Sean Parker of Napster and Facebook is coming out with a new service that could benefit many people. The question is really if anyone is willing to pay the price for this service.

The Screening Room is a service that wants to solely have the right to newly released content by the distributors and theaters to rent out digitally to customers the same date as the movie is released in theaters. This service is to provide instant access to new movies for a very high price of $50 for 48-hour rental and another $150 for the setup.

The Screening Room is onto something with their idea to rent new movies on the same day as they are released in the theaters. However, I do not think that a large part of the audience will pay $50 to just rent a movie for 48 hours. I can say right now that I would not pay that amount, unless I shared the price with 10 other people and I would end up paying $5. Many people tend to go to the cinema for the experience and, of course, for the movie itself. I think that many people are willing to wait if they are forced to pay $50 to rent the movie and another $150 for the setup. This model would most likely not make a big impact or get a lot of purchases.

Instead, I think that people may organize movie screenings and make people pay to watch this movie. When making the movie available for anyone for a high price, people will come up with a way to make a profit.

The split to the theater owners seems fair because it is high enough for them to actually consider lowering the time window. Giving away two tickets for free when renting the movie is not the best way to go. It might drive people to the theater, but the people who received the tickets will most likely give them away or sell the tickets to someone else. Why would they go and watch the same movie at the cinema if they choose to rent it for $50?

The Screening Room’s aim is to make new movies available faster for the audience, but in my opinion they will most likely just make fewer people to go to the cinema and create more organized movie screenings to appear. They should consider lowering the price to half of $50. $25 is still $10 more than the cinema ticket price, but it does not seem as heavy as the $50. As I see it, it is better to profit small amounts from a large quantity of purchases than profiting large amounts from a small quantity of purchases.

Last but not least, the Screening Room wants to be the exclusive partner. This creates problems with some distributors that are connected to other potential services. The Screening Room should ask to be the sole owner of the movies released for a certain amount of time-- let’s say 90 days-- and then make the content available to use for anyone.

The real question I want to ask you is: Would you ever pay $50 to rent a brand new movie for 48 hours? Would you go to the cinema? Or would you wait for it to come out digitally?