photo credit: photog2009

Well, the thing Cameron should realize is that on every train, plane and back seats of automobiles people watch movies on multimedia devices with screens of 20″ or less. Portable multimedia is here to stay and it increases the amount of time customers can enjoy movies. More people are likely to watch movies because of portable media players.

Director James Cameron has been speaking about the upcoming April Blu-ray release of Avatar, where he explained his dislike of watching movies on a small screen.

At the Avatar Blu-ray press conference, he announced that the best way to watch the movie was in 3D, despite the film not being available on the Blu-ray 3D format until November.

He doesn’t, however, recommend watching the movie on the Apple iPhone.

“I don’t feel that I’m making movies for iPhones,” he explained. “If someone wants to watch it on an iPhone, I’m not going to stop them, especially if they’re paying for it, but I don’t recommend it.

“I think it’s dumb, when you have characters that are so small in the frame that they’re not visible.”

And it’s not only phones he has problems with, but laptops too.

“To me, there’s a limit that you wouldn’t want to go below,” Cameron noted.

“I don’t know. I’ve never watched Avatar on a laptop. I guess it probably works, but I don’t recommend it.

via James Cameron: ‘Watching Avatar on an iPhone is dumb’ | News | TechRadar UK.

To call watching movies on portable devices ‘dumb’ sounds like Cameron, who ironically advanced movie effects with one movie, still desires to the old way of doing business for the Hollywood studios. He should learn from the music labels: embrace new technology. You can either ride the tide or drown in it.