Business Channel 2006-09-15&17

It was a quiet beginning. Early cinema was essentially¹ a stage play with no spoken words. But then came the talkies and the movies grew into a major industry. The introduction of color allowed films to stand out from the pack.

I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you.

And special effects make them even bigger. Star Wars picked up a love affair with high-tech² movie magic and left fans queuing up outside theaters. In homes, the retail³ and rental⁴ revolution began, first with videocassettes, then with the DVD, now estimated to be a 24-billion-dollar market. But DVD sales are slowing, so Hollywood is keen to try a new tech.

Angel Curt⁵ Marvis, CEO of Cinemanow, his company, together with partners like Disney, MGM and Universal, allows you to transfer movies from the Internet to your PC.

Retail is shrinking, digital distribution is growing. So ultimately, will, will digital distribution be the choice of consumers? Absolutely. What's the time frame for that? Five years, ten years from now, I think, ah, receiving content digitally will be as commonplace as going to a video store was in the 80s.

Cinemanow has been up and running for about seven years, allowing film fans in the US and Japan to rent or buy, and then watch movie downloads on the PC. Its latest offering is a burn-to-DVD service, rather than keep the movie file on your drive, you can burn it on a DVD and watch it on any standard player.

Putting it to the test is easy, log in, choose a film, and let the download begin.

Now it took us 2 hours to download the movie, a little bit of a wait, but it is a sizeable 3-Gigabyte file. And now, the movie is mine to watch whenever I want on my computer or better yet, take it to the TV.

Convenient? Sure. Picture quality? Pretty good. But that long download time has got to change.

The challenge is huge. It’s one that we have to work on on a daily basis. But I think that, er, it, we run Cinemanow in Japan, and where you've got 10 megabits up to 100-megabit lines of fiber⁶ going into most of the consumers in Japan. They can download a movie now off a Cinemanow in Japan in a matter of 10 or 15 minutes, and as you get more and more storage devices that get into, you know, I think, the home 5 years from now a Terabyte of storage in your average home will not be considered unique at all. So that would allow someone to offer, you know, have the opportunity to be able to, to store literally⁷ hundreds, if not thousands, of movie files.

Don't get away, work as a team.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Cinemanow is not the only digital beast out there. 20th Century Fox is making some of its TV shows and movies like X-Men available for online purchase and download. Apple also recently launched its long-awaited iTunes movie service and the British Film Institute is pushing its massive archive online.

Although nothing can ever replace, er, the great experience of watching film in a big screen, nowadays, there are so many other different ways which people expect to be able to get a film.

With online streaming, downloads and burn-to-own DVDs, film-going is retreating deeper into the home. As for that matinee, the theatre, well it may soon go the way of the silent film.

Kristie Lu Stout⁸ CNN, Los Angeles.

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Vocabulary

Luke Skywalker (born 19 BBY) is a fictional⁹ character in the Star Wars universe, portrayed¹⁰ by Mark Hamill.

1 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

2 high-tech   

adj.高科技的

参考例句：

• The economy is in the upswing which makes high-tech services in more demand too.经济在蓬勃发展，这就使对高科技服务的需求量也在加大。
• The quest of a cure for disease with high-tech has never ceased. 人们希望运用高科技治疗疾病的追求从未停止过。

3 retail   

v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格

参考例句：

• In this shop they retail tobacco and sweets.这家铺子零售香烟和糖果。
• These shoes retail at 10 yuan a pair.这些鞋子零卖10元一双。

4 rental   

n.租赁，出租，出租业

参考例句：

• The yearly rental of her house is 2400 yuan.她这房子年租金是2400元。
• We can organise car rental from Chicago O'Hare Airport.我们可以安排提供从芝加哥奥黑尔机场出发的租车服务。

5 curt   

adj.简短的，草率的

参考例句：

• He gave me an extremely curt answer.他对我作了极为草率的答复。
• He rapped out a series of curt commands.他大声发出了一连串简短的命令。

6 fiber   

n.纤维，纤维质

参考例句：

• The basic structural unit of yarn is the fiber.纤维是纱的基本结构单元。
• The material must be free of fiber clumps.这种材料必须无纤维块。

7 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

8 stout   

adj.强壮的，粗大的，结实的，勇猛的，矮胖的

参考例句：

• He cut a stout stick to help him walk.他砍了一根结实的枝条用来拄着走路。
• The stout old man waddled across the road.那肥胖的老人一跩一跩地穿过马路。

9 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。

10 portrayed   

v.画像( portray的过去式和过去分词 )；描述；描绘；描画

参考例句：

• Throughout the trial, he portrayed himself as the victim. 在审讯过程中，他始终把自己说成是受害者。
• The author portrayed his father as a vicious drunkard. 作者把他父亲描绘成一个可恶的酒鬼。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》