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How to Open a "Movie Cafe"?

Posted by Cliff on from the new-ideas-in-entertainment dept.

tunari asks: "Here in my neck of the woods (Cochabamba, Bolivia) there are hundreds of Internet cafes and Nintendo salons, where you can rent games by the hour. I would like to open a movie salon. I imagine a central CD/DVD jukebox and either dumb terminals or, if possible, TVs. Users would need basic control over playback, and, if possible, some automated way to request new titles. Cost is a big issue, as we will probably be charging less than a dollar per hour. What are some of the ways we could set this up?"

4 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. Biggest cost by MattCohn.com · · Score: 4, Informative

    The biggest cost you need to worry about is the movies themselves. Every time you turn on any movie you see a big 'FBI WARNING: ...movie is licenced for private home viewing only...'. Now, most of us have already gotten used to this but if you try and set this up you are going to need special licences. And they don't come cheap. Whenever you loose a blockbuster movie, know why they charge so much to replace?

    1. Re:Biggest cost by leviramsey · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's the reason that you get licenses from the distributors of the films. I would find out who holds the distribution rights in your country and ask them. Most likely, you will have to pay them a percentage (50% sounds likely) of every time the movie is shown, plus a fixed fee.

      The simple fact is that this guy wants to exhibit films for profit (or to at least make money from the sale of viewing films; as far as the law is concerned, these are the same thing) and that's not covered by any definition of fair use.

      If you get the licenses, they really can't sue you (unless you break the terms of the license, for instance saying that you only sold $100 worth of viewings while you really sold $10,000 worth); any suits would get laughed out of court. I would definitely have a lawyer present while negotiating the license, though, and might even consider having the lawyer draft all correspondence.

  2. Hotels by BenTheDewpendent · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hotels often have such a service and system installed to some degree. you Call say you want to watch a movie and you can... So there are systems that will at least partialy take care of your question. but as usual the devil is in the details such as cost of system, cost of licencing, etc...

  3. Not sure if that's true by Steven+Reddie · · Score: 2, Informative

    The owner of my previous local video store told me that the reason he is actively trying to get people to move from VHS to DVD is that he doesn't have such huge licensing costs for DVD's. I don't recall the details but I think he was saying that the cost to him for a rentable DVD is about the same as it costs to buy it in a retail store. He didn't seem to be doing anything dodgy like renting out "private viewing only" distros.