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If you have a home theater, it's easy to see that commercial movie theaters are both your friends, and your enemies. On one hand, without them and the billions of dollars they generate, movie studios would never spend the hundreds of millions of dollars required to make a movie. We owe the content we watch at home to the commercial theaters. On the other hand, adversarially, these theaters get first dibs on all content, and we must impatiently wait for home media to eventually appear. Don't like waiting? Well, if things work out, you soon might be able to cut in line.

In a bold experiment, Paramount has announced that two upcoming movies will be released on home media on a much faster time frame. When the theatrical run dwindles to 300 theaters or less nationwide, the movies will hit the retail chain in two weeks. That's a big change from the typical 90-day minimum release schedule. But in practice, in a concession to commercial theaters, the 300-theater threshold means that blockbuster movies won't be affected. Whether or not you'll want to eagerly watch Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension and Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse at home, is beside the point. Either way, these two movies will go where no movies have gone before.

Wanting to explore ways to optimize the revenue stream without killing the golden goose, Paramount was careful to consult movie theaters. It struck the deal with AMC Theaters and Cineplex. The experiment will be closely watched. Although it will be impossible to know what the profits would have been with the old release schedule, the profits gained with the new schedule will be carefully watched and, I imagine, interpreted in two different ways. Obviously, Paramount hopes that the short window will improve home sales; for example, a shorter window should help ADD consumers remember the initial release buzz, and it may cut down on piracy too.

In a perfect world, commercial theaters wish that home formats would just vanish, leaving them as the only game in town. But that perfect world was tarnished long ago with the advent of TV and Betamax, and newer technologies have sullied it even more. Now, it's up to movie studios to see if further erosion of the perfect world can wring out greater profit. One thing is for sure: the world of entertainment options is so crowded and competitive and fast moving that movie studios have to examine every aspect of their content management. They are so anxious to tinker with the home release schedule that Paramount has even pledged some of its streaming and download revenue to the commercial theater chains as compensation for any potential loss.

Paramount's paranoia has only been heighted as Netflix steps into movie production and plans to release its films online the same day they open theatrically. But many movie theaters have already lined up against that notion, essentially conceding that on a level playing field, they don't think their 30-foot projection screens can compete with 3-inch smartphone screens.

So it comes down to this: ticket sales versus streaming and download sales. If the 2-week experiment raises revenue without raising the ire of movie theaters, the 90-day window is sure to shrink. And that shrinkage would be great news for everyone with home theaters.