The Model Ship Blog

Does Online Movie Downloads Mean The End Of The Video Store?

Posted by Dereck Bowden

When a London company announced several years ago that it was offering the first legal service to Watch Ramona And Beezus Movie Free Online, video store owners around the world began worrying about their future.

Downloading services today are marketing to the very kind of person who used to drive to Blockbuster or Movie Gallery twice a week. After all, DVD and VHS renting is a massive market. Here’s a prediction: major film studio will eventually have their own online downloading services. Dumping movies into your home computers is going to be massive.

Legal movie downloading companies say they are aiming for the very customer who frequents the corner video store. Indeed, VHS and DVD rental is a massive market worldwide. Movie marketers today schedule not only the first-run release of each new movie these days, but also when it will be released in second-run theaters, then how and when it will hit foreign cinemas, then when the film will become available on DVD and when it will go to HBO, Starz, Showtime and other cable outlets. Now stir in one more possibility — home download release. What once was illegal has become a viable marketplace.

Yes, when downloading movies first began, doing so was illegal. The U.S. Movie industry lost an estimated $2.3 billion annually in revenue to internet pirates just a few years ago. Hollywood’s total annual income that year was estimated to be just under $45 billion. So, it should be obvious why Hollywood is harnessing its own download possibilities.

However, uploading the film and downloading it onto home computers are crimes. Hollywood lost an estimated $2.3 billion to internet piracy just a few years ago. Another $3.8 billion was lost to bootlegged DVDs and other “hard goods” piracy that same year. Hollywood’s total annual income that year was estimated to be just under $45 billion. So, with $6.2 million slipping through their fingers it should not be surprising that the movie industry is battling piracy with increasing vigor. Some would say China is the capital of movie piracy. Indeed, within hours of a film being released nationwide in the U. S., illegal DVD copies are available on the street in Shanghai and Beijing. About 90 percent of DVDs sold in China are bootlegged. However, Hollywood reports that it even loses even more money because of internet piracy in North America and Europe.

Such pirates fill a gap overseas where legitimate markets are heavily restricted. So the pirates may actually be pointing the way to new markets that the internet can open. Once upon a time, the big movie studios opposed the release of their movies on TV. They also fought the development of cable movie channels such as HBO. Then they resisted VHS and DVD marketing. Hollywood feared that TV, cable and home video would destroy movie theaters.

In fact, the downloadable movie market is booming. Studios will be smart to study today’s ever-changing technologies — and every move of internet pirates.

Some of the planet’s biggest DVD counterfeiters are in China — whose bootlegged discs have been identified in more than 25 nations worldwide. You can expect these same pirates to exploit the internet. But Hollywood would be smart to study their successes and figure out how customers wanting to Download Ramona And Beezus Movie for Free can make moviemakers a lot of money.

Movies are one of the best forms of entertainment we have, and as long as Hollywood keeps making new ones, we will keep looking for full movie downloads.

Tags: downloads, Entertainment, films, hollywood, Movies