Mary Hodder on sharing movies via Bit Torrent:

In fact, I think that low quality video files are considered to be of just-okay quality for people wanting a quick glance at content, and so they may download something on one of these networks, but that people really want the big rich high quality screen experience, hence video’s inability to kill the experience or desire by people to go out to see a big screen movie, and people also love watching DVD’s on plasma, because of the rich experience… downloaded files on little screens are just not nice in that way. Imagine watching Lord of the Rings on a five inch screen. But as bandwidth grows, it will become more of an issue, but what if these little files are loss leaders to entice people into the theaters, to buy DVD’s or high quality downloads with interesting value added stuff?

Two points: most of the movie torrents available on Suprnova are high quality DVD rips. And PCs are increasingly connected to media centers. An HDTV PVR running a Bit Torrent client would provide a very high quality experience, and the technology exists to build easy-to-use systems like that now. (See Bit Torrent & RSS Video Feeds.) So the key to getting people to pay isn’t going to be higher-quality content. Instead it will be 1) “event” content like live concerts/sports/drama, preferably with audience interaction 2) excellent (social?) software for finding stuff you actually want to watch, and possibly 3) lushly packaged physical products, like the limited edition of Radiohead’s Amnesiac, which came packaged in a weathered library book, complete with an old-fashioned checkout card tucked in a pocket in the back, covered in stamps.