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Bollywood New Releases Available via Video-On-Demand
af_robot writes "There's an announcement of a secure, DivX video-on-demand service for first-run movies, but only for Bollywood movies. 'Each new Bollywood film is released on the public Internet a day before or on the same day of its theatrical release, through piracy on multiple illegal movie download web sites,' said Al Mason, CEO of Cinema on Web. 'Our partnership with DivXNetworks represents the future of entertainment on the Internet. Soon virtually all new major Bollywood and Hollywood movies, including entertainment will be distributed digitally with secure VOD solutions like the one created by DivXNetworks, simultaneously defeating piracy and generating additional revenue for film studios and producers.'"
for bittorent or at the very least the multicast features in routers. ..has multicast caught on yet? seems like i remember reading it was starting to back when i was in college and gave a shit about the future
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
DilSe (From the Heart (USA))
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164538/
When I worked for a satellite TV providor that I will not name, I had to sell foreign language programming. Including B4U (Bollywood for you), I suspect that it's due to cultural differences. In India, it's the norm for all prices to be subject to negotiation. People used to try to haggle down a set price.
The first few times it's not bad, when you get you're 80th call, it is supremely annoying.
When I hear of Bollywood, I think of cheap ass haggling customers.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
And here's a discussion of that scene and the train :-)
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
its like this:
20% - song/dance - feels like 80% of movie
20% - crappy comedy - feels like 80% of the movie
20% - dialogues (actually 15% dialogues, 5% monologues, its must) - again, feels like 80% of the movie
20% - fight sequences/chases - 80% again
20% - unidentifiable facial expressions - takes forever!
By the time the movie ends, the amount of mental stress is around 400% of any average movie!
BTW, 80% of those 'gorgeous' babes are fscked by 20% of the producers in Bollywood!
It depends on several things:
Firstly, proprietary hardware; they don't use a standard conditional access module (CI-CAM), but the decryption hardware is deeply embedded in the receiver
Secondly, non-standard crypto systems; they don't use or share the crypto algorithms with others; and it's possible to change the algorithm over time to ensure they're a moving target - made possible by proprietary hardware
Finally, a very active private security team who read bulletin boards, blogs, news sites etc; apparently they visit people who get too "interested". Hello NDS people!
It's strongly rumoured that NDS's researchers looked very closely at their rivals' systems to learn how they worked, and on discovering weaknesses posted hacks, so that they discredited the opposition and thus drove revenue their way. More interesting, Sky and their associates have flouted European Commission regulations on open and fair access to their technologies where they have a monopoly.
And for the final irony? The software system driving the set top boxes and the interactive content is called OpenTV, when it is not open at all, and they adapted GNU tools to compile the code and yet didn't contribute those tools back under the GPL until they were forced to!
In the case of cable companies, at least, I'm not sure you're entirely correct. Cable companies want to sell the idea of video-over-IP. Go look at http://www.comcast.net/News/GENERAL/ even without a valid login, the right-hand sidebar has a grip of video news sources.
They want to be able to sell their service as a high-speed premium service, since they're more expensive than most DSL.
There are plenty of people who will pay to have the movies at home. This explains how netflix become so popular.
It also explains how Blockbuster Video became popular.
I think a lot of it hinges on the price. If I go to the video store, it costs about $4 to rent a movie, which I can then watch over the course of 5 days, with as many guests as I want. If I get Netflix, it's even better as long as I check out at least 4 or 5 movies per month: for $18, I can check out 3 movies at a time, with no late fees to worry about. Now compare all this to the movies, where I have to pay $6-8 per ticket, plus overpriced snacks and drinks. That comes out to probably $20-30 for a night at one movie for me and my girlfriend, depending on how much food I have to buy her. Ouch. Add in the cellphones, lack of seating choice unless I want to sit in the theater for an hour before the movie starts, people sitting in front of me, etc., and the theater looks less and less attractive.
So for this video-on-demand stuff to take off, it really needs to be priced right. $4 per rental maximum, and it needs the ability to rewind, pause, etc., or else it simply won't compete well with videos/netflix. If they try to jack up the price so that it's similar to a theater, just because it's available at the same time as the theatrical release, they'll get a few buyers who absolutely hate the theater, but everyone else will pass on it and wait until it's available more cheaply (through DVD rentals, etc.). This would not be a successful business venture.