Paramount Pictures/History with Star Trek/Creating an overall Star Trek franchise/Home video format franchise

Two of the six earliest known official home video format Star Trek releases,	Two of the six earliest known official home video format Star Trek releases,
VHS version of volume 1 of The Original Series 	Betamax version of The Motion Picture
An important cornerstone for the overall franchise became the home video formats franchise. In 1971 Paramount Pictures partnered up with industry competitor Universal Studios when they, as equal partners, established Cinema International Corporation (CIC) in 1971 (as of 1981: United International Pictures – UIP – ) as a joint venture, and responsible for the distribution of feature films outside the US, which included all of the later Star Trek films. This action was necessitated partly for cost-cutting reasons, partly for antitrust rules, specifically aimed to break the hold individual studios hitherto had on the entirety of the industry, otherwise known as the traditional "" (see also Desilu Studios in this regard).
With the advent of the VHS and Betamax video tape home video formats, a subsidiary division, CIC Video, was established two years later, responsible for the distribution of this home video format – due to the very high retail prices, predominantly through the rental outlet circuit initially – including all the Star Trek productions released in this format. It was again The Motion Picture that turned out to be the primary agent for Star Trek to make its entrance in the home media market as currently understood (meaning visual formats – there had been a few audio only formats previously, such as the 1976 Inside Star Trek LP). While it was a foregone conclusion that the film itself was to be released on the new videotape formats, Paramount Home Video (established in 1976, later known as Paramount Home Entertainment) also made use of the opportunity to release ten selected episodes of The Original Series, in five volumes of two episodes each, as part of their "Television Classics" collection in the United States as appetizers for the later in October released movie tapes, priced at US$79.95 at the time of their release. Released in early 1980, these five titles are as such, together with the later released movie tapes, the earliest known Star Trek home video format releases, where there had been none previously, that is, officially at least. There had been earlier releases of Original Series episodes on home video film formats before, specifically the Super 8 format, but these were neither sanctioned nor licensed by the franchise. Having the year previously hammered out a deal with photo developer/video rental outlet , one of the very first such rental companies, it were these tapes that were the first Star Trek titles to turn up in the rental circuit from mid-to-late 1980 onward. 
Ironically, it was not CIC Video that became responsible for the distribution of the first known Star Trek home video format title outside the US/Canada, but rather the obscure British distributor Mountain Video, when it, possibly unlicensed, released in the same year the one episode only tape of – not included on any of the five original releases in the US – in both tape variants on the UK market, though, again for the high retail price, the majority of them ended up in the rental circuit. From the mid-1980s onward though, CIC Video took over the distribution, not only for the UK alone, but for the entirety of mainland Europe as well.
It was Paramount however, who revolutionized the way these home video formats were marketed. Responsible for this was the aforementioned Mel Harris, by now President of Paramount Home Video, who helped to create the home video market by convincing Paramount to sell low-priced videos directly to the public to persuade customers to purchase videos rather than simply renting them. At the time, videos for sale were priced at around US$60-$80 or more; Harris accurately predicted that decreasing the price would create a market for videocassette purchases. Actually, the video tapes for The Wrath of Khan were the first ones to be offered in 1982 for a sharply reduced price of US$39.95, unheard of at the time, and sending shock waves through industry and retail stores alike – though amusingly, Paramount again generated shock waves eight years later, when it offered tapes of the movie The Hunt for Red October for sale at US$99.99, incredibly high by that time. (The Encyclopedia of Television, Cable, and Video, 2012, p. 411) His policies helped immensely to make the by him later initiated Star Trek: The Next Generation a resounding success, aside from tapping into yet another revenue source for the Original Series and movies produced up until then.
CIC Video as a joint venture was dissolved in 1999 (corresponding with the demise of the video tape in favor of such later home video formats as the LaserDisc, VCD, DVD, and later still, the Blu-ray Disc) when Paramount reasserted full control over the release of their home video formats through their own division, Paramount Home Entertainment. Yet, after 2006 Paramount had to leave the home video format distribution of the television properties, most specifically the remastered versions of The Next Generation and Enterprise, to CBS Home Entertainment, as it no longer owns the franchise, though they are still entitled to do so for the movie properties – albeit in mandated conjuncture with CBS, the latter thereby asserting its ownership of the franchise. The theatrical distribution arm, UIP, is, as of 2016, still in operation and still equally shared by Paramount and Universal.
Yet, while it became one of the most important cornerstones of the overall franchise, it has also become in recent decades somewhat a bone of contention with fans and customers of home video formats alike, due to the franchise's predilection to release numerous versions of the productions, each somewhat different from the other, leaving "double-dipping" (term used by them for incessantly re-buying alternate versions) fans increasingly feeling alienated from, and "exploited" by the franchise, as evidenced by a myriad of angry customer reviews on Amazon.com or . For example, the one episode per Betamax/VHS video tape format, as released from the mid-1980s through the early-2000s and adhered to for all Star Trek television series with the exception of Enterprise, has irked American customers to no end, especially since the format was, excepting a handful of early 1980s British tapes, not utilized in overseas markets, which were served with (at least) two episodes per tape releases. Something similar ensued with the very first Star Trek television series DVD releases, those of the Original Series; starting in August 1999, American customers were first offered the series on "bare-bone" two episodes per disc releases, shortly before season box sets – with, adding insult to injury, four episodes per disc and beefed out with special features – were made available to them. Overseas customers were on this occasion spared the double-dip format, as it were the season box sets that were offered them right from the bat, albeit at a later point in time. Incidentally, Enterprise was not released in the US on VHS but directly on DVD. However, this time around, Europeans were given the double-dip treatment, as they were first offered the series on VHS right before the DVD box set releases.
Though certainly not the only one – as Disney and Universal were among those who had solid reputations in this regard as well – it was Paramount in particular that became notorious for these kind of practices, and which were by all means not limited to Star Trek alone. While one of the very first, the Original Series has concurrently the dubious distinction of becoming one of the very few, if not only one, television series to be released on DVD in this manner, as all other Hollywood studios, conceivably forewarned by the bad example Paramount had set, decided right from the start to release their television properties on a per season basis in the new DVD home video format. 20th Century Fox became the pioneering one with their The X-Files DVD box set releases, which, complete with all the accouterments of such releases, started its release run in May 2000, when Paramount's bare-bone Star Trek editions were still in the midst of their release run; the contrast between the two release formats could not possibly have been any starker and was certainly on customers at the time. In Paramount's defense however, it should be noted that, as an "", unintended errors in judgment regarding the initial release formats could be expected.
Particularly loathed are the so-called "retailer exclusive" formats. The format entailed that preferred retailers, most notably the chain store Best Buy, would receive versions that contained special features not included on the regular releases. An early notable instance where Paramount had employed the practice was on the occasion of their first movie releases on DVD, starting in 1998 with First Contact. Regular customers could only buy the basic "vanilla" version of the movies, meaning only the movie itself with the theatrical trailer as single "extra", whereas Best Buy customers, for the same price, received an additional disc with the special features which were not available in any manner anywhere else; it infuriated fans, to put it mildly. At the time several scrupulous Best Buy patrons bought these releases in bulk and subsequently offered the special feature discs up at premium prices on eBay, the market site that was at the time rapidly becoming a force to be reckoned with. The perceived injustice was only redressed with the 2001-2005 "Special Edition" releases, though it meant yet another round of double-dipping. While the franchise could traditionally afford to dismiss fan/costumer concerns in these regards as entirely irrelevant – particularly before the advent of the internet age, when customers for the most part remained blissfully (from the franchise's point of view that is) unaware of the varying treatments, euphemistically called "market discrimination" in business economics – criticism of the retailer exclusive format in particular, started to swell considerably during 2012, precisely because of the internet. It became an issue of note with the releases of the Next Generation and Enterprise Blu-ray home video formats. But the situation truly came to a head during the "Star Trek Into Darkness Blu-ray VAM controversy", which, officially at least, marked the first time that the franchise actually buckled under fan/customer pressure, rectifying their "wrongdoings" by releasing the 2014 Star Trek: The Compendium Blu-ray set, and offering a for US residents only (a discrimination – not the first time – which, somewhat incomprehensibly, implies that the franchise still considers foreign markets as sideshows), who had previously purchased Star Trek or Into Darkness on Blu-ray.