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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?"
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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.
If Apple sent me a CD when I bought an album from ITMS, I would buy all my music from them.
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.
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.
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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