Cinema: what a big passion!

Once stricly linked to the physical theatre, today movies are distributed through dozens of media and devices, allowing many different use cases. Everything started in the 80s with a successful company named Blockbuster: couch, pop-corns and VHS cassettes have been the ingredients of a great concept.

Then DVDs, promptly decrypted by the norvegian student Jon Johansen, have represented the first sparkle of a massive revolution: digital support, unlimited copies with no quality loss…

Today broadcasters and ISPs deliver digital content onto our televisions in real time, new formats like mpeg4 and DivX have disclosed commercial opportunities and also set up a fertile ground for piracy, video content can be easily watched through the Internet Protocol with many different devices… while high definition and home-theatre systems turn our living rooms into an amazing environment.

At least the Hollywood Studios, perhaps adviced by the discographic disastrous experience, have exploited rather than fought this revolution. So Steve Jobs’ latest announcement is what we’ve been waiting for: besides songs, iTunes is going to sell thousands of movies. What’s next?