Movies on your PC - Technology takes a step forward

George Clooney said recently that the so called golden age of cimema ended after the period 1964 -1976. He believed that they were the halcyan days of movie making and that since then,massive hype,massive budgets and an audience less willing to think at the movie theater has caused an artistic decline.
One has to agree in part with him. Lets start with the first generally acknowleged blockbuster - Jaws, in 1975. This was a classic movie and has set the standard for big budget movies since then - particularly of the monster or alien genre.
But how has the movie going experience changed over the past 30 years? Well, the theatres are still there to some extent and the experience of going out to a movie to be entertained is still a unique one. Better facilities, better sound and better seating have helped keep the audiences coming back despite increasing competition.
And what is that competition?
In the 1970's we had the Video wars - between VHS and Beta to see which system would rule the world in home movie entertainment. Of course, VHS won and a new dawn began for us all.
Once video had taken hold, we had the development of the Compact disc in 1983. This promised to firstly take music from the old vinyl records, and drag it kicking and screaming towards the 21st century. And so it proved, gradually superceding, first the vinyl LP and the then the humble tape cassette. Its next logical use would be in visual use, and thus the attack on video began with the first DVD's in the mid 1990's. Now, go to any 'Video' store and you won't see any.
No one can argue of course, the sound and picture quality, plus the sheer amount of information that can be stored on DVD made it an obvious choice once the pricing was sorted.
And now into the 21st century, we have the advent of online, fast download movies, at a virtual click of a button. This has brought virtually any film ever released, available to anyone with a modern PC. Many people can now connect up their LCD Televisions to their PC's to enjoy movies when they want, where they want.
Cinema will never be beaten, I believe that, but for convenience, for those nights you don't want to brave the elements, downloading is the only logical way to go.

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