New Delhi: The launch of an online service which allows users to legally download films for as little as 99 pence has literally spelled disaster for the video stores across UK, reports the Daily Mail.
Internet service provider Tiscali plans to offer a ‘Movies Now’ service which offers cheap download of over 500 films. Titles on offer include The Bourne Identity, Bridget Jones's Diary, Pride and Prejudice, The Constant Gardener, King Kong, Love Actually, Apollo 13, Miami Vice and Jarhead.
The Internet company has unveiled its package at a time when BBC and ITV too have come up with their own ambitious Internet TV services. The Tiscali move is another nail in the coffin of the video shop, which in the 1980s and 1990s was an integral part of the UK’s leisure habits.
In recent years video stores have been hit by the rise of the Internet users renting and downloading films and the relentless growth of cable and satellite TV.
ChoicesUK a company that sells music and games to e-retailers told The Daily Mail it's unlikely that any video stores would be left in UK in the next five-years. The company bosses are planning to axe or sell 70 of its least successful stores, it added.
The traditional video store has also been hit by music retailers such as HMV and Virgin slashing the prices of DVDs as well as supermarkets such as Tesco offering massive reductions on them. There is also the problem of widespread Internet film piracy.
In the late 1980s, 230 million videos a year were being rented and, at one stage, it was thought the video boom could even kill off the cinema.
But the advent of the multiplex revived cinemagoing and, by last year, the video rental figure had fallen to 116 million. In the US the market for downloading films is huge. Apple and Microsoft are both expected to launch similar services in the UK soon.
The future success of downloading films is likely to be linked to the ability of viewers to hook up their computers to their TV sets or having a television which can receive Internet through a set-top box.
About 43 per cent of Britons can already watch TV on their computers in some way.
With excerpts from The Daily Mail
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