“The mood has shifted from, ‘Oh, my God, our business models are broken and we’re going to be cannibalized’ to something resembling euphoria,” said Peter Guber, a former chairman of Columbia Pictures who is now chief executive of the Mandalay Entertainment Group, which has interests in movies, TV and sports. “Studios see a robust, accelerating online market.”

Serious Web-based buyers for movies and television shows are popping up all over. Netflix, the DVD-by-mail and streaming service, was already aggressively pursuing Hollywood content and making sizable payments for it. This month, in a clear challenge to Netflix, Verizon and Redbox said they would team up on a service to stream studio films on the Internet. Days later, Amazon completed a deal to buy episodes of Viacom-owned programs, including “Jersey Shore” and “SpongeBob SquarePants,” as it prepares to introduce a stand-alone streaming service that also will compete with Netflix.

Hollywood also anticipates that YouTube and Google will soon expand their movie and television service beyond rentals to include sales. Steadily ramping up their offerings are Walmart’s Vudu, Best Buy’s CinemaNow, Apple’s iTunes and Hulu. And that is just in North America. The competition for online movie and television rights is also heating up in places like Brazil, where NetMovies Entertainment has a deal to stream material owned by the Walt Disney Company.

The money is not yet big enough to make up for lost DVD revenue, but it is substantial. Barton Crocket, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets, estimates that Netflix spent $937 million for streaming rights in 2011 and will pay $1.8 billion in 2012, as deals activate for CW shows like “90210” and DreamWorks Animation movies and TV shows.

On Tuesday, Netflix struck a deal for certain films from the Weinstein Company, including “The Artist,” the best picture front-runner at the Oscars. The CW deal, signed last year and estimated to be worth $1 billion in and of itself, runs four years. DreamWorks is getting an estimated $30 million a movie over an unspecified number of years. Last month, Disney agreed to provide streaming content to Comcast as part of a 10-year deal that will bring billions of dollars in revenue to Disney.