Search engines such as Blinkx and Yahoo! index videos from a host of sites such as BBC News and ITN, while the latest workplace distractions have come from Google Video and YouTube, which offer users the chance to share their clips with the world. This makes for a predictable glut of You've Been Framed-style sequences, but there are also many wonderful TV moments, seen by few at the time of broadcast, which have been digitised from old VHS collections. Pakistan cricketer Shahid Afridi's record-breaking century in Nairobi in 1996 is just one gem that has emerged.

The ease with which footage can be accessed and the huge sales of handheld media players such as the iPod has made the public keen to access new films and TV shows in a similar way. But distributors, faced with huge potential demand, seem either unwilling or unable to offer much in the way of content to anyone outside North America.

In the USA, services such as Google Video, Apple's iTunes and Vongo have moved into the world of paid-for video downloads with great success, offering a mix of high-rated TV shows and movies. Last week, the US companies CinemaNow and Movielink launched services that make Hollywood blockbusters available for download on the same day as the DVDs go on sale, putting movie downloads in direct competition with DVD retailers for the first time.

In the UK and Ireland, similar services have been slow to appear. Attempts to buy videos from US-based operations are thwarted by fullpage apologies generated by automated systems designed to keep us firmly out.

The barrier is there because of the highly delicate negotiations taking place with the content providers (film studios and TV networks) over the rights to offer such material in territories outside the USA; indeed, CinemaNow has put its meagre subscription-based operation on this side on hold while it focuses on the US. Google, Apple and Amazon are all reluctant to reveal their plans.

It's inconceivable that they won't offer premium content here at some point, but in the meantime it's left to a handful of services to share a fairly small amount of material.

Paul Hague, founder of the British Internet Broadcasting Company, explains the predicament. "Along with everyone else, we've been trying to reach agreements with the content owners, but it took 14 months for us to obtain music-video rights from just one of them. You can't force them to make a decision . . . they'll take as long as they want to take."

This reticence is partly explained by the boom in paidfor music downloads. Media companies ended up being forced to the negotiating table as Apple's iTunes became established. This led to an online music market largely controlled by one company that can dictate pricing and terms. Video rights owners don't want to make the same mistake.

This caution doesn't just surround the kind of video material that will be available to us online, but also how we view it. Concern about piracy has meant that recent previews of TV comedy shows such as The IT Crowd from Channel 4 were streamed directly to the web browser.

This avoids giving viewers a video file that could be duplicated, shared or copied to another medium.

Similarly, companies that allow downloads have favoured strict digital rights management (DRM), which gives a limited time period to watch the files before they're rendered unplayable and prevents any transfer to DVD.

The announcement from AOL and LoveFilm of a downloadto-keep service, which launches in the UK on Monday and includes a DVD copy as part of the deal, is a concession to consumers who are unhappy to be tethered to their PC to watch a film.

In addition, most existing services only offer files that can be played using Microsoft's Windows Media Player software and cannot be transferred to Apple's video iPod . . . currently the most popular handheld video-playing device. Until Apple launches a video download service here, owners will have to be content with the odd movie trailer and music video through iTunes.

In practice, some DRM restrictions can be subverted by tools that savvy code-warriors upload to the internet, but so many obstacles are being placed between consumer and content that the rise in the use of BitTorrent software is far from surprising. BitTorrent was designed to facilitate the transfer of large amounts of data, making it perfect for the sharing of video files with no copy protection; currently, the launch of a new DVD is invariably accompanied by a glut of users downloading an illegally "ripped" version.

The more conscientious filesharers shun commercially available material in favour of recently broadcast TV shows that people may have missed;

although still of dubious legality, it's a true video-on-demand service, and it is becoming so widely used the industry faces an uphill struggle to persuade consumers they shouldn't be downloading for nothing.

"This is easily the biggest hurdle we face, " says Paul Hague. "To change attitudes, we simply have to try to give people what they want, when they want it."

Whether the video industry can pull all the strands together and start offering a usable, affordable and truly global service remains to be seen.