Jim Lynch: Off the Top of My Head…

The WSJ has an article up about how Hollywood will be changing the way we watch movies.

Get ready for a lot more ways to catch a movie.

Hollywood studios and tech companies are rolling out a host of innovations that will change the way we experience films at home and in theaters. They’ve already begun to serve up DVDs that let you chat with other people who are watching the same movie. They’re also sprucing up theaters with crystal-clear screens and amenities like cozier seats and restaurant-quality food.
The Journal Report

Coming soon: kiosks that can burn a copy of a movie while you wait, from a library of thousands of titles. The industry is also working on ways to easily send movies from gadget to gadget — so you might download a movie on your iPhone and stream it onto your TV.

Down the road, expect new ways to easily store digital movies online, so you can access them from any computer, anytime. We might also get theaters filled with dozens of speakers for super-sharp sound, as well as much more lifelike animated characters.

As far as BD Live goes and the idea of chatting or watching text chat while watching a movie…ugh…forget it.

With some of Walt Disney Co.’s discs, for instance, friends across the country can use BD Live to chat with each other on the TV screen while they’re watching the movie. The text goes in a box over a portion of the screen.

Of course, for all this to work, you need a Blu-ray player that can hook up to the Internet — a stumbling block for many viewers. What’s more, the technology is still young, and many features are clunky and slow. So, BD Live hasn’t taken off with all the movies Disney has rolled out so far, such as “Sleeping Beauty.”

I don’t regard it as fun or interesting. Perhaps after the movie but who wants to see a bunch of idiotic text chat scrolling by on the screen when you are trying to watch a movie? It’s the text equivalent of listening to idiots blather on in the theater when they are supposed to be being quiet.

I watch movies to relax and be entertained. If I want to text somebody I’ll do it before or after the movie but certainly not while the movie is playing. Perhaps this is a generational thing but I don’t see how the Gen Y type text addicts can enjoy the story in a film while simultaneously having a text conversation. Seems like there would be too much dialogue and action missed.

As far as portable movies go, I already have that on my iPhone. I can rent whatever I want and take it with me wherever I go. It will be nice if there are lots of devices that can do that but I suspect that it will take time as most other cell phones stink when it comes to displaying video compared to the iPhone.

Glitzier theaters are a good idea. I know that these days I am unwilling to pay high ticket prices to go to the kind of multiplex that I went to back in the 1980s when I was growing up. I expect a higher quality of service and more comfortable chairs to sit in. There’s a local place called Chunky’s that offers that kind of thing and I much prefer that then going to a crappy theater with no quality food, bad seating, etc.

Let’s not kid ourselves though. If the movie sucks then I’m not going to pay to see it no matter how good the food is or how comfortable the chairs are. So movie makers better come up with quality product if they want people to go to the theater given all of costs involved (gas, ticket prices, etc.).

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...