As an aficionado of good quality cinema, especially the classics and world movies, it is frustrating not finding the ones that I am looking for. And this is a frustration that resonates with a lot of us. So unless you are willing to spend a lot of time searching around the town, around the country, or even around the world, there is no easy way building up your compilation.

Amazon.com has alleviated that problem to an extent, but it’s available only in a few countries. Some of us also don’t like the idea of piling up our limited spaces with a deluge of DVDs. And there is also the problem of longevity; anything stored on a physical media is prone to degeneration.

Fortunately, the Internet will eventually provide the solution. What is the solution? We’re already exposed to it in its primitive form; streaming video over the Internet on-demand. YouTube is a popular proponent of this technology. 

The solution is access to a massive digital library of movies – movies of all kinds, genres and languages. The solution provider could either be a media company (that has its own collection of movies) or an aggregator that licenses and liaisons with all the different media companies, and distributors.

As a user, you could search from an enormous collection of movies provided by the solution provider, and watch a movie of your choice, high quality digital video streamed or downloaded to your “device”. The device could be anything capable of receiving, playing high-quality digital video or even transmitting it wirelessly to a TV.

How do the owners and distributors of cinema benefit from it? Well, to start with, the movies open up to a global market place, a very discerning audience, ready to lap it up. Even though the license fee per movie would be small, the volume would be substantial and would be more profitable than conventional distribution channels. Dynamic pricing would also ensure that popular movies, blockbusters would fetch more in commissions. But best of all, it would kill piracy. Imagine if you could watch a movie for a few dollars, in high-quality and high-fidelity, at the convenience of your home, on demand, why would you go for a pirated movie?!

The possibilities are endless, and is a win-win situation for everyone involved; right from the movie maker, media company, distributor, and finally the end consumer.
 
I suspect this solution to become a reality by 2014, as we move towards a better, stable, faster and ubiquitous internet bandwidth.