As long as it's $20 or under for new releases, I'm fine with it.

Indeed as long as it's cheap I'm okay with it. But the thing is it has to be as cheap as renting or it will go bust. What's the point of downloading a movie for 20 bucks when you can save time and just buy it for the same amount or rent it and copy it?

This movie download idea is not late, its right on time. At least for the US market. Without a broadband connection you wouldnt even think of downloading a movie. Last year less than 40% of internet users had broadband but this year if you notice the price of broadband is dropping to the same level as dial-up and the majority of internet users will have a broadband connection. I hear in asia they already have this kind of thing because everyone there has broadband connections.

I think it's still a little early for movie downloads, broadband speeds aren't quite there (in the West at least, Asia's very ready with 100MB links). I agree the price needs to be right, but as the studios are saving on distribution and printing costs, that shouldn't be a problem.

Personally, I like the physical model at the moment and, like CD singles lead the way in downloads, I'm not sure how the market for full-length features will develop. And, lest we forget, what are the odds not everyone will get access to the film at the same time?

This is really exciting. Not necessarily for the big capitalists....but for the ultra low budget filmmakers that have content but no distribution. I worked on programming watching low budget feature after feature for the SF Intl Film Festival, and I can assure you, there is TONS of good content out there nobody has ever scene. This will be a great distribution avenue, and an opportunity for the little guy to earn back his/her investment.

www.cine101.blogspot.com

first of all, legal downloads are no where near as high as illegal, the firm that conducted that study admitted so in a followup. has this been publicised? i doubt it. no excuse was given for the gross oversight. also legal downloads is an insanely small revenue stream compared to normal sales (<1%). based on this, the amounts that have been quoted to have been lost by piracy are way way off. but noone would admit that, now would they?

as for this legal download movie movement, i just commented on the clickplay.inc story. the same problem with song downloads will take place here. lack of openness, competing formats, and much higher than necessary prices. why/ becausenoonewill stiop the content providers from dictating the agreement. who can? and they just want to protect their revenue source.

add to this the fact that brodband is necessary for this to succeed, and here in the uk at least, there has been a trend back to capacity based pricing which this obviously can't work with.
Plus the fact that prices will have to be cheaper than rental, which again, won't happen due to the protectionist culture. how do you beat £10 per month for unlimited rentals from amazon and co (assuming a subscription based model is on the cards with non paying equaling termination and the movies won't play anymore)
if a per movie system is preferrer, the movies will undoubtably be bare(noextras)and be around the £5 mark at least, since i can buy actual brand new dvds from overseas retailers for £8+,and sale ones here for £5 or so, this wouldn't appeal to me.

the only way i see this working, is to play on the immediacy factor. proprietary wideband reciever (combat piracy) to plugin the tv, and movies will download overnight or stream immediately. any errors, and get your money back. then also give the option for buying the dvd at a discount. charge a monthly rental figure, and you've got a winner.
in fact i could see sky doing something with this by involving sky+ (tivo like dvr), in fact hasn't tivo teamed up with netflix to do something similar? steal my idea, i want a cut!

not directly related, but gives you insight into the protectionism of the industry:
did you know the recording industy (divisions of) are suing themselves, for setting higher royalties on digital downlods than hard media, even though the mechanical cost of duplication upon which it is based, is less/nonexistant. it is also said thst this latest debacle is revenge on suing napster and co out of existance, who were willing to co-operate and start a industy sanctioned product. instead came pressplay and musicnet. does anyone remember what happened to them?

I don't really think you will stop the illegal downloading of movies or music. It's hard to convince the American people they are doing something wrong when an actor can get paid 20 million for a movie. Enforcement will always be a joke. There are just too many "criminals" and not enough police.

The "elephant in the room" when it comes to movie downloads over the Internet is that people do not want to watch movies on their PC; they want to watch them on the big screen TVs in their living room. I found one company with a neat solution for this: The EZTakes DVD Download Store ay www.eztakes.com. They let you download free and cheap movies legally from their site. Their EZTakes DVD Download Manager has built-in DVD burning capability.