The Future of Movies at Home

I believe I have seen the future of movies at home and thy name is Netflix streaming.

I have an Xbox 360 at home hooked up to my big television in the family room of the apartment. I also have a Netflix subscription which Amy and I share. A wonderful feature that Netflix offers for free to subscribers, who happen to have an Xbox 360 with an Xbox Live Gold Account, is you can receive free streaming of a pretty good selection of movies.

As long as you have a high speed internet connection you can watch movies for free in quite good resolution right on your TV at no extra cost. Now the picture is not quite as good as regular cable/satellite or DVD but it is pretty darn close. Now I know companies like AT&T and cable companies have been offering on-demand movies for quite a while, but the way Netflix in my opinion has a much better user interface, and a larger selection of movies. What makes me curious is what dictates which movies get to be streamed and which ones don't? Not all of the biggest movies make it to streaming but some do. But a lot of classic old movies do get out there, which is great.

In particular Amy and I were looking for a move to watch Halloween night. We figured a good Hitchcock thriller would nice. I was going to get one from Netflix, only I come to find out that a good majority of the Hitchcock movies are already available for streaming. So we will have quite a nice selection available come Saturday night.

I guess it all comes down to the fact that digital distribution/streaming is the future of the way we will watch movies at home. I would assume that by 2020, DVD/Blu-Ray may have already become a thing of the past. And everything will be either downloaded or streamed direct to us. The key obstacle will be portability. I have paid for this movie once to download and watch it at home. But now I want to take it with me on a trip, with a DVD that is easy, just take the disc. But with digital content it is not so easy. Supposedly Disney is trying to address this with a system of licenses, but I will believe it when I see it. Till then I have to choose between Marnie, The Trouble with Harry and Frenzy.