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Are DVDs Inconvenient On Purpose?
I was noodling around Best Buy looking for a new laptop, and it occurred to me how inconvenient it was that I was limiting myself to models with DVD players. Either that, or thinking what a pain it would be having to take an external DVD player everywhere that I might want to watch a movie on my laptop. Then I started to wonder why this was.
Specifically: Why do movie studios allow Netflix to send out DVDs to their subscribers by mail, but not to allow the same option in the form of "virtual DVDs" that you could "check out" through their website, and stream them while they're checked out to you? Surely the streaming option is more convenient for almost everybody — no postage fees, no opening and sealing of envelopes on Netflix's end, no dealing with lost and scratched DVDs, etc.
Well, obviously movie studios would not allow Netflix to let users "check out" a virtual DVD, stream it, and then "return" it and instantly "check out" the next virtual DVD in their queue, since this effectively amounts to unlimited simultaneous access to all of their titles. (That's now Netflix's huge online streaming library works, but movie studios don't currently want to make all of their movies available for instant streaming.)
But then why not take all the movies that are currently only available as DVDs (not for streaming), make them available as "virtual DVDs", and only allow users to check out a certain number per month? This would mimic the limit imposed by the speed of the postal service, which only allows users to check out a fixed number of movies per month by mail. Netflix could keep its existing streaming library the way it is, and for the movies currently available only as physical rental DVDs, replace them with "virtual DVDs" that would count towards a user's monthly virtual DVD limit. Why won't movie studios let them do that?
Well actually, there's still a clear reason why movie studios would not allow this: a certain amount of revenue comes from impulse buys from users who decide that they want to watch The Dark Knight Rises right now and rent it from Google Play. (That's how I broke in my setup for holding a tablet in front of an elliptical while exercising, and worked out for the entire length of the movie to assuage my guilt from pigging out at a party.) If Netflix allowed instant checkout of virtual DVDs, the studio would lose the $5 or more that it makes when a user decides to rent a recently released blockbuster. (The studio would still get a cut of the money the user pays to Netflix for the virtual DVD plan, but not as much -- about $12 per month divided by about 12 DVDs.)
So, finally, suppose Netflix built this limitation into the virtual DVD plan as well — you could have a "virtual DVD" queue, with two or three virtual DVDs "checked out" at any one time, and every time you "returned" a virtual DVD, there would be a delay of 24 hours or more before the next DVD in the queue would be "checked out" to you. So the virtual DVD queue would essentially mimic Netflix's existing experience of renting DVDs by mail, except the content would be streamed, so you could watch it on any device with an Internet connection.
Now we have a fairly interesting question. If what I've described would be essentially "the same thing" as Netflix's existing DVD plan — except replacing physical DVDs with streaming, which would be more convenient for all parties involved — then why won't movie studios allow them to do that? Of course movie studios don't want their own DVD sales being undermined, but they already allow Netflix to "compete" with the studios own DVD sales by offering physical DVDs for rent, so why wouldn't they allow them to offer virtual DVDs for rent in exactly the same way?
I'm interested in questions like these which seem to have an obvious answer, but the obvious answer is a decoy which turns out to be wrong, and the real answer is necessarily more complicated. In this case, the obvious answer is that studios don't allow Netflix users to check out "virtual streaming DVDs" because it would compete with their own DVD sales. But that answer by itself can't be right, because studios do allow Netflix users to check out physical DVDs, which also compete with the studio's own DVD sales. So what could be their reason for allowing users to check out physical DVDs but not to "check out" virtual DVDs in exactly the same way, where studios would get the exact same cut of the rental rates as if they were real physical DVDs being checked out?
Unfortunately, by the very nature of these decoy-answer-making-a-deeper-mystery questions, if you ask them in a forum or on a mailing list, you'll get people spelling out the decoy answer for you with what they imagine to be the patience of someone talking to an idiot. Wherever I posed this question, I got the answer that studios wouldn't allow virtual DVD checkouts because it would undermine their own DVD sales. To repeat, the question is why the studios allow physical DVD check-outs from a service like Netflix but do not allow virtual DVD check-outs that would otherwise work in exactly the same way, with Netflix and the studios getting paid the same in each case.
One possible answer is that this is a form of price discrimination, whereby a seller tries to extract the most that different market segments will pay for essentially the same product. Student discounts for museum admission are a form of price discrimination — extracting more money from non-student adults who have more disposable income, while still gaining some revenue from poorer students who otherwise would have skipped the experience and paid nothing. In cases where a seller can't check a buyer's income level (or student status) directly, they can practice price discrimination by throwing up some sort of inconvenient roadblock — requiring buyers to clip a coupon or mail in a rebate to get a discount. Busy, high-earning professionals often won't bother, and will end up paying the higher price, while price-conscious bargain hunters will take advantage of the deal when they otherwise might not have bought the product at all. (On the other hand, a restaurant charging more for steak than chicken is not "price discrimination," because the steak really does cost the restaurant more to provide.)
In the case of a Netflix DVD plan, if you watch movies and mail them back as fast as you can on a plan that lets you check out 2 DVDs at a time, every month you could watch about 20 movies for a monthly fee of $12. If you rented the same recent releases on Google Play at $2-$5 a pop, it would average around $70.
So this could be a form of price discrimination by the studios. If you care about price more than convenience, you can just splurge for a Google Play rental whenever you want to watch a recent release, and you can watch it on your laptop, your tablet, or your phone, without the need for a DVD drive, but you'll pay around $70 per month depending on how many movies you watch. On the other hand, if you want to save money, the cheapest legal way to watch all new releases as soon as they're released to home media, is with a Netflix DVD checkout plan — but the inconvenient roadblock is that you have to be willing to deal with those clunky DVDs.
It's an odd explanation, but it's hard to think of any other reason why Netflix and the movie studios would keep propping up the DVD format, when it would be easier for them and for us to just offer "virtual DVD checkout" and stream the same content, as long as Netflix and the studios got paid exactly the same amount of money as they would make when we watch the content on a physical DVD. The inconvenience of DVDs allows Netflix and the studios to price-discriminate and separate the wealthy from the price-conscious, and extract money accordingly from each group — especially when higher-income users are more likely to own tablets or DVD-free laptops, and lower-income users are more likely to own DVD players. Can you think of any other reason why they don't simply replace all DVDs with comparable streaming "checkout" options?
Well actually, I can think of at least one other possibility. With a "virtual DVD checkout" plan like the one I described, users might feel some aggravation every time they add a virtual DVD to their queue, only to be told they have to wait 24 hours or more before they can watch it. With physical DVDs, such delays are caused by the postal service and by the physical impossibility of having a DVD show up instantly in your home. But under a virtual DVD checkout plan, despite the fact that it would be more convenient overall, the delay before you can watch a checked-out movie is imposed by Netflix (possibly at the insistence of the movie studio), so that might be where the user focuses their aggravation instead. It's conceivable that even though Netflix knows that a "virtual DVD checkout" plan would be more convenient for users, those users would irrationally come to resent Netflix more for imposing the delays on movie viewing, so the company just decides not to wade into those waters.
I'd be interested in hearing other theories, as long as people understand the question: Why movie studios don't allow movies to be streamed in a manner that mimics, as closely as possible, the experience of checking out DVDs by mail from Netflix (including, say, a mandatory delay between the time you select the movie and the time that you can watch it). Saying "Because it competes with their own DVD sales" is not an answer, since Netflix's physical DVDs also compete with a studio's own DVD sales. But there may be other answers that are actual answers, and maybe one of those is the answer.
It's probably because content providers are worried that someone will figure out a way to rip the netflix stream while they're confident that the physical medium will provide an adequate protection scheme using DRM while the truth is probably the reverse.
Use iTunes for new releases instead of DVDs.
Don't complain about it.
Try going to the library some time...
Do you think Netflix would offer every movie on streaming if they could? Of course they would.
But Netflix also wants to keep a reasonable flat rate for streaming, so they offer what they can and try to grow the user base so they have enough overall income to pay for more popular titles to be included.
Until the content providers budge on price it's really that simple. After all, you can get EVERY new movie on iTunes to rent or buy - for a cost that to me is WAY too high. So until then I keep the dual Netflix streaming/disc plan so I can get discs for the few movies released these days that are worth watching.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Mechanical, compulsory is easy licensing to deal with. Not really much restrictions on the distribution format. Sync licensing on the other hand gives the artist the right to dictate which methods of distribution are allowed. So if an artist says, "NO STREAMING" there will be no streaming.
There. TL;DR;'d that for ya.
Everything about the --AA entertainment industry is purposely inconvenient. That way they can sell you the next, slightly more convenient version of the same content you already purchased.
Keep in mind that media such as movies and other entertainment are not the only use for DVDs, I'm thinking of enterprise software that while it can be downloaded (and often is these days), for practical purposes it's almost always burned to a DVD.
But also, not everyone even HAS an internet connection in rural areas, even when shity Hughes is an option.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Not an answer to your question, but what you've proposed is how my local public library system handles ebooks via Overdrive. Each checkout has a 21-day duration and I can have up to 10 items checked out at a time (vs. a much larger limit for physical media). The one thing they don't have is a queue system that automatically checks out and delivers the next available item on my "wish list".
because physical media has that whole first sale doctrine which allows the rental of the physical goods, virtual goods not so much.
I have been using Netflix streaming with 1-DVD at a time service for years now. In my experience, 95% of the movies I search for (with the intent of watching) are available on DVD from Netflix, while maybe 25% of them are available by streaming, or less. If you are a serious movie buff you've got to go DVD, it's the only way you won't be constantly denied from seeing the movies you feel like watching / hear about / remember from your child hood. If you only care about the newest movies, sure, Netflix streaming may be the best for you, along with many other services out there. Until ALL the backlog of past movies on DVD are available for streaming, I won't be able to let go of my DVD subscription.
Netflix has single-handedly created the most convenient way to deal with the physical medium of DVDs. Their highly usable website lets you search, learns about what you like, makes suggestions, accepts your ratings, provides you with other people's ratings, lets you queue up movies and re-order your queue, provides insight on what movies are coming/going from their system, and automatically mails the next one to you when you return the previous one -- self addressed stamped return-envelope included! Done with a movie? toss it in the envelope it came with, and drop it in a mailbox. It could not possibly be easier than that.
I work with a number of locations that lack any form of high speed internet. They have enough internet to facebook, order the DVDs, etc... but nowhere near enough bandwidth to actually stream the movies. The DVD-by-mail option is their only option, if netflix et al were to shut down this service, they would be very unhappy.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Netflix doesn't have to get permission from the studios to send you a DVD, but they would have to get licenses to stream even a virtual DVD.
>Specifically: Why do movie studios allow Netflix to send out DVDs to their subscribers by mail, but not to allow the same option in the form of "virtual DVDs" that you could "check out" through their website, and stream them while they're checked out to you?
Its the First Sale Doctrine. Once Netflix has purchased the physical medium of a DVD the movie studio has no control over what they do with it. With digital formats however Netflix never actually owns medium, they are just granted a license to use it and the studios maintain control by changing the license as they see fit. The studios would love to stop the use of First Sale and the subsequent mailing of DVDs, its just that that right goes back to printed books and was well established before digital medium existed. The model of licensing movies they way they do provides them with much more control and profit than a mimicry of physical medium check out system.
Shawn Moore http://www.teuse.net
> Specifically: Why do movie studios allow Netflix to send out DVDs to their subscribers by mail, but not to allow the same option in the form of "virtual DVDs" that you could "check out" through their website, and stream them while they're checked out to you?
They don't "let" Netflix do it. It's netflix's right to do so and the movie studios tried to stop them, just like they tried to stop VHS and Beta rentals when VHS gained traction in the late 70s/early 80s. The reason DVD and Blu-Ray remain so popular is that people want to OWN what they buy - they don't want to "license" it on a per-platform or per-device basis (which is why DIVX died), and they don't want the movie to disappear when the "seller"/"licensor" goes under or simply decides the business isn't profitable off and exits that industry vertical. I'm sure most consumers do not think it through that carefully but have a vague notion of the possibility.
And if they do buy a copy of the movie and want to take it to a friend's house and find that they cannot, then they learn and go back to physical media (or to unencumbered, ad-free "pirate" torrents).
And yes, you do OWN that copy you buy. Even the movie producers acknowledge this in advertising: "Own it on DVD or Blu-Ray today!!" They are very consistent about this, and it's known by them as well as thinking people that you OWN that copy of the movie (or album, or whatever) just as much as you OWN any book you buy- you're just forbidden from violating their exclusive distribution rights granted to them as the copyright holders through copyright law (or by contract with the actual copyright holders again via copyright law).
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The DVD distribution method is established, if they switched to streaming investment would have to happen. That's Netflix' reason. But there's probably much more to it.
There's also that other aspect, where streaming is hard to reign in. When dealing with physical media, you can much more easily determine who gets them. And while it may not matter to Netflix, you may rest assured that it does matter big time to the various distributors who still maintain a form of territory protection. You may have noticed that there is no such thing s Netflix in Europe (at least to my knowledge), for the simple reason that it would instantly put a fair lot of sponges out of business. Because every single country has its own distribution chain, and having a single place where you can easily get movies would threaten that convenient money printing machine.
A cheap streaming system would be a disaster to that market protection strategy, because it would work globally. Yes, I can't stream from your offer in the US because I'm not in the US. So? Welcome to the wonderful world of the internet where it is trivial to set up a proxy in the country where I "should" be. Getting a CC to pay for it is also not that big a deal, and if push comes to shove, there's companies who will gladly offer that service to you.
With DVDs, this threat does not exist. It's trivial to keep movies out of the country where you don't want them. Customs are quite happy to cooperate with movie distributors...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The author is looking at this from a tech geek perspective, trying to find explanations in terms of mathematical or technological influences.
The first big flaw is the author is starting with the assumption that DVDs are less convenient then streaming 'for almost all users'. Only about a 3rd of the country have fixed broadband currently, meaning a significant number of people are poorly served by streaming right out of the gate.... so there is probably a bit of social group blinders going on there.
Moving away from that, I do not think the OP really appreciates how much of a pain in the butt dealing with the contract is. Studios often do not have the simple ability to wave a pen and allow DVDs to be streamed, the original rights were generally not drawn up to include that kind of availability and courts have already decided that 'we have the physical DVDs and stream/rent them out' technical solution does not get around the legal interpretations of streaming services.
That is not to say there is not politics and price fixing thrown in there, but you really can not skip over these two rather major factors and get a complete picture of why. If nothing else there is plenty of politics involved, studios would probably LOVE to stop Netflix renting out physical DVDs but they are legally unable to prevent that, and control over the order of release of a film is a huge deal to studios (it is debatable how much of it is purely circle-jerking power vs real economic benfit, but most people outside the industry are probably not going to have the background to really know).
In the US, anyone can buy a DVD and then rent it out. That's the right of first sale, and that's how RedBox did their rentals on day of release - they paid retail at WalMart.
If you go to other countries where the first sale doctrine doesn't apply (like Australia) you'll find the DVD and Streaming rental prices are about the same. I think the reason you see such a discrepancy here in the USA, is that once a company buys a DVD the copyright owner can no longer control its use. With a streaming rental, it is considered distribution and they do require licensing.
The content companies have won. The brainwashing in the schools over the past 20 years has succeeded.
We have a 1770 word essay why ownership of media is clunky and why it is ok to keep paying to watch shows for entertainment. Have we really come so far from the concept of sharing and owning media that we now have to subscribe to "physical media" = bad -> We should always just stream?.
Streaming inherently disavows your right to own media and to make it your own. The end is at hand..
Streaming should be an OPTION. DVD's should be an OPTION..
##AA Stooges should not be allowed to post such rubbish. And those that are now brainwashed should submit to de-programming..
Otherwise we are destined to give away our right to creativity
front page of Slashdot. Of course this is price discrimination. Charge what the market will bear. Segment your users accordingly. Maximize revenue through each avenue, carefully ensuring that you match value offered to segments to pricing, etc.
This is not a story, this is marketing 101—it's what every marketing-driven organization (basically everyone in the modern economy) does, and the bigger they are, the better they do it.
It's not that any of this is wrong, it's just not newsworthy. We could write the same piece about any number of consumer goods companies, SAAS platforms, etc.
I guess my response to this is: "Yes. And?"
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
So, we're analyzing business models now ? Uh, ok.
MPAA and RIAA distribution models are broken with the advent of the internet, plain and simple, physically delivering digital product is effectively dead. The right people are not looking at the problem wholistically (or trying to control it too much), as a result their business models should suffer. There's a gap in the marketplace that you've identified. Congratulations, start a business on it or send the enhancement to Netflix/Google Play, etc, to mull the idea over.
I should also mention your plan does not account for some snags :
1. probability of customers doing a number of these things (cost of a person's time)
2. probability of customers maintaining their own cache of these disks (legally or illegally).
The concept of "ownership" vs "rental" is what has the industry in knots. See UltraViolet ( https://www.uvvu.com/ ).
Digital streaming is without a doubt more convenient from a certain standpoint, especially a short term view. There are several reasons DVDs are important to some as well as a longer term view. For basic consumption it's great, not so much for ownership and control.
First, there's the human aspect to it. Many like to collect objects - from stones to Elvis memorabilia to various forms of culture and everything in between. There's a certain satisfaction to owning a physical object like a DVD or book. While it can be taken to unhealthy extremes, for most it's just a hobby.
Second there's the long term view. Digital streams, cloud based collections, etc are all temporary. No one owns anything and are at the mercy of corporations as to whether that item will stay viewable over the long term.
Third, not all services are created equal. While I can buy just about any DVD I'd care to, when it comes to Netflix the offerings are pathetic simply because I'm above the 49th parallel. I'd be paying the same amount for a fraction of the content simply due to my geography.
Before claiming Netflix and/or the studios are conspiring to hold back streaming, maybe you'd better research their customer base.
What is a market penetration of streaming devices into the living rooms of households within the bottom 50% of incomes? Of DVD players?
How many are comfortable with their current DVD player setup and renting through Netflix or through a DVD kiosk at the grocery store?
How many can afford or are willing to spend money on high-speed Internet suitable for streaming purposes?
How many would replace a broken DVD player with a streaming appliance?
There's more at play here than Netflix and "Hollywood".
You have wal-mart, Best Buy and Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Redbox and other stores/physical places that continue to market DVDs.
Getting rid of the DVD market means that the marketing of movies falls from many stores to a *few* streaming providers which would give them far more leverage on pricing and distribution then Hollywood is ready to give up.
Also, streaming movies has relatively expensive up front costs requiring internet service and a decoder box plus an additional monthly fee that some people can't afford. (Let alone the older generation that can't figure out all that new-fangled GOOEY menu streaming stuff... and have enough problems just putting a disc in their DVD player!)
Could it be because of the shitty, overpriced, fucking internet service we have here in the U.S? U.S Netflix does not have any good selections and it's the same old crap being recycled every month. But at'least with DVD's you own the physical disc containing the movie unlike streaming which you don't. Convert your dvd collection to some format and stream it to your own personal devices at home.
This constant harping on how great streaming is bugs me. While that may be true in urban cores,
in the technological hinterlands we are lucky to *have any* Internet connections. When home,
I have problems getting short YouTube videos to play at all (if they do play, I get long hangs
every few seconds). Last time I looked my choices were AT&T DSL (I to not think they can provide
Uverse to my home), Comcrap or Clear (which is what I have). I used to have AT&T for home phone,
DSL and GoPhone cell service - I will *NEVER* willingly be an AT&T customer again if I can at all avoid
it. And there is a reason I listed the 2nd choice as "Comcrap".
I have never had Netflix but if I were to sign up it would be only for their DVD service.
As is Ihave a large collection of DVDs in hand (TV shows, movies - lots of anime). So I do not
find them "clunky" at all.
Dr. Frank J. Nagy Fermilab Computing Division Authentication and Directory Services Group
Wow, your social circle is a bit limited. Visit your grandmother in the retirement home occasionally. You're making a lot of assumptions about what "almost everyone wants" that I don't think are true.
You point out that having DVDs allows studios to make more money, and then wonder if there's any other reason they do it. WTF? They make more money this way, of course they're going to do it. No other reason is necessary.
You want to pay more to see a new release? Try a movie theater or iTunes. This is the dumbest thing I've seen here.
Yes, obviously the MPAA make things as inconvenient as possible for customers for their own malevolent purposes, but here's a big hint for the author: because of the borked-up approach that ISPs use (oversell, under-deliver, charge through the nose for it), many (most?) of us are not blessed with a cheap, fat, unlimited connection to the internet. Even if the MPAA weren't the [expletive] [expletives] that they are, it would still be more cost-effective for most of us to rent a few physical DVDs than to stream "virtual DVDs'.
"they already allow Netflix to "compete" with the studios own DVD sales by offering physical DVDs for rent,"
The studios do not allow it. The law allows it, because the law allows Netflix to rent physical DVDs that it has purchased.
The media companies would love to be able to block Netflix, lending libraries, etc. but the first-sale doctrine prevents them from doing so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
cause my ISP is a greedy mofo that charges me a high price if I go over a certain amount of bandwith. I've got my Internet service through a reseller so I pay around the same price but I know some resellers that are cheaper but they're 2 differences with resellers instead of the carrier directly 1- unlimited bandwith 2- support takes longer to solve problem if it gets complicated since they have to contact the carrier themselves. But in the end, i rather have a reseller ISP since I have unlimited bandwith so fuck you Bell or Videotron (Yup, I'm in Québec/Canada)
Several other people have mentioned it, but there's a lot of off-decent-broadband people out there (get online via satellite or cell-stick). These rural households may only be 5-7% of the nation, but since you see red envelopes in *almost every* country house I'm ever in, it wouldn't surprise me if they make up 15-20% of Netflix's customer base.
When I see the commercials for new releases I put them in my DVD queue, Some amount of time (weeks) later they actually show up at my door and I'm pretty good about keeping my queue moving. Usually I put the disc back in the mail immediately after viewing.
But anyway, Netflix has a wait queue for new releases.
I always just assumed Netflix didn't put it all on streaming just to have a rental business. If there was a premium streaming option for the cost of DVD+streaming, I'd go for that, Fios/Comcast throttling included.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
As long as ISPs continue to implement bandwidth metering, and the use of network traffic shaping to decrease the speed at which streams from streaming media providers who have not paid additional tolls to said ISPs to have prioritized speeds for delivery of content to their customers, physical media such as DVDs and Blu-ray discs will be a virtual necessity to deliver new content to folks afflicted by ISPs which impose artificial limits on traffic priority, bandwidth, and data usage. On a personal level, While I do use streaming services with frequency, I do have to keep an eye on my data usage. To help keep data usage lower, I find the use of services such as Netflix and Redbox fulfill my requirements for new content in a relatively convenient manner. I will likely continue to use physical media as a primary alternative to 'easy' streaming solutions as long as ISPs continue to practice consumer unfriendly practices.
The basic premise that streaming is always "more convenient for almost all users" is wrong. Almost everyone I know has times they prefer not to stream, some are unable to stream almost ever.
Check out how much some of your favorite artists make via spotify and the like. Of course I'd rather you buy my $15 CD than give me .00005 cents off a hundred plays. If that. The "long tail" is yet to be determined.
I can't imagine that streaming services such as Netflix pay that much to the studios, either, so of course the studios want you to buy the DVDs. If you can't wait for the streaming option, by golly, Best Buy will have it for $19.99 or $24.99 for the bluray on release date. I know many of you will just get it from BitTorrent anyway, but there's plenty of us who would rather just use the convenience of the disc or the Netflix app.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Essentially, the studios allow the netflix DVD service because they have no legal right to disallow it. Some time ago it was ruled, in the US, that when you purchase a book, DVD, etc..., of a copyrighted work, that you physically own it like an object. At that point you are free to sell, rent, give away, destroy, keep, or whatever else you can legally do with an object that you own, regardless of the copyright holders exclusive distribution right. Netflix owns the DVDs, they rent them to you, movie studios can not stop it. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
As my kids point out. Disks are higher quality than streaming. Also easier to jump around, better sound, have bonus features, and subtitles.
DVDs are "good" because you own them. You can "stream" them from your DVD player to your TV any time you want. Internet out? Grab a DVD off the shelf.
They are also low-barrier. Any granny can pay $100 for a DVD player (likely less) and have someone plug it in if they don't want to, but most RCA DVD players come with all the cabling, and it's all color coded. Granny doesn't need to figure out how to "stream" or anything. Doesn't have to buy a special Smart TV, or media device or computer. DVDs just work. You pick the one you want, put it in, and it starts playing (after 20 minutes of warning and advertisements).
What's wrong with "permanent" and "just works"?
Learn to love Alaska
"Unfortunately, by the very nature of these decoy-answer-making-a-deeper-mystery questions, if you ask them in a forum or on a mailing list, you'll get people spelling out the decoy answer for you with what they imagine to be the patience of someone talking to an idiot."
Bennett, that's because you are an idiot.
...would not understand why I prefer a BluRay DVD over a streamed movie.
Except for the ones who don't / won't / can't stream. Not every Netflix user (or person on the planet, for that matter) knows how to, or likes to, or has the internet access or bandwidth to stream HD video.
That there is still some demand for DVDs to buy demonstrates this very clearly.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
For Netflix to distribute physical DVDs, it must purchase the DVD.
Additionally, it must pay each time the DVD is "rented"
If virtual DVDs were allowed then Netflix would not have to buy X number of DVD resulting in lost revenue due to lost sales - could be negated by some other price structure between studio and netflix but remember netflix by their current purchase of DVD is subsidizing DVD production for the studios.
Requiring a physical DVD limits how many times it can be rented - scarcity equals pricing power - studio can probably tell you how much they make when a Netflix DVD shows "Long Wait" in their queue.
I remember when I first got broadband in 2002 (512/256 DSL, wow such fast) and I had a Dish DVR I often mused that Netflix should send me a box where they would trickle images equal to the number of rentals I had out to my system. I would watch the DVD as if it were a DVD on this box. I guess in my head I was just merging the dish DVR, my experience at ripping DVD isos, and the Netflix service. At those speeds the size would have time limited you anyway. Hell, it wasn't until Netflix actually launched Watch Now years later that it even occurred to me that this wouldn't be how they stream content if they ever got into that market. I was just envisioning this box that would download dvd images. I still have 1 disk with Netflix, there are some things I like to watch on Blu-Ray, the streaming is convenient but man the compression tears up a lot of the Science Fiction shows.
The only reason why movie studios do this is greed. They're afraid they'll lose money if they put everything up as streaming. And it's ridiculous. For example, "The Expendables 2" is available streaming on Netflix... but the older film "The Expendables" isn't. What the hell, Hollywood? They have to realize that for a large number of people, not having something available streaming or affordable means that they're just going to torrent it. They're losing money in the long run. You can't stop the signal.
->
too much to read
I've had an 8-at-a-time Netflix subscription since 2000 and I've been copying discs for that entire time. My goal is to touch a disc one time and Netflix facilitates that - I rip the disc and send it back. I don't mind doing it (at this point it's automated). My local copies tend to be better than the pirated product and it's not like my ISP is going to rat me out for doing it.
In theory I can download faster than Netflix can mail me discs, but dealing with physical discs more or less eliminates the risk factors from piracy. I'm willing to accept the slight inconvenience of having to put a disc in a drive for that.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Obviously the author is not a Comcast customer....
Not everyone has broadband internet access.
All that blithering. The business isn't about DVD vs streaming. It's about metered flat rate (Netflix's 2 DVDs at a time) vs pay per item (Amazon, Google streaming).
Pricing models in the movie industry are an interesting subject, but the original poster clearly knows nothing about them. This has been discussed to death in the trades (The Hollywood Reporter and Variety). Hollywood is desperately trying to avoid commodization of movies, something that's already happened to music.
Being inflexible is always a good business move. Certainly not a functional thing to do, but CEO's brag all the time about the strength of inflexibility. You think that's dysfunctional? Just about everyone relies on inflexibility to survive, in one way or another.
It seems like you are really reaching to find some complicated answer to the behavior when it really has a simple explanation.
Studio's can't prevent Netflix, Redbox, etc from buying DVDs and renting them out. They can prevent them from streaming movies. Given the chance I think the studios would block Netflix, Redbox, etc from renting new releases on DVD too just to try to get a few more sales of their DVDs. Yes it is all ultimately about them trying to get as much money in as many different ways as they can but I really think the simple answer is lack of control of DVDs.
Sure there are other reasons why it isn't done such as quality of streaming vs a bluray or DVD, Accessibility, cost of infrastructure for netflix etc but I think these would all be overcome if the studios allowed the streaming of the new releases or couldn't prevent it like with DVDs.
You seem to think that high speed internet access is universally available across the united states. I have news for you, it isn't. There are huge swaths of the country that don't have access to high speed internet at any price. In many places. That doesn't include the large number of people who can afford a DVD player but can't afford an internet connection, those who don't have a permanent residence, people like truck drivers who don't have access to internet most of the time, etc.
Bennett Haselton, you need to get out of your suburban ivory tower and experience life as so many do, without all the wonderful advantages you currently enjoy.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
You lost men when the premise of your story was false from the first sentence.
My network speeds and bandwidth allotment don't make streaming 'more convenient', it makes it stupid. If I want to watch a movie twice, why would I pay my ISP twice for the bandwidth?
If I want to watch a Blu Ray film, I pop it in and watch it. No jitter, no lag, no asking permission. I just press play.
If I want to watch a movie on a plane, I just bring a few disks with me and put them in my laptop.
If I want to loan a movie I own to a friend, I walk to my shelf and hand it to him. He takes it home, and can watch it all he likes.
Heck, I can go to a place which doesn't have good interwebs ... and you know what? I can still watch a DVD as long as I still have electricity.
There's no metrics being gathered, no opportunities for targeted advertising, and none of the aspects of streaming which I find annoying and inconvenient.
I've never streamed a movie in my life, and I'm hard pressed to figure out why I would.
You kids and your shiny baubles. Get off my damned lawn.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Not everyone has the high bandwidth connections. Streaming doesn't work in much of the USA and much of the world for that matter. There are many places where a DVD is much more convient to watch than to have the video streamed.
Another issue is that the streamed video from Amazon Prime for example does not include the extras like deleted scenes that are on DVDs.
But streaming eats away at your bandwidth cap. Plus its harder to keep a copy for later ( or a portable device ) unless you can touch the disk with your grubby little hands.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You have plenty of options. Buy it on itunes and download it.
Or buy the DVD and use handbrake to rip it.
Honestly, why is this even on slashdot? it belongs on a site with a Tech IQ that is very low, like Gizmodo.
Until recently a lot of BluRays came with a code to give you the movie as a download in itunes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Inconvenient you say? Not for me...
I've been a NF user since they started(2004?) and have had a streaming plan with them since that was possible.
I can say unequivocally that their streaming performance has gone downhill to the point I'm considering cancelling and going back to the 3 DVD at a time plan.
I've called(yes you can do that...) NF several times to complain. I get the same excuses everytime, which boils down to "It's not our fault".
I've contacted my ISP who shows that I've got the latest/greatest DSL modem, etc and that speedtest and streaming others like Youtube all check out fine.
There is a problem with NF streaming.
Should I assume this has something to do with the recent ruling about Net Neutrality?
In my case the problem started about six months ago and has gotten worse in the last two, so it was before that.
So when I watch a DVD I don't have all the bullshit to put up with that I do with streaming. To me NF streaming is akin to the early days of telephone or telegraph.
And yes, I do TOTALLY blame the ISP, but I really have no way to prove it.
My other choice of ISP?
Comcast...(blech/blarg/belch/barf)
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
> So what could be their reason for allowing users to check out physical DVDs but not to "check out" virtual DVDs in exactly the same way?
The answer is that they DON'T allow users to check out physical DVDs -- they would stop the the rental of DVDs if they could to force people to use their own distribution channels (and generate more profit). But the courts have said that if they sell DVDs, they can't prevent others from buying those DVDs and renting them out. So if they want to sell DVDs, they have to allow rental of DVDs.
A fair portion of the country is rural. The fastest "broadband" available in my area is 1 Mbps DSL which is far too slow to stream video. I know it might be a shock to some, but not everyone lives in a big city with 50+ Mbps FIOS available.
The OP assumes some sort of utopian world where everyone has an always on, high-bandwidth/streaming friendly Internet connection.
The simple fact is that world doesn't exist, and the movie studios are simply acknowledging that reality and making their wares available accordingly.
Keeping DVDs alive helps them sell to people in sparsely settled and/or remote areas, where there is little or no high-speed connectivity (think. say, Nome, Alaska; or perhaps Hardin, MT), people who travel a lot and want to take movies along (everyone from frequent flyers to long-distance trucking teams where one person drives while the other relaxes in the back of the cab to ocean-going ship crews), people who want to have some creature comforts in their off-grid hunting cabin/survival shelter or people who simply want to OWN what they like instead of depending on what someone else decides to make available (try to find some indie or documentary titles on NetFlix) or people who don't want to put up with some of the BS from NetFlix and similar services (for example, only making certain episodes from show seasons available).
In short, there's plenty of reasons that the OPs vision of what the world should be like is a mirage; and ample justification for studios to keep issuing DVDs.
Streaming is completely useless on a DSL line. I copy my DVDs to an SD card. You can get a lot of video on a 32G card.
It MIGHT be inconvenient to have to drive to the store to purchase a disc but when discs are arriving in the mail, I don't see how this could be considered inconvenient. You seriously can't walk to your mailbox, walk to the DVD player and put the freaking disc in, and then walk back to your couch?
You're missing part of the "convenience" argument when it comes to the DVDs. Sure, streaming is an incredibly convenient method of watching content, provided that you've already met certain requirements - like owning a device with the streaming service of your choice on it and having a fast enough internet connection to support streaming at an acceptable quality level.
The issue is that there are still a significant amount of people who haven't met those requirements, and for them, a DVD is still the more convenient option in some, if not all, cases. Plenty of people in the US still don't have broadband internet connections, so for them their only rental options are either through Netflix or through their cable provider's On Demand service. As you pointed out, Netflix is far cheaper once you cross a very low threshold of usage.
There are other people still who do have an adequate broadband connection and they may even have a device hooked up to their living room TV that will stream Netflix, but they prefer to watch movies at night on the TV in their bedroom, which doesn't have a streaming device hooked up to it. They'll find more convenience in a DVD in that case as well.
There are plenty of other examples where physical media is still preferred for some portion of the population, but the fact is that those numbers are declining rapidly as broadband coverage increases and as streaming devices become cheap/ubiquitous. This shift is happening quickly enough that it's not worth it for someone like Netflix to try and untangle all of the complexity of content rental (physical) vs. broadcast (streaming) with one of the hypothetical solutions you've outlined, because it'd just be a short term fix. Meanwhile, there are enough physical customers to make it worthwhile to continue servicing them for now.
As several people noted, this is super obvious: Netflix can do whatever it wants with DVDs, the studios don't 'let' them do anything. That isn't true for streaming. It's an obvious answer that required less than two seconds of thought.
Why did any ./ editor think this was a good pick for the site?
How many people who read tech news sites wouldn't know this?
Perhaps more on point: who actually works professionally as an editor of a tech news site and didn't know this?
Whoever moved this story from the firehose/pitch queue and onto the page itself should be fired. It was a worse decision than beta.
They're trying to increase torrent traffic. Whenever things get too complicated just open up your bittorrent client and problem solved.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Bennett is apparently clueless enough not to have heard of first-sale.
Studios don't "allow" Netflix to compete by offering physical DVDs for rent. The law allows Netflix to do that and the studios cannot legally stop them (that's how first sale works). The law does not allow Netflix to offer "virtual DVDs".
I remember when Bennett first came here as a teenager. He seemed relatively clued-in for a teenager. Unfortunately, as he got older, his clue level didn't go up and is below par for an adult.
"Why do movie studios allow Netflix to send out DVDs to their subscribers by mail, but not to allow the same option in the form of "virtual DVDs"
The answer is still obvious, they want money per movie to do that and Netflix doesn't want to do anything but a flat-rate charge. It's still the content providers demanding control over the pricing model.
iTunes does exactly what you are saying, you can rent a movie where you have a certain time in which to start watching it, and must finish 24 hours after you start. So the movie studios DO allow it, technically. But the cost for one movie is higher than a Netflix monthly disc subscription.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have Prime video but as you say, almost never use the video because of the mix of free and non-free - a search is pointless. On Netflix I will know with a search if I can watch something without paying more, every time.
Next year I plan to drop Prime as the value has diminished and the cost is increasing. Amazon thinks video is adding value to prime, when I see it dragging Prime down and stealing financial resources from other aspects of Prime.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
DVDs are not less convenient. The picture quality is much worse with streaming, plus, many people do not have the fast internet connection needed for streaming. Its amazing how the article assumes that everyone has high speed internet. With some ISPs also enforcing download caps, this adds more trouble. Break-up of the picture is common, and if more than a few of your neighbors are trying to watch movies too, it just stops working. The following not relate to rentals, but you can have a used market for selling DVDs and Blu-ray disc while its very difficult for a used market to exist with streaming or files. Streaming doesnt give you your own copy of the movie at all. At least with a DVD i can pop it in at any time without having to pay a fee and get good picture quality. Blu-ray can provide picture quality that far surpasses what streaming can do with the internet connections most people have. Blu-ray has a HD picture which is always clean and beautiful, streaming for me almost always is filled with glitches, artifacts and poor picture quality.
The author seems to be unaware that in 2011 Netflix tried to spin off its DVD business (proposed spinoff "Qwikster") and focus on streaming-only. The outrage from its existing customer base forced it to reverse this plan and publicly apologize to its customers:
"It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming, and the price changes,” wrote Hastings. “That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology.”
http://www.geekwire.com/2011/reed-hastings-netflix-customers-i-messed-up/
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
These are all valid assumptions... But flat out wrong. The fact is that DVD is still around for the same reason VHS lasted for so long. It's the low end of the market. People who can't afford to upgrade to streaming media for one reason or another.
These people make up a large percentage of the market. Much larger than the segments most of us fall into. Also a much larger segment than so called "cable cutters." These people never had cables to cut in the first place. They watch TV OTA and have game consoles two generations or more behind the latest and greatest. The odds of them having a computer less than 8 years old are next to nil. Certainly no tablets. Maybe a contract smartphone or two in the family, but they can't afford the bandwidth to stream video.
These families buy cheap $25 DVD players or used higher end models. Some times they impulse buy bargain bin DVDs at Walmart or target, but the sad reality is that most of them can't even afford that. This is why Red Box and other equivalents are so huge.
Now people are going to jump right in and say that devices that can stream off the Internet are cheap. This is true, but bandwidth is NOT. Decent computers to host a large media collection locally aren't any laughing matter either. Most of these families can't afford high speed Internet, let alone mobile devices with their even more prohibitive bandwidth pricing.
Until streaming has Blu-Ray level quality, I'll stick to Blu-Ray for everything except comedies and TV shows.
You're missing the point. The studios don't really want new media rentals at all, but they can't block it thanks to the legacy of video tape rentals. Thus the ridiculous agreements to hold off new releases from some of the rental streams for 28 days.
Could it be, that the studio's make more money off of selling and licensing the physical copy (and recooping their "costs" in "producing" the physical dvd) than what they could charge "per stream"? There also is an inherent limit to the physical medium's distribution, allowing them to sell only a specific amount of physical copies to net flix at a specific prorate, while then forcing them to pay full price if demand requires. Who knows? We would need someone who works in the business to really say, but i get the feeling this is one of the reasons.
The answer to why Netflix keeps DVDs around should be obvious if you take more than 10 seconds to think: Netflix wants to offer as many movies as they can to be as attractive to customers as possible, and the studios won't license most recent releases for streaming. As a second reason, there's probably customer demand: a significant number of customers may have bandwidth caps low enough, or connections slow/laggy enough, that streaming high-quality video isn't feasible.
The quality of viewing a DVD beats any of the Internet streaming movie services that I have viewed (Hulu, Amazon, Netflix). Viewing a Bluray is substantially better than a DVD, and is even better than watching HD terrestrial broadcast TV. If you are viewing on a small screen, the difference isn't noticeable. However, even on a 40" LCD the DVD over streaming advantage is clear. When the monitor is sized up to 60" or more, it's painful to watch Internet streaming media. Its laughable when the streaming services natter on about "HD" and more than "HD" when the compression required to stream effectively kills any sense of high definition. I haven't even bothered to run an Ethernet cable to my Bluray player on the 60" TV I use for watching movies. I do have Ethernet so that I can stream to my 40" TV for watching old episodes of shows I don't have time to watch in real-time over terrestrial broadcast HD TV.
I suspect that Netflix continues to offer disc-based movies because a) people want to rent disc-based movies (why else would RedBox do so well?) and b) movie studios save most of their best stuff for physical media and not streaming. How much of (a) is because of (b) or vice versa, I don't know.
One big reason is legal.
If movie studios were to allow virtual DVDs then they are acknowledging that streaming of movies one-to-one is not same as public broadcasting so is not infringing on the copyright. A virtual DVD rental company, Zediva, got shut down for the exact reason. Zediva was actually buying DVDs directly from retail stores and had actual DVD players spinning DVDs from their data center. Still Movie studios got a judge in LA to pass a particularly biting injunction which would have put the founders at considerable risk if they were to appeal the ruling.
http://www.wired.com/business/2011/08/zediva-shuts-down/
(among many other articles on the case)
Also, if movie studios could they would severely restricted the physical rental business as well. But because of the first sale doctrine, they can't do anything about it. The best they can do is have an agreement with rental providers like Netflix that they will sell them physical DVDs at bulk rates to Netflix (not retail prices) as long as they wait a month or so after the release of the DVD for sale to rent them out.
Actually, the cheapest legal way is to use a torrent site. Not everyone is in America, you insensitive clod.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Why do movie studios allow Netflix to send out DVDs to their subscribers by mail, but not to allow the same option in the form of "virtual DVDs" that you could "check out" through their website, and stream them while they're checked out to you?
Because the idea of "checking out" an intangible work is a stupid idea. We "check out" books and DVDs because they are physical items of which there is a necessarily limited number. The notion of "loaning" a bit of data with no physical media makes no sense. It's an attempt to map an obsolete business model onto a technology where it does not belong.
The notion of replicating a DVD queue with streaming video is frankly a pointless exercise that misses all the advantages of streaming media.
Look, the entertainment industry doesn't give a rat's ass about the consumer. None. What they care about is money; and they will do everything they can to make the customers *think* they're not getting screwed. In reality, they are. I hate watching physical discs; the 5 minutes of anti-piracy along with all the "comming attractions" they play are just entirely too much. Unlike VHS...most players won't let you skip this. Nothing says "shoot me" like watching a 5 year old DVD talking about movies coming out in theater like they're brand new. They weren't like this when they came out, not nearly this bad. It was a ruse to get them adopted by the public before reverting to the old ways. When the movie industry was unable to use legal action to prevent the rental of video cassettes; they responded by raising the price. The jokes you used to hear about a VHS copy of E.T. going for well over $79.99 was actually true. The idea was if they raised the prices of tapes, the video stores would stop purchasing them. However, it didn't really work; and the end result was most people were unable to afford VHS tapes and the rental business boomed. They soon started selling movies on a sliding scale, newer movies being much cheaper than older movies; which is why you'd often see 30 copies of the newest release and maybe 1 of an old one. Of course, the advantage of DVD is they can lock you out from skipping specific aspects. You don't really own the movie if you're forced to watch trailers and advertisements in front of it. There was a company (the name of which I do not remember); that operated on a "virtural DVD" rental type deal. They had loads and loads of DVDs in automated carousels, racks of DVD players, Slingboxes, and robots that would physically load each disc in to a player connected to a Slingbox. According to copyright law, this is 100% legal, and is the same as renting a DVD. However, the movie industry quickly stepped in, sued them for infringement, and shut them down. Similar with the TV networks and Aereo. Aereo is receiving the signals on OTA tuners assigned to a subscriber and allowing them to stream them online. It's legal, as place-shifting has already had some success. However, TV networks are trying to the the SCOTUS to rule it illegal becuase "they are cutting in on thier business model". Now...the old business model was they transmit programming that was paid for by advertisements; but ever since the cable act of 1992, affiliates and other broadcasters make a "demand" a retransmission fee for your service operator to provide it to you. So, they're claiming that Aereo, which legally is not retransmitting the signal and is receiving it from the air; is trying to be forced out of business by big broadcasters. If broadcasters don't get their way; they've already talked about leaving TV and going to an online distribution system. That's not to mention if you watch a program from their website; you're getting as many (if not more) advertisements as in the broadcast; and the same with on-demand. Apparently getting paid to broadcast to them once isn't enough. Look on your cable/satellite bill; I'm sure you're paying a local channel fee somewhere. Of course, many argue the additional ads on online distribution of the content is the result of the writer's strike; but one could claim they could still afford to pay the royalties if they weren't so worried about bleeding everyone dry.
wpp
plus people get DVDs for travel so they can watch them on their laptops, in their car, or at their rented cabin without need for internet/wifi/LTE. there's also something about the certainty that you can play it without concern for errors in streaming, bandwidth up and downs, etc.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
DVD's are a tangible thing. It's not a secret that most consumer laws in America (and most of the world) were written waaaaay before the internet or even before computers. Because of this, the majority of consumer laws are geared towards real "tangible" things, or non-tangible services. For example, trading a goat for 5 chickens involves trading one tangible thing for 5 others. Same goes for when i go down the mall and buy a DVD with a $20 bill. Going and getting my car washed is a non-tangible service. I can't go down the shop and pick up a "car wash" because it's a service, that's why there's a line drawn between good and services.
Now when credit and debit cards were introduced, that brought up a whole new problem, as you could now pay for tangible goods and non-tangible services using a piece of plastic. There's no direct transfer of cash, but the funds get debited out of your account and credited to the person providing the goods and services. The laws were changed to accomodate this small, but powerful addition to payment methods. Bearing in mind that the check system had been used since the 17th century, and credit cards are just a quicker form of the same idea.
Then Apple, Google, Netflix etc come along with digital downloads, which are essentially just a stream of 0's and 1's, which are definitely not a tangible thing, and a whole hodge-podge of legal issues comes along. Can you pass 0's and 1's to your next-of-kin? Can to transfer these 0's and 1's to a different device? Can you resell these 0's and 1's to someone else? These sorts of legal issues don't apply to DVD's or CD's because they're physical objects containing a stream of 0's and 1's, and existing laws on the trading of goods apply to these objects. Digital downloads, on the other hand, are a very new thing, and consumer laws just haven't caught up yet.
That's why the DVD will never die, and likely one of the reasons Netflix still mail out physical DVD's
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Streams are not. Netflix pays once for each DVD, then rents them multiple times. Streams are not re-usable. I would imagine Netflix's deals include per-stream revenue back to the studios as well as an overall fee.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
I like the who you get mad at explanation. Years ago, the airlines discovered that baggage that would be delayed for any reason should be sent to the carousel farthest from the gate so the wait would be shortened by the time it took to walk there. Same deal; you don't blame the airline if it's your walking pace the controls the time.
In the roughly 10 years I've had Netflix I've had one DVD that would not play. DVD's just work. Streaming is subject, even if the libraries were the same, server problems at netflix, problems at Cognet, problems with my inet, problems with my wifi (which may be caused externally)...
I would also suggest your definition of convenient does not apply to everyone. For some people dvd by mail is very convenient and easier than dealing with the connection headaches (not every one has high speed inet, not everyone can afford it, not everyone wants to pay for it). For some people having everything available all the time may even be a negative as Netflix then becomes too easy a time sink.
OP is missing the point entirely IMHO.
How many people are living a life of laptops and tablets and (functionally) unlimited bandwidth, and consume all their entertainment on these devices?
Now, how many people own a television and a disc player?
Also, popping in a disc is inconvenient? [Kids today, get off my lawn, etc.]
"I was noodling around Best Buy looking for a new laptop" ... That's your first problem. :)
Why do Netflix and a few other companies keep the DVD format alive, when streaming is more convenient for almost all users?
Because you're wrong, and it's not more convenient for "almost all" users.
Sounds like someone's got the old Slashdot disease of assuming you can extrapolate to the general population from a sample of one.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The reason Netflix doesn't stream all the possible content they could stream, is simply cost.
Not cost in terms of scanning the DVDs and bandwidth. It is cost in terms of licensing.
Netflix has contracts with movie studios and other content providers, for streaming a certain portions of their catalogs.
If netflix had a contracts at the same price to allow streaming of the full catalog of Warner, MGM, etc, they would have done it in a heartbeat.
License paid to content owners is Netflix largest expense.
Streaming all the content would likely have tripled or quadrupled or 5x the license they pay now..
Your streaming subscription would then cost $50 or more per month. At which point all the customers would quit.
If all you really want is full streaming access to the catalogs, the most likely way that will happen, is implementation of a premium service , with say $60/month subscription, or implementation of a pay per view scheme. I am not so sure Netflix is willing to mess with their format and risk customer backlash. Also, if moving to PPV or premium subscription, they would to a higher degree be competing head to head against the cable movie channels, as well as the bandwidth-provider's PPV schemes, HBO, showtime, who themselves are also content providers to netflix. I find it a bit unlikely that netflix would pick a direct fight with companies they depend on and are partnering with.
SO there goes your theories.
.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The USPS doesn't throttle the DVD supply to my house - at least not yet. Maybe there will be a Postal Service Movie Delivery System in the future which competes with them. Then my Netflix envelopes will mysteriously take two weeks to arrive from the next zip code. They will come ripped and often broken and mixed in with offers to enroll in the PSMDS if I am no longer happy with Netflix' service.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Its because plenty of people still haven't switched to steaming, and still prefer having a physical copy. Look how long it took VHS to die out.
OP must be around 25, and never seen a format change before.
It's the law, stupid. Netflix owns the DVDs it buys (first sale doctrine) and can rent them if it feels like it. Except where the publisher gives them a better deal to not own the DVDs, but then they can obviously rent them out too.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
when streaming is more convenient for almost all users?
I guess it never occurred to the writer there are those of us who don't want to watch a movie which stutters, stops or pauses because of network issues. We want a nice, smooth viewing experience.
Contrary to popular opinion, the latest and greatest is not the be all and end all. If anything, that mindset has contributed to decline in usability of nearly everything tech related and only serves to perpetuate the stereotype that those in IT are completely detached from reality and what the average person wants/needs.
Apparently KISS has been abandoned in favor of, "Ohh, shiny!"
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Most notably, it seems that Netflix rarely has the content that I like, so I continue to buy stuff on DVD.
Plus, with Netflix one is at the mercy of what can sometimes be an unreliable bandwidth connection. Trying to watch a movie that keeps pausing for about 10 seconds every minute or two is just not an enjoyable experience.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
tl;dnr: "Why doesn't the video entertainment industry offer things that people want to pay for?"
The answer: Because they're not in it for the money.
Just pirate things, then you don't have to worry about Netflix problems, DVD problems, etc. Stuff will Just Work. And since they keep saying no to everyone who waves money in their faces, you don't need to feel guilty about it, either. The guilt would only be appropriate if they were trying to run a business, but this is merely an incompetently-done public service. It's ok to abstain from the service.
The writer needs to do better research. Physical DVD rentals happen because of the First Sale Doctrine. The studios don't allow physical DVD rentals. They're powerless to stop them. Once they've sold a copy of the DVD they lose all control over what is done with it.
I find being offended by me offensive.
How about this for an answer? Some people don't have enough band width to stream video content at a decent resolution.
I know its true for me and I live in silicon valley as opposed to rural iowa, or where ever.
I have a so-called 30Mbps connection, that only hits those speeds on a speed test. Netflix rarely sends an HD picture, and I've never seen their Super HD. But Blu-Ray is 30Mbps of high-quality video and uncompressed audio that just works.
No.
Why do the movies studios "allow" Netflix to send out DVDs? They don't "allow" it. The right of first sale does. Netflix has the legal right to rent DVDs, with or without the studios permission.
Everytime in my opinion.
Physical media is immune to the bullshit the ISP's / Netflix are throwing at each other. No packet loss, throttling, bandwidth caps, peering degradation, cough-extortion-cough, etc etc.
Until the streaming services can be free of the anti-competitive behavior ( and face it, this is exactly what AT&T / Comcast / any major pipe owner who also has a media division is doing since Netflix competes with their own media business ) physical media will still continue to dominate as a means to deliver high quality content.
Eventually, the only way a non pipe owner like Netflix is going to survive is push for the splitting up of the folks like AT&T / Comcast who not only own the major pipes, but who also have competing products ( cable, Uverse, etc )
As a long time Netflix subscriber (maybe 10 years - going back to when it was 3 DVDs at a time for $14.99 and no streaming option) - I'd say the answer to the headline is "no."
Reed Hastings claims that high-speed internet streaming was always his plan for Netflix - they just had to wait for the technology to catch up. While they were waiting, Netflix had to fight off competition from Wal-Mart (Netflix bought them out) and Blockbuster (who probably wish Netflix had bought them out) in the "DVD by mail" space. When they first rolled out the "streaming" option, the movies available for streaming were not good (but streaming was a free add on - so it didn't really matter).
When streaming became a viable option, the big problem Netflix ran into was Netflix ("We have met the enemy and they are us"). They tried to raise the monthly fee and people bolted for the door (800,000 members quickly gone). Netflix said "oops!" and decided to split into two services (Anybody remember "Quickster?"), which people also hated - so we got something like the current price structure.
So, no DVDs are not inconvenient on purpose, and won't go away anytime soon. Netflix arrived at its pricing structure by responding to market forces. Streaming content is the future (and the future is now!) - which means licensing agreements with content creators/providers will surpass "hard copy" sales (if they haven't already).
...and if you are colecting marketing data for Netflix: I'm a streaming only customer. I "rent"/stream a lot of just released movies from Amazon.com (had a problem with the 30 day wait time for DVD new releases from Netflix - but if I could get new movies the week they are released on DVD I'd go back) ...
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
It all boils down to money. The movie studios still get tons of cash with every DVD purchase. Also streaming in not possible in all locations of this country. Not everyone has access to high speed internet or reliable internet. I live in an area where their is only two choices for internet that is not dail up. The first choice is sattite internet which is to expensive and with the data caps you can't stream movies because you'll use up your cap on one or two movies. My other option is line of sight radio communication internet. I can get up to 1.5MBS but not very relaibly. Most of the time I can stream movies from Netflix, but most streaming services insist on pushing HD quality streaming only and that will only work with hight speed connections. It's nice to have the DVD option.
DVDs are covered by the first sale doctrine (c.f. Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus) and the movie companies have no legal basis to stop Netflix from renting out the DVDs. Digital copies aren't covered by the first sale doctrine and thus require licenses.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a mail truck full of discs.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Have you seen how low bitrate and over compressed Netflix is? It is no DVD or Bluray, which both contain more bits for audio and video. Bluray video is the defacto standard with lossless audio and 25Mbps AVC which fucking owns Netflix's shitty 1-5Mbps blocky detail missing low res Streams.
The biggest problem on top of that preventing modern movies from getting on Netflix is movie studio monopolistic and sabotorial licensing and copyright restrictions. The movie studios refuse to license new films at affordable rates to Netflix, and generally they want a very high rate PER stream therefore they cannot do the current model of allowing you to download what you want at the current rates. With DVD and Bluray they can do this because they purchase so many copies and can rent them out as much as they want, but DVD and Bluray are copyright protected and this prevents Netflix from converting a "disc" copy to another format. Instead they have to license the movies through other much more restrictive terms where each view of a movie gets paid for and cannot be reused or viewed by multiple people like a DVD or Bluray.
Luckily there are many online services you can switch to but the cost is higher. Look at Vudu. Generally they want $4 to $10 per stream. Purchases in HDX format cost $20. So you got there a DVD/Bluray replacement but it costs you more. If Netflix tried to match these guys they would be charging similar rates.
Welcome to the world where movie studios intend to extract $100 a month for digital copies of their new releases, and only old releases are available at the bargin $8.99/mo rate!
A few years ago, this would have been a story about how geeks prefer DVDs because they don't want proprietary DRM-encumbered formats that only work in Windows and require installing Silverlight. Now, it is about how studios are behind because they only allow DVDs. It is amazing how quickly convenience trumps freedom.
Just my 1.999999 cents worth here.
I have 2 kids and when driving across country on a road trip, I cannot stream movies to the in-dash video system. Streaming over cellular is not a viable option.
With DVDs I can go to RedBox, or similar service, to get the movies we want. When we are done watching them I can return at any other RedBox kiosk I come across. Plus most vehicles with built-in entertainment systems have DVD support. Most do not have BlueRay or streaming video support. At best you are lucky if you can get HDMI without purchasing the top-end vehicle, otherwise the external inputs are AV patch cables.
Granted it is not ideal, but it answers your basic question as to why the DVD format is still hanging around.
http://www.electronista.com/ar...
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
Netflix has a limited supply of physical disks which means some demand would not be satisfied and some fraction of them will purchase a disk or digital copy. So Netflix' disks do not really compete with purchases to a significant extent; especially for people who want to see it now. Virtual disks would essentially give them the ability to meet an unlimited demand and really impact disk sales.
Netflix can also control expenses with real disks since they purchase a fixed amount, and if they pay studios a cut per rental they can slow down how fast they send them out to limit the total cost per months. Virtual disks, however, have no cap unless Netflix imposes one and that would risk pissing off subscribers. A a series of popular movies in one month could theoretically result in Netflix paying more to studios than planned and cause profits to drop because expenses were higher than planned.
A whole lot of people get cuts from the distribution chain and removing DVDs potentially means they won't make as much money and studios may find movies to be profitable before they had planned resulting in paying money to some poor sucker who got a cut of the net instead of the gross. Hollywood accounting can drive distribution decisions.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
This is the single stupidest, most presumptuous, idiotic thing I have ever read on /. that wasn't in the comments section - and it still vies for the top spot, even including them.
I started to write a complex response, but then realized that it would be asinine to give this drivel that much of my time when I can sum it up very easily:
Asking this idiotic question and not realizing the dozens of factors from quality (1080p streaming does not = 1080p Blu-ray, unless you are watching all your content on a tiny laptop screen), to the fact this AYCE streaming-world is mostly unique to the US and won't be sustainable here once Internet caps are in place for most folks (which anyone who follows such things knows is coming), and everything in between, is akin to someone posting an article saying, "Why doesn't everyone just cook with a microwave since it's the simplest, most convenient way to cook food?"
Though, it should have been obvious the writer was a tool from the first sentence - if you are idiotic enough to buy a laptop from Best Buy of all places, you don't have much sense to begin with.
I dropped streaming and went back to disc rentals. They have a larger selection of older movies and TV shows available on DVD than they do for streaming. Regardless, many people have no interest in giving any online company their credit card information for an Internet based service, my Parents for example. My brother is not too tech savy either and does not subscribe to any online services. For him, the Internet is good for nothing other than email and Facebook. Most of my friends feel the same way. It is still a minority of the population that use or care about online services.
At the beginning of the article, you ask:
"Why do Netflix and a few other companies keep the DVD format alive, when streaming is more convenient for almost all users?
At the End of the article you then say:
I'd be interested in hearing other theories, as long as people understand the question: Why movie studios don't allow movies to be streamed in a manner that mimics, as closely as possible, the experience of checking out DVDs by mail from Netflix (including, say, a mandatory delay between the time you select the movie and the time that you can watch it).
"as long as people understand the question:"?
Which question? The second question clearly answers the first question by asking "Why movie studios don't allow movies to be streamed...". The question itself is saying that movie studios don't allow streaming in a manner to match DVD by mail, so that's why Netflix doesn't do it.
Netflix already explained why they don't license everything for streaming.
https://help.netflix.com/en/no...
http://blogs.indiewire.com/sha...
I used a almost secret hacker tool (used by the CIA, FBI, and NSA!) to get this information.
Try it: http://google.com/
I don't generally stream or rent any movies. I usually buy one new Blu-Ray every 2 weeks or so. With that I get the physical media I can watch on my home theater system, and just as important to me with most movies I get an UltraViolet code. I then can enter that code and watch that movie on my phone and tablets and laptop as many times as I want with VUDU and I can easily download the full movies to these devices to watch at will. My tablet has a 32GB MicroSD that gives me a nice selection for a trip, and my laptop has a 1 TB drive that can pretty much hold as many downloaded movies as I care to, and I never have to deal with discs on the road. I am just not a renter. I would much rather pay full price to own fewer high quality movies that I can also play anywhere through VUDU than waste my money renting them for temporary use and needing a DVD drive or lots of bandwidth when I am traveling.
Nevermore.
The author is of the belief that DVDs are actually less convenient than streaming, and has a little* tirade about how much of the rest of the world having a different opinion is some sort of grand conspiracy.
* "little" being defined as approximately 472 paragraphs of tirade
You don't have to rewind them. They're pretty darn convenient!
I think it's mostly because Netflix either can't secure streaming licensing for many of the things that are only available in physical disc form, or it would be too expensive to license the entire dvd catalog for streaming.
I no longer care for DVDs, none of my equipment at home has them anymore
Then you must not have any PlayStation console since the PS2 or any Xbox console. Are you a Nintendo gamer, handheld gamer, PC gamer, tabletop gamer, or outdoor gamer?
I really get mad when physical stores waste so many real estate which is expensive displaying hundreds of shelves of a media which is outdated and should be dead by now.
Internet connections with 2-hour sustained speeds less than 1 Mbps or download caps smaller than 15 GB per month likewise "should be dead by now" but they aren't. There are plenty of especially rural areas that still can't get Netflix streaming in any useful sense. Likewise, disagreements among Netflix, the studios, and the actors over streaming royalties "should be dead by now" but they aren't. This is why lots more movies are out on DVD than on streaming.
I think this is one of those (very common) times when rational expectation diverges from irrational reality. The author is expecting things to be logical, or based on factual information. In my experience the opposite is just as often true. The fact is, people are stupid. People who work for companies are stupid. People who own companies and make decisions are stupid. People who invest in these companies are stupid.
No, not EVERY person is stupid, but on average, they're pretty freaking dumb. The idea that people act out of rational self-interest is false, as is the idea that the majority of people are even capable of rationality. Bottom line is, people are frequently not very bright and make decisions or act IRRATIONALLY, or based upon no or faulty information and logic.
Why the DVD/streaming issue? Who knows. There are probably valid reasons, but in the end it's just as likely because the people making those decisions have been lied to, or aren't smart enough to reach a valid conclusion. To expect otherwise is to misunderstood human nature itself.
Mailing a DVD to and from adds an inherent delay in the time before the next movie is consumed. This drastically reduces the number of DVDs that may be watched in a single month. There is no delay in streaming a movie. I can decide 20 minutes into it that it's crap and immediately switch to the next on the list.
I want my DVD and not be dependant on streaming through a dodgy telco network. I can use a DVD anytime and play it many times without additional cost, I can lend it out and get it back, and not depend on a company like Netflix staying in business.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I would say it probably has to do with the "unskippable" previews on DVDs.
Of course the streaming source could always include the previews, and disable seeking in the stream player during previews, so who knows.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
The DVD and the BluRay exist for good and non-conspiracy reasons that all lead to one fact: they generate enough revenue to justify their production.
It may be hard for millenials in mega cities (the sort of fools who create/support things like the Obamacare website) to understand, but there are huge areas of the country with NO reasonable streaming video options...many Americans have no internet access or only 56K dial-up on even the best of days. Get out of your big city and a physicial video disk is superior. Even within your big city, the physical disk MAY be superior... depends on how expensive your highspeed net access is and whether you need it for anything else. If you do not live your life on the web (most American adults don't have the time to) then $100/month for high-speed internet could easily be changed to $20/month for low-speed and leave $80/month for video disks, movies, eating-out, roses for your significant other, etc.
There's other reasons some of us prefer physical media:
Privacy is a good reason. Millenials might like to splatter every detail of their lives across the net with stuff like Facebook, and broadcast their every pea-brained micro-thought on Twitter, but those of us who prefer our privacy often purchase things with cash, and keep our private thoughts to ourselves. Nobody knows what we buy and what we watch and we cannot be so easily predicted, analyzed, manipulated, and marginalized.
Re-watching is another reason. I can buy a disk for less money than a trip to the theater (if I wait until it's been out a while) and watch it whenever I want, including pausing, backing-up, etc. Other members of my family can then watch it at THEIR convenience (without paying AGAIN for the same thing) and any of us can re-watch it again later whenever we want (without paying AGAIN). Several years from now if somebody in the family wants to re-watch it again, WE CAN... there's no issue about whether it's still popular enough that the streaming video vendor is still offering it, there's no issue about the price changing, or the same version not being available (look at "Blade Runner" or "Amadeus" etc where there are multiple cuts and the original is no longer even available) etc. When you depend on some vendor to stream you a bunch of ones and zeroes, you put that vendor entirely in the driver's seat and you are entirely at his mercy.
It's amusing that big businesses have historically LOVED business models where they re-sell you the same thing multiple times, and that over-and-over again entrepreneurs have created business models that free people from this tyranny (and in doing so they are attacked by the big businesses) only to see the upstarts become big businesses themselves who then start pushing the old big-business model as something "new"
IBM used to sell maintainence, and software with monthly fees, and server time and storage, etc. Along came Bill Gates and Steve Jobs with the idea that you could own your own hardware, own and control your own storage, and buy the OS (and then be free from monthly costs). Now both Microsoft and Apple are pushing "the cloud" and software "subscriptions, etc.
The music industry used to sell vinyl LP discs (which warped, scratched, etc and needed replacing), and they panicked over the arrival of cassette tapes (which let people make their own "copies") and then CDs (which they felt compelled to make but feared were "too good"). Various companies sprung-up to make MP3 players that allowed us to "rip" our CDs and permitted us to have and carry "our" huge audio libraries in a shirt pocket, and the music industry panicked. Now, the surviving MP3 people (including some players like Apple who jumped onto that wagon) want us to store the files "in the cloud" (where they'd like to charge fees) or "stream" (where they'd like us to buy and then re-buy the same stuff over-and-over again...)
There are plenty of other examples. People need to turn their backs on vendors who go from garage to corporate boardroom by breaking the client
All these words are used to describe Hollywood's Windowing System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_distribution). The industry has long established these release windows prior to digital distribution, which has become a new window outside of the traditional theater, physical media, and premium cable windows. It allows the industry to milk each distribution for all its worth and, simultaneously, put expectations in consumers' minds about different ways to consume movies.
With everything going digital these windows are shrinking (and somewhat merging into each other), however both the industry's & consumers' habits are slower to change than technological progress. Witness the kerfuffle with Netflix trying to break apart its digital & DVD offerings.
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
The only answer is Netflix's business model relies on rewind fees.
The author's question is not "Why does Netflix offer DVDs?". It's "Why is some content offered exclusively on DVDs, and not offered for streaming?" Yes, the summary is kind of misleading.
Welcome to Slashdot.
Sure, DVDs are all kinds of wonderful. But I prefer streaming because I don't have to plan what I watch days in advance, or deal with unpacking, packing, and mailing a DVD. No, it's not difficult, but streaming is more convenient. For me. If you prefer a DVD, fine. Again, the issue isn't DVDs, it's Netflix', or the creators', refusal to allow streaming of some content.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
As a result, physical DVD's must be repurchased by Netflix over and over, if they are a popular rental item. This represents a measurable revenue stream for the film industry, and they are probably quite happy with it.
Streaming movies don't incur this damage and don't generate the same revenue stream for DVD sales.
I'd be curious to see some statistics from Netflix, telling how many times they are able to rent out a disc before it comes back unplayable. I know I've had a fair few unplayable discs shipped to me by Netflix.
splunge (n) -- A good idea.. but it could be lousy... and I'm not being indecisive!
Its because we don't all live in NYC or LA and therefor don't have endless bandwidth?
I guess the author lives in a bubble and has never left his little comfy megacity but in the rest of the country? yeah you see we have these things called "bandwidth caps" that can be as low as 35Gb, that is if you can get high speed at all.
You see thanks to having a broken corrupted system that has been on the skids for quite awhile there is a nice scam where there is no competition in a good 70%+ of the country. In those places you get a DSL system that has been practically abandoned (because the phone company is making mad bank of those cell towers and could give a fuck about those old DSL setups, can't nickel and dime them to death like the mobile customers) and if you are VERY lucky you can be assraped by cable which is very fast but raises your rates every time someone gets tired of their jacking up the prices on movie channels. Oh and BOTH sides cherry pick and really don't give a fuck about poor or non whites so in many places you can have cable and/or DSL literally across the street and not be able to get anything but dialup. Racism and classism, don't ya just love it?
So to kill DVD would be to kill a good chunk of their sales as many just can't get high speed or have such high caps that they would have the choice between watching a movie or having dinner thanks to the insane overage charges. Blu Ray looks to never be anything more than a niche, in fact the people I know with BD players use them more for DVD than they do for BD, so like it or not oh sheltered writer of TFA the DVD is gonna be here for a loooong time.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Parent is correct. Please remove all over content and ignore the poster. If they didn't want DVD rental, they would have to stop selling DVDs in the US. That would cause too much Red Ink to do.
Netflix can mail DVDs anywhere without extortion like Comcast is now getting.
all content ever made, same day (usually within the hour) of broadcast/release, none of this "limited time release window" bullshit
no internet connection required to view, at a reasonable cable or fiber connection you usually get a 720p movie with surround in less than an hour, dvd quality with stereo in 15 minutes
then once you get it, you own it, no limit on how much you can watch and no phone home required, you can transfer it to any device you own, transcode however you want with readily available and easy to use free software
then you have high quality user-made subs available in most languages, not just the 5 or so the marketing department decided were important
and finally its free
but even if using piratebay was the same price as netflix it would still be a better value
This is NOT "obvious if you know the law", and it's not about the First Sale doctrine. First Sale used to allow a purchaser to lend or rent their legitimately-obtained copy, but no more. See 17 USC 109, which codifies the First Sale doctrine originally created by the courts. 17 USC 109(a) gives the purchaser of a copy the right to sell it. Subsection (b) limits the ability to lend or rent. It says "unless authorized by the owners of copyright ... neither the owner of a particular phonorecord nor any person in possession of a particular copy ... may, for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage, dispose of, or authorize the disposal of, the [copy in their possession] by rental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending."
This is not legal advice. If you want legal advice, consult your lawyer. I am not your lawyer. Free legal advice obtained from the Internet is likely not worth what you paid for it.
I have a 25Mbps down connection, and Netflix movies actually look pretty good after the initial ramp up in quality as it detects the available bandwidth. I very rarely get glitches.
I'll be the first person to point this out hopefully:
DRM
If 'm a total jerk, I can rent every DVD I can ever hope to rent, rip it to my computer and burn a new copy while returning the original.
Netflix however doesn't show the DVD version, they show a low-bitrate stereo, no subtitle, no commentary version of the movie that is a terrible excuse for the original.
Now if it were possible to "remotely mount" a DVD so it could be played over the internet, I'd need a 35Mbit connection that isn't interrupted by dubious "internet service fairness" throttling. And that's just for a AVC 1080p blueray stream. A DVD stream is 5Mbits at 480i in Mpeg-2. The logical solution would be for Netflix to have the full blueray version of the movie available, but have the video streams separated from the audio and remuxed at the client end so that the video stream can be pushed up or down as per the device size, and my favorite reason why I'm not watching netflix right now... no subtitles or original foreign language (eg Japanese for Anime) available.
But end-users don't have DVD or Blueray playing software anyway. So that puts an additional DRM+LicensingCowPie on top of the complexity.
So Neflix continues to mail out DVD's because it's more cost effective than paying for the bandwith and licencing .
This is the single stupidest, most presumptuous, idiotic thing I have ever read on /. that wasn't in the comments section - and it still vies for the top spot, even including them.
Clearly you missed Bennett's other "articles." This is just more of the same poorly premised bullshit.
The article has it wrong (and this comment has it right). Its not that studios "allow Netflix to send out DVDs to their subscribers by mail" its that that can't stop them. This is a long article based false assumptions and zero research.
Pandora is going through the same bullshit with price discrimination. Lil wayne made some 20 million dollars in pandora royalties, and his radio play royalties was like, a few hundred k. The fact that the service providers are being poked with a sharp stick for offering a more convenient and easy to use service is abhorrent. YAY CAPITALISM!
Yup, my cherry has been popped.
If this is a regular occourance, I have to ask though - who's he blowing?
(And, I really am curious - I'd love to have my brain farts suddenly warrant a ./ front page article, I'm up to go down.)
As far as I know, they don't "allow Netflix to send out DVDs". Content owners have in the past tried to forbid media rentals, but failed. They don't "allow" Netflix to do this -- they simply have no legal standing to prevent it. They likely would if they could.
At least that's my understanding of things.
I live in a major capital city in a G12 country and depending on what suburb I may be calling home I might have fibre (extremely unlikely), (copper) cable (only if I haemorrhage cash to a cable TV provider), Broadband II, plain old ADSL 1 broadband, WiMax.. or nothing... nada now that the last provider has axed dial up modem access.
I'm currently living in a suburb popular with 18-35's and god knows why as it's WiMax or it's nothing. On a typical friday night WiMax gets so congested you're lucky if you can stream a 30 second Youtube video (if you're patient enough to let it buffer for 5 or so minutes)
far more convenient to grab a DVD of the shelf or search through the {huhummm} "archive" of files you've BT'ed during off peak periods
It's incredible how myopic this article and many comments are...
- World median income is about $100/month. So "most people" probably can't afford a computer, much less a DSL internet connection to their home. They probably can, however, afford a crappy TV and a crappy DVD player.
- I'm not sure that optical disks are necessarily better than flash drives. They can easily scratch or break. Plus, it would seem that BluRays (which would beat flash drives for the data capacity/price) were crippled by their DRM, and we won't be seeing them used as general purpose storage any time soon. And a crappy USB DivX player is even cheaper and more sturdy than a DVD player (probably because of the lack of moving parts).
- The only reason streaming exists, IMHO, is because the content publishers want to control the way that content is being watched and they especially don't want you to share it by yourself. Because otherwise there's no point for streaming, since you can just download the video bits in "chronological" order and watch it as you download it, assuming your bandwidth is sufficient. That's actually what your browser does when "streaming", it's just that you don't get to keep the video file as it's kept in the browser cache. And if your bandwidth is NOT sufficient, then when downloading you just have to wait until the time left to download is equal to the video duration. FYI, a 700MB movie can be downloaded in 90 minutes if you have a bandwidth with and average of 130KB/s. So in theory, even a 56K (28 hours at 7KB/s for 700MB) is going to be faster than snail mail (of course you won't like the film download hogging all the bandwidth, and there's another issue if data transfers are expensive for you).
- Netflix (whether rent-by-mail DVD or streaming) is only available in a few countries, the rent-by-mail DVD system would probably be illegal in many countries (that's probably one reason why Netflix clones haven't popped up in every first world country). Movie streaming services in general suck, even compared to regular DVD rentals, and it just gets laughable when trying to compare the diversity and quality of service of streaming services compared to "pirate" sharing systems.
- I'm willing to bet that the most profitable system for non-scarcity systems like digital distribution is a "pay-what-you-want" system (or at least a system where your average consumer considers the purchase "cheap"). Case in point : Humble Bundle, GoG and Steam. (Oh, and content distributors shouldn't insult our intelligence by trying to sell us a film download for more than a movie ticket.) But of course the MPAA won't release their control because that would be their end, so they are going to go on, kicking and screaming, until they are finally completely irrelevant...
That doesn't happen every day.
> Specifically: Why do movie studios allow Netflix to send out DVDs to their subscribers by mail
I didn't read beyond that. The movie studios, at the core, do not "allow" Netflix to send DVDs through the mail.
This is specifically legal due to the First Sale doctrine.
I say "at the core", because Netflix has *voluntarily* signed agreements with various movie companies to get CHEAPER DVDs (the "rental" DVDs) from the studios. The fact that the "rental" DVDs typically do not have the extra content (once in a while there is a tiny proportion of the extra content, sometimes there is JUST the movie), and the rental DVDs seem to have become a large proportion of the DVDs I got, is why I cancelled Netflix sometime last year.. I was a VERY longtime customer. I am not against streaming, but the extras are largely why I kept with the DVDs. (Though I also think the idea that the streaming is inherently more convenient isn't necessarily true.. No buffering, video glitches, more reliable subtitles, you can skip back/FF easier, etc.. That doesn't mean I don't ALSO use streaming, through my Amazon Prime acct, which is another reason I cancelled Netflix.. But I am likely to take them up on their free month to see their various original series and a few other things.)
But anyway, even after that long ramble, even though Netflix currently has agreements, the very idea of renting DVDs is legally protected.
By that argument we should still be using VHS. They are no more difficult to use than a DVD.
The inconvenience is not the actual use of them but rather the fact that you have to transport and protect a physical item, as well as keep the hardware to use it. I have one DVD player at my house, in an old laptop that nobody uses any more.
I don't see the benefit in keeping a slow, vulnerable and low capacity storage format alive when there is a superior technology available.
The question you should be asking is why is streaming video so expensive that DVD (shipping little plastic discs around) is cheaper than sending bits over a wire?
That is the conspiracy.
Another slashblog post by an imbecile. Must be a slow news day.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
If you are poor, you don't have a computer, let alone high speed internet access. Streaming is out of the question entirely.
You can't stream (well) on DSL or dialup, which some people use -- not everyone has Google Fiber or Comcast cable internet.
Plus DVD "just works", whereas streaming is a crapshoot of Flash errors, ad blocker interference, and whatever else.
I regularly watch streamed TV but get movies on DVD. It isn't some conspiracy, it's just cheap and convenient. And guess what, DVDs are easy for children and the elderly to use. Grandma and the kids have no problem picking and playing a movie.
DVD is still around because, while not perfect, it's more than good enough. This guy must be living under a rock if he seriously thinks streaming is the end-all solution to watching films.
Apparently the author has never watched a 40 Mbps bitrate Blu-ray on a large TV. We get mainly Blu-ray discs from Netflix. Sorry, but streaming will continue to have significantly inferior picture quality until we all have vast bandwidth available to us (and no caps). The author must be one of those people that believes low 128kbps MP3's actually sound like music.
1. dvds offer higher quality video and audio than most forms of streaming..even so called '1080p' streams are so bandwidth constrained that they do not really qualify as hd, even though the pixel resolution is 1920x1080. To use an audio equivalent, even 64kbps mp3 can be '44100hz stereo'. It still doesn't sound good.
2. dvds just work. Throw the disk in, hit play. No hidden fees, no drops, no lag, and no racking up bandwidth costs.. Most people do not have decent internet that operates reliably at rated speed, so in order to get quality streaming, 50Mbit+ or better is required even though the highest quality streams from netflix et al top out at 10Mbit.
3. streaming makes sense for rentals, but not for owning. The prices charged by amazon to 'buy' a streamed movie are high enough that it's better off to get the bluray or dvd. Then you own it for keeps.
A virtual DVD is a fixed sized disc image like an ISO, right? Or a single, downloadable movie file, not optimized for streaming. So if the argument is about choice, putting physical discs as images seems okay. But bandwidth and monthly caps are an issue for the consumer too. A streaming movie isn't a full download, so it is viewable pretty quickly. Also, if your link is bad, Netflix tries to lower video quality and still deliver a passable user experience. Those customers wouldn't enjoy long download times for the virtual DVDs.
and even then, it will still not be anywhere near the quality of the physical good.
...
My parents don't have a computer anymore. They did but it was an old hand-me-down that barely got used. So there is still a significant non-computer, non-smart TV market.
Also, in North America generally it's famous how bad, considering it's a developed economy, the average "broadband" internet connection really is. And in a related issue it's famous how slow YouTube can be in sending video down the pipe. So slow that it became part of an SNL skit. When technical issues hit pop-culture awareness you know the problem is big. Really big!
Now factor in that there are many venues (transportation comes to mind) where internet connections are slow, expensive, and frequently absent altogether.
Of course the studios are behind the digital times. That is stipulated. However DVD's simply are not "clunky". The only serious problem they have is the time lag between ordering one and being able to watch. Nevertheless DVD's are legacy and will slowly fade away.
The author imagines a greenfield universe where they are the master planner. "Well I wouldn't do it that way!" OK, so what? The point isn't whether you would or would not do it a certain way. The point is, you did not. You are only invested in your own priorities. A service provider like Netflix has to consider what their customers want for delivery systems, the price they will pay, the current net neutrality arguments, their own installed base, profit margins, relations with the studios and many other factors.
OK, I can't believe l sound like I'm the PR rep for Netflix here. Time to stop!
There, I summed up the situation in two words. You're welcome.
Its because not everyone has a hi-speed connection.
Its because not everyone wants to trust a 3rd party company to tell them what they can and cannot watch.
Its because they prefer to have a physical item in their hands after they purchased it, instead of having a receipt telling them they can watch a stream of X movie Y times before they have to renew their subscription.
Slashdot, going even further downhill.
Buy it on itunes and download it.
A DVD player is cheaper than a lawfully made copy of Windows in which to run iTunes. Or has the Wine team figured out how to run recent iTunes correctly?
http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/01/zediva-ordered-to-permanently-shut-down-operations-pay-1-8-mil/
I think the next business who tries something similar better have cash and an army of lawyers because it will be a ton of appeals and eventually end up in the US Supreme Court.
Never let this fucking moron submit anything again.
Fuck you.
Have gnu, will travel.
For one thing, until US networks get a LOT better, the quality of a physical Blueray absolutely annihilates streaming here.
Neither DVDs or Bluerays suffer from your local ISP suddenly going offline, or a nearby hospital deciding to have a hires video conference between many points. No stuttering, no crashing (hello, Roku... you ever going to fix that crashing bug in your players?)
And, if we can talk about ownership here, each DVD/Blueray is a physical object which isolates risk of damage to one title at a time (as compared to a library on HD or in the cloud), and eliminates a third party who has decisive control over what you (think you) own, and how you can use it, in the "cloud."
And, like LPs before them, CDs, DVDs, Bluerays... the packaging often contains much interesting and collectable goodness. Or is such goodness in and of itself.
And, you can loan out a CD/DVD/Blueray, Swap them. Treat them as if, you know, you owned them. What an amazing idea, eh?
Just as a fer-instance, we've been watching Vikings, streamed from the History channel. We really enjoy the show. It starts in lowres; jerks into hires. Stutters and goes back to lores. Breaks for commercials. Swaps into hires without, apparently, properly telling the system it's changing, judging by the spattering of random looking mpeggy squares on screen when it's changing res. And the commercials appear to have been shot in CDV or something... "lores" hardly suffices to describe them. Basically, other than the content itself, the whole "streaming experience" there is totally bottom feeder. This is pretty much a worst case, but it's not all *that* uncommon, and many audio streams are also extremely low quality.
The CD/DVD/Blueray collection, however... impeccable. Just as good today as each title was when we bought the stuff. Given the new upscalers, perhaps even better.
CDs, same thing, really. There are a few good streams on Internet radio, but generally... not so much. 128k streams... meh. 192 is tolerable, 320 is more like it. OTOH, a good CD (for example, one from Telarc) always sounds *X*awesome*X*, and will for decades, perhaps longer.
Maybe my standards are just head and shoulders too high, but that's why *I* am still not all hepped up on streaming.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
As others have said, the First Sale Doctrine prevents copyright owners from controlling, as much as they might like to, the rental of physical copies of their copyrighted works. This area of copyright and trademark law has already been well explored in the courts, especially as it applies to rental of physical media. The copyright owners tried and failed to shut down the VCR and tape rental in the early 1980s, but that ship has long since sailed. So asking why copyright owners "allow" DVDs, but not comparable streaming practices, misses this key piece of the puzzle.
your comment in the Subject line. Thank
__
you
Oh yeah bloggers.... Worthless rants about the dumbest shit. As if no one else on the planet had asked themselves the same thing, or had that very thought cross there minds.
One paragraph, would have been more then enough. The same crap on NPR, idiots doing "retrospective segments" blabbering for 5 minutes with repetitive nonsense.
Why is this guy allowed to post this stuff? "In convenient on purpose" I was thinking that very thing over his rant...
the biggest reason would propably be that not everybody has a good enough internet connection to be able to stream without problems.. It isn't too hard to come up with that reason.. And let's be honest, not all streams are even up to DVD quality.. Yes, streaming is easy, but if the quality still isn't really great (high compression rate, macroblocking, fuzziness, no DTS or better sound) for me I still keep putting in my dvd's and bluray's..
Does netflix have DVDs?
Didnt they put that down long time ago?
I still buy DVDs. Not everything is always avilable on netflix for ever (Curse you netflix, or content owners for removing Avitar. I was almost done with book three you fuckers...), and I do enjoy looking at my wall of movies and games and relizing that they are mine. To watch and enjoy when ever I want and to rewatch with my kids when they grow up. I do enjoy the convinence of Netflix, but i more look at it as a try before you buy sort of thing (I WILL own Castle) or like a replacement for cable, which we dont have and find the lack of ads rather briliant.
1. The only place where you have a speedy 100% reliable internet connection is when you are a character in a movie.
2. A physical DVD is reliable 100% of the time.
I have a Google Fiber 1Gb connection at home and I still watch DVDs, although not as much as I used to. My AT&T / Comcast / TimeWarner (I tried all three) connection was never reliable enough to stream an entire movie without hiccup.
that way myself. If you don't like it, I suggest that you not do it.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The studios would love to stop Netflix DVD rentals too, because they don't share in the revenue from those rentals. But the law doesn't permit them to. The "decoy" answer may be the right answer for the simple reason that copyright law distinguishes between the renting of a physical thing and the renting of the information on that physical thing. That distinction doesn't make any logical sense -- it's based in history -- but it is the law.
Like, duh. The answer is that the movie studios can't STOP netflix from renting DVDs through the court system. First sale doctrine and move rental industry has paved the way. Doesn't take a genius to figure this one out.
I kind of, but not really, wish my pointless ramblings ended up on Slashdot. The author has a whim and then speculates on what ephemeral individuals were thinking when they made the DVD.
THIS IS NOT NEWS.
Not everyone can get good, reliable, high-speed connections. Folks out in the country need some way to watch their movies. Folks fighting their provider's poor service or horrible customer relations or even there random price increases need some way to watch videos.
OK, I realize that the issue is not "why discs are better than streaming," but rather, "why does Netflix's business model still comprise discs?" Aside from the fact that Netfix was crucified the last time it tried to cut loose its disc-mailing service, here are reasons why I still subscribe to both streaming and disc services:
i) Scope of selection & licensing issues. Try streaming Game of Thrones or Homeland on Netflix. Even if an HBO refuses to grant Netflix streaming rights to a piece of content, the content provider can't (and sometimes wouldn't want to) stop Netflix from purchasing and lending out disc recordings of that same content.
ii) Video quality. Despite your bandwidth, Netflix today still tops out at maybe 5MBs, or less, depending on your local infrastructure. A Blu-ray (yes, not all "discs" are DVDS) can give you over 20MBs. On my IFS-calibrated big-screen, that means a real difference in image quality. Video is not all about resolution, right? Right??
iii) Sound quality. Many, if not most, Netflix-capable boxes do not provide 7.1, or even 5.1 sound. Just watch the first 40 seconds of the last half of Breaking Bad S5 (the skateboarders in the empty pool) and tell me that surround sound is not the tits. I want it.
iv) Special features. OK, sure, most gag reels make you want to gag, but there are some Bonus Features that are pretty fabulous. Like the "Chicks with Guns" unreleased scene on BB S5.1 discs (in better-that-fucking-YouTube quality), or the invaluable character guides on the Game of Thrones.S1 set. Yes, I realize that many rental discs no longer include SFs, but increasing numbers of rental titles seem to be restoring them.
v) Flexibility. The ability to skip the title credits of any episode of American Horror Story with one click of the Next button. Eeeee-nuf said.
vi) Ownership. Even if you only have a loaner disc, you can bring it in to work & lend it out to the guy in the next cubicle. Not everybody has Netflix or streaming access.
I guess the bottom line is the same as it is with most types of media consumption patterns these days. If you can live with crappy MP3s & Dr. Dre headphones, don't mind surrendering control over your choice of media to consume, don't mind surrendering control over what you do with the media you choose, and can live with compressed stereo sound and DVD-class bandwidth, fine. Watch Avengers on a friggin' tablet. But I really LIKE the 100" screen, high-volume & extended bass multi-channel sound, esoteric bonus features, and filmlike video quality of BD. My quality of life is better than yours and I get better content than you do because I don't limit myself to streaming video.
And yes, I do realize that reasonable minds can differ. A lot of people do prioritize the convenience of watching lower-quality streaming content and are willing to subject themselves to the dictates of media industry licensing strategies. God bless ya & if that's cool for you, it's cool for me it's cool for you. What's annoying is the ignorance that would motivate someone to even ask the question that started this page. "Clunky" DVDs? Seriously? How about "high-quality Blu-rays"?
This is an excessively long article trying to figure out (and missing) a very simple cause: renting physical purchased DVDs is legally established precedent and requires no cooperation from the copyright holders. I can legally rent any DVD I own.
Digital copying of those same DVDs is not legal. The copyright holder needs to allow it. Streaming is again not allowed without the copyright holder's permission in the form of a streaming license.
Netflix made a deal to get rental DVDs at a lower price in return for making them available 30 days after their actual release in stores. But since all their other deals rely on the copyright cartels, they would not be stupid enough to leave all their eggs in that basket by dropping DVDs. All good shows are bound to come up on DVD at some point. If streaming prices go up (as they are bound to do) then DVDs are still available.
Physical objects like DVDs are governed by the First Sale Doctrine (reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...), a legal principle that says that once you have bought something you are legally entitled to do anything you like with it. including renting it and reselling it. Although some rental outlets get their discs (and in the past, tapes) at a reduced price under different agreements (notably agreeing to share some of the rental revenue with the studio), the fact that the rental outlet can opt to buy the discs through normal channels and rent them without encumbrance sets an upper bound on what the content owner can charge for their movies or TV shows.
Streamed content has no such out. Content owners can charge anything they like for streaming agreements, offer exclusive deals, or withhold the content altogether. (There is a complex timing arrangement of availability of movies on disc, on pay-per-view, on premium movie channels like HBO, on broadcast TV, and so forth - streaming services are currently the bottom of the food chain and get A-list movies only after the other sources of revenue are mostly used up.) That is one reason why the streaming selection on Netflix and other streaming services doesn't match what they can offer on disc.
If we really start to pay for data flow then a 4Gigabit daily movie habit gets real expensive, both in infrastructure and in cost (when paying per-bit downloaded). But only Polyanna could pretend that we won't have to eventually pay for big data downloads (the same non-functioning thinkers who thought making health care cheaper for the individual would automatically make more health care available).
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Well of course... have you notices that the authors must be paid by the word. I see lots of articles that yammer on and on.... and not say much in those sentences.
The answer is obvious but you keep dancing around the issue thinking there is some clever puzzle to solve.
Netflix can rent physical media to their hearts content. They don't have to negotiate deals with the studios. Studios can do very little to prevent this.
Distributing digital media, on the other hand, requires licensing agreements with the studios. Studios are making some serious cash from these deals, and they are trying to maximize revenue. All the deals they cut, or don't cut, are to that end. Whether or not they are successful in maximizing revenue is debatable, but that's their motivation.
If the studios could shut down physical media rentals, they would do it in a heartbeat. They don't have to worry too much though, since the physical rentals industry is on its last legs. With the advent of streaming services, studios are finally getting what they want: absolute control over rental of their titles. This is very new territory for them. Expect some bad decisions to be made while they figure out how to get it right.
some of us still get disks from the library. which is (sort of) free and a resource that is still worth all the tax dollars they cost
I have minimal bandwidth available within 25 miles of Nashville TN and 10 miles of an interstate. Not exactly 'back woods'.
Cable company wants $25,000.00 for an install so I can get basic cable. (Comcast AND Charter are within 3 miles - Comcast North, and Charter to the South. They both say I am in the 'others territory'.
I use a little of my wifes employer's T1, but can't use it all, and that is nothing compared to a good DSL or cable connection (at 1.44MBps symmetrical at best). Then I do have Exede satellite, but at $50/month for 10Gig of data ($75 for 15G, $110 for 20G) streaming is out of the question but the speed is sufficient. Extra data is at $10/Gig, almost up to the rates of cellular data (that I did use for a while, until there is now no-carrier that has truly unlimited data for love-or-money.)
Oh, DSL. Well I have a good 56K modem that I used in Houston (USRobotics Courier for those who remember, industrial strenght) and due to the aged copper in the area I can get sometimes UP TO 20 Kbaud. DSL or whatever the phone company pushes as broadband isn't here either, to say the least.
Yes, we live in a valley, so a 100' antenna gets half way to the terrain level on either side of the little valley we live in.
All this to say, Netflix is the best option for some of us. As antiquated as it may be, is still the best for many of us. At least UPS and USPS can find us.
The movie studios tried to make renting movies illegal but the lost in court. So that is why Netflix can rent any DVD by mail they just go to a store and buy the DVDs when they are released, no talking to the studios required.
Reason for Hollywood's reluctance: They seek to "be not modern" like Amish... Hollywood studios fight technology improvements at every turn, starting with the Sony Betamax lawsuit... technophobes? Or, just paranoid of losing absolute control of Regional distribution, to milk the most profits from their audience!
Torrents work better, for me... GNU/Linux, BSD ISOs,"only", of course... (harummph, cough, cough...)