• Los Angeles Times, Thursday, February 18, 2010 10:55 AM

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment president David Bishop is at the nexus of a raft of issues that are transforming the industry, writes Ben Fritz, from double-digit decreases in DVD sales to the rising threat of piracy and the tricky business of deciding what to do with the likes of Netflix and Redbox.

Sony, in fact, was the first studio to allow Redbox to rent movies the same day they go on sale. "Overall, we feel good about the economics of the deal," Bishop tells Fritz, which goes against the prevailing wisdom in Hollywood of preserving a sale-only period. (Earlier this week, for example, Redbox agreed to not rent Warner Bros.' DVDs until 28 days after their release.)

While he can't help pining for the glory days when disks flew off the shelves, there are better times ahead, Bishop feels, thanks to two new technologies. "I do yearn for the days when the finance people were calling me a sandbagger because I kept blowing past our projections," he says. "But I feel now, with 3-D and digital delivery and Blu-ray, that we're about to get on a growth curve again that will bring great things to come."

Read the whole story at Los Angeles Times »