Wholesale DVD distributors license the DVD distribution rights from studios producing the movies and supply DVDs to retail stores, online merchants, DVD rental companies and mail order stores. Often the DVDs are manufactured or imported by wholesalers themselves.

DVDs are sold as bundles containing different titles. Action, comedy, drama, family, horror, kids, martial arts, and western are some of the popular DVD genres. They are sold as pre-boxed bundles or customized according to orders. Often DVDs contain extra content not available to viewers in the movie theatres. These include interviews with the stars, behind the scenes action from the movie sets and scenes which have been deleted from the movie. These extras are an added attraction for DVD consumers.

The major revenue accruing to wholesale DVD distributors is through the sale of video products to retail shops and video rentals. There has been considerable growth in the mail order rental via the Internet in the US. Netflix, which is one of the largest online rental companies, has more than two million customers. The company expects to have about five percent share of the entire US market in 2006. It ships about three million DVDs each week.

DVD retailers enjoy a good margin and an increasing number of people are taking to purchasing DVDs in bulk from a wholesaler and selling them on auction sites such as EBay and online stores. Several DVD distributors offer drop shipping and mail the DVDs directly to the end consumer on the retailers behalf.

DVD mail order via the Internet, digital distribution which includes providing a movie download service via the distributors own broadband infrastructure, game stores, video on demand services, and pay-per-view services are the current trends. Video on demand (VOD) systems allow users to watch video over a network as part of an interactive television system. The video can be seen at any time, whereas a pay-per-view system allows television viewers to purchase events for a private telecast in their homes.