For a moment let your imagination take you on a journey into the future... to July 2, 2010, the day when the action-comedy Knight and Day, starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, releases worldwide.

Think of watching Cruise, an undercover agent, who gets thrown together with Diaz, on the day of the release not just in a large screen theatre with Dolby digital surround sound, but also in the comfort of your drawing room with a CD/­DVD/Blue-ray Disc of the same. Your options do not end there yet. Your DTH service provider offers the movie on a pay-per-view service. Knight and Day is available under video-on-demand and you can watch it either on your television or on your computer. You get to buy a USB drive with the movie on it. Plug and play it on your computer. Or watch the film streamed live on to your mobile while on your way back home on Friday evening, almost giving you an experience of the first-day first show.

You own a Zune or an iPod or a Mac, and think there is problem to get the movie on to a format that suits the device with you. Don’t worry! Disney-initiated technology Keychest has already taken the next step to digitise movies that could be viewed across multiple formats. And several millions are watching the movie on satellite television channels, Youtube and many other movie streaming websites. Think of a medium and a format, the movie is on it.

It could be a new world order for movie release and distribution. The concept of day-and-date release (a release strategy in which a movie enters theatres on the same day as it begins its presentation in all other formats as opposed to the traditional window system) finds a perfect fruition here. Mind it; this is not completely a work of human imagination and fantasy.

Industry experts say it is only a matter of time, as innovations in technology develops faster and much ahead of our time. According to them, a change in mindset among content owners (film producers) and getting rid of the fear of cannibalisation are all what it requires for a movie to be released across all media and formats simultaneously.

The idea behind the windows was to segment the distribution channels and give each outlet a period of temporal exclusivity. The theory was that this would maximise each channel’s opportunity and prevent cannibalisation among them.

Each stage of time was meant to justify different premium licensing fee structures.

G Dhananjayan, chief operating officer, Moser Baer Entertainment (MBE), thinks this is a good idea but unviable. “These mediums have different target audiences and their ability to pay varies. Hence they cannot be clubbed together and offer a film simultaneously,” he said. He argues that once a film is offered in more convenient options like DVDs/USB Dr­ives/DTH, consumers will not come to theatres as visiting them is the most difficult job among the options available. A DVD/video on demand can be instant. Hence, any simultaneous release will discourage the people from hitting the theatres, which is the real box office revenue for any film.

Krishna Durbha, who heads the value added service (VAS) at Reliance Communications, fi­rmly believes that the technology is in place to offer something like this. “There are challenges in terms of some technical issues which require certain standardisation. To a large extent, it is a matter of content owners (film producers) tweaking their business model to maximise their returns,” said Durbha, admitting at the same time the primary importance of the theatrical experience of watching movies.