It's truly stunning how far home entertainment technology has come in terms of how we watch movies. When I was a kid we had VHS tapes, but not only have we moved on from those, but we've almost completely moved on from their successor, DVD, as well, with the rise of Blu-ray and streaming movies. While most of us could have never seen it coming, one person absolutely did: Roger Ebert.
The LA Times recently dug up an interview with the world's most famous critic that was written back in 1987 in which he talks about the future of movie watching, and he is scary accurate, plus or minus a few smaller details. Scope out the excerpt below.
"We will have high-definition, wide-screen television sets and a push-button dialing system to order the movie you want at the time you want it. You'll not go to a video store but instead order a movie on demand and then pay for it. Videocassette tapes as we know them now will be obsolete both for showing prerecorded movies and for recording movies. People will record films on 8mm and will play them back using laser-disk/CD technology. I also am very, very excited by the fact that before long, alternative films will penetrate the entire country. Today seventy-five percent of the gross from a typical art film in America comes from as few as six --six-- different theaters in six different cities. Ninety percent of the American motion-picture marketplace never shows art films. With this revolution in delivery and distribution, anyone, in any size town or hamlet, will see the movies he or she wants to see."
Did you just get chills down your spine, because I certainly did. In one fell swoop the guy predicted the saturation of HD TVs, DVDs, OnDemand and independent film distribution. How many of you can see 24 years into the future of your chosen profession? Like I said, scary accurate.
