Movies when and how *I* want them!

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I won’t be the first, nor the last, to say that the movie industry really needs to figure out distribution of high-quality digital movies to consumers. As it stands now, consumers are hampered by an odd mixture of sales practice that governs when, how and in what format movies are available. Basically, I want to be able to get movies when, where and how I want them–and I’m willing to pay a reasonable cost.

The nature of technology has reduced the cost of distribution from a few dollars (to press and package a movie on DVD) to nearly nothing (in bandwidth to distribute a movie over the Web).

(Ok that’s a gross over-simplification since DVD distribution includes storage, delivery, shelf space, etc. But that’s not really what I think I need to pay for. I’m not your average consumer, I buy what I want based on interest, knowledge of what’s been shown in theaters and maybe a little Web-research, not just what’s presented to me at a store or on a shelf. Having to go to a store and walk the aisle to browse for a movie (to rent or buy) is not something I really do–it’s rather arcane these days. In fact, it’s why companies like Blockbuster are having problems. Also I used what I perceive as the costs for DVD duplication and not Blu-Ray which has higher manufacturing costs for which I don’t have an order of magnitude estimate.)

So, how do I want to purchase/rent movies? It’s a little complicated. Maybe…

Here’s what I want:

• I want high-def movies. The quality is much better and can improve the watching experience, certainly for newer films.
• I want either:
  • physical media of both high-def and standard def versions, or
  • high-def physical media plus a standard-def digital copy.

  Until I have a fully connected living room where I have effectively unlimited storage of high-def movies* I still want to be able to watch the high-def from a Blu-Ray disc.

• I want digital copies, in high-def and standard-def versions. The high-def versions I can play on my laptop or computer, the standard-def versions I can play on my iPod. Or failing that, I want to be able to legally rip these digital versions from the physical media.

A couple articles came out recently that gave me the impetus to write this post.

Netflix recently announced they’d be charging more to rent high definition (Blu-Ray) movies. Say what? I’ve just proved you’re making money off me. I’m pretty sure you’re making money off most other people. I know that you’re not always renting standard off-the-shelf DVDs, you’re getting DVDs pressed custom for you so the argument that Blu-ray discs cost more than DVD is specious. Yes the media’s more expensive, but not as much as you’re considering raising rates. And you should be using access to a very, very high-quality picture as a differentiation point. You should be encouraging (or at least not discouraging) people to rent high-def movies on Blu-ray instead of the variable/questionable quality of movies streamed from cable or Apple. (Aside: Apple high-def TV Shows and movies are pretty darn good, but I’m also not watching them on a 42″+ TV where I’d think the picture quality would start to suffer.)

Also there was a discussion on Slate.com of how Netflix and Apple are limited in which movies they can stream to my HD-Tivo, how long they remain available for me to play, etc. I think it’s mostly greed by the movie studios (I suppose Netflix might be a little at fault) that has limited the user experience that Netflix users can have. The digital copy (bandwidth costs aside) is nearly zero. Why do I only have 24 hours to watch the movie once I start playing it? Why can’t I stream a video and watch it as many times as I want without having to re-rent it? Why isn’t the whole movie downloaded to my Tivo, if I have the space, so I have a more Tivo-like/DVD-like experience and I don’t have to wait for whole long restreams of the data if I go too far forward or back from the current play point?

And then there was a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. Here’s the referenence: Peers, M. (2009, May 23-24). Hollywood Studios Need to Romance the Download. Retrieved May 25, 2009 from Wall Street Journal Online http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124301477914747859.html

Drawing from the article, studios are worried that more on-demand releases could cannibalize video sales. Video sales accounted for $8 Billion or 43% of movie sales (according to Adams Media Research cited in the article). Movie studios, it seems, have become overly-reliant on the video sales category, one that didn’t really have until the early 1990s. (Ok, I don’t have data on this, but it follows logically if you think back to the emergence of the VCR market when very few videos were available for purchase, and instead they were renting them out, and if you wanted to purchase them you’d have to spend $100 or more, instead of the $15-40 today (DVD vs. Blu-Ray). So that 43% of revenue didn’t exist say in 1993–so they transitioned once.

$8 Billion in revenue from sales compared to the $0.8 Billion in revenue from all forms of on-demand “sales”, presumably including iTunes, Netflix, etc.

Time to transition again.

* I already have Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players, that I used frequent flier miles to “purchase” so they were effectively free. Yes, I could use a XBox360 or Microsoft Media Center PC but I don’t want to maintain them, and it’s something on the order of an additional $200 investment plus I’d have to hide a medium tower case somewhere. Yes, I could use an AppleTV but they have very limited storage and no really user friendly way of managaing the number and size of digital files necessary to make this effective. Yes, I could use a MacMini with terabytes of storage, but that’s on the order of $800-1000 for a setup that would work for me.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]