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DreamWorks Animation CEO: Movie Downloads Will Move To Pay-By-Screen-Size
Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of Dreamworks Animation, speaking at the Milken Global Conference in California, opined that the future pricing model for movie downloads will revolve around screen size. In his view, larger screens will incur larger download prices. As he says, 'It will reinvent the enterprise of movies.' Unclear is how physical dimensions, rather than just resolution matrix, will be determined. Will we soon be saying 'hello' to screen spoofing?"
Can you fake the physical dimensions reported in the EDID block when the connection is using HDCP? Aside from the implication that this would mean more DRM (and seems pretty unworkable, but with the rise of locked bootloaders on even x86 hardware...), the prices he predicts seem alright: "A movie screen will be $15. A 75-inch TV will be $4. A smartphone will be $1.99."
Bend over and take it boys! Hope your anus is been pre-stretched!
Will they be able to tell how far away I have my projector from the wall?
Or they'll all continue to be free..
and then every other screen will play it for free.
it will be like 99c songs on iTune. Not that I ever paid 99c for a song. There will be plenty of ways around it. but still, if it's pushed to the masses the lazy masses will bite. This is how you shake the masses of change.
wouldn't they really want to charge on # of viewers? (no one cares about size of screen anymore; my kids watch everything on their tablets)
also, $2 seems pretty high for a movie in the days of Netflix...
this makes sense based on my own experience. I get a lot more value from a movie in my home theater than I do from watching the same movie on my phone. So if I have to pay $5 to watch it on my big screen tv, I'm not going to pay $5 to watch it on my phone!!! The post implies that katzenberg is making an arbritrary technical distinction. in fact, what he's saying is that customer value scales with screen size, and the price should too.
A 75-inch TV will be $4. A smartphone will be $1.99.
So, I hook my smartphone up to my 75 inch TV & save $2? I'll stick with unlimited streaming, thanks. MKV files as a fallback. I haven't yet, and don't intend to ever, purchased a DRM'd video. I buy non-DRM mp3s all the time now.
Any video switching equipment for HDMI/DVI will often use a small device such as Gefen's HDMI Detective to store the EDID of the screen and convince the video source that it is always connected. It would be trivial to store a "fake" EDID in such a device that reports a smaller screen.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
He can go F himself if that's gonna happen, I've got a projector with a 100+" screen, and I've also got a phone of 5", both are FullHD, so for one I would be paying $15 and for the other $5 even though they are using exactly the same resolution, therefore bandwidth...
I have more than 600 bluray's and well over 5000 dvd's, but if they go for such a moronic pricing for digital downloads, then I'll just go and pirate it, there is a limit to what actually makes sense, but paying according to your screensize is well beyond that..
We already have a unit of measure for billing which is referred to as "mega bits per second". Now they want to bill us by "screen size per viewing"? Every @#$%'ing time I try to go legit, they force me back to illegal downloads with their senseless bullshit.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
Good thing I kept my old CRT with 800x600 resolution. Well, at least that what my system will report and I am sticking with it!
These clowns are just more or less determined to destroy the whole business of downloading, as well as killing their own revenue stream.
They think I'm going to pay more to download a video to my 55" TV than my 27" TV (and correspondingly more than my tablet)? All at the same resolution? How does *that* work? Can we charge him more for being a bigger idiot?
They're already gouging me to rent it, then my internet company is gouging me for the bandwidth to get it, and *then* they want a premium to play the exact same content on a slightly different device at the same resolution because the physical dimensions of the screen are larger?
These guys are drunk, rent-seeking assholes who have lost touch with their customers if they think this is going to work.
It seems like the movie studios are so focused on leveraging their synergies in order to opimitaly maximize revenue that they're going to destroy the very market they're hoping to make money from.
If Dreamworks and the other movie studios go this route, they're going to drive away customers.
I already think going to a movie is too damned expensive, and would rather watch movies at home. But it sounds like they're just trying to add more rent seeking/price gouging along the chain here.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And if I'm streming music on a 5.1 system will I be charged eventually more than on a standard stereo smartphone...
As the low quality vs high quantity of content grows, the entertainment industry is still looking to sqeeze more more and more juice from customers.
As ridiculous as deactivating and activating pistons on a car based on the price you paid it. And I heard some companies have thoughts about it. You give a call, activate some "service" at a monthly price and BANG you got a V8!
OR I could pay for the lowest resolution and torrent the highest resolution and sleep soundly
OR I could just not pay for anything at all if you're going to have a pay scale that equates resolution to quality
Hey professor, what's another word for pirate treasure?
"Well I think it's booty" "booty" "booty that's what it is"
CAPTCHA: "dreaded" (pirate roberts)
So just buy it for your mobile phone or tablet and stream to your TV. Most of the smaller have resolutions that are good enough for "typical" TV-sized displays. A better pricing scheme would be for the actual resolution. E.g. $1 for 640x480, $2 for 1024x768, and scale upward.
And how do they propose determining the price for a projector, when a single unit can readily have a screen size ranging from 30 inches to 300 inches?
if i get a 4k version for the 4$/75 inch and 8k & some nice uncompressed 192khz multichannel surround for the movie screen, e price hike is justified. but for playing the same file on a larger screen? that's just ridiculous.
following this logic, audiophiles should pay a tax for playing their music on a high end stereo/better headphones, pc gamers with bigger screens should pay extra (and for surfing the net on a 32 inch monitor....) and peole with bad eyesight should pay for larger fonts on their kindle.
This is another example in the cavalcade of lunacy...
Media bigwigs simply **do not understand the internet and digital technology**
Over and over, through things like DRM, their marketing, lawsuits they file, companies they back, the music/film/TV industry shows the faults of their business model.
Where does it all end? We can already get any "content" free virtually instantly (to watch new TV shows online you have to wait depending on your time zone)...artists are using non-standard channels more than ever...whole genres of music have developed that are entirely outside mainstream media marketing...
Do these companies just die ridiculously slow deaths?
Thank you Dave Raggett
buying that cheap $2-$4 dvd or $5-10 BR at a pawn shop costs me nothing to watch it anywhere. I got about 1000 dvd's and 700 came from pawnshops/flea markets. You can keep your price per size hopefully it goes all digital and no more physical media so I never had to be bothered to watch anything and go for a walk instead. That movie habbit is hard to break but I'm getting there. Been cable free for over a year now which saved me $100 per month and haven't been to a movie theather since The Road.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I think he was really referring to resolution when he was talking about screen size, perhaps he was addressing a non-technical audience. I agree with him for the most part. He's talking about expediting digital distribution to only 18 days after the initial release, as he figured the major cinemas have made about all they're going to make by the first three weekends. He sounds very forward thinking. Pay X3 for 4K, X2 for 1080P, X1 for SD.
...will be 25 cents.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Is anyone else thinking that this is fucked up? How in hell is the size of my device related to the value of the movie? This is not capitalism. This is a new kind of scam.
What he's talking about is more likely that streaming a movie to an iPhone app may be cheaper than to an Apple TV, for example. Or that a lower resolution screen (totally fine for smaller devices) would cost less than the full HD stream. No mention of measuring the actual resolution or dimensions of the display device. He may or may not be correct in his statement, but can we at least show the courtesy to not infer crazy ideas that weren't expressed?
How about also charging more for loudness? This way a-holes next door will have to pay more for being obnoxious.
Also what about separate charges for Red, Blue and Green? This way colorblind people can benefit from low, low price of $19.99.
Last but not least, they should charge extra for Jar Jar Bink-less content. Insert him into all movies, then charge low low price of $1.99 to filter.
If you ask me, odds are 70% he was just using "Screen Size" as a proxy for "Resolution" in the first place, either because he doesn't know the difference, or (more likely) was talking down to the audience. In any case, it is one person's speculation about the future, nothing more.
Once again, the movie industry reveals their complete lack of understanding of their own industry. People have no moral inclination to follow unjust and ridiculous rules/laws. Making your sales model even more ridiculous will just drive more customers into piracy.
Can you fake the physical dimensions reported in the EDID block when the connection is using HDCP?
Yes. The EDID block is not encrypted.
Whoo hoo! My 51" hdtv's EDID data says it's 7" in size. Everything's coming up Milhouse!
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
Maybe they should just charge based on how much we enjoy the movie. They could install brain sensors in all the audience members, and if it's a really good movie like Spider Man 2 or The Revenge of the Sith we can pay top dollar, and if it's a really terrible movie like Spider Man 3 or The Phantom Menace we can get a discount.
This kind of article and thinking by a studio exec shows that nothing has changed in the way of making movies. Of course, content and story have nothing to do with it, it's down to what you're watching it on which completely takes the studios off the hook for producing anything that you'd actually want to pay for. Has anybody really seen a film that Dreamworks has produced in the last 10 years that's worth seeing again and again? Clearly the pay per view model is where this douche is focusing and I'm sure we're all going to want to pay, happily, to see "Dinner For Shmucks", "Cowboys and Aliens" or "Need For Speed" again.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Dunno how the head of an animation company doesn't know this. What's important is angle of view. A 5" phone held 1 foot away from your eyes has the same angle of view as a 50" TV viewed from 10 feet away, which is the same as a 50 foot theater screen viewed from the back at 120 feet away, or a 0.42" Google Glass-type screen on your eyeglasses just 1" away. The image for all of these occupies exactly the same size on your retina.
Surprisingly, that seems rather unheard of.
How do these fucktard CEO's get these jobs?
I'd be ok with a price for bitrate or quality.
You can have a much smaller / lower quality file (SD'ish) for a smartphone than for a 60" TV (where you want at least 720 and probably 1080).
They already charge a higher rate for HD movies than SD movies on a number of streaming rental sites so it's not even a "future" rental model.
Primewire AG is the way of the future.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Yep, "Pay-per-Pixel." I can see that.
In other news, DreamWorks executives can afford to smoke shit that the rest of us haven't even heard of... :)
--- "i think what we have here is a failure to communicate" ---
as in the CEO has NO idea about the technology being used
px resolution is a easy one to do , and would make some sense .
the SIZE of the screen is just a phallic reference .
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
Jeffrey Katzenberg might have said "you pay for the size", this does not mean he explicitly meant physical dimensions and not resolution. This suggestion was added in by the article submitter to make him sound more idiotic than he probably is. I'm sure if you were actually talking to Katzenberg and you pressed him on the issue, he would clarify that he used the term size as a proxy for a combination of resolution and compression quality which one would expect for a TV vs a cellphone.
The software does not detect what device you have and let you download only that. He's trying to say that you pay more for a better quality picture. If you want to pay 1.99 and stretch a smartphone resolution-sized video onto your 60 inch tv, you can do just that.
As for me, I'll keep using torrents.
More tech predictions from MBAs. Why is /. repeating this crap?
will work for dragon quest localization
I think basically, he's proposing pay per pixel. If you have a phone-sized screen, you have lower resolution, and they aren't sending you as many pixels.
Also, lol @ 'smaller screen sizes mean you pay less'. You never pay less. It'll be the base rental cost it is now ramped up further on screen size.
... I doubt they care what your screen size is. If you want to upscale the SD version onto your 4K TV, no problem -- it just won't look as good.
their last paying customer?
They should also charge according to how close you're sitting to the screen, and how many speakers you have.
sig: sauer
Does anybody in the entertainment industry stop for a moment and think how much money they are wasting on implementing various protection schemes just so they can have the fuzzy warm feeling of being in full control? Screen size? Really? How do you know what screen size I am projecting on from my DLP? What about my VR set? What would be the screen size on that one? What if you are projecting directly on the retina from a google-glass-like device?
So they now have to come up with protocols for communicating the size and resolution of the screen to a number of devices and over the network to the streaming services. Mind you, in order for this to work these protocols have to be reasonably tamper proof, highly accurate (you don't want Netflix to think that your brand new 70" TV is a cell phone) and backwards compatible (yes grandma watches TV too). Then they have to convince all manufacturers to spend money on implementing this. After that they will have spend more money on fighting kids that mess with their little scheme not because they don't have money to watch the movies, but just because they can. How is all this going to make them more money compared to just dumping the content to Netflix or offering to on Amazon for 99 cents?
When a market can maintain price differentiation based on an attribute that doesn't affect the cost, then the market has failed and is clearly in need of intervention. You're not saying that the movie industry needs to be shaken up, do you? Not that it affects me. I'm not going to pay for music or movies ever again. IMHO those industries don't need to be shaken up, they need to die.
the burden of the crown royal wizards & warloks http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=weather+manipulation+wmd beware falling gargoyles....
Let's assume he's talking about resolution instead of screen size, because he's probably the kind that has his secretary print out his emails and has no idea what a pixel is.
This is the CEO of Dreamworks, known for a lot of CGI movies.
After getting a retina macbook, i recently tried the 4K version of one of those Blender movies - Sintel to be exact.
I didn't see any significant difference.
I guess Dreamworks has the render farms to do a few more hairs than the Blender foundation, but still, for his products more resolution is a bit worthless.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Anyone who looks to Katzenberg for predictions about the future is a fool.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
Rather than tiered based upon Screen Size, it;'s more likely that Katz meant it would be tiered based on Video dimensions. Many people have pointed out that it's hard for the delivery mechanism to know the target screen size. It's easy for the producer to generate a video at multiple video dimensions. The teirs would relate to standard screen sizes, increasing in cost per tier. For example:
Tier 1 - 320x240 or 640x360
Tier 2 - 640x480 or 800x450
Tier 3 - 800x600 or 960x540
Tier 4 - 1024x768 or 1024x576
Tier 5 - 1280x720
Tier 6 - 1920x1080
These are 4x3 and 16:9 resolutions. I'm sure they could make other resolutions available.
The idea is that lower resolution may be just fine for viewing on your phone or watch, but you'd want the Tier 5-6 dimensions for watching on a large TV. Try watching a 320x240 res video on your 40" display and you'll see what I mean.
Nothing to stop you from doing exactly that; you want to pay $1 and watch 320x240 res video on your 40" display? Sure, go ahead. But I'm betting it won't be as good as watching the 1920x1080 res video.
Except if it's a download of Twilight.
I mean then it's a straight data / cost ratio.
Say it was 50 cents per gigabyte you download from them.
So $2 for a DVD. $15 for a Blue ray. 50 cents on your mobile device unless you want to run it at "retina" level resolution in which case you might be paying $4.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
One of the most popular seems to "trusting remotely entered data".
Based on the wording, he's comparing watching it on a given screen equal to watching it in a movie theater. That is, you don't get to keep it. Watch once, that sort of thing. Maybe a netflix model. At $4 bucks, 10 years from now, for a large screen tv, it sounds like it's some sort of rental, like the holy grail of DRM has promised the MPAA folks; they can only watch it _x_ times, or only until date _y_.
Of course, like all models that revolve around these sorts of limitations, you need to implement increasingly restrictive DRM, enforced by both software and hardware, and it can't have any holes or alternative routes. We all know how well that works. We've seen exactly how well it works. People, by and large, aren't in a big rush to adopt hardware for features that only benefit copyright distributors at the consumer's expense.
My guess is that in the best case, they'll end up partnering with cable companies and/or netflix to have some sort of ala carte channel model with a monthly subscription fee. Direct digital distribution is unlikely because they won't be able to set a price point that makes sense to the public - their price point will be based around the concept of giving up control completely, because once one person 'hacks' it, it free.
That's it. I'm only watching movies on my phone from now on.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
I'm hoping they implement this business model. For once the size of my asset will be an asset.
Really, it should come down more to resolution ,or "definition" as the studios often call it. This is somewhat the case already with (e.g. movies on google play) being more for the HD versions, and blu-ray being more than DVD.
So just have it something like
$$$$ Ultra-HD/4KHD
$$$ HD/1080p
$$ 720p
$ Low-Def (480p?)
Even if a tablet/phone supports 4KHD (WHY, WHY do the average 5" smartphone have better res than a 15"+ LCD), you don't really get much benefit from getting an ultra-HD version in terms of viewability. It may even be worse if you're streaming or on a slow device due to lag/bandwidth considerations.
Similarly, low-def and is going to look crappy on a big LCD TV, and even 1080p may be inferior on the really big ones. Let people get what they pay for, and give them cost/resolution options similar to what's already available.
There will also be a 75% increase in the price of .torrent files.
The CEO isn't the guy who does the technical work. His job is to find money for the company and provide vague "direction". Pixel counts are totally beneath him.
CEOs don't start in that role and they don't get that job by being idiots. Katzenberg has worked in the film industry since 1974. I'm pretty sure he's got a clue what a pixel is.
That said, Katzenberg appears to all evidence I can find to be pretty much a weasel.
Isn't this the same group of people that predicted that by the year 2010 we'd all be working 5 hour weeks and spending the rest of the time wandering randomly in suits made of aluminum foil?
I think they are worried about 1080p --> 4K up-conversion on the consumer end. Some AV manufacturers up-convert pretty well, especially for animation, which is Dreamworks bread and butter. Who would pay double for 4K native content if the up-conversion works nearly as well? 2D animation (mostly anime from Japan) is still having trouble getting people to pay out for Blu-Rays, when DVD resolution is often good enough, especially with DVD --> 1080p up-conversion.
Reality is probably closer to:
"we'll try ever harsher and dumber DRM and rights constriction in order to stay the eventual decline of our business model."
Or:
"Only suckers will pay the premium, everyone else will just pirate to their little hearts content. This change will do nothing but increase the number of people paying 0 dollars."
If they supply it at the resolution you're paying for, no DRM required. Of course this wouldn't help people who have smartphones with better resolution than HDTVs.
Will they be able to tell how far away I have my projector from the wall?
So if you want to download the 1080p content for your phone, you get charged the $15 rate. How that competes with Netflix's 1080p free-for-all streaming, I don't grok but at least it's an attempt at a fair pricing scheme (i.e. pay for quality).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
And after Jeffrey Katzenberg idea God created the pirates so you can get his movies for free at any size.
Oracle is the perfect example.
You pay by the number of processors, by the speed of the processors, etc....
WTF should a software company be able to charge based on what hardware I own? Yet people pay them all day long.
Now, it's slightly different in that Oracle helps a company make money, where as a Movie is purely entertainment. I think the Pay per Screen size will be a HUGE flop since it will be very hard to know the size of the device and people will be against it. Some will pay though because they don't care, they just want to watch a movie.
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
see, here's the thing...I agree with this:
but that truth in no way, IMHO, makes this true:
they can both misunderstand **and** be trying to kill it...that's my whole point...
this "charge per screen size" ridiculousness shows that even in their attempts to kill it they fundamentally, still misunderstand digital technology
the greater point is, if they *truly* understood it, they would actually profit more by fully embracing it!!!
Thank you Dave Raggett
Why the hell would anyone pay more simply because they have a larger screen?
The fact is, a screen's physical dimensions and the screen's resolution have almost nothing to do with one another.
I can see paying more for a higher resolution version based on bandwidth consumption.
But screen size?
That has to be the dumbest, most inconsistent metric available.
I'm wondering if Katzenberg has been smoking the whacky weed.
The fact is, NOTHING is going to "revolutionize" the distribution of movie/TV content.
That's ALREADY happened with digital delivery.
But the market continues to evolve. And it's the content delivery systems, like Google Play, Amazon Instant Video and Netflix that are evolving it.
If Jeffy thinks that his one little studio is going to somehow drag the rest of the industry away from the people doing the ACTUAL pioneering of the format, he's delusional at best.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
How far do I have to fall back on the curve to lawfully watch the film Song of the South or the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea?
Go and watch some crappy video shot on someone's cell. Then make it full screen.
I've Plex'ed some Youtube videos to my 32" TV and many of them look like shit - as in unwatchable.
Now, if you have a choice, wouldn't you want to make it as good looking as it can on your screen - assuming it's worth it of course?
I'm thinking folks with their 50+ inch tvs are going to want something that looks good on it and they'll pay for it.
Otherwise, why buy such a thing?
EOM
A better pricing scheme would be for the actual resolution. E.g. $1 for 640x480, $2 for 1024x768, and scale upward.
Redbox does exactly this: $1.20 per night for 480p or slightly higher for 1080p. What the studio wants to do is discriminate between small 1080p screens big enough for one person and large 1080p screens big enough for more than one person.
Fantasizing about new ways to charge customers more money for the same crap is just CEO fap material and not much more. If his dream ever does come to pass you can bet one thing. I'll be downloading the biggest, most expensive version from somewhere other than where that bastards cash register is located and so will plenty of other people. On the other hand if he'd figure out the price point necessary to get more people to want to buy it he might see more customers and more dollars.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Can you fake the physical dimensions reported in the EDID block when the connection is using HDCP?
Yes, you can fake out the EDID. HCDP does not protect the DDC communications. Interposing on the EDID transfers over HDMI would be super easy to do with off-the-shelf parts and a breadboard.
But how many retinas can it occupy at once? A phone is big enough for one person. A living room TV is big enough for a family of five and should cost five times as much, or perhaps less for a family pack discount. This is the same reason why a lot of video game developers have stopped making split-screen multiplayer modes: to make a household pay for more than one copy of a game. Besides, focusing on a target 30 cm away from the eye for the running time of a feature film causes eyestrain; viewers would pay more to avoid eyestrain.
They are working with Microsoft to use the Kinect to detect how many people are watching and calculating their gross weight. The next billing will be pixels-per-pound. Maybe Dominoes might be interested too, $19.99 pizza per thousand pounds of people.
the SIZE of the screen is just a phallic reference
That or how many people are viewing at once. How would you go about comfortably fitting five people around a 17" 1080p laptop monitor?
i recently tried the 4K version of one of those Blender movies - Sintel to be exact.
I wonder if the CEO of DreamWorks wishes he could punish the Blender Foundation for allegedly ripping off the idea of How to Train Your Dragon.
Yes, TV manufactures will jump at the chance to have people NOT upgrade their tv because they don't want to pay more money for their content. They will love it! LOVE IT!
thats all applies more than normal today
The teirs would relate to standard screen sizes, increasing in cost per tier.
Almost. The widely known tiers are LDTV (240p-288p), hard letterboxed SDTV (360p-432p for film, 360i-432i for sports), SDTV (480p-576p for film, 480i-576i for sports), EDTV (480p-576p for sports, rare), basic HDTV (720p), full HDTV (1080p for film, 1080i for sports), and 4K (2160p). "Standard definition" is tier 2 in 60 Hz markets (USA, Canada, Japan, Korea, and Brazil), and tier 3-4 in 50 Hz markets (much of the rest of the world).
Try watching a 320x240 res video on your 40" display and you'll see what I mean.
It'll look like a cut scene from a video game for the original PlayStation. Yet Nintendo's Wii Shop still charges $8 to $10 for Genesis, Neo Geo, and N64 games that run in 320x240.
If this "remotely entered data" is signed by a licensee of a digital restrictions management system under contract with Hollywood studios, then whoever enters the data would be liable for misuse. At least that's how CSS and AACS were intended to work. This would have to involve a revision of HDCP to end EDID spoofing.
I'd pay more for a better story lines. High resolution versions of a bad movie is still a bad movie. Would kill it James Cameron to spend $50k on a screenplay?
and how would this work for something like an AppleTV? It has no screen
The end user would pay to rent the film on a particular screen size. A revision of the Apple TV that supports such a scheme would read the EDID (possibly including an HDCP-wrapped hash of the EDID info to make sure it isn't spoofed) and windowbox the playback if the screen size exceeds the size specified in the license.
I can see a market for devices with tiny screens that demand high resolution video and just happen to be able to broadcast as well.
I imagine there's a rule in HDCP against devices that both display and repeat video.
And the freetards still complain that it's not as good as piracy. He needs to just accept that some people will always pirate then rationalize why they *have* to do so.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
But will the studios cheat and up-scale a 2400px to 6000px so they can charge you more? Time will tell.
What about "virtual projectors"? Give me a Oculus Rift + VR Cinema ( https://share.oculusvr.com/app/vr-cinema ) and I can have these 2D Movies as big in front of me as I want.
Disney will of course make most of their titles ONLY available in the largest dimensions.....for artistic integrity of course.
No, seriously, good luck.
I don't see how you could possible find the screen size of a TV/Monitor online. Even if the monitor give out it's model number out, there's THOUSAND of monitors and TVs out there, there's no way it will be able to check what you have or not.
Not to mention, what's stopping me from plugging a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable from my smartphone, to my big screen TV?
No problem, I'll just open a window.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
My first instinct is to say this is a bad idea... But here in Australia we pay $20 for a movie ticket already. I'd be quite happy to pay $4 to watch new release movies, in the comfort of my own home, on my own 55 inch TV instead of paying $16 more for the inferior experience of a trip to the cinema.
for the crap those people purvey. I see no reason why anyone should have to pay for Movie 43. Or, frankly, 99% of the rest of the dreck they put out.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
How nice to see that they care so much about keeping the vibrant and innovative informal ditribution sector alive and well, employing all those people, and helping all that quality content reach all those lives it would never have touched with quality. Striving to reduce the life- and spirit-crushing disappointment of always having to use and have and be served crappy and crappier everything. They are truly interested in nothing more than spreading joy and contentment worldwide. Those that would hastily call them "the Grinches that stole my viewing res", willingly ignore that crucial "fact". :^
Try again. Or here, let me help you:
What the big players need to do is create a common deliver platform. One place people can go to find there shows. Don't compete on the delivery, compete on the show quality/popularity.
Charge 17.99 a month for deliver, with 5 min commercials every 30 minutes. Most people don't mind commercials becasue they know it pays for the content.
Allow people to pay not to have commercials. 99 cents for every 30 minutes.
Have a no commercial subscription tier charge and addition 29.99
Rent/Sell a small box with an HDMI port on one side, and an ethernet port on the other for people who don't want a 'computer' in the living room.
Put everything up there. The industry would replace DVRs becasue getting whatever a person wants when they want it is what people want.
The industry doesn't need the cable companies anymore, everyone has internet. Well, people don't need the TV part of cable companies.
Use some of the lobbing money to get the intern declares a common carrier. Make it easier and cheaper for people to already have the pipe.
ACTORS:
The model is changing, life time royalties must end. In fact, royalties for more then 2 years should end. You are killing television history.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you want to beat piracy, here's a checklist:
1. One website on which to sell the movies
2. Streaming or download at your leisure cross-platform
3. A price that is reasonable (at least, considered reasonable by some portion of people; don't get snippity with me)
If you skip any of those, I will still be able to pirate it more easily. I once spent 15 minutes trying to find a legitimate way to watch a movie on my Linux laptop. If you want me to buy stuff, don't make it so difficult.
...with how these fucks keep spending too much time finding new and unique ways to fuck the consumer instead of finding new and unique ways to actually create something worth a shit and make it simple for the consumer?
I doubt any of this will get too far. I mean if the games, tv and book industries wanted to commit suicide, they'd just end up driving hobbyists to make their own entertainment: Queue the explosive rise of open source gaming. Now I'm not suggesting we're going to see a sudden explosion now. I don't think those industries are quite that stupid. But I think if they actually did decide to go stupid-crazy, the bulk of people would just start hacking their own content and releasing it. People like games and modding, but if push came to shove, they'd make more open source projects if they had to get around restrictive stupid crap.
Hollywood can charge on whatever basis it likes. It makes no difference to me since I don't pay for movies anymore.
So, go ahead - charge on whatever basis you like. Charge based on current wind conditions for all I care. It's not like I'm going to pay anyway.
We already have a workaround for smaller screens.
Have gnu, will travel.
So I can get around having to pay a higher price by 'watching' the movie on a phone, and then mirroring it to a 55" TV? No doubt there'd be a 'no mirror' bit set somewhere when watching one of these movies.
I'm guessing they're charging more $$ for bigger screens because more eyeballs are likely watching.
how do they know the resolution of my torrent client?
Some mobile phone screen resolutions are very high, a mobile phone has a screen ~5inches long - should it then not be 1/15 the price of the 75inch version of the movie? Instead of $1.99, it should be $1.00
> Can you fake the physical dimensions reported in the EDID block when the connection is using HDCP?
The EDID is unauthenticated and transmitted over i2c. You can simply cut the cable and stick a few cents worth of microcontroller (or i2c eeprom) on the i2c lines.
So there is no reliable way to determine screen size on a remote display. Could work on devices such as smart-tvs (but security is usually woeful compared to set top boxes).
That is the model they need to go with. Until then I'll skip step 1. F' em
Went to the movies recently at the theater on "cheap" night. Went to see the new Captain 'Mercia flick.
Cheap night means movies are 5.99 rather than the normal 11.99.
However when I went to get tickets I found this:
Of the like 12 show times, all were 3D, with the exception of ONE, which was at 3pm on a weekday (meaning that pretty much no one can watch it unless you are on night shift work or retired). The 3D versions of course all have a 3$ surcharge added to them, making "cheap" night 8.99. Add the 25$ popcorn deal, and its still a 50$ night for two (on cheap night).
So the parallel here of coarse is while they may have a tiered system, who is to say they will all be offered in all instances equally. Maybe the movie you want is only available in the expensive tiers, because they don't want to limit the users experience of course... Anyway if they want to do it to save users their own bandwidth costs, I am fine with that. However if they try the above described bullshit (which they most assuredly will, as it will increase profits), they can go straight to hell.
With the prices quoted in the summary I would literally be forced to spend more time outdoors.
I believe fully in supporting the art and intellectual property of others, and I do not pirate. But when an industry decides to out price themselves when thievery of there product is so simple people will pirate even more. This in turn leads to the loss of the industry, art, and intellectual property because no matter how much the artsy folks love Marx they want to be paid.
to compensate for my small penis. will i get a break?
How many Bieber fans even know what those numbers mean? This is not about bandwidth, this is about recouping the loss of physical media sales and movie ticket revenue.
What would it cost me for all Dreamworks Animation pictures to be in 0x0?