How are you going to keep them down in the movie theater after they've seen the bright lights of home video?

I just came across an interesting article in the New York Times that indicates that moviegoers are staying away from theaters more often these days. Except for "must-see" titles like Star Wars, moviegoers are by and large waiting for the DVDs to come out, as well as watching pay-TV, playing videogames, and taking in other forms of entertainment.

Of course, this isn't the first time something like this has happened. In fact, the ripple effect caused by the last time movies tried to combat a slump in attendance due to TV is still reverberating through the home-entertainment industry. As Shirley Bassey and the Propellerheads put it, "I just see a little history repeating."

Mr. Peabody, set the wayback machine for the 1950s. Back then, motion pictures just coming to the end of their golden age. Going to the movies was still a whole experience, not just a movie. When you went to the theater, you'd spend the whole afternoon or evening enjoying some shorts, cartoons, serials, newsreels, a low-budget "B-movie", and a feature film presentation. All of it was in 1.33:1, or Academy, ratio—because that's what the ratio had been when movies were invented, and nobody could see any reason to change it.

But with the 1950s came a new threat: the rise of the television. Though they were only black-and-white with a tiny screen, erstwhile moviewatchers were buying them and staying home in droves. The TVs were showing original new programming and older black-and-white movies, things that viewers couldn't get from a movie theater. And movie studios began to feel threatened.

How did they respond? Partly by slimming down the moviegoing experience; with news and cartoons coming from TV, they didn't need newsreels or short subjects anymore—and they would have time for more showings of the movies themselves. And partly by looking for new gimmicks. Color movies were things that TV could not do (at the time), but color by itself was clearly not sufficient to continue drawing the crowds. So, this was the era of massive experimentation, and all sorts of crazy gimmicks: 3D, smell-o-vision, audience participation (particularly in the gimmick flicks of William Castle), various experimental forms of widescreen, and so on. Even into the seventies, the gimmicking continued as theaters tried out things like Sensurround.

In the end, the only one of those gimmicks to stand the test of time was widescreen (and even that took two or three tries to get it right). People could be coerced out of their comfy seats to see movies if they offered a bigger, wider picture than what they could see on their TV sets. And the home-entertainment industry hasn't been the same since: because a TV screen is narrower than a wide movie screen, movies must either have bits chopped off the sides or black bars added to the top and bottom to be shown on a TV screen—giving rise to an advocacy argument that may never die.

Jumping back to the present, it looks like movie theaters are being faced with much the same problem as they experienced in the 1950s—only this time it's even worse. Thanks to high-definition/big-screen TV, DVD players, pay-TV, and Dolby and DTS surround speaker systems, consumers can come closer than ever to recreating the desirable aspects of a movie theater experience in their own homes, without the undesirable aspects such as crowds and sticky floors. And with the average time between theatrical screening and home video release shrinking down to four and one half months, it's easier than ever to wait for the home video release of any but the most critical-to-see movies.

And once again, movie theaters are trying to find ways to draw people in (as well as cut costs to maximize profits from those people they do draw in). George Lucas, James Cameron, and Mark Cuban think more digital movie theaters, with higher-definition pictures than even HDTV can provide, are the answer. Robert Rodriguez is reviving 3D (as in Spy Kids 3-D), and George Lucas wants to re-release Star Wars in digital 3D in 2007. Mark Cuban also wants to try releasing movies on theatrical, pay-TV, and home-video formats at the exact same time to see if there is a synergistic effect.

In my opinion, this is an exciting time to be a movie-goer. Competition always drives improvement—even competition between two different formats such as home and theatrical movie exhibition. Make no mistake, both movies and home video display are going to get better (especially after the dispute over the upcoming high-definition DVD format is over). And frankly, I can't wait.

See you at the movies!

So long, and thanks for all the books

I was listening to the second episode of the Quandary Phase of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio show today (via streaming RealAudio from the BBC Radio 4 webpage), and it got me to thinking. Yesterday, May 11th, was the 4th anniversary of Douglas Adams's untimely death, and though I never met the man, I still miss him.

My interest in the new radio show, coupled with revising a few Wikipedia entries today, caused me to look up what Wikipedia had to say about the Hitchhiker's Guide. Along the way, I found something quite unexpected: the theme song to the H2G2 radio show was not done by some British chappie—it was actually done by the Eagles. That's right, the American country-rock group with Don Henley, Glenn Frey and the rest. The song is called "Journey of the Sorcerer" (here's its iTunes Music Store link) and is actually almost 7 minutes long. I bought it and took a listen. It's neat to be able to hear the entire work, including the pieces that weren't used for the radio show.

I also happened to mention it to some friends on-line, and one of them noticed that the iTunes Music Store listing for One of These Nights, the album it was on, said it was released on May 21, 1985. This was 7 years after the radio show, so he thought they must have covered it. I knew that wasn't right, the Eagles had already broken up by then, so I pulled up my web browser and typed "Eagles discography" into the Google search box, coming up with this page as the top result—and this page revealed the album actually came out on 6/10/75. (Of course, if I'd read a little further down in the iTunes window, I could have pointed that out to my friend without having to do that, since though the date in the header was wrong, the descriptive blurb of the album did mention the right date.)

Only after I'd done that did it really occur to me—except for the fact I'd done it on a desktop machine instead of a hand-held gadget, I had done exactly what one of Douglas Adams's characters might have: I typed a query into an electronic repository of knowledge, and boom, there was my answer. Just as if I'd looked it up in the Guide.

Douglas really was ahead of his time, you know. The titular object in the Hitchhiker's Guide series is one of the first things resembling the modern ebook to appear in SF literature. It's also one of the earlier SF depictions of hypertext—an encyclopedia where "see also" references could be followed directly to the entries in question. I don't know if Adams was influenced by any of Vannevar Bush's original writings on hypertext, but I do know he was an early adopter of it in his personal life too; he stored the entries for his work The Meaning of Liff on a hypercard stack until a virus destroyed the computer it was on. He was also crazy about PDAs, and excited about the idea of being able to have a Hitchhiker's Guide-style compendium of knowledge accessible from a pocket-sized device in real life just as in his stories. That was where the h2g2 on-line user-edited encyclopedia had its genesis after all.

It's so unfair that he was taken from us in the prime of his life, only partway through what should by rights have been a long and full career. Now we'll never know what might have been—and the Hitchhiker's Guide saga will forever end on the sour note of Mostly Harmless which Adams wrote during a bad year and never intended to be the last Hitchhiker's Guide book. (Though reportedly the radio show may follow the grand tradition of other iterations of the Hitchhiker's Guide saga by rewriting that, too.)

So long, Douglas, and thanks for all the books. I only wish you could have written more.