When a group of friends decide to do a movie marathon at home, apart from microwave popcorn and a customary fight over the comfy corner of the couch, it usually involves one of the following: a pirated dvd or a thumb drive with illegally downloaded movies from the Internet.
This casual violation of law, which even hardcore Anna Hazare supporters would gloss over, has for years been the worst enemy of studio executives everywhere. The efforts to fight this with law enforcement always ended badly for them. Technology trumped legislation each time as young consumers came up with new ways to jail break digital locks, region codes and other restrictions and altogether trump the studio suits.
While this tussle is not ending soon, a new trend that is catching on might evolve into a win-win game for both sides-full-length online movies that are both free and legal. You can now legally watch recent hits such as Aamir Khan-starrer 3 Idiots, Yashraj Films' Band Baaja Baaraat and Rock On on a number of video sites that are serving ads to subsidise the cost of these films.
YouTube's BoxOffice, which has already amassed 7.4 million views, is one such service. On BoxOffice, you can instantly stream full-length movies (some even in high definition) -all you need is a broadband connection and a PC. "With BoxOffice, we promise to feature one blockbuster movie every month to users in India for free. With over 1,500 movies in our catalogue, it is one of the most comprehensive & legitimate movie libraries on the web for movie content," said Gautam Anand, director, content strategy, YouTube Asia Pacific. The service is ad-supported. The content providers can also choose how they want to distribute their content, which markets they want to block, where they want to use movie rentals and where they want to use the adsupported model.
Yahoo's Movieplex is another new ad-supported service and they're starting out small with just eight Bollywood movies. Arun Tadanki, managing director of Yahoo India, says his company has tied up with movie production houses to bring thousands of movies online to users, and they will be uploading new titles in a phased manner.
Although the service is ad supported, the movie experience is not interrupted with pop-up ads or ad breaks. "Yahoo does not support pop up ads anywhere. The advertisement can only be played as a pre-roll before the movie," Tadanki said. This might fast evolve into an additional revenue stream for film producers, however small the opportunity might now be. "It's an evolving revenue stream from a non-paid environment and currently it works based on a sharing of the ad revenue," said Amit Khanna, chairman of Reliance Entertainment Ltd, which produced 3 Idiots with Vidhu Vinod Chopra.
Khanna was speaking about the industry in general and not specifically about 3 Idiots."Right now, the revenue share is in favour of producers as the services are investing to promote themselves, but that will change as this platform becomes more popular," he said, adding that depending on the evolution of technology and broadband penetration, this might evolve into a new revenue stream for producers. Broadband penetration in India is growing fast and content makers are enthused by the adoption of Internet on mobile devices.
The free full-length movies are also debuting in proprietory content environments build by companies that make mobile devices such as phones and tablets. If you own a Samsung smartphone or tablet, for instance, you can watch free movies through the My Movies app. Available exclusively through the Samsung Apps application store, the service offers over 400 full-length movies in various languages, music videos and the latest movie trailers. The movies can either be streamed over a 3G connection or when the device is connected to broadband internet over Wi-Fi. "As we build this service, there will be more premium & diverse content available for our customers. We want our customers to make My Movies as their first choice when they want to view movies on demand," said Asim Warsi, director, Samsung Mobile.
With many of these premium devices, users can also connect to a monitor or TV with the TV-out feature to enjoy free movies on a larger screen. While relatively new Bollywood blockbusters showing online for free are limited, Internet has a wealth of options for those who love independent films and documentaries. Those thus inclined should check out services such as Google Video, Internet Archive, Free Documentaries and Open Culture.
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