Cutting the Cord: Waiting for ... 'Godzilla'?

If you are like me, you can't always catch a movie at the multiplex.

And the summer box office figures reflect that either there's a lot of you like me out there — or maybe this season's release slate didn't quite appeal to you.

This summer's $4 billion box office take is about 22% less than last year's and the largest summer-to-summer decline on record.

Still, there was some summer eye candy I wanted to see. I did make it to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in July — two thumbs up — but I missed several other comic book and sci-fi flicks during their theatrical runs, including The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Godzilla, Edge of Tomorrow and X-Men: Days of Future Past.

So what's a movie lover to do when they want to catch up? Well, you have a growing list of viewing options — at varying price points.

Hollywood is increasingly making movies available for online purchase and rental, ahead of the Blu-ray Disc and DVD releases and pay-TV video-on-demand. So, if you just can't wait, you can pay a bit more and see it before the packaged discs hit the stores. Conversely, if you want to rent from a kiosk, you may find yourself waiting a bit longer than in the past.

Let's say, like me, you missed Godzilla in the theater and you want to exorcise that 1998 version with Matthew Broderick from your memory and catch up on the big guy's latest adventure starring Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad).

The Blu-ray, which starts at about $23, and DVD come out Sept. 16. But if you want to watch the movie before that, you can download a high definition version for $19.99 from iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Google Play and M-Go. (Amazon, Google Play and M-Go also offer a standard-def version for $14.99.)

If you can wait and don't want to own the movie, once the discs are out, you can use a service such as Amazon or iTunes and rent the film for $6 or less. If you have a pay-TV service, the film is usually available to rent on demand at this point, too. However, you will have to wait nearly a month if you want to rent an actual disc from a Redbox kiosk, which costs less than $2 — and even longer to see the film on HBO, Showtime or Netflix.

Getting similar treatment is Edge of Tomorrow (now retitled as Live Die Repeat/Edge of Tomorrow), out on Blu-ray Oct. 7, but available now on iTunes and Google Play, and Transformers: Age of Extinction, on home video Sept. 30, but hitting iTunes Sept. 16.

Consumer adoption of online sales and subscription streaming services — and the turning away from buying packaged discs — is driving this mutation of so-called movie availability "windows."

The Digital Entertainment Group recently reported that sales of Blu-rays and DVDs fell 8% during the first half of 2014, but still accounted for $3.3 billion — far from a dinosaur format. Over the same time, electronic sales rose 37% to $671 million and subscriptions rose 26% to $1.9 billion.

As consumer behavior changes — in this case, purchases of tickets and discs declining — Hollywood needs new ways of recouping its investments in movies. "There are a lot more outlets for content now than there ever really have been for video," says Glenn Hower, a research analyst at Parks Associates. "So the studios have to seriously examine their windowing process and develop a couple of different release periods."

We shall see what windows viewers choose to open most often in the days to come.

"Cutting the Cord" is a new regular column covering Net TV and ways to get it. If you have suggestions or questions, contact Mike Snider via e-mail. And follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider.