Hollywood studios are eyeing a significant shift in the way they make their films available to rent after Warner Brothers launched a Europe-wide video-on-demand push.

The studio behind the Harry Potter series and recent hits such as The Hangover has started making its films available to cable television subscribers in the UK, Germany and France on the same day the titles are released on DVD.

The studio is keen to move people to video-on-demand because it generates better returns than DVD rentals at a time when people are buying fewer DVDs – Hollywood's cash engine for the last decade.

Warner Bros' video-on-demand push in Europe – with partners which include Virgin and Deutsche Telekom – follows a US trial. It led the studio and its rivals to make titles available on video-on-demand and on DVD at the same time.

Other studios, including Sony Pictures Entertainment, which had one of the year's biggest hits with 2012, are also considering such a move in Europe.

Next year Warner Bros plans to begin releasing its films in South Korea via video-on-demand two weeks before they appear on DVD. The studio is planning a similar trial in the US.

While DVD sales are down in the US, rental revenues are up, thanks to subscription services such as Netflix and kiosk services like Redbox. Yet video-on-demand generates significantly better returns – about $0.65 per film for the studio against $0.25 from a DVD rental.

Hollywood has shied away from releasing movies on other platforms at the same time as the DVD to stem the erosion of revenues. This means there are often lengthy gaps between a film's cinematic release, its appearance on DVD and its broadcast on pay-TV.

Jim Wuthrich, president, international home video and digital distribution at Warner Bros, said simultaneous video-on-demand and DVD release in the US had actually boosted DVD sales in some cases because of the marketing effort of the company's cable TV partners.

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