I've actually been using Time Warner's VOD service (imaginatively named "On Demand") for a while now. Response to the controls is pretty awful, as is the occasional required unplug/replug power to reboot the box (seems to flush some kind of cache). And, it's digital cable, the artifacts of which are just plain annoying.
That said, I'm a big fan of the service. I pay $7/mo on top of my regular HBO/Cinemax fee and get access to around 30 movies on HBO, plus a couple of episodes of the Sopranos, comedy specials, etc... if you don't pay for the premium stuff, you can still get stuff like the cooking channel commercial-free (more or less, they throw in a 30-sec "sponsorship" at the beginning like PBS does). Could I do better with a TiVo or EyeTV? Sure... if I waited to build the library myself.
The modelling would be pretty complex - but it has been tried, though not, to my recollection, with DVD's in particular. Remember when Amazon kept offering different prices to different consumers for the same item? That kind of "NOW how much will you pay?" analysis would have to be done a few different ways, I would think, to get to the "real" price (equilibrium state btw supply and demand). However, I think the markup on DVD's is so thin (e.g., Costco wholesale is pennies different than mainline retail) that such research would be difficult unless the MPAA were willing to spend money to get real figures, which obviously is counter to their interests.
Another thing to remember is that the elasticity of these demand curves (i.e., their slope) changes over time. New releases can tap pent-up demand at any reasonable price; as the release ages the curve flattens very quickly. The market becomes saturated, demand is exhausted, and the property is sold to the cable networks to squeeze the last bit of revenue out of the equation.
To make a short story long... I don't believe that there exists a fixed point in time where we can compare pre-DeCSS piracy to post-DeCSS piracy. As piracy technology evolved and spread, so too did the usage of consumer DVD players (now less than $50 USD at the grocery store down the street - now THAT's a saturated market at work). The upshot is that we could develop a model to assess the true "lost revenue," but the people holding access to the data needed to develop the model are those least interested in getting a real number. It's much easier to get headlines with your pinkie finger stuck to your lip screaming "3 BILLION dollars!" than to show the slowing of growth in sales of DVD's. Look at the cinema industry here in the US; three years ago the major players were merging like crazy and building new movie theaters anywhere they could get a lease - we still haven't cleared this glut of capacity and these companies are on shaky ground despite this lousy commercial real estate market. But we're supposed to believe that DVD sales will grow at x% (where x is a very large number) when the first-run movie houses can't pay their bills?
CBS is reporting that the Russians sent up an unmanned supply vehicle this morning, and also that there is an escape craft of sorts sufficient to return the ISS crew to Earth without a shuttle flight.
Come on... the submitter is obviously German... do we expect the editors to pick on non-native speakers of English while sifting through submissions? Lighten up, eh?
Re:logo there for a reason
on
Apple PDA?
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· Score: 1
I wouldn't have believed it either,.. until I saw how the volume/scroll wheel on my iPod spins with no resistance whatsoever...
Isn't this a re-hash of the "public v. private API" battle that's been raging forever?
If the API's are unpublished, and you build software that publishes it without their permission, why is it wrong to ask that you don't publish it? If Apple doesn't want people to use API's that are problematic, and tries to help customers maintain the stability of their system by encouraging the use of API's that DO work, where is the inherent evil in that?
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I've actually been using Time Warner's VOD service (imaginatively named "On Demand") for a while now. Response to the controls is pretty awful, as is the occasional required unplug/replug power to reboot the box (seems to flush some kind of cache). And, it's digital cable, the artifacts of which are just plain annoying.
That said, I'm a big fan of the service. I pay $7/mo on top of my regular HBO/Cinemax fee and get access to around 30 movies on HBO, plus a couple of episodes of the Sopranos, comedy specials, etc... if you don't pay for the premium stuff, you can still get stuff like the cooking channel commercial-free (more or less, they throw in a 30-sec "sponsorship" at the beginning like PBS does). Could I do better with a TiVo or EyeTV? Sure... if I waited to build the library myself.
The modelling would be pretty complex - but it has been tried, though not, to my recollection, with DVD's in particular. Remember when Amazon kept offering different prices to different consumers for the same item? That kind of "NOW how much will you pay?" analysis would have to be done a few different ways, I would think, to get to the "real" price (equilibrium state btw supply and demand). However, I think the markup on DVD's is so thin (e.g., Costco wholesale is pennies different than mainline retail) that such research would be difficult unless the MPAA were willing to spend money to get real figures, which obviously is counter to their interests.
Another thing to remember is that the elasticity of these demand curves (i.e., their slope) changes over time. New releases can tap pent-up demand at any reasonable price; as the release ages the curve flattens very quickly. The market becomes saturated, demand is exhausted, and the property is sold to the cable networks to squeeze the last bit of revenue out of the equation.
To make a short story long... I don't believe that there exists a fixed point in time where we can compare pre-DeCSS piracy to post-DeCSS piracy. As piracy technology evolved and spread, so too did the usage of consumer DVD players (now less than $50 USD at the grocery store down the street - now THAT's a saturated market at work). The upshot is that we could develop a model to assess the true "lost revenue," but the people holding access to the data needed to develop the model are those least interested in getting a real number. It's much easier to get headlines with your pinkie finger stuck to your lip screaming "3 BILLION dollars!" than to show the slowing of growth in sales of DVD's. Look at the cinema industry here in the US; three years ago the major players were merging like crazy and building new movie theaters anywhere they could get a lease - we still haven't cleared this glut of capacity and these companies are on shaky ground despite this lousy commercial real estate market. But we're supposed to believe that DVD sales will grow at x% (where x is a very large number) when the first-run movie houses can't pay their bills?
CBS is reporting that the Russians sent up an unmanned supply vehicle this morning, and also that there is an escape craft of sorts sufficient to return the ISS crew to Earth without a shuttle flight.
12 years ago, a PowerBook 100 probably cost as much as your tuition did...
Come on... the submitter is obviously German... do we expect the editors to pick on non-native speakers of English while sifting through submissions? Lighten up, eh?
I wouldn't have believed it either,.. until I saw how the volume/scroll wheel on my iPod spins with no resistance whatsoever...
Isn't this a re-hash of the "public v. private API" battle that's been raging forever? If the API's are unpublished, and you build software that publishes it without their permission, why is it wrong to ask that you don't publish it? If Apple doesn't want people to use API's that are problematic, and tries to help customers maintain the stability of their system by encouraging the use of API's that DO work, where is the inherent evil in that?