Entertainment: Is the world ready for video downloads?

I read an article on Slashdot today talking about how Sony is looking to create a robust business model for legal movie downloads. They talk about charging $8 to legally download your favorite movies, as many people currently do with services like iTunes. I guess they figure now that Apple has put out a device that plays movies, the world will now want video downloads so they'd better jump on the bandwagon.

But do consumers really want to download movies? In my opinion, neither the infrastructure (i.e. gadgetry in my living room) nor the demand for such downloads are there. Let's break it down in a real-world example. Let's say Sony comes out with an extension to their mediocre Connect music store, much as Apple has done with iTunes (iTunes doesn't sell movies yet as far as I know). I come home from work and ask my wife what's on TV tonight - she says nothing's on. Ok, let's download a movie. I now need to boot up my laptop or go upstairs to my desktop PC in the office, log on, purchase the movie, and wait for it to download. I'm guessing the download would take at least 15 minutes if my bandwidth is good, but I think it's safe to say that it would probably be more like half an hour or more. Once it's done, I now need to either hook up the video and audio out of my laptop to the home theater, or buy one of the many digital streaming devices on the market today and hook it up. After all this, the picture and sound quality aren't nearly as good as watching a DVD and I've wasted a good 45 minutes of my life waiting for this massive download and stringing together various digital devices.

Now let's check out the alternatives. During the time it took to download my movie, I could have driven around the block to the store and rented a DVD that I know will play and give me a beautiful picture and 5.1 digital surround sound. Or I could have just ordered the DVD from Netflix and skipped the video store altogether.

Then there's my cable provider's on-demand system. For roughly the same price as the DVD rental, I can pick my movie and start playing it within seconds. Granted, the on-demand libraries of most cable providers are a bit more limited than the video store, but this is improving quickly. The number of available titles today is vastly greater than last year when I first signed up.

But what about the iPod phenomenon? Just about every electronics company from Apple to Samsung sells a portable media player that can play video (I see them every day on Gizmodo). So why aren't sales of these devices booming like the iPod?

iPods and other audio players sell so well because they let you take your whole music collection just about anywhere. But do you want to take your video collection everywhere? Running? Nope - you'd run into a tree. Work? Nope - you'd get fired. Car? Three words: Jaws of Life. The only time I could justify the need for portable video is when I have to sit and wait somewhere for hours at a time, like the DMV or on a long flight. Thankfully I don't need to do either of these often, so why would I spend $300 on a portable media player and then shell out 8 bucks a pop for downloaded content? I'd much sooner get a $150 portable DVD player and get instant gratification when I pop in a disc - no waiting for downloads, no waiting to sync to my device. I have to remind myself of this every time I pass all the shiny new media players at the store (that no one else is buying).

As it stands today, I don't think the world is ready for downloaded video content. A recent article on Gizmodo highlights the tendency of gadget users to discard any new technology that isn't intuitive from the get-go. I have a feeling that with the current hardware and software offerings available to consumers today, downloaded video will suffer the same fate as video and picture messaging - cool, but ultimately useless.