Hollywood Downloads a Post-DVD Future

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Hollywood is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the future. The sad part is, any time Hollywood gets behind something as simple as digital downloads, they are going to seriously screw things up.

By next year, consumers may have to wait two months or longer after a movie goes on sale before they can get it in a Redbox kiosk or Netflix envelope. Those who want to stream films online for a flat monthly fee from Netflix, Amazon or Blockbuster will in many cases wait years until those titles have completed their runs on cable networks like HBO. "I see movies going down a path over time from premium sell-through all the way to the lowest-price rentals," said Craig Kornblau, president of Universal Studios Home Entertainment. "If we get digital right, consumers are going to get what they're willing to pay for."
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Get what they pay for? Asshole, such services will fail just like your current idea on how Blu-Ray prices work.
 
Some numbnuts in a Hollywood studio has some stupid ass powerpoint talking about how digital is the next big thing and that he's way ahead of the fucking curve for even thinking about it.
 
No worries. The greedy ISP's and their ridiculous caps will see to the end of this.

Physical Media is far from Dead, they just don't realize it yet.
 
Read article..

Realized that Movie Studios are still so out of touch with reality it is almost pathetic.
 
It's more like they are being dragged kicking and screaming into the present...

Actually scratch that. They are being dragged kicking and screaming into 10 years ago, when movie downloads on college campuses started going through the roof...
 
What's funny about that HBO comment, is that they NEVER seem to have any newer movies they speak of in this article, or even much of any good movies. They also just play the same ones over and over, sometimes even on multiple HBO channels(this case seems to be similar to Showtime). They gave us 3 months free, I will definitely NOT be renewing....
 
Yeah, I don't think they'll get it right any time soon. Most of the content out there is just background noise at best as far as I'm concerned so whatever. Well, let's see how this works out for them. Knowing how gullable and greedy the general public is, Hollywood's plan will more than likely succeed over time.

I'll be on the lookout for a GenMay thread for taking bets on how soon Ultra Violet will be hacked. :)
 
they should hold all new releases for two years from cable to force people back to theaters.:D
 
Speed up the internet fiftyfold
remove caps
Allow blu ray audio and visual to be streamed
charge $10 per month

FPN will be happy.
 
And in the meantime, I will continue ripping my blu-rays and streaming them for playback over my Cat6 network.
 
J Macker said:
And in the meantime, I will continue ripping my blu-rays and streaming them for playback over my Cat6 network.
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I don't even bother ripping movies.

I'ts been decades since I saw a movie I had any interest in watching more than once. the whole concept of owning them is pointless to me, especially at the ridiculous price of $30 to $40. Simply not worth it to watch a film once and then have the disk collect dust or 15 years and then throw it out when the format becomes obsolete.

I rent or stream online when I want to see a movie.
 
Metrocall said:
What's funny about that HBO comment, is that they NEVER seem to have any newer movies they speak of in this article, or even much of any good movies. They also just play the same ones over and over
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Same reason I canceled HBO almost 20 years ago and never went back. Too expensive for maybe one new movie per month. Much better deal to simply rent DVD's
 
Sheesh, so they want people to pirate media, because the movie will be on a long waiting list before they can see it.

Either buy it now, or wait months to rent it.

Yeah Hollywood, you wonder why people are so negative towards your tactics. :rolleyes:
 
wiseoracle said:
Sheesh, so they want people to pirate media, because the movie will be on a long waiting list before they can see it.

Either buy it now, or wait months to rent it.

Yeah Hollywood, you wonder why people are so negative towards your tactics. :rolleyes:
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They really need to learn the lesson from Steam.

When you have a digital distribution model, each incremental sale costs you so little, that lowering the prices in a way that increases sales volumes always - within reason - improves profits.

People want the convenience of downloads, they want them fast and they want them cheap. Anything else is going to fail and lead to more piracy.

The reason Steam has been successful is because there are so many titles that are so cheap and so easy to get that Piracy no longer makes sense.

They need to eliminate piracy not by litigation, but by making it easier to get a movie b downloading it through official channels, and making it cheap enough that people down't hesitate to do so.

I think $5 new - post theatrical - releases could accomplish this.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037807669 said:
They really need to learn the lesson from Steam.

When you have a digital distribution model, each incremental sale costs you so little, that lowering the prices in a way that increases sales volumes always - within reason - improves profits.
.
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I agree that with that. Too bad Steam never got into selling movies.
 
Before they even think about digital, they should really make movies people WANT to SEE. I've had enough of the rehashed garbage coming from Hollywood. Learn to swim.
 
"I see movies going down a path over time from premium sell-through all the way to the lowest-price rentals," said Craig Kornblau

"I see a positive correlation between idiotic outdated business models and zero day piracy" said Aaron Harmon
 
TechLarry said:
No worries. The greedy ISP's and their ridiculous caps will see to the end of this.

Physical Media is far from Dead, they just don't realize it yet.
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I just find it incredibly arrogant how movie studios and game developers alike automatically assume that people will be willing or even able to switch to an all digital distribution system. As you said, physical media is far from dead simply because not everyone has the perfect internet connection like these asshats who live in big cities. Even then, some people don't have an internet connection because they feel like they don't need one. I know plenty of old folks who have no internet because they have no use for it. Does this mean that Follywood is going to lock out a huge user base?

There are also others who WANT to own a copy of the movie just so they don't have to put up with the hassle as they can just pop the disc into the player.
 
Ehh, I buy used BR on Amazon, then rip it to my file server. No way in hell am I paying full price for movies these days. Hell, even when we go to the theater, I still don't pay full price. Sunday morning $5 matinees is where it's at.
 
amdgamer said:
There are also others who WANT to own a copy of the movie just so they don't have to put up with the hassle as they can just pop the disc into the player.
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I don't want to pop a disc into anything. I want to press a button on my TV, and watch whatever movie I want to watch whenever I want to watch it. There is a demand for this. They really need to wake up on the supply side.
 
Hollywood exec: People love digital downloads
Hollywood exec #2:We make good money off Netflix & amazon & hulu. But we can make even more money if we offer our own digital service! Lets call it "DStarz"
Hollywood exec #3:But how do we get them off Netflix & amazon
Hollywood exec #2:We charge Netflix a lot more money for the same content
Hollywood exec #1, #3BRILLIANT! We'll be rich!

Netflix exec We can't afford Starz new pricing along with everyone else we have to support. We'll drop Starz

Consumer I want to watch Starz. Netflix doesn't have it. But my XBox / Roku doesn't support the new service DStarz . I'm screwed.

I already see the fragmentation happening. In the end there will be 50,000,000 digital download services. Each studio or major company offering their own version. But there's no standard distribution model that works on all streaming devices.

In the end our dollars and our simplicity of use is fragmented...Severely. Hollywood in the end, ends up making LESS money, because of greed.

The old model worked because customers didn't have a choice. Neither did the studios. They had to go through Comcast, or Cox or what have you. It was 1 channel in, 1 channel out.

Now we have many channels in, many channels out, many standards. Streaming devices only support a small subset of services.

Fragmentation is bad....ummm kay

There's a bunch of dumb asses in Hollywood I tell you.
 
SilverSliver said:
I don't want to pop a disc into anything. I want to press a button on my TV, and watch whatever movie I want to watch whenever I want to watch it. There is a demand for this. They really need to wake up on the supply side.
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There are alot of people who don't have a TV connected to the internet, or even a fast enough internet connection if they did. I know several older people that still watch and trade video tapes. I cleaned out my old Video tapes added to thier "shared" library.

There will be a demand for physical media for a long time.
 
nutzo said:
There are alot of people who don't have a TV connected to the internet, or even a fast enough internet connection if they did. I know several older people that still watch and trade video tapes. I cleaned out my old Video tapes added to thier "shared" library.

There will be a demand for physical media for a long time.
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I did not say anything about completely switching media formats for everyone. Just offer what people want. If people want physical media. fine, let them have it. But there are plenty of people who want a digital option.
 
All our techno nerd posturing is irrelevant. The days of the flat rate stream all you want movie service are coming to an end if you want content that's less than a year old.

When Netflix spun up they got great license terms from clueless studios. Then they did a great job of migrating people to the streaming model. To keep costs down for content ingestion they fully automated their video encoding pipe. The result is a pile of mal-formed content with artifacts like combing, tape hits, out of sync audio, blended frames/fields, etc. They are on top not due to quality or timeliness of content but because they are cheap.

Now the studios finally see the streaming business as a great opportunity. They will not license on terms that allow for a flat rate service ever again. Ever. Again. Every time a movie or TV episode is streamed providers push that data to the content owner, who in turn gets a cut, the bulk of the sale price in fact. Margins for the streaming service are quite slim. For those of you who are heavy streamers on Netflix: you cost them money. They hate you. :D

Prediction: Netflix days are numbered. Or they will be relegated to the service that provides poorly presented old content.

There's a lot of riff-raff in the streaming business that will get chewed up and spit out. I think Netflix, even though they blew it wide open, will be one of those casualties. When their rates climb to match those on ITMS, VUDU or Zune people will wonder why pay for their malformed garbage when the other guys get it right.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037807422 said:
I don't even bother ripping movies.

I'ts been decades since I saw a movie I had any interest in watching more than once. the whole concept of owning them is pointless to me, especially at the ridiculous price of $30 to $40. Simply not worth it to watch a film once and then have the disk collect dust or 15 years and then throw it out when the format becomes obsolete.

I rent or stream online when I want to see a movie.
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From a single user's perspective, owning movies is pointless indeed, and a huge redundancy and waste of resources if everybody were to own all the movies they like.
However, movies can also be shared across family and friends, and just like books, inherited, traded, or, since you mentioned format obsolescence, ripped. So they are viewed once only by you, and can benefit many others. And I don't know what kind of movies you watch or what your tastes are, but I constantly find movies that I watch more than once, including new movies of the year. Indeed, this is my main criteria for purchasing. I don't buy movies I wouldn't watch more than once.

For me, owning is a way to share, and also a way of bypassing the streaming limitations (poor quality, no audio or subtitle track, extremely limited selection, no new movies). Many movies I own are not available on streaming, some are out of print, some DVDs are even from movies made in the late 1800s - early 1900s.
And thanks to the Internet, the selection of movies I can purchase is even greater than the ones on Netflix as they span across continents, I bought from at least 3.
 
ianken said:
\ Margins for the streaming service are quite slim. For those of you who are heavy streamers on Netflix: you cost them money. They hate you. :D
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Where did you read this? Far as I know, it's extremely cheap to stream a movie, than it is to pay for someone to stuff an envelope, produce the envelope, and pay postage.

Why would Netflix hate people who are heavy streamers. They don't throttle your traffic, your ISP does that. The only initial cost is the infrastructure to build and then the x amount of money to stream a library of movies. When you have 12+ million of people paying the 8 dollars a month, Netflix is banking, while bandwidth is cheap.
 
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