The Future of Home Entertainment and Films
Netflix is a great service. I think that the days of strolling to the DVD store to pick out a few of your favourites are ending rapidly. Why should you pay full price for a DVD when you could stream loads every month for the same price? The same kind of service is taking place with our games consoles. Less than two weeks ago Games On Demand was released for the XBOX 360.
This allows you to download games paying a reduced price for them. I downloaded Battlefield 1943 and Assassin’s Creed – it’s just like having the game on a disc without the trip to the store. It saves the distributors money, it saves the producers money and more importantly it saves you money. But this rapid change in the way we get our movies will have big repercussions.
Firstly, there will be job losses. All those staff at the DVD store will be given their notice. What’s the point in keeping on staff when there isn’t enough business to pay them? The only solution for the big entertainment stores is to head online and try to create a Games on Demand or Netflix alternative.
Secondly, the whole hobby of collecting special edition DVDs and first editions will die. Because we can simply press ‘Download’, movies are starting to loose their individuality and allure that they’ve had for generations. The only thing, I believe, that will stop cult films and massive hits from loosing their spark will be the cinema.
Thirdly, you can say good bye to physical media. Games consoles are now being sold with hundreds of GM of memory. Soon, all media players (the equivalent of today’s BlueRay players) will just be giant memory card sitting underneath your TV.
But it may not all be bad news for the businesses, collectors and DVD player makers out there. When VCRs came out everyone assumed that the cinema would be finished in ten years. Yet here we are. I also think this will be good for piracy. Yes there will be more films online but once they are protected properly, sharing should diminish. After all, the main reason why people watch illegal copies of films online is because they don’t want the trouble of buying a DVD. If they offer videos of a very high quality at a small price, video viewing that’s all above board will come back.
The future looks bright for home entertainment indeed.
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