Surviving Past The New Year

I think it is the beginning of a trend. I remember last year when there were huge rumors that Matrix Revolutions, even after making $150 million at the box office, was thisclose to being released on DVD within 2 months of its theatrical release.

Or, this may be part of a larger trend of waxing nontraditional first-release distribution methods for films in general. DVD sales currently outpace box office receipts in most cases. Furthermore, as Internet speeds in the US slowly catch up with the speeds of other nations*, the Internet will become an increasingly popular medium of film distribution.

Personally, I welcome both changes. For one, I prefer to have control over what I watch, I like to watch it in the convenience of my own home, and I like to watch it in DVD quality - so I don't attend a cinema that often.

And, if more films are to be released firstly and economically** via the Internet, well, it doesn't get any more convenient than that - especially for the hundreds of indie and foreign films that I want to see each year but that aren't playing in a theater within 200 miles of my home.

* Koreans, for example, are 98% broadband users - compared to 35% in the US, I think - and their broadband is 15x faster than America's fastest broadband connections. It's a similar story across most of Europe.

** You'd think that since a third of all Internet traffic is BitTorrent traffic, online video downloading services would figure out how to utilize the technology to massively save on online distribution methods and thus increase the quality of the files they distribute and charge reasonable fees.