Film distribution trends...?

My own current examples? Some are via ON DEMAND; some are rented DVDs (Redbox or the Cinephile DVD store in west Los Angeles); a few hard-to-find rarities were DVDs purchased online or via ads found in genre magazines (i.e., Rue Morgue, Fangoria); and a certain amount I saw at friends courtesy of torrent download, if you get my drift. As the quality of major Hollywood movies gets worse - formulaic, badly written, with recycled plots - many people I know feel more & more that they are being overcharged at the boxoffice for junk & would rather "catch it" online than overpaying for it & have a bad experience (which is now becoming the norm). But believe me, if the word of mouth - or twitter - on a film is good, they RUSH out to see it in a theater.

The future? Here's what I know (I'm fascinated by this subject, let me tell you. And I also used to work in the film industry): You'll be seeing most movies streaming to your TV, same as you get ON DEMAND from Time Warner Cable. There's a wild competition to stream movies now, between Netflix and its competitors (Netflix had over 10,000 titles available to stream, last time I checked, months ago). Problem currently is, studios force Netflix to hold back streaming the brand new titles - in deference to the cable companies & DVD sales. But the time-window is shrinking every few months as the studios play nastier hardball with the exhibitors & cable. People like Robert Iger are nobody's friend... except the almighty dollar.

The DVD is rolling downhill now & gathering speed. Expect Redbox to begin to disappear in a few years also as streaming services reach greater numbers. Once all the cable companies link your TV to the web, Redbox will be a dinosaur like Blockbuster & Hollywood Video.

Right now, the big rush is to build a streaming feed of movies (from a company like Netflix or Amazon) straight into your TV - via the cablebox or DVD player (in fact, you can buy DVD players with Netflix hookups for $60 and up these days). The industry knows we'd rather see movies on our 50-inch screen than a 21-inch LCD, while splayed out across the couch stuffing ourselves with popcorn & pizza. Problem is all that data POURING over the Internet; research is going on to facilitate & speedup the downloads so streaming is sharp & uninterrupted. And the cable companies have been experimenting with new boxes for years now - a lot of R&D going on in this area.

Yeah, everything's gonna be for a fee, just like the airlines. Get ready & get out your wallet.

Eventually, we can expect most new films to debut almost simutaneously at theaters, Netflix-like companies, and TV cable ON DEMAND (the competition will be cut-throat). It will be kind of like the independent film scene today - a number of brand new, independent movies already debut on ON DEMAND cable the same day they open in theaters. And the once great DVD? Just stream the movie to your TV, record it on your TiVo, and then burn your own DVD. We'll all be making our own collections, in superb digital format; as good as anything we could have bought at the store.

No one likes to do homework on here.