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Pay-Per-View to Provide DVD After Viewing?
Anonymous Coward writes to tell us that Comcast is entertaining an idea that would allow digital cable customers to purchase a pay-per-view movie for roughly $17 that would also include a hard copy in the mail a few days later. From the article: "The only snafu in the entire idea is the fact that only 40% of Comcast cable subscribers have the required digital box at this point in time. But still, that is 40% of 21 million customers which is not too bad. DirecTV and Dish, are you listening?"
They should just put DVD burners in the Cable Boxes and save postage.
Ignore Alien Orders
If you watch it, and find out it sucks, can you cancel the order/send the hard copy back? How much do they charge you, then?
if it's in the normal DVD packaging then you could leave it unopened and resell if you didn't like the movie. but if it's a cheap copy with their own branding then I think it costs too much. if you're the type of collector who is proud of their collection you wouldn't want this, and if you don't care about your collection the hard copy wouldn't matter too much either.
however it turns out at least it's something new.
This sounds like a great idea to me. I've often watched a movie on PPV and wished afterwards I had purchased the hard copy. The best thing is that it sounds like they're selling the DVD at a reduced rate.
My lame blog.
...Pay-Per-View comes out after the DVD release, so everyone who wants the DVD for home viewing probably would have it by then. I can't really see the point to this.
I don't get it.
The only way I would ever find this useful, is if the option to purchase w/ a DVD copy would come *AFTER* you've watched the movie. That way you can tell if it's worth getting a hard copy.
i.e. You purchase the movie for $3.95 or whatever, at the end of the movie, you're prompted to purchase a discounted hardcopy at 13.05 ($17 - $PPV).
This is the only way I see it to be useful, otherwise you wind up with the same 'But I don't want to pay for a shitty movie' problem.
You pay $3 bucks to watch it; if you like it, you can upgrade at the end to a "hard" copy.
Or $3 to watch it, $10 to burn your own, or $17 to have a "good" copy sent to you (some of us don't realllly trust BYO DVDs to last, having had media/upgrade problems in the past).
Face it, people are stupid, and the internet is the place where they all meet.
I am willing to bet that if this goes into place, people will start buying DVDs that they would not normally want to own and will probably bypass going to see movies in the theater altogether. For instance, how many people would probably PPV & buy M. Knight Shyamalan's 'The Village' rather than just rent it or see it once in the theater? After seeing that so-so movie, I don't think I would want to own it on DVD, but if given that option when I first saw it, I might.
People may just buy the DVD and own it through PPV, rather than go to the movie theater/store and deal with the hassle. Even if the movie is not that great, people will still purchase the DVD anyway as a convenient alternative to going to the local movie rental store or theater. The DVD then would sell at a greater profit, since it may not otherwise sell at full price or would just sit in inventory.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Hold the press, folks!!! Comcast actually gets it.
They're going to take a business model (Pay Per View), add value by giving more to the consumer, rather than less (the ability to purchase the DVD), and deliver it at market prices.
You know, it's nice to see a company that actually wants to do business. Sure, you're paying top dollar prices for the media, but most movies you can buy on pay per view are new enough to still be charging premium prices anyway.
If they're smart, they'll offer the option to buy the media after the movie has been seen as well. (For all those users who will want a copy after seeing how great a movie is.) I can think of a number of times when a movie I've seen once has turned out to be a must-own. For example, Fight Club. The movie wasn't about what public perception thought it was about. As soon as I saw it, I knew I would watch it many times, and so bought it
It's about time a company came up with a mutualy beneficial product for customers rather than the take-em-for all their worth.
If I have to pay $17 for a PPV movie, I'm not likely to use it. If I pay $4 for one, and have the option to shell out another $13 after it for the DVD, thats something I'd use. Thats a try-before-I-buy sort of option.
:)
Comcast is definitely a company that "gets it" though. The on-demand works well, they're pushing out more and more HD content. 5+mbit cable modems, etc. If they could only get reasonable software on the digital PVR cable boxes, I wouldn't even be entertaining a switch to satellite. That and if they got Universal HD, so I could see BSG in HD
Which part of burning downloaded DVD's is legal?
I have no sig yet I must scream.
On one hand we have companies like this trying to extend our view time of their media by sending us a hardcopy to watch later.
Then we have twits trying to make self-destructing DVDs that only work for a couple days before turning into coasters.
They need to collectively make up their mind.
It seems to be a case of them not wanting to charge for the media, but wanting to charge for each viewing of the media. Yet another in the endless examples of why the concept of "licensing" sucks.
Though i suppose in 20 years every video the consumer can get will be pay-per-view. What a mess.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
If it's an actual DVD complete with package like you would get in the store (for collectors and such) then I think this would be a great idea as long as you could cancel the order and they take off a certain ammount. (So it would be more like renting) That way, if I watch the movie and don't like it, I'm not stuck with a crappy DVD but it's also better than renting a movie because I know there have been a few times I wished I bought a movie I rented because it was so good but usually I'm not inclined to go out and buy it after I've rented it. Then there are the times where I've bought a movie I wish I had just rented.
We'll just have to wait and see all the details.
you see the whole movie and than you get the hard copy. hey $17 isnt it bit costly . so why do you need the hard copy. is it for the video library or what. huh.
Which part of parent said he lived in the United States?
I think this is too expensive. Here's why. The majority of people that watch a movie Pay-Per-View do not go out and buy the movie, nor do they watch it on Pay-Per-View again. Now there are always exceptions - people that really like a specific movie so they go out and buy it. However for most it is about watching something new and different, not watching the same movie over and over (think about how many movies you've rented from the movie store more than once).
So the extra cost is pure profit for Comcast and the movie producers. It's another a way of getting someone to commit to buy a movie before they've watched it - before they find out it is another one of the mindless, forgettable flick comprising 95% of what Hollywood produces these days.
Why do you think they've started premiering movies world-wide? So as many people can see it as possible before negative word of mouth spread, reducing ticket sales. This is similar, but more on an individual scale.
Now if they put a burner in their box, and let the customer burn their own copy for say $5 extra, then that would be reasonable.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I have Comcast and I used to have a Digital box. It was pretty decent, but I gave it up because it just wasn't worth the price.
Technoli
Mod parent up, Insightful.
Burner-in-box saves more than postage. It has the potential to eliminate the need for a DVD stamping factory. The act of burning kicks the extra "DVD" fee, which should be *way* less than $17 total. If you don't burn it, you don't pay it.
Cover art and box contents are overrated, as are DVD extras. If you want all that crap, maybe the "purchase" comes with a code to unlock that content on the web -- go get it yourself.
all of it. I'm dutch.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
The movie houses said the same thing when betamax and vhs came out.
If Apple sent me a CD when I bought an album from ITMS, I would buy all my music from them.
I see the infomercial in the middle of the movie already in front of me:
This is Paul Jones, former frontman of the whatever music band. I have brought you the great collection CDs of the carpenters, and now I have for you the DVD of the movie you are watching right now. If you call the number in the bottom of your screen in the next 10 minutes, you will get it for $17 instead of the $24.95 usual price.
Wait a moment, watching at it like this: Is this PPV + DVD sale really new, or are we just fooling ourself.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
The pricing really should be somewhere between ppv + buy and just buying outright. So if $3 is the ppv and $17 is the buy, then maybe $5 with option to to buy for an additional $12. Comcast would win because a lot of ppvs would be $5 instead of $3. Consumers would win because they'd save on not buying a lot of dud DVDs. And Hollywood would win because consumers would buy a lot more movies they would not have otherwise bought. I can personally attest to the latter since there are a lot of DVDs I would have bought but didn't because the DVD rental put the total price over what I would have paid for that movie. Typically by the time I rent a DVD that I decide I like, the store price is $20 instead of $17 so it would "cost" me $23 to own the movie. There's aren't that many movies I'd eat the $6 extra on.
"They're going to take a business model (Pay Per View), add value by giving more to the consumer, rather than less (the ability to purchase the DVD), and deliver it at market prices."
That would be a terribly interesting feat indeed - to some how arrive at a market price on a monopoly (though copyright) good. Make no mistake, even though some DVDs are less than others they are still maximizing profit by leverging their monopoly power by pricing the product to gain maximum profit given the demand *for each type of DVD*. This is not (free) market pricing, it is monopoly price discrimination.
Do you really believe that the "cost" of the DVD depends on things like DVD burning, stamping, cover art, and a box? There's usually a multi-million dollar film to be made before any of that can happen. Cutting out burning and packaging costs would save the consumer almost nothing.
Circuit City's divx program did this - after purchasing your 48 hour disc, if you enjoyed it you could "purchase" it and fully unlock any time constraint DRM built into the system.
Alternatively, they could not bother to send a hard copy and pass on the saving to the consumer, thereby making pay-per-view ever so slightly closer to the freely available copy we can all get these days anyway.
I hope people don't get paid to come up with this shit.
But now you get the movie on demand and the DVD no matter what, it is not a choice of one or the other.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Netflix it for 20 a month, get upwards of 20 films in that time frame, burn what you like for next to nothing.
Is it illegal? In some places it is, but have you ever heard of anyone getting a visit from The Man for taping a show off of TV?
Even if you don't want to take that route I still would think that Netflix and a visit to a local Best Buy would be less expensive for the type of DVD consumer that buys more than one film a week.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
For $17 one could easily go through 10 movies a month at Netflix. Granted you don't get to keep a hard copy unless you burn one. Walmart has shelves of it's movies at $9.
I suppose there's a market. This might appeal to a single mother who wants a copy of a Disney movie for her kids (assuming they're shown on PPV) or Spiderman. If someone only wants one movie a month I guess it's okay. But at two movies that's $34, three is 50+. I suspect this is going to get real expensive for some households real fast. But, then again, these are households that are already spending $90 a month for cable in the first place.
What interests me the most about this article is how Comcast plans on delivering the movie. Will they keep a large inventory of DVD's in a warehouse, ready to ship to the customer (incur carrying costs), partner with another company that can ship the movie such as Amazon, or just have the movie drop shipped from the manufacturer? I think those would be the three most logical choices but all have their own unique hurdles. I really couldn't imagine Comcast keeping inventory of the movies they show on PPV but it seems like the best route to me if they truly wanted to offer this service. Just keep checking Ebay for a user named "Comcast" selling 100,000 copies of 13 Going on 30.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
welcome our new Pay-per-View overlords
OK. I am pretty sure I'm in the minority here, but there are very few instances where I would buy the DVD of a movie without having seen the film first. And the only reason I would ever watch something on pay-per-view is because I missed it in the theater. I'm not an impulse buyer. I consider my purchases for a very long time before making them and I wait until something is on the used market before I buy it. Especially where media like DVDs or CDs are concerned. The last thing I want to do is fall into the trap of owning stuff I don't really care for and then later losing money by trading it in for just a few pennies. I can't be the only person who thinks like this.
I would suggest that a lot of you who don't think like this re-evaluate your approach if you find that you are trading lots of stuff in at a loss. I used to trade stuff in thinking that I was still getting a return on my investment. But over time I noticed that unless I sold the stuff directly (without the middle man that a store or online used retailer is) I would stand to get more of my money back. But that's also too much effort for the return. So it's better to make sure when you buy something, that it's something you REALLY want. Unfortunately, this approach like so many others is going to sucker a bunch of people into thinking they're getting some kind of deal by combining their DVD purchase with a pay-per-view viewing.
Finally, don't say: "Hey... it's only media/a movie/music. Chill out". Some of us value our entertainment quite highly and therefore are extremely selective and cautious about pricing. I have yet to ever watch a pay-per-view movie because they all pretty much suck in general on DirecTV.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
...I have an option for purchasing the widescreen version of the movie on DVD. I also like the "try before you buy" idea that fellow Slashdotters are mentioning.
I can already get pretty much any new movie at WalMart for $17 for the first release week.
I can see any movie I want via NetFlix for $17 per month. More than 5 and I'm doing better than pay-per-view.
This new scheme saves me going to Walmart sometime in the week i want to see a new release DVD.
Which for most people, you already know you want to buy that movie, so planning to get to a store in the next week isn't a great burden.
Comparing Netfilx - I've had it for a year, I've purchased two movies that I didn't know I wanted to own until I saw them - Royal Tennenbaums and Robots.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I have somehow missed movie downloads being legal over there, do you have some link with information? (a search on copyright law does not seem to reveal anything special).
Seeing as how /. is a US site posting mostly US news for mostly US readers, I would argue that the GGP is obligated to mention that he/she is not from the US when he/she mentions that it is okay to do something that is clearly illegal in the US. I would also argue that the GP's response is a perfectly acceptable one given the previous sentence.
Or if you want to ignore that for some reason, then I ask: Which part of grandparent said he/she was referring to US law (and not, for example, Canadian)?
This offer seems a little backward thinking, even old fashioned.
Many people, including myself, simple use their DVR/TIVO to record the pay-per-view movie then watch the movie at their convenience as often as they want for as long as they want, all for $4. One is only limited by the size of their hard drive.
There is not much reason to pay the extra $13 for a hard copy unless you want to watch the movie in my car or on their laptop.
Without the normal DVD packaging, or after opening, you could still legally resell it, provided you don't keep any copies yourself. Unopened packaging may help you get a better price, but it isn't a legal requirement.
That's simply Comcastic!
Some settling may occur during posting.
It might not save the consumer, but in aggregate it seems like it would save someone some money.
Whats up with headlines that end with a question mark.
Its almost guaranteed that bullshit follows!
I had a UHF antenna in Boston, and grabbed all 6 networks with HD feeds, plus my nationals, all piped through my HD and later HD-Tivo box. In Florida, I needed to get a VHF/UHF antenna. Right now, the antenna only feeds through one line, I just need the 15 minutes to hop in the attic and switch the 4x8 multiswitch for the 5x8 multiswitch, and I could do HD on ANY drop...
Nothing with with OTA HD, it generally is at a higher bitrate than cable or satellite will give you (my local CBS looks much better than the NY Feed)... Plus Sunday Ticket + Superfan gives you LOTS of HD football. Now if only the Shortcuts ran in HD... maybe next year they'll get it.
The DirecTV boxes all include a built in OTA tuner, so no harm, no foul, and once you are putting in a satellite dish, the antenna is no big deal.
Alex
Of course they're selling it at a "reduced" rate. It's just like ketchup at a restaurant or HBO at a hotel - both are offered with something for which you already paid them money.
Comcast is offering a "reduced" rate, but to take advantage of it you need to have their service first. That's not altruism and good will toward consumers, that's marketing.
PPVs are way overpriced. Yes, it is a bit more convenient than driving to a video rental store or waiting to get them mailed (you can watch right now instead), but the prices are just too high. The only times when I used them was to watch those live events (sports or humour shows) - whose cost is even more ridiculous...
If you're watching a couple of those (or even renting a couple from a overpriced video rental store like blockbuster here - although my local rental is 3$/2 DVDs and still has better selection than PPVs), then renting by mail (ala netflix) is FAR cheaper (always under 1.50$CDN/rental). Even here in Canada we've got like a couple dozen places like netflix. Last one I checked has over 36000 different titles - a little bit better than your average PPV selection or blockbuster which is not much better. The online rentals don't usually send me dirty or scratched discs either.
Upgrade? ROFL! You got a DVD burner and some blanks, right? DVD burners are under 50$, and blanks can be had at BestBuy between 30 and 40$ for a box of 200 almost everyday (good quality Taiyo Yuden aren't much more either). Combined with readily available warez'ed AnyDVD + CloneDVD/Nero Recode/whatever you like, and you got an excellent copy in a few minutes for about a dime. Not that I really encourage it, but it's the reality of it. Even my 60yo dad can, and does. If movies weren't so overpriced it wouldn't be so common perhaps. I just rented "Robots" because the 28$ they want falls under "too fucking much" - and quite frankly I still hesitated making a copy (it wasn't that good really). Most movies aren't worth the asking price. At other times, I'll be glad to buy it - like the T2 extreme edition DVD (an OK action movie watch watching again, and including the high def version - although it's DRM'ed) which was only 18$ for the 2 disc set with shipping.
It's about time that companies started doing this.
Hopefully now companies will see that consumers that buy 'ephemeral' products actually WANT something for their money besides the temporary service they are provided.
Hopefully Apple and Microsoft will take note and follow suit.
Like when you buy a FULL album from iTunes, they should send you the HARD copy as well since it cost them NOTHING to make a copy of the digital version.
And the Bull-Shiat that Compaq, Microsoft and PC manufacturers pull when your BUY a pc and are charged for a Windows license, (In Compaq's (now HP)'s case), only to be given a 'restore partition' on the hard drive (which is easily damaged or corrupted). If I buy a license, I EXPECT a physical CD in case the shoddy software/hardware craps out and takes my copy with it.
I was lucky enough in '99 to buy a Dell and they included a backup Dell image cd AND the Win98se install cd with manual. But then in 2003 when I bought my shitty Alien-Crap-Ware laptop I specifically asked the customer service agent if by paying on their website for "a copy of WinXP pro" if I'd be getting a install CD and not just a partition or just a manufacturer restore cd, and they said it would be a WinXP cd. Bullshit. It was a restore cd.
It's good to see some companies are taking steps to actually provide a valid service rather than fleece their customers, for pure-profit 'digital merchandise'.
GRRR.
Too bad lemon-laws aren't applied to software, and digital media.
OOoooor pay $1.06 for a rental from Redbox, rip it to the file server, and watch it whenever you want. Most movies I rent I only want to watch once anyway.
The reality of PPV is that its a product based buisness and not a service based one.
... Would you rather license windows or subscribe to RH?
... Not that Napsters taking off these days but the concept is there.
Look at Netflix, one of the fastest growing entertainment companies with an ingenious model. They are doing so much buisness that they no longer have to pay indivdual media licensing fees. They instead can pay ussage fees on thier movies, consider the next logical move. Video on demand through highspeed connections at a monthly service rate. You get a quantified number of movies to watch a month and all at 1 monthly rate and not some insane 3 dollars a movie, as of now I rent 9-12 movies a month for my standard 20 bucks through the mail. If they offered ondemand service I would double my ussage and be willing to pay 40. PPV and other product based consumebles are phasing out and service oriented ones are moving in.
Want another example?
Windows -- Redhat
Napster - Buying Cd's
Im sure you can think of hundreds more.
Siefkencp
I don't know if they said the same thing when Netflix came out, but if they did, they'd be right. Not only are "borderline" movies cheaper to see, but when I'm finished, they don't embarrass me by sitting around on my DVD shelf.
> Which part of burning downloaded DVD's is legal?
:-)
The part where RIAA torches them after confiscation...
the hardcopy will just be a copy of what was transmitted, adverts and all...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Making up one's mind is your duty, not theirs. See, the way it works, these companies offer you all these different ways in which you can buy something, and you decide which one makes sense for you.
Comcast's offer makes a lot more sense than many other business models; I think I'll give it a try.
Do you really believe that the "cost" of the DVD depends on things like DVD burning...
Yes, they could drop the price to $16.75 if they didn't have to create the DVDs and the cover art.
Find coupons in Greeley
Just record it with my VCR for free.
I think maybe he's looking for the plausable deniability and 'original sources' that they can provide. however there is a flaw in his plan: If he's willing to use netflix (who would probably upgrade him to the 5-disk plan for free if he asks nicely) for the rest of his life at the pretty reasonable price of 12 disks per year, why bother ripping them? If there's something you want to see again, just put it in the queue.
It's better to buy the disks anyway. They cost about the same as music CDs (how weird is that? 3hrs of motion picture for the same price as 40-55 minutes of filler and up to 10 minutes of what you wanted) and you get the nice package for your dvd shelf as well as the longevity of a dvd that's physically stamped rather than photochemically "burned"
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
At an rate of 1% of subscribers taking "advantage" of this deal once a year, that's an additional $14.3 million per year in gross revenue for Comcast. That adds a measly 0.07% to their total of $21.3 billion in revenues. Probably not worth the cost of setting up the infrastructure to support this program.
I'm sure they're predicting a much higher response rate, but I'll bet they're sadly mistaken.
They should just have a "Buy DVD" button attached to every television show, movie, superbowl advertisement collection, movie preview collection, whatever. DVDs are so cheap these days, with that kind of volume and throwing in a few ads, you could probably charge a lot less than retail.
Actually... maybe they shouldn't. That might be something too tempting for me.
E pluribus unum
My concern is what kind of DVD it would be. I don't mean factory-pressed versus DVD-R. I mean, it is the same kind of DVD that I would see in the retail store or is it some kind of Comcast-branded version?
More than that, the majority of pay-per-view that I see is in pan-and-scan/open-matte format. For example, if a movie was intended to be seen in 2.35:1 widescreen, that's how I want the DVD. Since most pay-per-view that I've seen is 1.33:1 (and a few 1.77:1 here and there), would the DVD be in its intended 2.35:1 aspect ratio or would it be in the pay-per-view 1.33:1/1.77:1 AR?
Same with audio. If a movie is Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS but the PPV version is two-channel, is the DVD going to be in the intended audio format or the PPV format?
The article didn't mention how these particular issues would be handled and it needs to be a concern, not only for those of us who want to see movies in the way that the film makers intended but also for the opposite. What if someone who doesn't like widescreen watches a pan-and-scan/open-matte PPV movie then receives a widescreen DVD? What if someone who tolerated the non-widescreen version on PPV expects to get the widescreen DVD and instead gets the pan-and-scan/open-matte (euphemistically called "full frame") version? Will customers be given the option of the widescreen or P&S/OM version?
Unfortunately, TFA doesn't address these issues. I think that a lot of people will want to know this before they decide whether it's a good thing or not. This is an idea that we in the home theatre community have discussed for several years; but Comcast needs to make its customers very aware of what kind of DVD they will be getting or else Comcast risks getting a lot of complaints and returns.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
These things need to happen as a movie is released. Movie theatre attendance is down, piracy is up. If we were offered a valid and easy way to supply our obvious demand for in home entertainment, they could make some real money. Hollywood, are YOU listening?
One issue not addressed is who wants a DVD with the transition to HiDef DVD (take your pick HD-DVD or BluRay) just months away? Comcast is basically selling old technology according to this announcement.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Great, so we'll have more polluting discs floating around that people watch once or twice before tossing in the garbage. What shocks me is that not only does the environmental cost not appear to be an issue to the original submitter, butr none of the respondents that I could see have raised the issue yet. I admittedly have a prejudice since I pretty much hate discs of any sort to begin with - why is everyone so excited about possessing a shitty piece of physical media? - but surely I can't be the only one who feels that redundant delivery through physical media in the mail is a step backwards?
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
They should just put DVD burners in the Cable Boxes and save postage.
In addition to being more expensive and prone to breakage, burners would have lower functionality.
- Burned CDs/DVDs have a shorter lifetime than pressed ones.
- Mailed CDs can include the ancilary stuff - including program material that didn't make it and commercial packaging with its artwork. (Plus the coupons, advertising, etc. which makes it a better deal for the movie company.)
Main upside to having a burner is you get the hardcopy right away. But storing a softcopy in the machine until the mail arrives will do almost as well for repeated viewing - you just don't get to port it to another set until the hardcopy arrives.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Have a plan whereby after spending $17 or $20 on the same pay-per-view over and over for the kids (or whatever), they just send you the fricking hard copy. Kind of a lease-to-own option. It might cost a little more but it could be worth it.
"Many people, including myself, simple use their DVR/TIVO to record the pay-per-view movie then watch the movie at their convenience as often as they want for as long as they want, all for $4. One is only limited by the size of their hard drive."
What you are doing violates the spirit of copyright. Time shifting a show and watching it once at your own convenience is different than archiving it and watching it multiple times. The latter is copyright infringement, and in my opinion, theft. Maybe the MPAA isn't so evil. The customers don't seem to even realize what they're doing is wrong.
Vote for Pedro
Is it just me or would this be like buying the plates and silverware when you go out to dinner?
I am not hard to please - At the end of many (most) movies I can give them a thumbs up and then move on with my life. Very few times have I said, yea I want to buy that movie and watch it a thousand more times.
Even in this day and age when I could pop a DVD into my laptop and "click rip and burn" -- I don't even bother doing that. It's not like the movie is going to end any different or have a different plot line the 2nd time I watch it.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Ditto on the Comcast vs. DirecTV... My biggest problem is that in Florida, the summer rains interupt my signal... so that might be a reason to switch to cable. I also find MPEG4 artifacts more annoying than the MPEG2 ones... (people are free to disagree, I also find MPEG artifacts more annoying than static, but its probably from years of filtering out static).
However, DirecTV's deal with the NFL requires them to make Sunday Ticket available without programming. Not sure if you could keep your Tivo service, so I'd have to switch to the older HD Box, but I think that I would keep Sunday ticket, even if I switched to Comcast...
Alex
Second its not a good buy as
A. PPV + Discounted DVD on its release date may very well be less then $17.00
B. PPV plus used DVD out of bargin bin at video store is way cheaper by the time you actually want to see this movie again.
C. The courts have said you can legally record a PPV. Infact several cable providers used to recomend it.
Third its Illegal as hell...can we say anti-trust laws boys and girls...the idea here is to sell DVDs that are NOT RELEASED yet to the general public (movies hit PPV 30-60 days before DVD). The VSDA would go balistic as would Blockbuster, Wal-mart, Amazon etc, etc.
ROI is a shitty measurement of a project's worthiness. You use NPV, or if not that, at least IRR...
If Comcast didn't provide DVD's with the PPV's it would negatively impact DVD retail sales, since the PPV's will be made available simultaneously with the DVD release. DVD's are a huge portion of overall movie revenues. It's all about convenience for the subscriber and timing for the DVD release. I'm all for it and would pay $17 for top-run features but the PPV's better be in HD. I won't pay that much to watch it in SD.
http://www.techyrants.com
Yeah, the MPAA / RIAA would LOVE this idea!
How many times have you bought a DVD for someone else, then had to borrow it back to watch it (or watch it with them)? This sounds like a good way to get a gift for someone else while getting to watch it yourself once. And if it sucks, pass it off at the office Secret Santa.
I'm sure Comcast sees this as an alternative to a trip to the video store when you want a DVD right now, and it is a perfectly good one for most situations. But it also has the bonus that you can take the viewing for yourself and give away (or sell) the DVD without opening it. There may be some sort of agreement that you won't do this, but unless you're auctioning them off, who is ever going to notice?
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I heard about this earlier today. I thought, wouldn't it be cool to be a fly on the wall when the national sales manager from Fox Home Video sits down with the video buyer for Wal-Mart, the guy who buys 40 percent of all the DVDs these guys and all the others put out -- that would be 40 out of every 100 -- so I'd love to be a little black fly when the national sales guy from Fox clears his throat and says "Joe [pseudonym], here's what we're thinking of doing with Comcast." And I'm thinking the video buyer sits there in the plain meeting room -- I think they have folding chairs and a simple table -- and he's a nice southern boy, so he jus' sits there and listens while this dude from California lays out the whole idea and there's a moment of silence, and then he says: "well Joe, did you have any other ideas you'd like to share with us?" oooooooh, I'd love to be there for that!
I work for Comcast in Nashville, TN. When we released the Video OnDemand service, PPV movie rentals more than tripled. In the old system, you had to wait until the movie started, rent the movie, and watch it right then, and if you missed part of it and wanted to see it again, you had to rent it again. With ondemand, you now get PPV movies for 24 hours, and even regular premium or free movies for 2 hours. People who'd never even considered PPV before started renting PPVs on a regular basis with this new system, especially since you can rent it anytime you want. As buggy, slow and unreliable as ondemand is (and there are multiple reasons for this), it's still the number one selling point of digital service. When you watch anything on ondemand, after it's over it takes you to the 'My Rentals' section after it's done. It would be nothing at all to add an extra button that only appears in this section (ensuring you'd already rented the movie, but not necessarily that you've watched it) to order the DVD. And people will do it, because most of them are normal people. And normal people are lazy. They'll just see it as convenient. They'll watch a movie they were only a little interested in, and if they like it, they can buy it then and there. Hardcore movie buffs and technofreaks probably won't take advantage of this, but seriously, if you're a hardcore movie buff, if you buy $100+ worth of DVDs every couple of weeks, how often do you even watch PPV? That's not the target audience, because they don't buy PPV movies anyway. This is targeted at people who already spend upwards of $50 a month on PPV (no, really, lots of people do this), often times ordering the same movie 3 or 4 times (I kid you not).
just some guy
yeah, I have one. it's in dutch, so it will probably not tell you much...
i e/
http://www.iusmentis.com/auteursrecht/nl/thuiskop
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Well, that's not terribly helpful then. Thanks anyway though.