The Tricky Future of Digital Home Entertainment
March 21, 2002 -- Hollywood has seen the future of entertainment. And it's the decidedly tricky realm of digital media.
Players for CDs and DVDs could be just the tip of the digital home entertainment iceberg. Digital technology — from computer hard drives to the Internet to advanced broadcast and movie systems — will bring much more advanced entertainment options in the not too distant future.
"What we're going to have is a massive explosion of new entertainment [choices] for the home," says Victor Harwood, founder and director of Digital Hollywood, an annual trade conference that gathers artists and executives in the media and technology industries.
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Digital television systems will offer programs that are sharper and clearer than current broadcast systems. The Internet — or some other high-speed communications network — will allow studios to send or "stream" hundreds of digital movies directly to digital theaters and homes. New "set-top boxes" and "digital hubs" in homes will automatically seek out programs and content that matches consumers' interest.
Yet digital technology is also raising thorny issues among Hollywood, technology companies, and consumers.
Chief concern among entertainment companies and consumers, for example, is the balance of copyright and so-called "fair-use." To prevent their digital programs from being perfectly copied and distributed by pirates, Hollywood studios want digital protection schemes in place. But technology companies say such measures would make it more difficult for legitimate consumers to enjoy the benefits of the technology.
While both sides work to figure out solutions to such issues, the march towards digital diversions continues.
Faster, Cheaper and More Flicks?
Since most major motion pictures are edited using computer-based digital editing systems, studios and film-makers can save time by shooting directly onto digital video. Some directors are experimenting with shooting movies directly using digital video rather than traditional film stock. The next installment in George Lucas' Star Wars saga, for example, was shot in a digital format.
Ultimately, digital production may also save costs on distributing films to theaters. Instead of producing and shipping thousands of reels of films to theaters, studios could transfer the motion picture like any other computer file. Such film-less movies would save studios an estimated $600,000 in marketing costs for each major motion picture.
"People will be able to create professional-level movies for an incredibly reasonable cost. You will see an explosion in the film-making process," Harwood predicts.
Still, it will be a while before the entire Hollywood industry will completely abandon celluloid film. For one, the digital projection technology that would be needed by movie theaters is still quite expensive. Cinemas chains would need to spend about $150,000 to $250,000 to upgrade each theater's projection equipment to handle the digital files instead of film. So far, such costs have kept the number of "digital cinemas" to about 80 worldwide.
Consumers already have access to digital cable and satellite systems that offer hundreds and hundreds of channels. Another potential boon — and bane — for digital entertainment is the seemingly limitless Internet. Already the distribution hub for millions of Web pages of digital data, industry execs believe that the interconnected network of computers could be a viable conduit of new digital media diversions.
The top five movie studios in the United States — Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal and Warner Brothers — are developing a Web site that would distribute digital movies online. Since digital movie files are fairly large, only those with the fastest Internet connections would be able to retrieve the movies from the site.
The Real Clone Wars
And then there's the concern about piracy.
Much as the music industry learned over the last few years, the technology used to create digital media can be used to illegally copy and "steal" the content. The record industry claims that millions of dollars were lost from pirates who "ripped" digital music from CDs using MP3 software technology and then share them others online through Web sites such as Napster.
"Once content is available in downloaded and compressed form, it's easier to share — and harder to control," says Sean Wargo, senior industry analyst for the Consumer Electronics Association.
Entertainment industry executives believe that technologies exist that could easily be implemented to protect their hard-developed content. So-called "watermarking" techniques, for example, would embed codes into the digital programs that would allow only legitimate users to access the programs on their digital receivers.
But consumer advocates question just what kind of "access" such technologies will allow.
"Would you be able to take a copy [of a digital program] and loan it to a friend who missed [recording] it?" asks Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "There is a real danger that consumers will lose a lot of capabilities they are use to [now] and are fairly legitimate."
Until the entertainment industry and the technology industry can work out how to safeguard digital content, it's unlikely that studios will actively pursue distributing movies on the Net soon.
Click here to see some of the historical highlights of entertainment innovation.