'Harry Potter' Offered (Legitimately) on the Net

Skyshadow writes "Warner Brothers is distributing several movies, including Harry Potter and Mars Attacks via the internet. The price is the same as I pay for Pay-Per-View from my satellite provider ($3.99 for a 24 license), and the movies are in the area of 700 megs. I'm sure that movies on demand will eventually take off as a legitimate and feasible distribution method, but given that a vast majority of US households are without broadband, is this an idea before its time?"

Comments

Re:Are me eyes deceivin' me?

[Eccles]

What the what!?! Amidst all this lagal brick-a-brack and industry association B.S. a company is actually doing something that reflects a real consumer market?

Nope, it's $3.99 for a video you can view for only 24 hours, after spending the downloading time. Compare this to a $4 5 day rental at Blockbuster, or buying it on DVD for $16.99, it doesn't look so good. Whose kid is only ever going to want to watch it once, and in most cases on a computer screen (TV out isn't *that* common)?

Unrestricted, it would make sense. For a lot of movies, they'd make up in volume what they'd lose in per-copy prices. (The $16.99 includes distributor and vendor markups.) Harry Potter might be one of a few where this isn't the case, simply because so high a percentage of the potential purchasers are buying it already.

I think this is just intended to fail. "Look, we offered stuff over the net, but they've already pirated it and refuse to buy it."