Angelina Jolie on your Cellphone Anyone?

The titanic developments in new technology have fundamentally changed the technique we watch TV and movies at home. Gone are the days when the TV set was just like a box in the corner with a 20" screen and a tinny speaker. At this time most of us prefer to watch movies and sports casts on a widescreen that is at least 28" from cater-cornered. If you are a admirer of home theater then that screen will probably be bigger and be accompanied by a surround sound speaker system to maximize the aural effect and immerse you in the action. As technology improves and equipment becomes low-priced, more and more people will have high definition TVs and home theater systems.

However, if Sony has its technique, we will all be enjoying a totally different movie-watching experience, on a 2inch mobile phone screen. Sony wants to see an iTunes-style download service for movies so we can download them and watch them on the move. Would you watch a film on a cell phone? I would not.

Visualize it. Out would go the immersive, involving experience of the movie theater that we have tried so hard to make at home, and in its place would be a screen so small that it would be complicated to make out what was going on. That in itself would create a quandary for film-makers. If a large number of people who pay to see a movie do so by downloading it on their mobile, will directors have to take this into account when making it? Will studios refuse cuts because they contain too many slight facial expressions or movements that can not be detected on a small screen? Will the damped colors of a Saving Private Ryan have to replaced with more loud and brightly colored scenes to make them more easily visible on a cell phone?

And what of the audio? Is their any point in spending time and money developing a elaborated and textured surround-sound experience if an important section of your audience will be listening on ear buds while traveling on a train?

These examples may be great, but they do show up the differences between the way a music download service works and the technique a movie download service would. Music, by its nature, is hugely portable. Okay, the sound quality from an iPod over a pair of ear buds may be nothing compared to that from a decent sound system set-up, but for most people most of the time, it is a close enough estimate. That would not be the case with movies. Why did those tiny, batteries powered, pocket TVs never really take-off? For the same cause.

Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, who makes out a thing or two about the movie industry through his stewardship of Pixar, has frequently said that he is not interested in producing a video iPod because nobody wants to watch movies on a tiny screen. Jobs are right about most things, and I think he is right about that. Sony disagrees. It’ll be interesting to see who is right.