Don't Back Down

With the holiday season in full swing, it is probably a fair assumption that many of you are going to be purchasing - or receiving - a movie in the coming weeks. If not, then there is a good chance that you will go out and see one this weekend or the weekend after that. Movie distribution is a monster - I have no doubt that illegal music distribution is probably more widespread, but that's only because it's typically faster to download a file that is a couple megabytes in size than it is to get one that is a few hundred megabytes (or a couple of gigabytes). With broadband continuing its slow march, that is only going to continue to change.

Of course, I understand that burning a music CD is easy because you can then take it anywhere - it's not quite the same with movies. Part of the fun is going to a theater and watching it on the big screen. But with home theater systems becoming more and more common, and most computers these days having their own DVD burners, another domino falls - illegal movie distribution is only going to become more of an issue. When you consider that even a matinee is much more expensive than it was, it won't be long before movies are as popular to download as music, if not more.

In fact, not long ago, I wrote about a particular torrent that just wouldn't go away. Even now I still see this distribution pop up. It's certainly possible that this is a valid rip of the movie, or it's possible a fake that someone is trying to get people to download in order to catch those who are downloading. Without doing so - and getting caught - it's unlikely that we'll ever know for sure.

But what I find really interesting is that the quality of torrent are actually getting better, and they are coming out in advance of the real movies. It's typical that a couple days before a movie hits, a cam version will show up online. But it is usually very poor quality and you have very low audio, as well as the bonus feature of watching various people getting up to go to the bathroom and to get popcorn. It's really not worth it.

A short while later, just before the DVD comes out, you will often see DVD Screener releases, and the quality on these is usually pretty good - though it may not actually be the same as what will be released, and you get the occasional message from the studio saying that it's the property of Muckety-Muck Enterprises, and not to copy it or you could be in big trouble. That obviously works.

In recent weeks, however, there have been some new development.

One example is American Pie Presents Beta House. This straight-to-video release didn't come out until a couple of days ago, but at least a week before it was available there were multiple copies circulating on various torrent sites, and all of them seem to be of quite good quality - the video and audio at any rate (your opinion of the movie may vary). Since this was a straight-to-video release, chances are someone just got a copy of the DVD before it hit the shelves, so it's not a big surprise.

Another example is Resident Evil: Extincition, the third movie in the series, which came out in late September. The DVD isn't even scheduled for release until January. But a DVD-quality version torrent made it online last week - a month before release! Not a screener with messages or anything, but a full-blown DVD-quality version of the movie. The only thing that's not DVD-quality is a couple of heavily-accented voices just before and just after the movie reading the credits. It's a little strange, actually, but the movie itself is totally watchable.

Now I'm not condoning that you get your movies this way - but for a large part of our world, downloading media content online is perfectly acceptable. If they can get their movies weeks or months before it becomes available, and if they can then consume it in their own home before it ever gets out and not have to lose any quality in the process, the movie industry is in for one hack of a rough ride!