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Peter Jackson and JJ Abrams 'Back' Sean Parker's Screening Room (variety.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Reports claim that Napster founder, Sean Parker, is working on a new service, called Screening Room, which would make major blockbusters available at home on the same day as they hit cinemas. The service would apparently charge users $50 per movie, and provide them with a 48-hour window to watch it. Now a new report claims that Hollywood titans Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg and JJ Abrams are among backers of Screening Room.
A fool and his money soon parted.
I have a 4K HDR Dolby Atmos dedicated theater in my basement. Sure a 100 foot screen is great and all, but I have better sound and video on my 133" screen than any theater within a 18 hour drive. I would gladly pay that fee, it would be cheaper than me and my wife going because of the cost of a sitter.
"and along with Screening Room’s robust anti-piracy strategy" LOL are they serious? If you can see and hear the movie you can record and redistribute it. Period. At first I'm sure they'll have the stream locked down but pirates will just record it using a capture system and re-encode. And quickly the stream will be compromised and they won't even have to do that. Don't get me wrong I like the idea but if they're under some delusion that there won't be releases on every torrent site after a couple hours they REALLY don't get it. Love the idea (maybe not for $50 a movie) but you'll be able to get copies from everywhere less than a few hours after release.
Are there actually THAT many people that HAVE to see it on release day.....and can't wait for a later, more convenient day, or maybe just do like I do...and wait for it to come out on BLuRay...rent and watch in the comfort of their own home...?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This reminds me of my college days. I always asked my roommates if they wanted cable. They all say YES! I then asked them if they wanted to pay for cable. They all say NO! We never had cable when I was in college.
There are plenty of people to whom $50 is not problematic at all for an hour or two of entertainment. Think what dinner at a nice restaurant costs even in a medium-sized city. They could charge more and still have many thousands of customers, but are obviously searching for the sweet spot between cost and number of customers that optimizes their return.
This could easily be MUCH cheaper then going to the movie theater, especially if you add in drinks/snacks....
Eating Kraft macaroni and cheese at home is also much cheaper than going out to a high class restaurant. Your point? Watching a movie in the cinema is not the same as watching a movie at home, even though in both places you get a "movie". Just like horrible, boxed mac and cheese and a $60 angus steak are both "food". But if you can't see the difference then you deserve to pay more for less. If your family of four waits a few months the same movie will be on pay per view for $5, or on cable for the price of the subscription you're paying anyway.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
When you consider that it costs $150+ to pile a family of 5 into the Canyonero and drive to the movie theater, pay $15/ticket and $15 a piece for a small bag of stale popcorn and small sugary soda, and watch a movie surrounded by people talking on their phones and calling a play-by-play of the film, I would HAPPILY, VERY VERY HAPPILY pay $50 to watch a first-run movie at home on the night it is released in theaters.
Also there is a lot of value in NOT dealing with the asshole talking and texting in the movie.
But you got a million tedious fight scenes that were never in the books.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
wait no that didn't happen that way AAAAAGGGGHH
Dude's a hack. Admit it.
I agree. I boycotted those movies when I found out the dialogue was going to be in English, instead of in the original Westron with subtitles.
>> the dialogue was going to be in English, instead of in the original Westron with subtitles
Coffee, meet keyboard.
It's more that there are a lot of people who want to see something at home and don't want to go to the cinema. With large numbers of people have good home cinema setups, they'd like to use their equipment to view these blockbusters. There are some movies that I really couldn't be bother going to the cimema to see, but may watch at home. (There are some that I'd still go to the cinema for, though). Also, some people just can't get to the cinema for various reasons.
So, yeah, I probably be tempted to fork out some money to watch a movie at home instead of a noisy cinema, where I can enjoy it more. $50 is a lot (€45, which is 4 cinema tickets here), but with a few people around to watch it, you'd break even.
And I'm sure it will lead to a certain degree of reduced piracy, where some people will be happy to pay to have a good copy streamed to their TV, rather than download a low quality (and illegal) camera copy. But the impact likely won't be huge. I'm sure most will still just download the cemera copy, but at least the option would be there to allow you to purchase it for viewing, legally, and in Blu-Ray quality (or even 4K!)
If you already don't care about breaking the law, why not just pirate the movie?
First of all an official release will probably be of higher quality (I only say "probably" because there has been a history of DRM or fear of rights holders meaning an official digital release of something has been worse than what you can download). For Day1 material though, the likelihood of the quality being better from an official release is much higher. I'm at the point where taking even even two hours to watch a movie is a lot of time so I want it to be worth doing and only have to see it once if possible...
But the second thing is, morally I don't want to just download something and not pay the creators for it. So even if I could download a higher quality version for free I'd rather at least pay for it for real and then watch the free version (I've done that before). You seem to conflate morals with the law, but the two are pretty much wholly disconnected at this point. I can easily say I break the law many times per day now (I won't say how but there are many common things that almost everyone does) so worrying about "breaking the law" means nothing to me anymore in comparison to behaving morally. Getting a small handful of friends together to me seems reasonable, so I will do it regardless of what the actual contract wording may be.
There's also the side aspect of risk; studios are particularly finicky about going after pirates of newer material.
All around it's way worth $50 to me to have an official release with great quality.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This will greatly improve the quality of cam torrents as pirates use stolen credentials and private VPN service to capture the latest movies day&date with theatrical release in their own home.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Your point? Watching a movie in the cinema is not the same as watching a movie at home, even though in both places you get a "movie".
No, it's worse. Not starting at the scheduled time so they can show you adverts, noisy people, no pausing to go to the toilet, expensive (and non-alcoholic) drinks.. I really don't see the point in the cinema any more - is there anything *so* good you can't wait six months?
Nope. If you want that service it already exists and has for many years for the ultra-wealthy. $500 for a single screening. Credit Check required. The equipment has a fingerprint scanner to verify you authorized the screening. It uses a satellite connection to pull down an encrypted file ahead of time and then the internet connection to get the key to decrypt. It's basically the same source material a theater would use.
Some people were taught right from wrong by their parents and have some moral integrity. I know it's a crazy idea, but just because you think it's okay to steal doesn't mean everyone else does. I would guess that most of us did some morally questionable things when we were younger. Most of us have matured enough to realize that we should not be proud of those things and brag about them by the time we graduate from college though.
Cue the "it's not stealing if nothing gets taken" crowd. I'll go ahead and preemptively respond to that, too.
There are different types of theft but at the simplest level theft is taking something that is not yours without permission from the owner/creator. Note that "something" can be a physical item, a valuable idea, an identity, a service, etc.
If you go to buy a car and think the dealer's asking price is too high, do you come back after they close for the day and steal it? The cable TV company spent the money and did the work necessary to provide the infrastructure so they could offer a service. They set a price for this service based on what they thought it was worth. If you thought their asking price was more than the service was worth, you should have done without rather than stealing it.
You know what, if you go to the car dealer and think that car price is to high and you come back latter than night and make a copy with you own machine and supplies, well, you know what, that's fan-fucking-tastics, and woo hoo, you are to be celebrated and congratulated. Gees, think about, don't like the price of a big mack and can make an instant copies to feed yourself as well as the rest of the planet, you would be celebrated no matter how much maccas would want to fuck you up.
Dude, copying ain't stealing. In fact the only actually stealing that occurs is when the pigopolists with the backing of government storm troopers turn up to your door and actually steal and destroy the stuff you made with your equipment on your supplies, they also steal the equipment and suppliers and even your own self. The other big time actual stealing that is occurring is of course big time fraudulent DMCA claims where pigoplists do actually steal content that other people have produced by the pigopolists claiming it as their own.
Now here is a tricky one, did the cable companies steal quality of life from it's users by maliciously and disingenuously promoting unhealthy and socially destructive practices and should they be prosecuted for the harm and suffering they have purposefully caused, that harm being the theft of years of a persons life.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen