The world is constantly changing – as is the way in which we go about everyday life, buy our products and consume entertainment. The last ten years have seen a massive shift in how we watch movies, something we’ve studied hard here on the website since we’ve been going.
While the days of going to the cinema are still very much alive with recent shifts in technology – 3D, 4D and the IMAX formats – luring us to the local multiplexes, how we go about watching and buying films and TV content for the home experience is very different today than at the start of the century. Many people have home cinemas in their houses and of course we have the arrival of the online streamers – led by Netflix and Amazon – who are creating their own content, some of it multi-million dollar productions exclusively released on these channels.
We’re living in a digital world, and consumers are responding to added security online to support purchases. Online payments are more secure, ledger wallet coupon sites guide people to encryption devices to maximise security to bitcoins etc, and of course the likes of Paypal and water-tight online banking systems mean we’re heading online more to bag the latest copy of a film or TV series, often at the push of a button.
The DVD, Blu-ray and digital markets are every present, and with incentives using discount coupons and vouchers to save money on purchases online an extra incentive, the cost of entertainment keeps on coming down. The cinema to DVD/ Blu-ray/ digital download window is not down to between three and four months with the retail and rental markets now fully aligned. Gone are the days of waiting for a film to move from the rental shops to the retail stores.
The media giants are also looking to new ways of minimising the release window, and five out of the six big Hollywood studios are already reportedly buying into a home theatre rental system where users will be able to log on to iTunes via their computers or indeed the streaming system that is Apple TV, to rent movies that are still playing in cinemas. This is in its infancy, but early reports suggest that the cost will be considerably higher for these kind of rentals – potentially $50-$70 per movie – but when you consider the cost of a family movie ticket, this may seem attractive and indeed more accessible to the consumer – especially if discount coupons are dangled by the distributors to gain interest in the new product.
Either way, our way of consuming will continue to change, and you can’t help but to keep being excited by what might be just around the corner.
