Pass on the popcorn

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: Filmgoers will miss the popcorn. But yes, they can now use the Internet to buy a low-cost—yet good-quality—movie for viewing in their living rooms. Welcome the joys of convergence, which is fast making its presence felt. While TV sets and home-theatre systems get smarter each passing day, the Web is ushering in an inimitable new distribution platform for movies. Internet connectivity, barring odd cable-snapping incidents like the one in the Mediterranean the other day, is getting swifter and swifter as well, and consumers want to leverage this speed for better entertainment.

The US-based DVD rental company Netflix has joined hands with LG Electronics to market a set-top box that will let consumers stream movies straight from websites onto TV screens. And unlike the IP-TV (Internet Protocol-based TV) or DTH satellite-TV services that exist in India, there will be enormous choice in film selection. Online movie reservoirs like CinemaNow and Amazon Unbox are packed with titles new and old. Netflix, with 7 million subscribers, offers nearly 90,000 titles on DVD, though initially it’s offering only a few of these movies and TV shows for Web streaming. Later this year, LG’s set-top box will allow direct-to-TV downloads. In India, similar services could emerge, with local online movie rental services like Seventymm getting into the act.

In fact, the movie download business is a logical extension of the currently popular iPod-based music industry, and Apple Computer has already announced Apple TV. Likewise, Archos, a portable entertainment products company, is coming out with a two-way device that will record TV shows and also download movies from online video stores.

Films would be transferable to portable players, too. Wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) devices will be able to download movies at Wi-Fi hotspots available at hotels, airports and so on. Archos TV+, for example, is a Web browser-based set-top box for video recording and Wi-Fi video downloads. Priced up to $547, the 160-gigabyte Apple TV too allows you to download multimedia content using wireless connectivity.