Moving pictures ... Watching a movie on a handheld device. Photograph: Donna McWilliam
Is it the end of cinema as we know it? Today's Times seems to think so, getting very worked up about the advent of legal internet movie downloads.
The move, involving all the major Hollywood studios - bar Disney - will make downloads of new titles like King Kong and Brokeback Mountain available on the same day as their DVD release. This, the story suggests, "could make a trip to the video shop or even the cinema a thing of the past".
I'm sure this particular journalist's excitement has nothing to do with the fact 20th Century Fox, one of the studios behind the new retailing venture (not yet available in the UK), is part of the Murdoch empire, along with the Times. But it does seem to be taking things a little far.
In the first place, the films available to download will retail for the same price as the DVD, despite lacking any of the extras packaged with the disc. They will also be impossible to watch on a DVD player, making it difficult for the technically illiterate majority of us to watch them on TV.
The move does of course continue the trend towards home entertainment, but this is hardly a new phenomenon - much of Hollywood's income now comes from steadily rising video and DVD sales. It does show that Tinseltown is on the defensive about internet downloads. But many would argue that, rife though these are they are, hardly threatening the studios' ability to turn a profit, since DVD sales continue to show steady growth.
Given that part of the motivation behind this move seems to be to make films available for portable devices like video iPods, one could argue that it's another step on the path away from mass entertainment and towards ever more personalised pleasures. Here again, though, it's a social trend already well under way.
The age of mass entertainment does seem to be over: but Hollywood has long recognised this, selling its products through an ever widening array of different media and market segments. And if the big screen is on the way to becoming a niche market, it's a significant one which continues to generate millions of dollars in profits. In other words, it's unlikely to disappear any time soon.
