LOS ANGELES — A little over a week ago, the movie business got its eagerly sought permission to activate technology to protect new releases from being copied if they were sold through video-on-demand systems before being issued on DVD.  Now comes the hard part: finding a studio brave enough to risk war with theater owners by trying it.  Hollywood cleared a legal hurdle when the Federal Communications Commission gave its approval on May 7 of “selectable output control,” which can reach into a customer’s home video player and turn off its video outputs while a pay-per-view program is being watched, to prevent the program from being copied.  The F.C.C. limited use of the remote power to those movies released to video-on-demand during their first three or four months in theaters, before the films go to DVD or other release formats. By the end of last week, however, no major film studio had yet disclosed a plan to take advantage of this new capability.  When asked about the studios’ plans late last week, Bob Pisano, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said, “I can’t tell you that, because I don’t know.” To comply with antitrust law, he added, “we stay out of business-model decisions.”  What might at first seem an arcane matter — precisely when to put a movie for sale on cable systems and at what price — has been the subject of ferocious debate in a film industry that so far has stopped just short of embracing the digital revolution.  Cable operators, whose customers have become increasingly comfortable with systems that let them pay as they go for programming, stand ready to offer first-run films like “Sex in the City 2” or the forthcoming “Wall Street” sequel almost as quickly as studios are ready to offer them.  The toughest challenge, Brian L. Roberts, the chief executive of Comcast, told an audience at a cable industry event here last week, will be that of “navigation in a 100,000-choice world.”  Comcast is poised to take control of NBC Universal, if regulators approve a pending deal. It might then be in a position to break the ice by adding future Universal Pictures releases like “Battleship” or “Stretch Armstrong” to its on-demand universe — but only if it is ready to face down, or accommodate, theater owners who have been fiercely protective of the exclusive period during which they have customarily served up the major studio pictures.  John Fithian, the president of the National Association of Theater Owners, did not respond to recent queries about the likely response of his member companies to any move by film studios to exploit the F.C.C. approval, which his organization strongly opposed.  But one senior theater executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for his chain, said theater owners had made clear to film distributors that they simply would not book films that were simultaneously available in another medium.  Well aware of the tension, spokesmen for 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, Walt Disney Studios and Universal — all members of the M.P.A.A. — declined last week to discuss their companies’ plans.  Speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with peers, however, several executives said they expected to see one or more studios soon try to sell at least some films to an on-demand audience in advance of the DVD release. And one executive suggested it would happen as early as this year.  Warner Brothers and Fox were described by these executives as being especially eager to find a new revenue stream via on-demand, though it was not clear that either company was prepared to go first.  According to one executive, it appeared likely that any early experiment with on-demand film would be devised as a high-priced “premium” event, akin to an expensive pay-per-view fight night, possibly in a collaboration of some kind with theater owners, who might somehow share in revenue or get improved financial terms to make up for lost viewers.  The deeper concern, as seen by theater executives, is that even a slight nudge toward additional home viewing might help to break frequent movie-goers of their habit — and jeopardize the $10 billion-a-year box office — just as they are being enticed by big 3-D events like “Avatar.”  To date, on-demand screenings of new movies have been confined to the independent film world, where services like those operated by Rainbow Media have routinely sold access to festival-style films that would not otherwise have a large theatrical audience.  The added technological protection offered by the output control authorized by the F.C.C. makes it easier for studios to capitalize on the enormous marketing expenditure behind a first-run film like the forthcoming “Salt,” with Angelina Jolie, or “Knight and Day,” with Tom Cruise, by easing it into homes alongside theaters.  But that can happen only if theater owners allow it — and if home viewers overcome the suspicion, voiced by some, that antipiracy technology might impede their televisions and recorders once they have allowed a studio film in the door.  On this last score, Mr. Pisano said the concerns reminded him of an old television series. “This is not going to come from ‘The Outer Limits,’ to take control of your television set,” he said.
Studios now can block new films from being copied on pay-per-view systems, but they fear theatersâ reaction if they sell to cable before DVDs are out.