Will DVDs be the death of cinema?

Visit any cinema complex on almost any evening of the week, and you'll see great movies playing to mostly empty seats. DVD stores (they still call them video stores), have no doubt seen good growth, as consumers opt to stay at home and experience a quality movie evening on their own ‘Home theatre system', at a fraction of the cost of going out.

Take a family of four to the movies, include popcorn, drinks and sweets at Ster-Kinekor or Nu Metro's wonderfully inflated prices, add parking, and you're probably hitting close to the R300 mark. That's 12 – 15 new DVD releases each month depending on which DVD store you rent from, or the cost DSTV Compact with change for a new DVD release a week! Cinemas could certainly go the way of the drive-in if they fail to innovate and become more flexible.

However the curtain is not likely to go down on cinema complexes just yet. Relatively low pay-TV penetration (just over 1 million subscribers), together with a very low broadband penetration and extremely slow downloads of movie content, is providing cinemas with a bit of breathing space. However entertainment options have grown exponentially in the last decade, with cinemas no longer being bullet proof. Admittedly it just takes one or two great blockbusters in any given year to drive record attendances, the worrying trend must however be all that empty ‘real estate' just going to waste.

The future looks great for DVD outlets assuming that they can tap into emerging technology. And that does not mean waiting for a decent high speed broadband platform or the necessity to connect to the internet in order to download to watch.

Imagine a scenario where you take your iPod or any other storage device to the local DVD store, plug it in to a dedicated machine, and download as many movies as you want. Plug in your storage device at home into a dedicated set top box, which validates the digital copyright, checks that you have money in your account and decodes the content. No more waiting for the availability of that new release that your DVD outlet only received two copies of! Customers only pay the 24-hour rental fee once they start watching. Subsequent views outside the original time limit may incur new or discounted fees. The service guarantees profits for DVD store owners by giving them a cut of movie rental fees. And consumers will love it as they can watch what they want, when they want, with less frequent visits to the DVD outlet, thus saving on time. No more scratched DVD's, no late return fees, no rushing back to the store to return the DVD on time, no more lack of copies.

If this all sounds a little too far into the future for you think again. It's already becoming reality in Australia, with trials underway by Video Ezy, the franchised chain of DVD stores.

I wonder if any of our local chains are following this trial with interest and looking at introducing a similar concept. We are living in a world of increasing choices, where people want the convenience of watching what they want to in their own time, instead of having to fit in with the cinemas, dealing with their schedules. And if a monthly visit to a DVD store for your favourite downloads contributes conveniently to helping manage a hectic lifestyle, way to go!