Paradigm Shift Imminent?

[Mallette]

Discuss:

A paradigm shift is imminent in the electronic entertainment business that will end linear TV and cable programming and eventually result in a drastic reduction in the number of public motion picture houses. Those remaining will be art, nostalgia, and massively expensive immersion experiences where cutting edge technology will attract early adopters and thrill seekers...and stoned people...willing to shell out top dollar.

Movies will thrive, but in something of a return of the old studio system, they'll be on the MGM Channel, the United Artists Channel, the Disney Channel, etc, etc where movies are debuted at a ticket cost lower than going to the theater, but with a higher profit margin for the studio for (by business standards, if not by consumer standards) a win-win situation. Dramatic, SciFi, fantasy, comedy, and similar TV series from today will evolve exclusively from "movie" franchises, as the studios will spin off films that do very well or go into multiple sequels as shorter series...though we'll see better quality writing as on the hour or half hour enforced program length will be eliminated and every episode will have a different length dictated by the story rather than a shedule.

Pricing will be set by the consumer, though, as usual, we'll probably pay more than we want to or should.

Of course, most of the above will be available at drastically reduced rates or free if you are willing to put up with commercials that you can not skip.

Dave

[Wrinkles]

Does not bode well for those (like me) who live out in the country and receive TV or movies over the free air antenna. And already get more stupid commercials than we can stand.

[Mallette]

Does not bode well for those (like me) who live out in the country and receive TV or movies over the free air antenna. And already get more stupid commercials than we can stand.

Au contraire...TV access is a RIGHT and your government will come to the rescue with an REA type program the city slickers will pay for.

Dave

[DrWho]

Ya, over the air TV isn't going anywhere....the recent FCC ruling mandating digital transmission is just an attempt to improve the density of the frequency spectrum (more channels on air). Frequency spectrum is incredibly valuable and the people that currently get to use it aren't going to give it up without a fight. It's looking like Wi-Max is going to fall by the wayside now because the current stakeholders were able to prevent their spectrum from being removed - Shure was a big part of that actually.

Anyways, what makes you think movies are going to go straight to TV? Are you thinking something like Netflix where you just choose what you watch and stream it over the Internet?

[oldtimer]

I only hope the writing gets better.

[Islander]

I only hope the writing gets better.

Good luck with that. Adding lots of channels is just like the hockey expansion teams. They added a lot more players, but the talent pool didn't get any bigger, so the average level of play and entertainment went down.

There will still be good shows to watch, plus a lot more filler than we already have. How many pawnshop and cake shows do we need?

[oldtimer]

For me personally, none.

[Mallette]

Anyways, what makes you think movies are going to go straight to TV?

At my peak, I went to the movies perhaps once a month as a teenager. Over the decades since I've gone less and less to the point that I go every few years to something very, very special. Last one was "The Polar Express" in 3D Imax. Loved it, and would go more often to things done that well. OTOH, my family of 4 ran up around a hundred bucks even carrying most of our snacks. For the average film, I am perfectly happy seeing it a few months after release for cheap or free on my plasma screen which has every bit the dynamic range of a theatre projector (probably more than some of the increasingly common digital projectors) and even better sound than I can get there.

So, let's go even further back. By the '30s most people were going to the movies at least once a week, more for many. Even the poorest did. It was their television. They watched the Newsreel, Buck Rogers, a cartoon, and a B movie for the modern equivalent of a buck.

Television ended that. However, until the last decade neither the sound nor the imagery of TV was even remotely as compelling as a theater. By the end of this decade at the current rate of increase in screen size and decrease in cost, even the poor will have sets capable of images both in relative size and quality comparable to a theater.

There is not only no threat to Hollywood here, but an enormous opportunity to re-establish itself as the hub of American entertainment, even down to the auld studio system as I described in the original post. The "B movies" will be back with a vengence as you cannot feed the American appetite for entertainment with a "Gone With the Wind" or "Avatar" every day. Even when I was in college the local theater changed movies 3 times per week. You have to turn out a LOT of stuff these days to feed the market and that will not change.

What has changed and will also grow exponentially is bandwidth. My phone, video, and internet all come in on the same wire already. That wire is woefully inadequate and everybody knows it, but it is still a marvelous thing completely unanticipated even a couple of decades ago. I recall being THRILLED with my first 1200 baud modem that replaced my 300 baud acoustic...which I had considered a miracle when I first got it. Now I have 20mbps. That is simply unbelievable! My wildest predictions rarely include anything so extreme as such a change in such a few years, so let's just say we are likely to have a LOT more bandwidth in the usable future.

But wait...I am already getting streaming, on demand video and the ability to choose from many thousands of topics...and this has only been around for a few years. I am going to stick my neck out and suggest it's probably going to get a lot better and really fast.

Finally, consider that some theaters are already direct streaming digital content from distributors. People are basically paying to watch cable TV in a big room with no beer and high priced snacks. I predict that won't last.

Are you thinking something like Netflix where you just choose what you watch and stream it over the Internet?

I don't mean to sound like a wiseass, Mike...but I already have Netflix and just choose what I want to watch and stream it over the internet. While even the prognostications of far smarter folks than I are, at best, through a smoky glass darkly, I feel reasonably confident that a sensible business model for the Hollywood establishment is direct distribution to the customer with no middleman. Further, somebody has to keep the days betwen the release of the big flix filled with something other that "America's Got Talent" and with the demise of non on-demand TV they will expand to take up the slack. Not all of it...I think that, like the self publishing bands and such that replaced the big music publishers once we had adequate bandwidth for music downloads there will be a lot of mom and pop video production springing up. It's happening already on You Tube.

Just some idle musings...

Dave

[Mallette]

Adding lots of channels is just like the hockey expansion teams.

Good news, Islander. "Channels" are going away as well. Already a dead issue at my house. There is ALWAYS something on demand. Watched a couple of "Flash Gordon" episodes this evening from 1938. Not sure what "channel" that might be found on, but it was right there when I had a sudden interest.

Dave

[Islander]

Just don't forget what the Internet is really for:

[Islander]

Hmm, no reply? So, what is everyone doing? Unable to type one-handed?

[WMcD]

It seems to me that movie theaters will have a long life.

This is because they serve in several social functions.

1) Guys and gals need a place to go on a date.

2) Families with kids need a place to go to get out of the house and experience a new movie together.

3) Even single adults need to get out of the house even if the HT is superior to the movie theater.

There is also something about seeing a film in a theater. Comedy shown at home doesn't seem quite as funny. Horror doesn't seem quite as frightening. But put a bunch of people in a theater, the mutual response of the crowd feeds on itself. No amount of high tech at home can replace those. And people are willing to pay for the experience -- if not the popcorn.

WMcD

[Islander]

There is also something about seeing a film in a theater. Comedy shown at home doesn't seem quite as funny. Horror doesn't seem quite as frightening. But put a bunch of people in a theater, the mutual response of the crowd feeds on itself. No amount of high tech at home can replace those. And people are willing to pay for the experience -- if not the popcorn.

So true!

[Mallette]

There is also something about seeing a film in a theater.

Gil, your whole post is true and nicely nostalgic, but doesn't change the winds of technological change and business models. When you say "...something about seeing a film in a theater..." what comes to my mind isn't the little 10 in a mall, slightly larger than many home theater installations, featureless, faceless "theaters" of today with their 1000% markup snacks, but the Paramount, Strand, and Ritz of my youth with their mezzanine lounge areas, gilding, grand staircases, and uniformed ushers with flashlights to see you to your seat.

I did not say they'd dissappear...but that since the days when the movives were the primary and dominant means of entertainment for the family in the late '30s on we've seen a rapidly speeding up change that is approaching being recognizable a s a paradigm shift. First paradigm shift was from the multiple trips weekly to the theater at prices comparable to basic cable today for a family of the 40's to perhaps 90% fewer visits to a much more expensive movie house of the late 50's that had been supplanted by the Network System.

1900-1949: The Studio System

1949-2000: The Network System

Current to ?: I'm not going to play Marshall McLuhan or whatever and try to name it. However, it's characterized by the lack of a "system" and based upon a general purpose "machine," the WWW, rather than a specific tecnhology, like the projector or radio waves.

BTW, I just read that Netflix is commisioning its first original material, something with Kevin Spacey.

Revisit this thread in a decade or so...

Dave

[cornfedksboy]

I just thought that I would add a little something about the Movie Theater experience in good 'ol Wichita, Kansas. In the early 90's, Wichita entrepreneur Bill Warren built his acclaimed Warren Theater on the west side of town. It was built with nostalgia in mind, and featured neon lighting and marquees with a traditional art-deco exterior. The interior continued this motiff with marble floors and columns, tuxedo clad ticket-attendendants wearing white gloves, and it even has a 1940's style malt shop where you can order a very good diner-style meal. The extraordinarily large theaters (seating 1000s in some auditoriums) house chairs that are high backed rocker recliners with plenty of butt room for 300 pound movie-goers and enough leg room for 6-5 patrons to stretch all the way out. They never sell to more than 90% capacity in order to have plenty of available seats for large groups. Since then they've added an I-Max theater which, at the time of construction, was the largest in the world.

In the late 90's a similar Warren Theater was built on the East side of Wichita which held the same features but offered stadium seating. A third theater was built about 10 years ago in the downtown bar district, but while on a much smaller scale, the Old Town Theater contains a sports-bar area with 19" flat panels at each table and a 40' jumbo-tron. While viewing feature films in the theaters, the same luxurious seating is available, but with a "call-button." Press the button and a waiter/waitress will come to your seat and you can order beer and mozarella sticks during the film. Upstairs balcony areas are set-up like MLB's owner's suites to be rented out for parties.

Bill Warren recently expanded his Mid-West empire to Oklahoma, though I haven't seen that theater. There are plenty of ways for Theaters to stay operational, not that these theaters will change the way Hollywood produces features. I just thought I would add this tid-bit as many are unaware of the experience that can be had in fly-over country.

Here's a link: http://www.warrentheatres.com/index.asp

[Mallette]

In the early 90's, Wichita entrepreneur Bill Warren built his acclaimed Warren Theater on the west side of town. It was built with nostalgia in mind, and featured neon lighting and marquees with a traditional art-deco exterior. The interior continued this motiff with marble floors and columns, tuxedo clad ticket-attendendants wearing white gloves, and it even has a 1940's style malt shop where you can order a very good diner-style meal.

It's GOOD to be king! Great story. What I find interesting is that Baron Buffet has captured the whole history of the theater in those three statements. Very cool.

I haven't mentioned known future. OLEDs will be the cheapest video technology ever by a very significant margin in the next decade sometime. I am pretty sure that decade will close where a few hundred dollars buys you enough OLED material to cover the entire wall of your choice. I'm no engineer by any stretch, but if it turns out the material is all pretty much the same, we'll see video "separates" where you replace the driver unit with the latest model as you wish.

Dave

[DrWho]

I haven't mentioned known future. OLEDs will be the cheapest video technology ever by a very significant margin in the next decade sometime. I am pretty sure that decade will close where a few hundred dollars buys you enough OLED material to cover the entire wall of your choice. I'm no engineer by any stretch, but if it turns out the material is all pretty much the same, we'll see video "separates" where you replace the driver unit with the latest model as you wish.

I wouldn't hold my breath on the OLEDs...

• Current costs: OLED manufacture currently requires process steps that make it extremely expensive. Specifically, it requires the use of Low-Temperature Polysilicon backplanes; LTPS backplanes in turn require laser annealing from an amorphous silicon start, so this part of the manufacturing process for AMOLEDs starts with the process costs of standard LCD, and then adds an expensive, time-consuming process that cannot currently be used on large-area glass substrates.

• Lifespan: The biggest technical problem for OLEDs was the limited lifetime of the organic materials.^[56] In particular, blue OLEDs historically have had a lifetime of around 14,000 hours to half original brightness (five years at 8 hours a day) when used for flat-panel displays. This is lower than the typical lifetime of LCD, LED or PDP technology—each currently rated for about 25,000 – 40,000 hours to half brightness, depending on manufacturer and model.^[57][58] However, some manufacturers' displays aim to increase the lifespan of OLED displays, pushing their expected life past that of LCD displays by improving light outcoupling, thus achieving the same brightness at a lower drive current.^[59][60] In 2007, experimental OLEDs were created which can sustain 400 cd/m² of luminance for over 198,000 hours for green OLEDs and 62,000 hours for blue OLEDs.^[61]

• Color balance issues: Additionally, as the OLED material used to produce blue light degrades significantly more rapidly than the materials that produce other colors, blue light output will decrease relative to the other colors of light. This differential color output change will change the color balance of the display and is much more noticeable than a decrease in overall luminance.^[62] This can be partially avoided by adjusting colour balance but this may require advanced control circuits and interaction with the user, which is unacceptable for some users. In order to delay the problem, manufacturers bias the colour balance towards blue so that the display initially has an artificially blue tint, leading to complaints of artificial-looking, over-saturated colors. More commonly, though, manufacturers optimize the size of the R, G and B subpixels to reduce the current density through the subpixel in order to equalize lifetime at full luminance. For example, a blue subpixel may be 100% larger than the green subpixel. The red subpixel may be 10% smaller than the green.

• Efficiency of blue OLEDs: Improvements to the efficiency and lifetime of blue OLEDs is vital to the success of OLEDs as replacements for LCD technology. Considerable research has been invested in developing blue OLEDs with high external quantum efficiency as well as a deeper blue color.^[63][64] External quantum efficiency values of 20% and 19% have been reported for red (625 nm) and green (530 nm) diodes, respectively.^[65][66] However, blue diodes (430 nm) have only been able to achieve maximum external quantum efficiencies in the range between 4% to 6%.^[67]

• Water damage: Water can damage the organic materials of the displays. Therefore, improved sealing processes are important for practical manufacturing. Water damage may especially limit the longevity of more flexible displays.^[68]

• Outdoor performance: As an emissive display technology, OLEDs rely completely upon converting electricity to light, unlike most LCDs which are to some extent reflective; e-ink leads the way in efficiency with ~ 33% ambient light reflectivity, enabling the display to be used without any internal light source. The metallic cathode in an OLED acts as a mirror, with reflectance approaching 80%, leading to poor readability in bright ambient light such as outdoors. However, with the proper application of a circular polarizer and anti-reflective coatings, the diffuse reflectance can be reduced to less than 0.1%. With 10,000 fc incident illumination (typical test condition for simulating outdoor illumination), that yields an approximate photopic contrast of 5:1.

• Power consumption: While an OLED will consume around 40% of the power of an LCD displaying an image which is primarily black, for the majority of images it will consume 60–80% of the power of an LCD – however it can use over three times as much power to display an image with a white background^[69] such as a document or website. This can lead to reduced real-world battery life in mobile devices.

• Screen burn-in: Unlike displays with a common light source, the brightness of each OLED pixel fades depending on the content displayed. The varied lifespan of the organic dyes can cause a discrepancy between red, green, and blue intensity. This leads to image persistence, also known as burn-in.^[70]

• UV sensitivity: OLED displays can be damaged by prolonged exposure to UV light. The most pronounced example of this can be seen with a near UV laser (such as a Bluray pointer) and can damage the display almost instantly with more than 20 mW leading to dim or dead spots where the beam is focused. This is usually avoided by installing a UV blocking filter over the panel and this can easily be seen as a clear plastic layer on the glass. Removal of this filter can lead to severe damage and an unusable display after only a few months of room light exposure.

A lot of this is due to the inherant nature of "organic" substances.

It's definitely an interesting topology and one that I hope they can solve most of the engineering problems.

[skonopa]

Hmm, no reply? So, what is everyone doing? Unable to type one-handed?

Probably because we've already seen that or some varient of it a million times before?

Granted, it was funny the first couple of times, but it got old real quick.

I think that one comment puts it aptly:

"Ok for? real people: HOW MANY VERSION VIDEOS OF THIS FREAKING SONG IS THERE?!?"

[skonopa]

I just thought that I would add a little something about the Movie Theater experience in good 'ol Wichita, Kansas. In the early 90's, Wichita entrepreneur Bill Warren built his acclaimed Warren Theater on the west side of town. It was built with nostalgia in mind, and featured neon lighting and marquees with a traditional art-deco exterior. The interior continued this motiff with marble floors and columns, tuxedo clad ticket-attendendants wearing white gloves, and it even has a 1940's style malt shop where you can order a very good diner-style meal. The extraordinarily large theaters (seating 1000s in some auditoriums) house chairs that are high backed rocker recliners with plenty of butt room for 300 pound movie-goers and enough leg room for 6-5 patrons to stretch all the way out. They never sell to more than 90% capacity in order to have plenty of available seats for large groups. Since then they've added an I-Max theater which, at the time of construction, was the largest in the world.

Oh tell me about it! Along the same lines, you should see this Muvico/Splitsville theater that was just put out across the street from my place just this Spring! Really nice seating througout, complete with marble floors and art-deco styling. In addition, in the upstairs "VIP" area (which is for 21 and up only), you can order beer and some really good food at your seat. I was actually surprised and impressed with how good the food was, and it was actually pretty reasonably priced. It was not really any more expensive than getting the same type of thing at any of the other upscale restaurants/lounges here in town.

There are actually TWO theaters right here in my neighborhood. The second one is the older Fredericksburg 15 that was here for quite awhile. However, they recently pretty much renovated the place throughout and it really is quite nice (even complete with Klipsch audio!) Heck, it is even right next to my office building! I even have to cut through the parking lot of it while riding my bike to work! There were a few times I was tempted to sneak out during lunch to see a mantinee and grab lunch itself right there at the theater.

I can certainly see on-demand TV becoming more common, though. Look at the success of Netflix, Apple iTunes, Hulu and the like. In addition, I actually have access to quite a library of on-demand right there on my DirecTV service (that I ought to take more advantage of). Of course, the DVR itself is really nice, as I can just go and set it to record what I am interested in and then watch it at my own convenience later on (not to mention getting to skip the commercials).

Still, as was also already alluded to, I still think there will still be movie theaters of some form around. People will still want to experience the whole movie-going thing for the reasons already well stated above in earlier posts in this thread. In order to get people to come and make it the special event that it is, we will probably see more of the nice high-end features like the lounges/sport bars or the bowling alleys and such. Also, just hope that the movies themselves will be better quality. Granted, some of the recent flicks have actually been pretty good (although I am wondering if Hollywood is getting stuck in this whole comic book/superheros thing as of late, though, although I heard that Captain America flick was pretty good).

[cornfedksboy]

Hollywood is DEFINATELY stuck in the comic book genre right not. In the last ten years, they've just begun to be able to reproduce visual effects that are complimentary to that style, plus they are already written in story-board format. The most recent Batman films have had the added benefit of fantastic charachter development, and that combination is quite engulfing. "Inception" was a fantastic original story pulled off correctly, and "Machete" was entertaining for it's slightly satirical throw-back stylization. Otherwise, the great action films are already pre-written and the only limitations are the actors and budget.