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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.
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
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.
because physical media has that whole first sale doctrine which allows the rental of the physical goods, virtual goods not so much.
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...
> 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 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).
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
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.
In the rural valley I lived up until last year, my Internet was provided by cellular modem or MiFi - The only alternative was satellite, and the latency of satellite prevents VPN usage that I need for work. The MiFi comes with a 10GB cap, which is fine for most of my home and business usage. But 10GB is about 3 streamed movies. So I buy DVDs instead.
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier
Interlibrary Loan can get you pretty much everything with similar transit times to Netflix DVD shipping.
Since the Walled Garden makes pricing information a state secret, it's kind of hard too really. At least with Amazon, I can see if any given new movie can be "rented". All I need is a standard web browser. It doesn't matter if my display platform is supported or not.
Although the idea that a DVD is "clunky", is just mindless elitist claptrap. You stick it in the device and it plays. That's fairly simple really. If not for compulsory ads, there would be no real reason to seek out something else for a rental.
Streaming services and Virtual Jukeboxes are more advantageous for things you are going to watch more than once.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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!)
This. The reason Netflix was able to build an empire on DVDs is that they didn't have to ask permission from every studio to do it. They just bought the DVDs and put them in the mail. This is also why the streaming selection sucks, because media companies wrote the laws for streaming, and Netflix has to put their balls directly in their hands and ask how hard they want to squeeze. The situation won't improve without a major overhaul in copyright law, which is absolutely not going to happen anytime soon. If anything, Congress will make the laws even more restrictive/stupid because that's what they're getting paid to do.
I read the internet for the articles.
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
"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...
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.
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.
I found some posts from intellectual property attorneys and they seem to be saying that you can't just buy a DVD at Walmart and rent it out:
http://www.avvo.com/legal-answ...
Interestingly though the answers from the IP lawyers seem to be split.
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/
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.
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.
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.