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create a new internet entertainment company called POP.com. To be launched sometime this spring, POP.com was created to produce and broadcast original, internet-only programming. But will you be lured? Are Spielberg and pals getting the right stuff? Rick Broadhead has written 27 books on the internet with Jim Carroll, the latest of which is called Light bulbs to Yottabits: How To Profit by Understanding the Internet of the Future. Broadhead has no doubt that eventually there will be successful movies on the web, but there are some roadblocks. The problem isn’t jerkiness; there has been huge progress made in the last six months in delivering video that doesn’t look like the early talkies. (Check out the shows on Real.com if you don’t believe me.) Broadhead says the problem is bandwidth. “Put simply, there is too much information that has to be shoved through a very tiny pipe that feeds the internet to your computer. The longer the program the more likely it’s going to crash. So imagine trying to watch a movie and you have to stop and reboot every every 10 minutes. It would drive you crazy.” Plus, the more popular the site, the slower the access. Just look at what happened in March when Stephen King decided to launch his post-accident novella online. “The system was totally unprepared for the demand,” Broadhead says, “and that was just a book...just text. There are way more problems when you’re trying to deliver video.” But make no mistake, there are people who are putting full length feature films on the net. "People are downloading Hollywood
blockbusters that According to high–tech journalist and author Marc Saltzman, if you are really savvy with the web you can steal almost any film that is currently playing in theatres. “Understand, this is going to cause a huge problem for the film companies,” says Saltzman, “because in the same way that people are downloading music to MP3 players, people are downloading Hollywood blockbusters that are on the web the same day they open in theatres. Then they are either watching the films directly on computer, connecting an output cable from the back of a video card to a TV or they’re burning them on to CDs so they can watch them on a laptop when they’re travelling.” It will only take about an hour to download, but the quality really varies. “Some are terrible,” says Saltzman. “They have obviously been shot by somebody sitting in a theatre with a video camera and you have people’s heads popping up in the scene, but there are others that have been ripped from DVDs and the quality is excellent.” And no one is arguing about demand. Stephen King sold 400,000 copies of his online novella in 24 hours. “For entertainment on the net to really succeed, what’s offered has to be different from what’s available elsewhere,” says Broadhead. “I can see the day when you might go to the theatre to see a movie but to get the ending you have to go to a web site. They’re already doing that with NIKE commercials.” If you hate that idea, try this one. POP.com is promising that its content will be “immediate, raw and interactive: a mix of live action and animation, video on demand and live web events.” And best of all, it’s free and legal. Jane Hawtin is a Toronto-based television and radio host. |