I was chatting to one of the sales people in the Dion Wired store who told me that one of the biggest sellers at the moment were the different Media Players that plug into your TV and allow you to play via your TV whatever movies you have downloaded to your hard drive. Certain brands were selling as many as 15 units a day at the one store alone during December and what that means to me, although the store said that that is “not necessarily the case” is that more and more people are downloading movies that have been ripped from Blu-Ray and watching them.

I think that the factor that has allowed this to become more popular is increasing Internet speeds as well as the various unlimited bandwidth options we now have in South Africa, albeit at ridiculous prices. What encourages piracy is the lack of a viable option, such as Netflix in America and the fact that many movies are released in South Africa months after they have been shown in America, so that for example, with the Blu-Ray version that has already been launched in America, while the movie is showing for its first week in our cinemas. The Town, for example, was already released on Blu-Ray by the time it started showing in South Africa and one of this year’s big Oscar contenders, The Black Swan, which will only be showing in South Africa in the first week of February, whereas it has been showing in America since December already. Delayed releases, the absence of a legal downloadable solution such as Netflix and the like are going to encourage more and more people to take this approach and one wonders why there is not a South African Netflix already?