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Internet_Distribution_The_Future_of_Entertainment
| Internet Distribution: The Future of Entertainment.
A friend and I were having a discussion recently. I asked him
what he thought the next method of distribution for films and
music would be. My thoughts were that we would have to come up
with some new method that was convenient, sturdy and didn't
involve compression (as CDs and DVDs do, thereby limiting the
picture and sound quality, although not very much). He simply
said that it wasn't going to happen; in the future it's all
going to be distributed on the Internet.
I've heard this argument before. My grade ten IT teacher assured
us that within five years (and this was four years ago) we would
no longer be purchasing CDs. With the advent of broadband we
were going to see purchases of music and movies online, streamed
to the computer or another device. I've always thought this was
relatively unlikely. I may be in the minority, but I really like
the CD and DVD cases. There's something a bit more tangible to
them, more of a feeling of value for money. Plus they look kind
of good lined up on a shelf like some new-age library.
Having thought about it for a while now I have no doubt that the
Internet is set to become a major distributor of media. When you
think about it, it makes sense. Low to no production and
distribution costs; you just provide a download location when
people send you money. Cutting out the 'middle man' has always
been an effective way to save money, and in this case you're
cutting out the shop owners, couriers and manufacturers. This
should lead to substantial drops in prices (and loss of jobs...
but... I have no defence for that. You're just going to have to
find yourselves a new career. Sorry. On the positive side your
entertainment costs will go down, so you won't need the job
quite as much...).
Purchasing movies or CDs can be quite expensive. When you're a
bit unsure about whether or not you really want a particular
title, the full price is often more than you're willing to pay.
This leads to trawling the second hand shops looking for a
cheaper copy or simply pirating the product. Digital
distribution opens up whole new areas for the marketers.
Different quality streams could be provided at increasing
prices. If you're just interested to see what a film's like then
pay a little and get a low quality version. If the distributor
were to offer an upgrade option that takes into account the
amount of money already spent on a film, it could become a very
attractive offer. This could also reduce the amount of piracy
around. Finding and downloading movies is time consuming and
irritating. It often takes around twenty hours to download a
film, due to varying connection speeds and quality. If the
movies were easy to access, cheap to purchase and the servers
fast enough for the user to get the movie in around the time it
would have taken to go and hire a film, then many of the reasons
for pirating would be lost. In terms of hiring films, providing
temporary access to online streams of movies for very low cost
would work nicely.
Global distribution becomes a lot easier this way. As a big fan
of foreign films, I often have to hope that the movies I want to
see pop up on EBay, or wait for one of my infrequent trips to a
larger city than I live in to visit their markets and/or
Chinatown in order to purchase movies. I'd love the option of
buying the movies with greater ease online.
There are already a few sites out there offering the purchase of
movie downloads, although I'm not sure how the legality and
licensing of these ventures works. The content available from
the sites is often quite limited (and we're talking really quite
limited here, the most recent flick I found on one site was from
1980), but the right idea is there. Music is also being sold
online through such places as the Apple Music Store and the MSN
Music Store. These offer songs for download at about $0.99 a
song, which is cheap, easy, quick, legal and more likely to get
your money to the artists as opposed to the big corporations
manufacturing CDs.
So, I've come around to the idea of online distribution and its
beneficial application to movies, music, software and even
books. I still like my colourful boxes and cases but there are
some movies that I own simply because I wanted to see them. The
local video rental shop didn't have a copy, so resorting to
buying them is an expensive way to see what a film is like. I
guess my hopes for a completely uncompressed format are all but
lost (not that it really matters any more with the ever
increasing quality of technology). If the distributors will just
get onto this idea as soon as possible they can solve many of
their problems and ours within a very short period of time.
About the author:
Daniel Punch M6.Net Web Helpers http://www.m6.net
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