And what of audio? Is their any point in spending time and money developing a detailed and textured surround-sound experience if a significant portion of your audience will be listening on earbuds while travelling on a train?

These examples may be extreme, but they do highlight differences between way a music download service works and way a movie download service would. Music, by its nature, is immensely portable. OK, sound quality from an iPod over a pair of earbuds may be nothing compared to that from a decent hi-fi set-up, but for most people most of time, it’s a close enough approximation. That won’t be case with movies. Why did those tiny, battery powered, pocket TVs never really take-off? For same reason.

Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, who knows a thing or two about movie industry through his stewardship of Pixar, has often said that he’s not interested in producing a video iPod because no-one wants to watch movies on a small screen. Jobs is right about most things, and I think he’s right about that. Sony disagrees. It will be interesting to see who’s right.

The youthful face looks to be fresh out of high school having originally hailed from Northern California, yet is face, voice, and actor of a well-trained virtuoso in his thirties. Six years ago without any training in German, nearly six-foot tall, handsome, golden-eyed, fair-skinned performer headed for Germany to hone his craft on stages of several smaller opera companies. According to producer and promoter TR Cutler, Damkier will make his recital debut in South Florida.

Visit Brent L. Damkier at www.brentdamkier.com or email e-mail e-mail protected from spam bots

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