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Panelists: Downloads 10 to 20 years from mainstream

JUNE 14 | SANTA MONICA, Calif.—Executives from leading movie download companies said their business is 10 years or more away from becoming a mainstream consumer offering, with an unlimited range of movies that can be viewed easily on the TV.

Speaking at a Digital Hollywood panel Wednesday, executives from Amazon.com Unbox, CinemaNow, BitTorrent and other companies said that everything from lack of content, restrictive release windows, interoperability problems and technological hurdles are holding the business back from taking off in the immediate future.

Amazon director of digital media Roy Price was the most optimistic, predicting that it will be eight to 10 years before movies are widely available by download and easy to view. But he thinks mainstream consumers will start downloading in the next two to four years.

Execs from Movielink and CinemaNow, both doing downloads for the longest time, predicted the business is 10 to 20 years from really taking off. CinemaNow CEO Curt Marvis was the most cautious in his estimate, predicting it could be 20 years. However, he said he thinks when it does, it will be bigger than the home video industry and all other channels.

Execs from BitTorrent, Hewlett-Packard and Akimbo put takeoff around 10 years or less.

Amazon’s Price said the biggest hurdle is consumer homes, which don’t have the infrastructure to easily download movies and transfer them to TVs and other devices.

Interoperability wanted

Allowing users to play digital downloads on a number of devices from different manufacturers also is important. Currently, iPods play downloads only from iTunes, while downloads with Windows Media DRM offered on Amazon, CinemaNow, Movielink and other services only play on portable devices that support Windows DRM.

“If all devices played well together, that would be the ideal world for us,” Amazon’s Price said.

Consumers also are limited in where they watch those downloads; right now, they’re mostly chained to the PC. Movielink chief marketing officer Mary Coller Albert said consumers want more control and convenience in when and where they watch movies and TV shows.

Execs said they believed Apple would begin offering download rentals, though they don’t think studios will agree to the low price at which Apple reportedly plans to offer the rentals. Earlier in the week, a couple newspapers quoted sources saying that Apple is in negotiations with studios to begin offering rentals this fall priced at $2.99 each, nearly half the price of most other rental downloads.

CinemaNow’s Marvis said rental has been an important business to be in. After the online retailer began selling download-to-own copies of movies last year, it moved away from pushing rental but soon switched back. Marvis told VB earlier in the week that CinemaNow sells four times as many rentals as permanent downloads on its site, though revenue is about equal.

Content is key

A lack of content is another issue that download services face. Execs said consumers have come to think they should be able to find anything they want on the Internet and don’t understand when movies aren’t available.

Niche content is doing well on the sites, though Albert said it’s the big new releases that first draw in consumers.

At Akimbo, which doesn’t sell new movies, niche content not available anywhere else tends to be the most sought out, co-founder and VP of marketing Jim Funk said.

Movielink has done well on older TV shows, such as I Spy and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

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