Editing It's a Wonderful Life (section)

===VHS===
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, when the film was still thought to be public domain, ''It's a Wonderful Life'' was released on VHS by a variety of home video companies. Among the companies that released the film on home video before Republic Pictures stepped in were Meda Video (which would later become [[Media Home Entertainment]]), [[Kartes Video Communications]] (under its Video Film Classics label), [[GoodTimes Home Video]], and Video Treasures (now [[Anchor Bay Entertainment]]). After Republic reclaimed the rights to the film, all unofficial VHS copies of the film still in the hands of video distributors were supposed to have been destroyed.<ref name="TCM"/>

[[Artisan Entertainment]] (under license from Republic) took over home video rights in the mid-1990s. Artisan was later sold to [[Lions Gate Entertainment]], which continued to hold US home video rights until late 2005, when they reverted to Paramount, which also owns video rights throughout Region 4 ([[Latin America]] and [[Australia]]) and in [[France]]. Video rights in the rest of the world are held by different companies; for example, the [[UK]] rights were once with [[Universal Pictures|Universal Studios]], but have since reverted to Paramount.

====Technological first: CD-ROM====
In 1993, due in part to the confusion of the ownership and copyright issues, [[Kinesoft]] Development, with the support of Republic Pictures, released ''It's a Wonderful Life'' as one of the first commercial feature-length films on [[CD-ROM]] for the Windows PC ([[Windows 3.1]]). Antedating commercial DVDs by several years, it included such features as the ability to follow along with the complete shooting script as the film was playing.<ref>Burr, Ty (December 10, 1993). [https://web.archive.org/web/20090425210741/http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,308919,00.html "ABC'S OF CD: Delivering the Future"]. ''[[Entertainment Weekly]]'' Retrieved December 8, 2024.</ref><ref name="cgw199403">{{cite magazine |date=March 1994 |title=Taking A Peek |url=http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index.php?year=1994&pub=2&id=116 |magazine=Computer Gaming World |pages=174–180}}</ref>{{#tag:ref|Voyager Company's ''Hard Day's Night'', released in May 1993, slightly predated the Kinesoft product. It was originally advertised as an audio CD.|group=N}}

Given the state of video playback on the PC at the time of its release, ''It's a Wonderful Life'' for Windows represented another milestone, as the longest-running video on a computer. Prior to its release, Windows could play back only about 32,000 frames of video, or about 35 minutes at 15 frames per second.{{Citation needed|date=December 2020}} Working with Microsoft, Kinesoft was able to enhance the video features of Windows to allow for the complete playback of the entire film—all of this on a PC with a [[Intel 80486|486SX]] processor and 8&nbsp;MB of RAM.<!-- reason=Thankfully it didn't require non-extant Windows 3.1 on an SGI Onyx2 InfiniteReality cluster and was fine running on standard desktop PC hardware of the time --><ref>Edwards, James. [http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,42076/ "Peter Sills: Developer BIO"]. ''mobygames.com''. 2009. Retrieved May 29, 2009.{{Self-published source|date=December 2020}}</ref>

''[[Computer Gaming World]]'' said in April 1994, "The picture quality still has a way to go before it reaches television standards", but was "a noble effort" that would "please fans of the film".<ref name="cgw199404">{{cite magazine |date=April 1994 |title=Invasion Of The Data Stashers |url=http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index.php?year=1994&pub=2&id=117 |magazine=Computer Gaming World |pages=20–42}}</ref>