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Posted by Derek Janssen on 02/12/06 07:28
Sam Rouse wrote:
> In article <11usumfquihpu63@corp.supernews.com>, "Alpha" <none@none.net> wrote:
>
>>As another poster pointed out, this technology has now peaked. The future
>>clearly is streamed video, not physical discs. Netflix has already started
>>investing in streamed video, and that is perhaps why they need to maximize
>>revenues .. to invest.
>
> Sure, but I don't see the whiners getting any pleasure here. Already, there's
> an increasing market for 25-50 minutes worth of television downloadable to cell
> phones for $1.99 a pop - that is what this new market will currently bear. This
> technology doesn't make the market directly scalable - much of the
> infrastructure required to deliver this product is not owned by the product
> providers. Then, at the front end are investors putting anywhere from $10-200
> million into movie products - they want return on their investment, and they
> will get it (and are getting it from Blockbuster, and Netflix, and Comcast, and
> DTV, and Dish, and Verizon, and....). So, I'm not holding my breath for
> purchaseable movie downloads to be had for less than the seemingly magic average
> figure of $1.50 each, and it'll probably be awhile - if ever - before they get
> that low (in adjusted future dollars).
Not to mention, the self-pleasing studio tunnel-vision rush for VOD
hasn't quite seemed to have grasped the kindergarten fundamentals of
*why* people rent movies:
Yes, maybe there's some 18-35 idiot out there who wants to sit back on
his couch and remote-control his cable company for "xXx: State of the
Union"...There usually is.
Or, maybe it's NOT just the movie we want to watch when we rent a
disk--Maybe we want to listen to the commentary. Maybe we want to check
out the making-of doc. Maybe we're keeping it over the weekend to
invite a friend over. Maybe we're renting a volume of "Lost" reruns, so
we can catch up before next season. Maybe we're looking up an obscure
foreign film from five years ago somebody at work recommended to us.
But ask a studio whether people would rather download a network-selected
choice of movies, hotel style, or choose them themselves on Netflix, and
the answer you get won't travel pretty far past "People want the hip,
hottest hit Hollywood movies, in super digital sound! :-D "
Ermmm....yeah. Like trying to explain things to a Blockbuster
New-Release shelf, ain't it?
(I mean, isn't it kind of *sad* when one of the cable-VOD selling
blitzes is "You have control over the movie!--Now you can rewind AND
fast-forward!"?)
THIS is one of the secrets to Why Netflix Is a Verb, and yes, it's one
of the secrets that killed DiVX:
If studios actually *watched* movies like the rest of us, they wouldn't
think so many new in-home technologies were Neat-O.
Derek Janssen (and that's WITHOUT the whole "price" thing)
ejanss@comcast.net
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