Cinematic Crisis

I'm a bit preoccupied with the world of motion pictures. I've been paying attention to numerous situations which motivate my concern:

• On October 2007 portuguese magazine Premiere shut down. No more magazines dedicated exclusively to cinema. The problem? There wasn't enough profit. Although one year later the magazine started publicizing the magazine once again, it's still something to be worried about.
• In my whole life, I've only seen four Blockbuster video renting shops here in Portugal. One will close down next month.

And I understand why the second problem is happening. People don't want to rent DVDs anymore. The Internet is right there: in libraries, at your friends' house, you probably have it in your own home. Downloading high quality movies is very easily done nowadays.

Even so, companies such as Meo or Zon (I think it would qualify as America's TiVo) offer a big list of movies that can be rented for a short amount of money. Obviously, movie lovers will go for that as well.

Even huge multinationals such as french Fnac are noticing a breakdown on their DVD profits (and CDs and books, etc.). If this continues, I'm sure that in a few years this industry won't know what to do. But what's the key to this problem? Downloading movies will never stop, especially now that the Internet is big stamp in our lives. You can easily get your movie informations on professional websites instead of magazines dedicated to the same matter.

As a big fan of motion pictures and possibly even a cinema student, I'm curious to see the consequences of all these problems, and what will be the future of the movie industry. What are your thoughts?

- Lo