Exploring the power and capabilities of video, this text describes how viewers have found a new cultural relationship through electronic recording. The study considers the roles of distributors, censors, technicians, reviewers and exhibitors as well as viewers.

Timeshift explores the powers and capabilities of video and the cultures it thrives in. Adding a new dimension to film, television and computer media, video has the potential to become a uniquely democratic medium. Sean Cubitt shows that viewers have found a new cultural relation through electronic recording, whether in video rentals, off-air recordings, music video, community, campaign or artists' video. Focusing on the aesthetics of video, Timeshift tests current semiotic, postmodernist and psychoanalytic approaches in the laboratory of real-life video viewing. It goes beyond the traditional emphasis on the producer and the text to consider the roles of distributors, reviewers, exhibitors, traders, censors, technicians, engineers and, crucially, viewers. It looks at the whole range of video use, challenging the marginalisation of video in media studies and questioning orthodox theoretical assumptions.