Future of Movies at Home

I’ve been thinking about this for a little while. I like movies. I signed up for Netflix really early. Like, 2000 early. It was a great way to get movies, and I’m sort of a geek, so it was a cool way to demonstrate that to my wife. I quit after a couple of years because of lots of scratched discs and, the last straw, a disc completely broken in half (The Corruptor with Mark Wahlberg and Chow Yun Fat. I’ve still not seen it…).

So, I quit. But I couldn’t stay away. After a few years of rental stores, I came back last year and I love it again.

I admire Netflix. It’s a mix of antiquated technology (USPS), current technology (DVD) and the future of technology (Internet). Brilliant. But I’ve always thought their days were numbered. There’s been a way to download movies illegally just about as long as you could download music from the awesome and original Napster. But bandwidth, memory capacity and lack of video quality did not lead to as quick adoption of movie downloads as music.

Well, the bandwidth problem is going away. Something like 42% of the country is on broadband. Computer hard drives regularly have upwards of 60 to 80 gigabytes and more. External hard drives are being used by less-than-geeky people. And blank DVD-Rs and CD-Rs are selling in insane numbers. The only issue still outstanding is quality. Simply, because the better quality you want, the more bandwidth and memory you need. And with people accustomed to DVD quality and 42 Plasma HDTVs the general assumption is that people will only aspire to get better quality and bigger TVs.

Well how about this?

Consumers have been known to sacrifice quality for the sake of ease and convenience. Think back to the most referred to event in the history of consumer electronics - betamax vs VHS. It is generally acknowledged that BetaMax was the better technology, yet VHS won by having more partners and better distribution.

The concept of movie downloads, too, has more partners and better distribution.

And besides that: It’s Already Happening. Look at DirectTV, Dish Network, Vongo … These are video on demand sources that let you view a movie as many times as you want in a 24-hour period. The only thing that will hold up the concept of movie downloads is giving consumers the option to keep the downloaded movie file. I believe most people only buy DVDs for the repetition. So their kid can watch The Incredibles two times a day, everyday, for three months. But notice I said “hold up the concept” back there. That’s because it’s going to happen. Even if the movie companies get dragged along by the arm… by iTunes… or some college drop-out programmer in Albuquerque…

Band aids like TiVo, is going to be up to you. It’s going to do the same thing: pull files on demand from a source on the other end of your coax cable, phone line or satellite dish. And if that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s what happens now, every time you log onto the internet.

NOTE: So I’ve finally realized the real industry drawback to movie downloads. There is a reticence on the movie studio and distributors part because they are running out of things to sell. TV shows to package, movie sets to compile. Movie downloads give consumers too much freedom. But, man, consumers are going to drag movie companies along, just as they did to the RIAA.

NOTE 2: It may be slow, but it's coming...
Netflix says mulling options for downloading
Apple's iTunes Movie Store Hurdles - 2007?