The winner in this whole business will be the first company that comes up with an affordable method of providing the customer instant access to view and archive any movie at any time and at the highest quality video and audio.
It will be achieved through a system that combines improved storage capacity, better compression technology and unlimited archival ability.
Of course it all hinges on who can come up with a system first and at the same time strike the right deal with the movie industry itself.
The 45 day "window" referred to is nothing new. Producers started these deals many years ago to get "up front" production money in exchange for "first view" rights after a "window" of time for theater runs. Actually there are multiple windows: Theater run to video release; video release to PPV; PPV to premium movie channels, which is where it pretty much digresses to a "go to the highest bidder" system.
I believe once the industry sees an affordable, "at home VOD system" become a reality and senses the general public preferring it to video store rentals, they'll jump on it quick.
When you think about it, right off the bat this marketing system all but eliminates the the cost of media and distribution, which leaves a lot of room to give Hollywood their piece of the pie.
Last but not least, it takes piracy out of the loop or at least makes it a non-issue as far as they're concerned. They could actually not even bother with copy protection since pirates would really no longer have a market.
