Hollywood will make a transcendent leap onto the internet on Tuesday when the Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain becomes the first blockbuster available for permanent download on the same day its DVDs hit the shelves.
Two competing download services announced on Monday they will offer downloads of such hit films as last year’s Oscar-nominated King Kong and Memoirs of a Geisha just as they become available in video stores, allowing users to watch them any time they wish.
Top studios Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Warner Brothers and Twentieth Century Fox began selling permanent copies of more than 200 movies on Movielink, their jointly owned internet video-on-demand company.
Major titles that will soon enjoy same-day DVD and online release include Peter Jackson’s epic King Kong, George Clooney’s political drama, Oscar-nominated Good Night, and Good Luck, the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Simultaneously, Movielink’s main competitor, CinemaNow, began allowing downloads of films from independent Lions Gate Entertainment and Sony.
CinemaNow will sell digital download versions of more than 85 films from Lions Gate, the independent studio behind Crash, which won this years best picture Oscar.
Movielink customers can create their own permanent digital film library of films, which can be viewed on up to three computers, in addition to downloading rented films for 24 hours, said Jim Ramo Movielink’s chief executive.
“The studios are embracing the internet as a viable distribution platform for their movies, and providing this service will also help to convert internet pirates into legitimate customers,” he said.
The “big five” studios launched Movielink in 2002, hoping to beat online movie pirates at their own game as file-swapping technology became increasingly used to illegally trade film files.
Hollywood says that movie piracy costs it up to $3,5-billion a year, threatening to sink the industry as the pace of new technology outstrips Tinseltown’s ability to guard against intellectual copyright theft.
But industry expert Jay Cooper said the availability of same-day DVDs and video downloads was less of an antidote to piracy than it was a new revenue stream for Hollywood studios which are facing a slump in cinema ticket sales.
“I think it’s a major advance in digital movie distribution,” said Cooper, who heads the US West Coast entertainment department of leading law firm Greenberg Traurig.
“Box office has been down, DVD sales have been down and the major studios are exploiting the feasibility of a new income sources,” he said.
Cooper noted that trips to the cinema were becoming increasingly expensive for large families while home theatre systems were becoming cheaper and more sophisticated.
Movielink has divided its website into two “stores,” one dedicated to movie rentals and the other now allowing movie purchases for unlimited viewing for around $20.
The movies can be permanently stored on the hard drive of a computer to create a permanent archive or burned to a disc in Windows Media format for backup or playback on up to two additional tethered computers.
The movies can also be downloaded to a notebook computer for travelling and users can stream their copy of the movie to a television set connected to a media centre extender or an Xbox.
“I don’t know that the studios will see major income from this at first, as it takes about 90 minutes to download and it’s unclear whether people currently have the ability to do that, but it’s a good beginning,” Cooper said.
“Video-on-demand and downloadable films is a very big part of our future and even if it doesn’t immediately yield big revenue, it’s here to stay,” he added. – AFP