Next Gen Movie Watching: Chat Meets DVDs

As technology takes movie-watching ever further from the days of clunky film reels, the Wall Street Journal rounds up some developments to look for:

• A new Blu-ray feature—called BD Live—combines movies with social networking, letting people viewing the same movie chat on screen.
• Technology in the works will wirelessly transfer movies among portable gadgets, for watching anywhere, on any device.

• Kiosks will burn DVDs or SD cards on demand from a data base of thousands of films, making older films available as stores cut titles.
• Cloud computing will be used to allow individuals to store their movie libraries online and tap them from any computer, anywhere.
•  At movie theaters, cutting-edge digital projection—4K—improves image quality even beyond current-generation offerings, and even up close.
• One sound system in development uses dozens of speakers around the theater to make voices of characters on screen seem to come from right next to each audience member.