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Internet Movies Before DVD
alfrin writes "Actor Morgan Freeman and Intel are starting a company that will sell movies over the Internet before they are released to DVD. "We're going to bypass what the music industry had to come up with, and that's to get ahead of the whole piracy thing," Freeman told reporters at Sun Valley after making his presentation, which was closed to the press. Wouldn't this just make it easier to pirate movies?"
Did anyone else hear Morgan's voice in your head when reading the quote, as if it was a line from "Shawshank Redemption" or "Million Dollar Baby"? Spooky!
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Three words: It's about time.
Actually, the movie industry has done a reasonably good job of keeping ahead of the market forces that drive piracy. Depsite all the complaints about movies getting on the Internet early (as if the problem didn't exist with bootlegs prior to the Internet), I haven't seen any evidence that it has been a widespread issue. Your average person seems happy enough to go to the theater, buy a DVD, or sign up with Netflix.
The ones who should really be worried is television. The DVD rehashes of shows have helped, as have PVRs like TIVO. But the general populace is starting to get pretty annoyed about being told when they can and can't watch television. If TV doesn't reinvent itself as an internet business soon, the reprocussions could be of Napster proportions!
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Interesting definition of "get ahead" of. My impression is that movie downloading illictly on the Internet has been "no big deal" for the masses for quite some time. When my clueless barely point-and-grunt literate co-worker offered me a DVD copy of the latest Star Wars 4 days after it opened I realized it had already hit the mainstream. Sorry guys, to little, to late.
I dunno. The presentation was closed. I don't know anything about the specifics. If they use hard core DRM, it's possible it wouldn't be cracked. I suppose their first move should be to hire "DVD Jon" and then send him on a permanent vacation with no net access.
Is this guy versatile or what?
If they find the right price and the right movies to sell. They might create an 'itunes' effect, except in the movie genre. Most people would buy it if it was readily available and cheap.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." - C.S. Lewis
"before they're available on DVD" isn't quite going to cut it. Most movies are available via torrents before, or while, they're still out at the cinema. Sure, they're inferior, pirated copies, but for most people that seems to be good enough.
The mysterious step 2 is solved.
Get with Apple, do a (probably relatively minor) code revision to iTunes for the selection/shopping engine and DRM (face it, its gonna have it in some fashion) and add video support, maybe do some more work to use distributed downloading like bittorrent or have multiple mirrors in network-close proximity (work with cable and satellite cos?) to users, and have at it.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
If music is released on iTunes before it comes out on CD, the only ways that that music could be pirated are:
1. burn it to a CD, then rip the CD, thus losing quality
2. record the audio as you play it
3. crack the encryption.
However, with a video, #1 and #2 are out of the question. Unless, of course, you really want to hook up an S-Video/etc. out plug to a digital camera or VCR, record the playback to the camera, and transfer it back. It's just not feasible. Unless (until?) the encryption is cracked, this won't help piracy one bit.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Since when is the music industry in a real slump?
About the movies, I wish they would do this and make it as portable/open as possible, but as we all know it will be DRM'd out the ass and completely unusable except at Uncle Bob's house on Tuesday after 5pm.
Now sell it for half the price of a regular DVD and I would probably buy more movies.
This is really only news when a couple of big labels actually sign on.
There are already services that let you view movies online. If I am going to pay full price for a movie, I want the physical media that I can hold. Considering how cheap Wal-mart DVDs are, they better offer dirt cheap prices on this service if they expect to succeed.
The public will buy it before they steal it if:
1. Good quality
2. Readily available
3. The price is right
Most people, to this day, don't know that most DVD movies are encrypted and have the Macrovision(r) switch turned on. They just put the disc in and press play. What they care about are the three things above.
Item #3 doesn't mean free. In fact, it can't be free because if people see a price that's too low, they will think it sucks. #2 is important because from what I have seen, people download movies mostly because they aren't available on DVD yet. When the DVDs come out, they often buy'em... (or not based on whether they liked the movie...) #1 is pretty obvious, but I think it's not as important a draw as the later two. It is significant, however, as at present, in order to make video content on the internet feasable, a sacrifice in image quality will likely have to be made even with the best consumer grade broadband. So even if they capture the stream and put it on a DVD and can even play it that way, it will not likely measure up to the quality of a production DVD which would be a motivating factor to buying the DVD... not necessarily instead of downloading and not necessarily in addition to downloading either. I don't think the two are connected drives.
Or, 'Wayne Enterprises sells movies online' is what actually ran through my head first.
Need a photographic memory to remember all Morgan's roles!
Not Free SF Reader
kudos to freeman, the respect i already had for him just doubled....this just shows how out of touch the MPAA really is...
if an actor almost 70(!!) can understand the importance of new technology, why can't a "consortium" of movie companies who "supposedly" have our best interests in mind embrace digital distribution?
It sounds like they intend to DRM this tech heavily, but it baffles me a bit how they intend to do this. The download format will be encrypted, but if it is decrypted for display there are a lot of ways to record that stream. What do they intend to do? Put intel chips in televisions themselves? Degrade the signal so any additional lossy compression will render it as unwatchable? Junk it up with video bugs to identify the original source? Maybe they just assume that Joe User will be able to steal 3 or 4 movies, but he'll soon give up if he fills up his hard disk and decides it's just easier to stream them all the time.
Any speculation or additional articles on what this plan intends to implement?
I don't really understand why us geeks like to hoard intellectual property so much. Of those 50 movies:
1. How many do you actually watch?
2. How many do you use to buy friends with?
3. How many get thrown on a spindle and forgotten?
I know people that download almost 50 movies/TV shows/games a month. When I ask them how many they actually watch/play, it's rarely 20% at most.
I think this stems from the fact that having so much media readily available to us is still a relatively new concept. It was only 10 years ago that it took us 2 hours to download a 5 minute, low-quality movie (usually porn). I believe people are thinking "Wow !! i CAN have all these movies", not "Wow !! I want to WATCH all these movies".
I believe that when our kids grow up, they won't have this desire to accumulate all this media, because they'll be able to watch/play all this stuff when they want it.
Instead of paying $50/month of DVD, just to have the pleasure of burning and stock-piling them, why not hire 10 DVDs for $30 from your local video shop and buy some beers to drink while you watch.....
for an aging actor to get into Lori McCreary's pants. I can't blame him - she's easy on the eyes.
O'course, having seen his off-camera personality, I suspect he's more into the one he has his arm around.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
The only piracy that really hurts the movie and music industries is what comes from industry grade copying and packaging. Internet downloading and P2P don't really hurt. The quality is not truly there. Those who really want a copy will buy the retail or "legitimate" downloads. The recording industry has been advancing these arguments since the days of wire recording (cassette tapes were the devils own in their day). New tecnologies, new terminology in the rethoric. A great many artists know that people "sharing" creates greater exposure and ultimately promotes sales of the full featured top quality product. The movie industry has recognized this by putting so much into creating all the extras on DVD's. Mr. Freeman is a brilliant man, and further shows his love of craft and business accumin with his statements.
Sure, they're inferior, pirated copies, but for most people that seems to be good enough.
If Hollywood were capable of making films that were good enough to merit the trouble of going to a theater and paying the premium price to see it, then people wouldn't be satisfied with crappy camcorder internet bootlegs.
I know several people that spend so much time finding movies and burning DVDs that they never have time to actually watch them. Pick a random DVD out of their collection and it's almost a sure bet that they've never seen it. It's really rather sad.
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
Yes, of course it will (eventually, once the DRM is cracked) make it easier to pirate movies.
But it will also make it easier for people to legitimately buy movies.
No irritating crying children.
No people who smell bad.
No waiting.
No hassle.
No lines.
No fuss.
Given the choice, I think that most people would like to compensate the actors, directors and producers of a movie. What that price point is, remains to be seen.
If it would be computer-tethered and non-portable, I personally wouldn't shell out more than $5.00 (matinee ticket price).
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Wouldn't this just make it easier to pirate movies?
No, not really. You'd have less interested parties in your stolen warez. Of course, this all depends on the price. If the movies are going to be $20 a pop, then yes, it will just continue to get pirated. If they were only $5, most (read: all but the cheap) people would rather own a legit copy than a pirated DVD rip. Think about it this way:
If you could get an entire album of music for $5 that you had full rights to (i.e. able to play it on any device you owned and able to make a backup as well), it has been proven time and time again that people are more willing to pay for something rather than steal it (which nobody can really argue, downloading albums without permission is illegal, whether moral or not).
It should be interesting to see what price structure this thing will have, as that's about the only thing that will make it worth anyone's while. Otherwise, it will just aid piracy. As Eisner said in one of his few moments of wisdom, Price and availability are the only real combatants to piracy. The question here is whether it will be a step in the right direction, not whether it will make piracy easier. Piracy is already far from difficult.
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Bad movies, on the other hand, have a hard time drumming up rentals if they really bombed in the theater. ("Catwoman" is a great example. I personally thought it wasn't half as bad as people made it out to be -- but are you going to spend your money on it?)
I've heard it from more than one Hollywood type: Movies have the glamor, but TV is where the real money is. (Though maybe that depends which side of the camera you're on.)
Breakfast served all day!
1. Pricing is sane: If the vid costs any more than 30% of the price for a brand new retail DVD, forget it.
2. Delivery is sane: No funky P2P implementation. I'll be damned if I pay for a movie and have to use my own connection to help the publishers distribute it. Better cough up the bucks for the fat pipes, cause you're gonna need them.
3. Timing is sane: Say, really really soon after a movie premieres? Maybe 5 working days? If not, cheap bastards like me will just score it off ***net. It's not just about the quality, it's about the timeliness too.
4. DRM is sane: I'd better be able to shift the vid around, or view it without being connected to the mothership. Or better yet, forget DRM, because
we'll just film it off the monitor if we can't crack the copy protection. Have you seen high quality telecines? They're free, and they look real decent. You can't compete with that.
5. Selection is sane: Don't just limit the choice of movies to the latest corporate trash. Some of us like the weird obscure unseen shit. Donnie Darko would have been a worldwide smash if the publishers had the brains to properly promote it.
6. Quality is sane: The vids had better not be the size of a postage stamp. And perhaps, offer the viewer the vids in a variety of formats and codecs.
Perhaps piracy would technically be easier with this system, but you have to remember that most people really don't like stealing. The iTunes Music Store is blossoming for this very reason. Freeman's point is a good one: If a system like the iTunes Music Store (but for movies) precedes possible rampant piracy (which is certainly growing in the movie industry), the problem will be corrected before it grows. As is the case with music at the moment, you will then start seeing a lot of people legally downloading movies, and there will be no piracy mess to clean up (as has been the case with music). I certainly believe that this system would thwart far more piracy than it would encourage.
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." -Archimedes
I felt kinda like this back in 97 when I first got on the internet. Downloading and printing crap every spare moment... probably took me a year or so to realize that "THE INTERNET WILL STILL BE THERE IN THE MORNING!!" ha ha ha.
I still have tons of old programs and games I'll never use. I must have about 5 or 6 gigs of windows 95 drivers still too.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
For instance, when i was in school there came a time when 5 1/4" floppies fell below a dollar a per disc, in bulk. At this point it became extremely reasonable to make a copy of every single program that anyone had. A floppy, though a neat little utility called disk muncher, could be spread throughout the school in a day or two. It did not matter what the program did, or if you would use it, just that you had it. Students left high school with hundreds of floppies.
So i don't think it is because access to conent is new. I thinkmany people like to hoard, and if one takes the time to download, one might as well burn it to a $.20 CD. I agree that taking the time to rip a movie a every movie one gets to DVD might indicate additional concerns, but the concept is the same.
Also, I think this is one of the places where piracy is a term best not used. The content owners really need to focus their defenses on the firms that utilize stolen software for administration of profit. I mean once i got some cash, and grew up, the piracy went way down.
Can we get a fancy signed note with a shiny gold sticker to give to our ISP when they cap/cut off our service us for breaking their unpublished usage limits? I almost feel sorry for the poor college students living in their dorms with very restricted network usage, maybe 2GB a week or 20KB/s. Going by MovieWeb's avgs of 700MB for "normal" or 1.4GB for "high quality" that's one or two a week, not enough for a slow weekend.
These movie services may force some ISPs to upgrade their service and increase their usage caps if enough customers want to use a legal paid service(not pay for kazaa/bit torrent/other), especially if there's ever an unlimited use monthly subscription.
It would have be very high quality, far enough before the dvd release and cheap enough for me to cancel my Blockbuster Online membership, $15/mo 3 at at time and 2 coupons for free in-store rentals.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Does this have anything to do with Apple's migration to Intel hardware, Intel's plans to release hardware DRM in next year's CPUs, and the new h.264 compression scheme that's in Quicktime 7 that's supposed to make visually-high-quality downloadable movies more of a reality? Sounds like an aweful coincidence if you ask me.
Damien
I keep hearing the same complaint over and over.
The interesting movies/TV shows/records/content never get made because they aren't going to be block-busters and the studio system has gotten so bloated and expensive with the hangers-on.
We need a distribution channel (like an IMDB with iTunes-like media distribution) for movies that aren't and will never be block-busters but that are good anyway.
The studios used to produce quite a few a month but that got too expensive. Then came the indies but the studion and distribution companies own all the distribution channels, ergo, I don't get to see any interesting films.
The theater chains and the multiplexes can never run the movies long enough for me. By the time that I'm ready to see them, they're already gone.
But if I could pick 'em up off the net, legally, when I want to see them, I would.
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I believe this comment's parent has a point. A bad implementation could make piracy easier.
OTOH, I wish that entreprenuers could gloss over concerns of encouraging piraacy.
Isn't that the argument so many pirates use to rationalize their actions? IE, "If only the RIAA had offered music online for my convenience and pleasure, I wouldn't have to use Kazaa!"
At every turn, the **AAs (and those who fund the production of media)oppose most any digital content distribution system because of fears of piracy. I say that creators of convenient digital content distribution systems should flat dismiss such fears of piracy. Piracy will always occur, partly because of the hacker desire to grok most anything that's interesting or a challenge. The consumption of such readily available digital content would far outpace any ancillary piracy. The success of legitimate online music stores is a good example. Despite the continued easy availability of pirated content, millions of people prefer to purchase and receive their music through their choice of many competing online music stores.
Producers need to push piracy out of their mind. When companies make quality content conveniently available, people will gladly pay, and such revenue should outstrip any "missed" (not "lost revenue", IMHO, b/c would a pirate buy the content anyway? Maybe, maybe not)revenue.
PS: A good implementation would discourage piracy. For example, AFAIK, the only way to strip WMA 10 audio files of their DRM is to record them in real time, in analog. This means that the same could be true for video; that pirates could only rip movies in real time, which is a pain in the ass. I think that's an acceptable detterent.
Sadly enough, I find myself in this situation, to the point that there is a torrent or two running at all times on my machine at home. However, most of the time the download is in lieu of actually watching TV to the point that I almost watch TV shows exclusively on my computer. Lately I've also been burning DVDs of TV shows and distributing them around to friends who haven't managed to see them yet.
I think some of it is one giant pissing contest as to who can have the most movies, sometimes it's the "I'll get around to watching it later" syndrome, and sometimes it's just to have something to watch that you've never seen before available at all times. Sort of like saying "I've only seen this Simpsons 20 times before, so maybe I'll just finish watching Cowboy Bebop instead". And sometimes, it's because we remember waiting three days to download the first half of Blade in crap Telesync before realizing that the actual movie came out the next day. Even with the slowness, being (most likely) the first people in the community to have a movie from the 'internets' was a pretty big thing back then. Maybe some people just haven't gotten over it.
But you're right. It could get way out of hand...
Unless we're talking about Pr0n. Then it will likely never get out of hand.
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
It's all about the perception of scarcity. If you dangle the threat that someday, access to commodity X will be restricted (ie, made more expensive) or taken away, it creates an incentive to hoard. Whether it be guns, alcohol, rare paintings, media, etc., if you have the reasonable belief that what you can get today for $5, you cannot get tommorrow for $5, you will get as much as you can, while you can.
For example, there are people who archive useful websites, because sometimes, these websites change (become less useful) or disappear completely. You and I would probably not devote much time to this, because we know that we can usually rely on the Internet Archive or Google's cache to make snapshots (not always, but that's the risk we're taking). However, if it was information that had a reasonable chance of not being preserved due to external influence (ie, internal Diebold memo on how to fix elections for the highest bidder), then people would hoard it just for the sake for hoarding it, due to its potential value in scarcity. Ironically, because of that potential value, it would probably be less scarce than if it was a run of the mill technical document.
Given the movie/music industry's more or less stated goal of converting all of their "property" into licensable forms, preferably forms that expire on you (remember Divx - not DivX;), but the DVD you could rent to view for 24, then throw away?), hoarding what you can get, while you can still get it, isn't as crazy an idea as you might think. Of course, there's always the other explanation of hoarding specific items - some people are just natural-born packrats.
I call it the Pokemon Phenomenon (or effect)... it's the same mentality that makes you want to "catch 'em all".
It's a nice feeling when you have a "complete" set. Like hockey cards, coins, stamps, TV episodes (back when you had to try to record reruns to get em all). Or even reconciling your credit card bill with receipts and having everything match up...
Why do so many people think it is right to be able to copy movies and music for free?
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." - Thomas Jefferson
So you've heard it from Jefferson, but now let me ask you something. Suppose we lived in a world where Star Trek-style replicators were as easy to come by as computers are now. Anyone who wanted to could point their replicator gun at a car, a house, an air conditioner, a steak, or anything else they wanted, and instantly have a free copy without taking anything away from the person who owned the original.
Such a device could end poverty and hunger as we know it. No one would have to live in a run-down apartment, eating top ramen and setting a fan next to an ice chest to try to stay cool; they could have a fine home, fancy meals, and all the modern amenities simply by pressing a button.
Now, this would naturally reduce demand for manufacturing and construction. Some people might find themselves out of work and try to get this device banned. But wouldn't the benefit to society be worth keeping it? In fact, wouldn't it be immoral to deny everyone the standard of living this technology would give them, just so a few people could keep making a buck the way they always have instead of changing with the times?
Free sharing of copyrighted works, similarly, might reduce demand. But I believe the benefit of giving everyone access to decades' worth of material would greatly outweigh the cost, and furthermore, it would allow us to concentrate on rewarding people for creating new material in the first place instead of just for producing copies.
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I'm the same way about games.
I used to download, burn and spindle every game that ever game out, in thoughts that "I'll want to play it some day". Now I barely play games at all, and I have 7 spindles of games from 5+ years ago that are collecting dust.
What a useless obsession...
- shazow
I feel the same way - although I guess I never really thought about it.
Hey, what if I need that program some day? What if they stop Bittorrent and all the other stuff by requiring ISP's to only allow cached web traffic? What if?
It could happen, and in the current climate of technology things, it seems likely. In the meantime, I'm downloading everything I can get because in the future I might not be able to.
Of course, I wouldn't bother if this shit wasn't so expensive. $25 for a movie? $60 for a game? $500 for Photoshop? If movies were $5, games were $15, and Photoshop was $30, I wouldn't bother pirating any software or media.
However, I do buy DVD's occationally, because I know I can get that movie off the disc any time I wanted. I probably won't ever copy it or send it over the Internet, but I *could.*
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
No, you absolutely did not. The AC is wrong. DIVX was Circuit City's DRM-disc format. Wikipedia has never heard of "DIVIX", nor has Everything2, nor any other reputable site I can find. The only reference to "DIVIX" that I can find is on random forums on Google where clueless people are mispelling the name of DivX (the codec)
Random and weird software I've written.
Almost by definition, Internet pr0n never gets out of hand....
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
I don't really understand why us geeks like to hoard intellectual property so much.
Because it wants to be free?
I am downloading software and movies I don't intend to use in the coming 6 months, but I will likely be interested in it later - because if these P2P crackdowns actually succeed, then it won't be available anymore - so I'd rather have them stored in my pile of CD's where nothing can take them away anymore.
Of course, there's always the other explanation of hoarding specific items - some people are just natural-born packrats.
Your post will go great in my large collection of posts about consumption. Never know when it will come in handy, and some day Slashdot may not be around...
Ah yes, that must be why music, art, and theater never existed until the first copyright law was passed.
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How are we suppose to reward people for creating new material?
The same way you reward someone for designing a house or cutting your hair. You pay him for his labor, and then he doesn't have to worry about what you're going to do with the song he wrote (or the house he designed, or the stylish 'do he gave you) because his job is done.
If he asks more than you're willing to pay on your own, then you get your friends together, tell them about what a great artist he is, and ask them to chip in.
For us to reward people for creating new material, we'd have to actually pay the band/record producers -before- they even made the album. I suppose that could work though--as you pay your 20 bucks and reserve a CD. Actually, that might work as the company would be able to collect all the money, and -then- release the album.
Exactly, and if there are any concerns that the band might take the money and run without producing anything, that's what escrow is for.
No longer would artists have to worry that something they spent months or years creating won't sell. Instead of working for free to create something and then trying to sell it, they'll know ahead of time how much demand there is for it.
Then again, I bet you'd wait for it to be on the internet so you could just pirate it.
First off, it wouldn't be considered piracy, since it would be released for anyone to use as they see fit.
Second, if they can't convince me their work is worth paying for, that's their problem. If their first album comes out and I'm blown away by it, I'll chip in for the second one. Like many (if not most) people who download stuff from P2P, I have no problem paying for something if I know it's going to be good, and I've bought many albums purely because of hearing the band's other work via P2P.
This isn't about trying to benefit society or some other dumb-clucky thing; this isn't even about freedom from corporate america. This is about selfishness, greed, and people thinking the world owes them something.
You're right.. but not in the way you think. What you're describing is the motivation of those who support copyright. They think the world owes them something--not just money, but control and deference--because they wrote a song, or a book, or drew a picture. "You can't read it unless you do what I want, and neither can your friends! It's MINE! I demand the right to tell everyone what they can do with those words!"
They're too greedy and selfish to actually keep working; they want to make something once and then milk profit out of it for decades to come, by selling copies long after the real creative work has already been done. They think there's something magical about their job that entitles them to special treatment, when really they're just using their skills to perform a service like millions of other people.
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put me on that list.
max out 2 8mb connections and spend tons of time burning the images to dvd, but really i just like keeping track of these things.
how many good or even decent movies, or songs from 25 years ago just disappeared? how much culture is lost? looking back sure you can get a megahit album from the beatles or bob dylan, but most of the mediocre stuff that just fills the airwaves is lost. Most people would say "good riddance" but we are defined by the crap as well as the art. It will be sad if people 50 years on look back and don't realize along with the decent music we had our britney spears and nsync, because i think that horrible crap actually defines us as a real, breathing culture more than any timeless classics we produce. how much would you know about the victorian age if all you ever heard about was the works of shakespeare and such.
this seems like such a pessimistic argument, but in school when you heard all those folk songs in music class didn't they convey a greater understanding of the people vs a symphony or the national anthem. losing culture is a crime, less so for the crap, but hey, one persons ricky martin is another persons bach.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
also, i've noticed the more hd space i have the more i just have to keep it filled with movies, programs, crap i have stuff i downloaded, failed to sort and never got back to taking up hundreds of gigs at this point.
my main server has 2tb online right now, the download barrier for me is very low. if i see something online and had any interest in it at some point, click, boop, its queued. unlimited bandwith coupled with near unlimited storage capacity (like 5 dvd burners around) mean you get everything, and if the impulse comes by someday to check it out, meh. its a packrat mentality, but when the cost of acquisition and storage get that low expect everyone to have a few tb media library. the old paradigm of "buy what you really like cause you can't keep that much" is breaking down all over, and we should be happy. seriously, besides a few outmoded economic concerns what's to stop everyone from having either a copy or easy access to every movie made in the last 5 years, or every tv show. on demand is working on this, but it's terribly clunky as an interface, and has too small of a selection.
seriously, tv distribution is a model that evolved from the limitations of video broadcast. those kinda don't exist anymore, at least not the same "1 vhf channel per show per timeslot" kind of way. media is still profiting off the artificial scarcity, but that won't last forever. the first company that says "hey we sponsor tv shows for online download subscription" once broadband becomes really ubiquitous is going to be huge.
video killed the radio star, and then the net fired back.
should be fun to watch.
the revolution will not be televised... it will be a distributed torrent-cast.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.