This could be a way for BushCheneyHalliburton to lay the groundwork for further import duties. Even a 10% across-the-board surtax would generate $30 billion (and you're probably looking at a rate more like 33% to 50%). Thats so much money its hard for them to ignore. Of course, it means that all those cheap imports get more expensive, but that only hurts the poor (in both countries), and there's no evidence Bush even knows the poor exist, except as cannon fodder.
Given that such a tarrif would send both nations into a recession. It's be cutting off your nose to spite your face. Also, bush chenney are gone really soon. The next admin may be affiliated but I wouldn't count on it with such popular backlash against this regime. Worst thing to happen to the US since Hoover and MCarthy.
This is true; however, the end result is that an agreement was reached that the US is complying with. This tends to indicate that the US does indeed respect the WTO arbitration process.
No a compromise was reached that ignored the WTO rulings and Canada agreed because they didn't want to draw it out any longer and forsaw little change to reclaim any more of the tarrifs.
Actually, a lot of countries abide by the WTO ruling because they are punished for not doing so. Canada has a particularly clean record the US has a particularly bad one.
distribution (pay the person on the street who sells the stuff)
It actually works the other way, a small store buys the stock at a set price, marks it up and resells it. In china the priates are manufactuerers. They do nto controlt he whoel supply chain. they sell to small regional distributors who in turn sell to the outlets. Which are mostly small businesses. Regulation of this type of supply chain is hard. They occasional bust a big wharehouse and claim their fighting the good fight but it's a massive problem that china likely doesn't nto want to get too deep into. No real upside for them and the only drawback is the ire of the US entertainment industry.
Most marqee recording artists are paid a %. they don't get a wage. IF you include the wage the amount does not increase dramatically for the majority of albulms. A film can cost a lot even without factoring the 2 mil for the director and 5 for the marqee actor. A lot fo the budget is spend on crafts people, cameramen, editors, key grips etc... in music it's a sound engineer a couple of assistants if it's a big enough project and an editor. Ussually 1/10 as many people involved.
HD/BD both allow the option to use component or DVI. At least my PS3 does. DVI allows 1080p. Oddly component only allows 1080i on the PS3 on my 50ind sony rear projection LCD. And the difference on my rig between IP digital TV and DVD is noticable and DVD to BD immense. Your underplayings the actual difference. Not only higher resolutions and more pixels but also higher bit rates audio and almost no compression artifacts like DVD. They are noticable on most action films on DVD. There is also java menuing options, better scratch resistance, and better audio. On older TV's or even just bad TV's there is little difference between DVD, VHS BD, rabbit ears. But on better sets even in SD a noticable difference is there. The next step will be evolutionary not revolutionary. DVD was a big step because so much can be improved. BD/HD is less so because there are fewer obvious things to improve. The next step will be online content once bandwidth comes up to speed. Thats the last added convienance but with broadband penetration being so pathetically low in the US (as compared to other western nations) this step might take a while. Most people didn't care how exactly DVD's were better back in the day, they just bought the DVD because it was just "better". The same thing will happen to BD/HD. Although it looks like it's going to be BD at this point.
Result: Slow adoption. Could even be termed 'niche market', at least for now. The analysts may have said that blue ray is catching on as fast as DVD, but not faster if you look at it as a percentage. Most of that came from Casino Royale sales. I think that an important point would be that the HD standards require a new TV, DVD didn't. So I think that you have will see a brief surge of (rich or spendthrift) buyers to help justify the HDTVs they already purchased. After that, it'll be much more difficult.
I'd like to have HDTV, ps3, etc... But I baulk at the price tag every time. I could go cheaper if I was willing to have HDTV in monitor sizes (27"), but I want one at least as big as my current 32" TV. Add in that I don't have cable or satellite and you'll see that my available content is limited and expensive. Not time to adopt yet.
Heck, with the whole casino royale best seller thing I wonder how many people bought the HD discs by mistake, thinking they were getting some kind of deluxe version, but still playable on their DVD player?
What do you mean by percentage? percentage of media sold? number of media sold? percent of my profit? back end royalties? The numbers in absolute term resemble DVD except adjusted for pop growth.
Video mis-sold are often returned. I'd hazzard it was a fairly small percentage since the stuff is in it's own isle most of the time. The HDTV adoption rate is increasing. HDTV's are now a large percentage of new TV purchases. They have then in various price ranges. It's pretty hard to deny at this point that the next format is goign to be bluray and it's catchign on about as fast as DVD. Time will tell but You seem against HDTV coming? Don't buy if you don't want it/afford it.
ps. Most sets came with at least composite plugs. That buys you 1080i. DVI/HDMI gets you to 1080p. There were some corner cases of really old sets doing 790(i/p) only. But they are uncommon. Most are at least 1080i.
If only such a small percent of the market is concerned about DRM, then why has adopting it been such a problem for the entertainment market?
Apple seems to be doing fine with DRM. Although music is a different thing to video. Right now even DRM free video is a bit clunky to move around. When data transfer speeds reach sub 10s transfer times for decent video you might have an arguement but people are not yet wanting portable video en mass. Some geeks liek me and you have our video Ipods and motorola smart phones etc... but the general populace is just recently caught on to mp3's. DRM is not a huge liability to apple yet. I personally hate drm. I choose DRM free media if it's convinient. But the general populac eis clueless.
It doesn't look like these titles are all so new that you'd be correct (and anyway, new releases nearly always have greater weekly sales than ones that have been around awhile). The real story here is in comparing the HD/BD sales to regular DVD sales--the low rate reported here would probably remain quite low.
Even if Wal-Mart isn't on the list, weekly sales of less than 1000 copies isn't good news for the next-generation titles (particularly because all the HD/BD discs I've seen tend to be the "money makers"--not box office flops). Lots of the movies do suck, but that never stopped people from buying them in massive quantities on DVD or VHS.
According to Sony, bluray is spread about as fast as DVD did. the early adopters grab it, show their friends, friends go out and but it when it hits their price range. Its what happens. A bit early and silly to call the format a dead end. Remember that for at least a year DVD greatly outsolf by VHS for most releases.
Over here in Canada, A DVD would be 10-30 bucks. The mode being about 19.95. A Blu ray dist is between 20.00 - 50.00 with a mode around 29.95. It's not that big of a price premium here and most DVD's under 19.95 are often clearance items or really old/bad movies. The 19.95 blu-rays are just older movies. HD DVD seem to be priced a bit higher. I haven't payed as much attention. As for DVD's. A progressive scan DVD player does not hold up well to a Bluray-HDDVD player on a 790(p/i) or 1080(p/i) screen. Even on a 480(i/p) there is a noticeable but much smaller difference. Those who can afford it are migrating. The rest will upgrade eventually. Like how the VHS clung on for years. The luddites/poor migrate slowly. In 6 years you'll be complaining how bluray is good enough and this new fangled online delivery is queer and will not succeed.
People aren't buying into it in droves, because the previous thing they used works well enough for them and the new features offered by it aren't enough of an incentive to 'upgrade'; on the other hand, it is laden with DRM that the previous thing wasn't.
DRM is only a concern to maybe 0.01% of the market (roughly the # of slashdot posters to bitch about it). The key limtiation in install base not DRM. DVD had stronger DRM then VHS. almost no one cared. Ditto with blu-ray/HD DVD vs DVD. People do not tend to try to copy their DVDs, those who do will eventually go with the method to do so with Bluray-HDDVD. Everyone else will shrug.
As a few analysts and Sony markettign pointed out, Bluray is catching on faster then DVD did.( Although only by about as much as the pop has grown). So it seems Bluray is going to be the next major format. Don't kid yourself, your concerns are not shared by even the general slashdot populace.
The only question mark remaining is: how far away is the MPAA from this scenario? Movie theaters and HDTV may be their only saviors, in that it takes enormous (by current measure) amounts of bandwidth and storage to copy a quality movie. Music is quite compressible, and too many tin-eared fans are willing to settle for crappy-but-tiny MP3 recordings. But as long as people want to share the experience of a movie on the big screen, and as long as HDTV requires a relative firehose of a network connection for high quality, AND as long as they can convince people that quality matters, they'll be able to keep making money on TV and movies.
The difference between the RIAA and MPAA is the RIAA has a product that takes 1-10 people to make and quality is not dependant on money spent. The MPAA needs 20-1000 people to make their product and below a certain minimium funding your end product looks like crap. The MPAA has multiple revenue streams while the RIAA has much fewer. The MPAA can release DVD's, charge to put it on TV, charge to licence it to youtube, charge to put it on airplanes, release it in movies. The RIAA can release it as a CD or digital music, or they can extort what they can from the artists they sign. Might be a while before the MPAA faces the same threat of exstinction.
If music is really worth it to our society, we should be WILLING to pay for it.
Apparently the answer is no. I do not find $15 for 2 3 minutes songs to be worth it. Instead if I like a tune I'll mentally note to go to the concert when ti rolls by. The albulm would have netted the artists $0.50 if he was lucky but some slimy middleman and a retailer gets the rest. I prefer to cute the slimy middleman out. The concert also pays the slimy middle man to promote them but again a much smaller percentage.
Since most recording artists that release CD's work for a percentage (professional hired guns excluded) the cost of a recording and pressing a CD is less then $1,000,000 USD. You can have it done for $10,000 - $150,000 depending on the studio you use, the time it takes, and the number of copies. The Recording industry doesn't ussually spend that much on the recording, it spends on the advertising. Which contributes nothing to the product.
...it's certainly a top-down mandate handed down by Communist Party officials in a one-party state! Why look at how well all those Soviet Five Year Plans did at burying us in mountains of wheat...
Alternately, China could stop dicking around with piecemeal reform and institute capitalism, democracy, and the rule of law. If China had half the per-capita GNP of Tiawan, they could easily surpass the United States economically. But as long as they cling to the vestiges of a totalitarian command economy, they won't do it.
India has already woken up and figured out that socialism doesn't work. Unless China does the same, it could well be India that supplants the United States as the world's biggest superpower by the end of the century, not China...
Crow T. Trollbot
That plan worked so well for russia. Lets ditch everything we built and try again. I'm sure anarchy and crime wont sky rocket. While we're at it lets just disarm, I'm sure the Americans want nothign but peace and won't do anything unsavory like invade a nation or support our enemies. Look at how they treat their best frienda Canada, predatory tarrifs, protectionist policies, double speak, random arrests of their citizens, and out right lies. I'm sure they mean us no harm and completely changing our society without a plan would just be great.
They'll spend a fortune developing research resources when they could have just announced a prize for a winner and allowed business to get on with it.
Still. Just goes to show you can't tell politicians, they need to be controlling things. Same the world over.
A free market is not the answer to everything. It does some things well (evolve good consumer products) and some things poorly (evolve new technology). it tends to increment whats there and move towards what is pofitable. some research needs to be doen by the state because private enterprise will nto fund it.
The poor are insignificant in all spans of history. If you look closely, every revolution is spear headed by a upper middle class/ upper class person leading the middle class with the poor as cannon fodder. Mao, Lenin, etc... The poor do nto have any inate value and contribute the least to society. Unless some leader wishes to exploit them the poor will remain nothing.
The major difference between china and the US is that China sends anybody to a place to guitanamo while the US only send brown people. I guess it makes China more equal opportunity? That and the government in modern china tend to be less invasive of it's average citizens life then the US governments. China has no high ground to stand on but the US is slowly slipping down to the same level.
Your idea is great for the world as a whole. As a whole someone is benifitiing. However as a American/Canadian/Brit you lose out. So it's simply do you prioritize the idea of a free market of yoru own best interest.
The unique factor that made americans so productive was the willingness to work 40-80 hours a week and keep it up as part of the "american dream." The reason that special something is not there anymore is people who have been working 60+h long enough will output only about 20h of real work. The US is just burning out. Also the Nazi tech loot that was stolen in WWII has also run it's course and most of the looted scientists are dead. Greed and short term thinking is slowly eroding anything else you have left. The anti-academic bent of the culture also diminishes you over all capabilities.
A lot of companies are also looking north to Canada, virtually the same country but with slightly better educated colledge grads and slightly lower cost.
Slashdot Mirror
This could be a way for BushCheneyHalliburton to lay the groundwork for further import duties. Even a 10% across-the-board surtax would generate $30 billion (and you're probably looking at a rate more like 33% to 50%). Thats so much money its hard for them to ignore. Of course, it means that all those cheap imports get more expensive, but that only hurts the poor (in both countries), and there's no evidence Bush even knows the poor exist, except as cannon fodder.
Given that such a tarrif would send both nations into a recession. It's be cutting off your nose to spite your face. Also, bush chenney are gone really soon. The next admin may be affiliated but I wouldn't count on it with such popular backlash against this regime. Worst thing to happen to the US since Hoover and MCarthy.
This is true; however, the end result is that an agreement was reached that the US is complying with. This tends to indicate that the US does indeed respect the WTO arbitration process.
No a compromise was reached that ignored the WTO rulings and Canada agreed because they didn't want to draw it out any longer and forsaw little change to reclaim any more of the tarrifs.
Actually, a lot of countries abide by the WTO ruling because they are punished for not doing so. Canada has a particularly clean record the US has a particularly bad one.
distribution (pay the person on the street who sells the stuff)
It actually works the other way, a small store buys the stock at a set price, marks it up and resells it. In china the priates are manufactuerers. They do nto controlt he whoel supply chain. they sell to small regional distributors who in turn sell to the outlets. Which are mostly small businesses. Regulation of this type of supply chain is hard. They occasional bust a big wharehouse and claim their fighting the good fight but it's a massive problem that china likely doesn't nto want to get too deep into. No real upside for them and the only drawback is the ire of the US entertainment industry.
2 sounds I first heard in doom 1 makes its way into numerous movies.
BFG swish sound as the ball of plasma explodes is used often with fire shots.
Door opening sound seems to be used often. the clang of the heavy doors seems ot show up everywhere.
Most marqee recording artists are paid a %. they don't get a wage. IF you include the wage the amount does not increase dramatically for the majority of albulms. A film can cost a lot even without factoring the 2 mil for the director and 5 for the marqee actor. A lot fo the budget is spend on crafts people, cameramen, editors, key grips etc... in music it's a sound engineer a couple of assistants if it's a big enough project and an editor. Ussually 1/10 as many people involved.
I have an older set without HDMI. it plays movies at 1080 i fine on my PS3. I fail to see hwo it screwed me.
HDCP isn't mandatory. I get 1080i with my component/Ps3 set up. I can get 1080p with DVI connectors. OR so I'm told.
HD/BD both allow the option to use component or DVI. At least my PS3 does. DVI allows 1080p. Oddly component only allows 1080i on the PS3 on my 50ind sony rear projection LCD. And the difference on my rig between IP digital TV and DVD is noticable and DVD to BD immense. Your underplayings the actual difference. Not only higher resolutions and more pixels but also higher bit rates audio and almost no compression artifacts like DVD. They are noticable on most action films on DVD. There is also java menuing options, better scratch resistance, and better audio. On older TV's or even just bad TV's there is little difference between DVD, VHS BD, rabbit ears. But on better sets even in SD a noticable difference is there. The next step will be evolutionary not revolutionary. DVD was a big step because so much can be improved. BD/HD is less so because there are fewer obvious things to improve. The next step will be online content once bandwidth comes up to speed. Thats the last added convienance but with broadband penetration being so pathetically low in the US (as compared to other western nations) this step might take a while. Most people didn't care how exactly DVD's were better back in the day, they just bought the DVD because it was just "better". The same thing will happen to BD/HD. Although it looks like it's going to be BD at this point.
Result: Slow adoption. Could even be termed 'niche market', at least for now. The analysts may have said that blue ray is catching on as fast as DVD, but not faster if you look at it as a percentage. Most of that came from Casino Royale sales. I think that an important point would be that the HD standards require a new TV, DVD didn't. So I think that you have will see a brief surge of (rich or spendthrift) buyers to help justify the HDTVs they already purchased. After that, it'll be much more difficult.
I'd like to have HDTV, ps3, etc... But I baulk at the price tag every time. I could go cheaper if I was willing to have HDTV in monitor sizes (27"), but I want one at least as big as my current 32" TV. Add in that I don't have cable or satellite and you'll see that my available content is limited and expensive. Not time to adopt yet.
Heck, with the whole casino royale best seller thing I wonder how many people bought the HD discs by mistake, thinking they were getting some kind of deluxe version, but still playable on their DVD player?
What do you mean by percentage? percentage of media sold? number of media sold? percent of my profit? back end royalties? The numbers in absolute term resemble DVD except adjusted for pop growth.
Video mis-sold are often returned. I'd hazzard it was a fairly small percentage since the stuff is in it's own isle most of the time. The HDTV adoption rate is increasing. HDTV's are now a large percentage of new TV purchases. They have then in various price ranges. It's pretty hard to deny at this point that the next format is goign to be bluray and it's catchign on about as fast as DVD. Time will tell but You seem against HDTV coming? Don't buy if you don't want it/afford it.
ps. Most sets came with at least composite plugs. That buys you 1080i. DVI/HDMI gets you to 1080p. There were some corner cases of really old sets doing 790(i/p) only. But they are uncommon. Most are at least 1080i.
If only such a small percent of the market is concerned about DRM, then why has adopting it been such a problem for the entertainment market?
Apple seems to be doing fine with DRM. Although music is a different thing to video. Right now even DRM free video is a bit clunky to move around. When data transfer speeds reach sub 10s transfer times for decent video you might have an arguement but people are not yet wanting portable video en mass. Some geeks liek me and you have our video Ipods and motorola smart phones etc... but the general populace is just recently caught on to mp3's. DRM is not a huge liability to apple yet. I personally hate drm. I choose DRM free media if it's convinient. But the general populac eis clueless.
You mention DRM to most buyers and they will think it's a "feature". I think price has more to do with it then DRM.
It doesn't look like these titles are all so new that you'd be correct (and anyway, new releases nearly always have greater weekly sales than ones that have been around awhile). The real story here is in comparing the HD/BD sales to regular DVD sales--the low rate reported here would probably remain quite low.
Even if Wal-Mart isn't on the list, weekly sales of less than 1000 copies isn't good news for the next-generation titles (particularly because all the HD/BD discs I've seen tend to be the "money makers"--not box office flops). Lots of the movies do suck, but that never stopped people from buying them in massive quantities on DVD or VHS.
According to Sony, bluray is spread about as fast as DVD did. the early adopters grab it, show their friends, friends go out and but it when it hits their price range. Its what happens. A bit early and silly to call the format a dead end. Remember that for at least a year DVD greatly outsolf by VHS for most releases.
Over here in Canada, A DVD would be 10-30 bucks. The mode being about 19.95. A Blu ray dist is between 20.00 - 50.00 with a mode around 29.95. It's not that big of a price premium here and most DVD's under 19.95 are often clearance items or really old/bad movies. The 19.95 blu-rays are just older movies. HD DVD seem to be priced a bit higher. I haven't payed as much attention. As for DVD's. A progressive scan DVD player does not hold up well to a Bluray-HDDVD player on a 790(p/i) or 1080(p/i) screen. Even on a 480(i/p) there is a noticeable but much smaller difference. Those who can afford it are migrating. The rest will upgrade eventually. Like how the VHS clung on for years. The luddites/poor migrate slowly. In 6 years you'll be complaining how bluray is good enough and this new fangled online delivery is queer and will not succeed.
People aren't buying into it in droves, because the previous thing they used works well enough for them and the new features offered by it aren't enough of an incentive to 'upgrade'; on the other hand, it is laden with DRM that the previous thing wasn't.
DRM is only a concern to maybe 0.01% of the market (roughly the # of slashdot posters to bitch about it). The key limtiation in install base not DRM. DVD had stronger DRM then VHS. almost no one cared. Ditto with blu-ray/HD DVD vs DVD. People do not tend to try to copy their DVDs, those who do will eventually go with the method to do so with Bluray-HDDVD. Everyone else will shrug.
As a few analysts and Sony markettign pointed out, Bluray is catching on faster then DVD did.( Although only by about as much as the pop has grown). So it seems Bluray is going to be the next major format. Don't kid yourself, your concerns are not shared by even the general slashdot populace.
The only question mark remaining is: how far away is the MPAA from this scenario? Movie theaters and HDTV may be their only saviors, in that it takes enormous (by current measure) amounts of bandwidth and storage to copy a quality movie. Music is quite compressible, and too many tin-eared fans are willing to settle for crappy-but-tiny MP3 recordings. But as long as people want to share the experience of a movie on the big screen, and as long as HDTV requires a relative firehose of a network connection for high quality, AND as long as they can convince people that quality matters, they'll be able to keep making money on TV and movies.
The difference between the RIAA and MPAA is the RIAA has a product that takes 1-10 people to make and quality is not dependant on money spent. The MPAA needs 20-1000 people to make their product and below a certain minimium funding your end product looks like crap. The MPAA has multiple revenue streams while the RIAA has much fewer. The MPAA can release DVD's, charge to put it on TV, charge to licence it to youtube, charge to put it on airplanes, release it in movies. The RIAA can release it as a CD or digital music, or they can extort what they can from the artists they sign. Might be a while before the MPAA faces the same threat of exstinction.
If music is really worth it to our society, we should be WILLING to pay for it.
Apparently the answer is no. I do not find $15 for 2 3 minutes songs to be worth it. Instead if I like a tune I'll mentally note to go to the concert when ti rolls by. The albulm would have netted the artists $0.50 if he was lucky but some slimy middleman and a retailer gets the rest. I prefer to cute the slimy middleman out. The concert also pays the slimy middle man to promote them but again a much smaller percentage.
Since most recording artists that release CD's work for a percentage (professional hired guns excluded) the cost of a recording and pressing a CD is less then $1,000,000 USD. You can have it done for $10,000 - $150,000 depending on the studio you use, the time it takes, and the number of copies. The Recording industry doesn't ussually spend that much on the recording, it spends on the advertising. Which contributes nothing to the product.
...it's certainly a top-down mandate handed down by Communist Party officials in a one-party state! Why look at how well all those Soviet Five Year Plans did at burying us in mountains of wheat...
Alternately, China could stop dicking around with piecemeal reform and institute capitalism, democracy, and the rule of law. If China had half the per-capita GNP of Tiawan, they could easily surpass the United States economically. But as long as they cling to the vestiges of a totalitarian command economy, they won't do it.
India has already woken up and figured out that socialism doesn't work. Unless China does the same, it could well be India that supplants the United States as the world's biggest superpower by the end of the century, not China...
Crow T. Trollbot
That plan worked so well for russia. Lets ditch everything we built and try again. I'm sure anarchy and crime wont sky rocket. While we're at it lets just disarm, I'm sure the Americans want nothign but peace and won't do anything unsavory like invade a nation or support our enemies. Look at how they treat their best frienda Canada, predatory tarrifs, protectionist policies, double speak, random arrests of their citizens, and out right lies. I'm sure they mean us no harm and completely changing our society without a plan would just be great.
They'll spend a fortune developing research resources when they could have just announced a prize for a winner and allowed business to get on with it.
Still. Just goes to show you can't tell politicians, they need to be controlling things. Same the world over.
A free market is not the answer to everything. It does some things well (evolve good consumer products) and some things poorly (evolve new technology). it tends to increment whats there and move towards what is pofitable. some research needs to be doen by the state because private enterprise will nto fund it.
The poor are insignificant in all spans of history. If you look closely, every revolution is spear headed by a upper middle class/ upper class person leading the middle class with the poor as cannon fodder. Mao, Lenin, etc... The poor do nto have any inate value and contribute the least to society. Unless some leader wishes to exploit them the poor will remain nothing.
The major difference between china and the US is that China sends anybody to a place to guitanamo while the US only send brown people. I guess it makes China more equal opportunity? That and the government in modern china tend to be less invasive of it's average citizens life then the US governments. China has no high ground to stand on but the US is slowly slipping down to the same level.
Your idea is great for the world as a whole. As a whole someone is benifitiing. However as a American/Canadian/Brit you lose out. So it's simply do you prioritize the idea of a free market of yoru own best interest.
The unique factor that made americans so productive was the willingness to work 40-80 hours a week and keep it up as part of the "american dream." The reason that special something is not there anymore is people who have been working 60+h long enough will output only about 20h of real work. The US is just burning out. Also the Nazi tech loot that was stolen in WWII has also run it's course and most of the looted scientists are dead. Greed and short term thinking is slowly eroding anything else you have left. The anti-academic bent of the culture also diminishes you over all capabilities.
A lot of companies are also looking north to Canada, virtually the same country but with slightly better educated colledge grads and slightly lower cost.