Cards on DVD in addition to Internet streaming. Given that the company name is Netflix (and not DVD-in-the-mail-flix), and seems to have regarded their initial DVD subscription model as a mere stopgap until broadband availability was good enough for Internet distribution, they will probably not take any special efforts in this area, but the production company most likely has plans for a DVD release anyway, and they will certainly go along with that.

From a (in my case very hypothetical) viewer's perspective, one also has to wonder if they will follow the usual model of releasing a new episode every week, or just throw out everything as soon as they can. From a marketing perspective, scheduled and focussed weekly releases seem to make a lot of sense for first-run content, and the production process itself probably does not allow anything significantly different anyway, so I'd say they'll stick with that.

And finally, most interesting of all will be how successful Netflix will be with this, and how many of these deals they (and Hulu and iTunes and Amazon and Google) are going to make in the near future.