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DreamWorks Animation CEO: Movie Downloads Will Move To Pay-By-Screen-Size

Posted by Unknown on from the uh-huh dept.

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."

6 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. Projectors? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Will they be able to tell how far away I have my projector from the wall?

  2. Or.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Or they'll all continue to be free..

  3. We already have a unit of measure for billing by thechemic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  4. summary is misleading by Khashishi · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Pay per pixel? by darkshot117 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Except more and more phones are higher resolution then most HDTVs already. A lot of people will have a 55 inch TV at 1080p but a smartphone with 1440p at least in just a few years. So paying per pixel or per size is pointless as neither tells you anything...

  6. Re:Stretch that anus! by NotDrWho · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bend over and take it boys! Hope your anus is been pre-stretched!

    I'm a Comcast customer. I can assure you that my anus is more than capable of taking anything at this point.

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.