Posted by Sam Rouse on 02/12/06 09:58

In article <bYidnR9W-50mf3PeRVn-pQ@comcast.com>,
Derek Janssen <ejanss@nospam.comcast.net> wrote:

> 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.

These are the main things that I suspect will be lost (and that I'll miss the
most) in the VOD-world. Hopefully, DVDs will stick around for quite awhile.

> 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.

Good points. For me, this is tempered with a cynical view - that art, like
technological doodads, is becoming a disposable commodity. Music is digitally
recorded, digitally purchased, ripped and shared via p2p, loaded into Ipods,
deleted, lost, forgotten, never having been rumpled and fetished in so much as
CD form with accompanying printed material. Films seem to be headed the same
way, though more slowly. The documentarian Ken Burns has noted that his future
counterparts will have a tough time, since unlike him, they won't have old
letters and photographs with which to reconstruct our era - it's all email and
JPEGs, which disappear at the touch of electrons.

> Derek Janssen (and that's WITHOUT the whole "price" thing)

OTOH, who are these people that pay $1.99 to download an episode of Lost into
their cell phones, and are they the wave of the future?

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