Sonic launches DVD on Demand

EVER WONDERED why there's so little choice in your local Blockbuster? Box office economics, my friend. Only the studios with the biggest muscles, and the lowest morals, can afford to make a blockbuster.

If you want to be entertained, you have to accept a world view that's palatable to Chuck and Nancy Lardbutt, of Chickenshit Ohio, because middle America is the mass market that all the major Hollywood studios aims to please. If Eddie and Sindy Sixpack think something's wrong with the move at the test screening - maybe the Arab terrorist's British accent isn't convincing enough - the studio executives will demand changes.

The good news. This is a model of perfectionism we could all aspire to. The bad news. The world's being (un)educated by people who've never owned a passport. People whose whole worldview comes from web sites. US ones mind you. They get to lecture us about the new world order.

All that could change, as a new DVD on Demand technology is launched that promises to change the economics of the entertainment industry. Although I bet it doesn't.

California based Sonic Solutions, a digital media software house, and Movielink (a video on demand service) have released the technology that will enable distributors, retailers and consumers to download movies onto recordable disks. Movielink licensed Sonic's DVD-on-Demand technology to permit home users to securely download, format and burn movies to recordable DVD media. Meanwhile Sonic will include the Movielink Service within its Roxio CinePlayer and other Sonic software applications distributed through OEM and retail channels.

But why, to paraphrase a movie executive, would Mom and Pop from Dullsville Alabama give two hoots?

It's going to open up choice, said Mark Ely, executive VP of strategy at Sonic. You no longer have to gamble on stocking DVDs. You can just print them off when needed. "Everyone in the movie industry has to be conservative because of the logistics," he explained. Technology like this should help distributors and retailers to become more fluid.

"Retailers can't afford to fill their premises with movies that aren't going to shift. The retail economics of the entertainment industry are that most DVDs on the shelf are new movies that are guaranteed box office [because so much marketing is behind them] and the majority of revenue is made in the first 45 days of a film's shelf life," he said.

Retailers have to survive by dictating to customers what they can buy. But there is massive demand for older films. Thirty per cent of customers leave a retail store, says Ely, because the film they wanted wasn't available.

Now retailers can download a movie and burn a DVD to order. You want Il Postino? Give us five minutes, and we can find it for you. Sonic's DVD on Demand is a regular Tardis, according to Ely. That grey box sitting on the counter is actually a warehouse big enough to contain gazillions of films.

But how is this going to liberalise the film industry? How will it give us more variety?

"It'll do for move distribution what Amazon has done for books," said Ely. "It removes the barriers needed to make a profit. You get a better selection of available titles." Hmmm. µ