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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 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.
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.
It seems that PPV comes out maybe a month after the DVD release, which really isn't that long a time. Not everyone watches the calendar and rushes out to buy movies the day they're released.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
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
Which part of burning downloaded DVD's is legal?
I have no sig yet I must scream.
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.
Because not everybody wants to go to Blockbuster to rent a movie to find out if they want to buy it first. This lets them watch it at home, then decide they like it and buy the DVD that way.
Think about it, man. Not everybody sees the film in the theater first or uses the rental store. Many use PPV simply because it's more convenient, even if they have to wait a little longer to get their first look.
I though the Microsoft self-destructing DVD story was just a rumour? That aside, I don't see anything wrong with Comcast's idea - provided (a) you can return/refuse the DVD if the movie was crap and (b) the DVD you get isn't an inferior copy (lacking some of the extras perhaps).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you watch movies as much as you listen to music, you either don't do either much, or you don't do much else. I'll listen to tracks from CDs I buy probably 5000:1 to the number of times I'll watch the same movie. I don't typically rewatch movies for years outside of social engagements, though, because the nature of my memory makes them considerably less entertaining. They aren't as emotionally manipulative as music, consume two senses, consist of stories (which degrade in interest with repitition), and eat up from 90 minutes onward.
Theatres are less efficient entertainment/cost than DVDs, and DVDs are less efficient entertainment/cost than CDs.