Tech Beat: Prime time for downloadable movies?What if movies adapted to the digital age as music did? Download a movie anywhere, anytime, and watch it with any device whenever you want. The idea of going to a movie theater is already archaic to entertainment seekers who have home theaters or digital TVs with large screens. And DVDs get damaged and take up space – just like their CD ancestors. The current turmoil in the movie world is reminiscent of the music industry just before Steve Jobs shook things up with iPod and iTunes. Consumers spurned the unwanted music bundled in discs with the tracks they did want. They revolted by using file sharing software to download individual tracks for free. The music distributing companies cried intellectual property theft. Eventually, the dust settled, and the music companies learned to live in the digital world. And Apple Inc (Nasdaq: AAPL) made pots of money, along with its shareholders. In the Internet video world, something similar is afoot. Clever entrepreneurs such as YouTVpc.com and peekvid.com store movies in overseas servers and use file sharing software to let consumers download movies free. Hollywood is crying copyright theft. But digital media is unstoppable; large video files are easy to distribute when they are compressed with technologies such as MPEG 4. And the broad acceptance of broadband networks makes the distribution of internet video files feasible. spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer
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