Online Streaming As Profitable As TV, Disc Sales By Charging Just a $15 Flat Fee 160
Lucas123 writes "A new report shows that if movie production houses charged a $15 monthly fee to just 45% of the world's online subscribers, they could rake in just as much cash as they currently do through TV downloads and disc sales. That equates to $29.4 billion. 'Movie producers have little to fear from online distribution in the long term,' the report states. 'It is the distribution part of the movie business that should be worried because online distribution will replace a sizable portion of their current industry.' According to the report's hypothetical model, the $15 fee would offer open access to all movie content — meaning instant online access to all movies that have been ever produced, 'along with new releases as they come out.'"
Piracy kills 55% of sales (Score:5, Interesting)
But greed. (Score:5, Insightful)
With this, then they can't double dip. They wouldn't be sell the popular ones, while dumping the unpopular ones on netflix for the fees. And there might be incentives other than spectacle and marketing in the development of movies, and we can't have that either.
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This only goes so far. Many people (like myself) don't subscribe to Netflix because the content is crap.
I would gladly pay $15/month though if I had access to any movie/show ever made. I like that the
selection is slowly increasing but there are still alot of the content that is so expensive it might as well
not be there. Who really pays $2 an episode for a 10 year old tv show? They would probably make
10 times the money if they charged $0.50 an episode instead. I would also be content with a service
that
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SyFy - or Netflix?? (Score:3)
Business will naturally maximize profit and all movies will just be SyFy-quality at best within five years.
The counter-argument to your point is that with just a flat fee, Netflix has managed to make a number of TV shows that are better than 95% of TV that exists today.
It's not like you would not still wish to make something with some quality, because there are still auxiliary sales from things like BluRay sets or merchandise that only come from enjoyable shows.
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Which would be as 'easy' as divvying up User_X's 15/mo between the licensors of the stuff User_X watched (proportionally by time watched. Watching the first 15 minutes of a 3 hour movie and quitting in disgust only counts as 15 minutes :)
Retire from sailing the Bay in search of booty. (Score:1, Insightful)
They do this and I'll stop pirating!
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Erm, bit of a problem there. First, DRM was never removed. Second, streaming is still only available at shit quality. Third, prices haven't dropped on any service that even looks like it might in the future become useful.
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Re:Retire from sailing the Bay in search of booty. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Where I'm from CDs were 20$+ in 1990-2003 dollars. WHen Itunes came along price of both full albums and itunes albums dropped to 10$ in most cases. I would say that's a case of digital distribution forcing down the price almost 50%. Of course now it's like 13$ but inflation is a bitch since 2008.
I concede however streaming as an alternative to radio is awesome but let's not compare apples to oranges, just like paying for cable is not like buying a season on DVD.
Re:Retire from sailing the Bay in search of booty. (Score:5, Insightful)
> If this wasn't true the Beatles wouldn't be the most pirated band in the world.
The Beatles? Really? You must be joking.
Any of their stuff is likely OLDER THAN YOU ARE.
That's not even real piracy. That's just the public domain being taken back by the masses.
You picked a piss poor example of the "injustice of piracy".
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WTF? When was DRM removed?
Re:Retire from sailing the Bay in search of booty. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pirating is a pain in the ass.
I download the movie and its a DVD screener or cam...
I download the movie and its got hardcoded subtitles...
I download the movie and it has NO subtitles but have the people in the movie are speaking Russian...
I download the movie and get an annoying email that I now have to delete...
My ISP feels justified in throttling me because what I'm using my bandwidth for could potentially be piracy...
I'd pay $15/month to rid myself of those annoyences. But the industry has to give me what I get with piracy for free.
1. I can get any movie I want, from any point in time.
2. The video doesn't have 30min of previews before it starts.
3. The video will play anywhere. No silverlight BS
4. The movie is available soon after it leaves theaters... not years later... and no location locks.
5. I can save the movie to disc and do not have to stream it during peak times just because they're terrified that I might make a copy of it.
Of course, everything above they see as revenue generating so it'll never happen. They don't want to use the internet to make as much money as they are making now... they want to use the internet to make ALL the money. As illogical as it seems, declining profits are just as bad as bankruptcy to them. They just keep throwing the ball long hoping someone catches it. All this nonsense about working your way down the field and first downs isn't something they want to think about.
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Tough crowd tonight.
Remember, perfect is often the enemy of good.
That's not going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
the $15 fee would offer open access to all movie content — meaning instant online access to all movies that have been ever produced, 'along with new releases as they come out
That's not going to happen
Re:That's not going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
the $15 fee would offer open access to all movie content — meaning instant online access to all movies that have been ever produced, 'along with new releases as they come out
That's not going to happen
Which is too bad, because a guy like me, who doesn't care enough about movies to pay $30/visit to see them in the theater nor pay $30 to buy the BluRay, would happily pay $15/mo for instant access to, essentially, every movie ever made.
Oh, well, I guess the studios don't want my money.
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If you're paying $30/blu-ray disc you're either impatient or doing it wrong. I don't feel a burning need to watch a movie within some arbitrarily-short timeframe after its release just so I can keep up with the Joneses. As a result of that and buying things on sales/deals, I average $5-$10 per blu-ray movie, even very popular blockbuster releases. My movie collection now spans over 400 movies, most of which are blu-ray. And I know friends and family with more.
One might point out that if I had taken all that
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If you're paying $30/blu-ray disc you're either impatient or doing it wrong
I'm paying $0, because movies aren't something I feel a compulsion to spend money on, outside my current Netflix subscription (which I use to watch TV shows, mostly). But I do see new releases priced that high at the big-box stores on the rare occasion I actually find myself inside of one.
One might point out that if I had taken all that money, I could have instead paid for 25 years or more of Netflix or what have you. The issue there is that then I'm at the mercy of whatever movies the streaming provide decides I can watch today, and maybe will pull tomorrow, as well as the condition of my internet connection. I've already had maybe a 10% success rate searching Hulu Plus/Netflix/Amazon Prime for a given movie we want to watch, as well has seen frightening lists of what movies Netflix decides to "discontinue" from time to time.
No thanks. I'll keep my physical media, thank you.
Oh, I dig - I'm the same way about buying CDs rather than relying on streaming services.
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Give it 20 years and there will be only ONE.
$15?
$1500 - Take it or Gitmo
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It's time to build our own "Internet", with Meshed networks,
And blackjack, and hookers!
In fact, forget the meshed networks and blackjack!
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How would it even work? Some kind of scam like the current pay-to-join rights groups that only deal with mainstream record labels?
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Movie industry: "We can't make a profit with streaming! Titanic! Movie magic! Actors will starve!"
Response: "Yes you can. For a flat rate of $15, let alone whatever you WILL charge. And that's even if you DON'T charge premiums, which you fucking will."
Movie industry: "But PIRACY IS GOING TO DESTROY ENTERTAINMENT FOREVER"
Response: "NO."
Quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your statement implies the current system produces anything of quality.
Re:Quality? (Score:5, Informative)
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Not even accounting for different tastes, 90% of what is produced is crap, and 90% of that remaining is generally transitory. This has been true since we were able to record music.
For the most part you can build a really good movie list simply by taking the BEST 1-2 movies produced each year. Same deal with songs.
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Most likely the movies you would stream from Netflix actually are crap......
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Most of everything we consume is considered "crap" by someone. Do you cook gourmet meals? Watch only the best movies? Enjoy great music (opera! No, classical! No, whatever...). How about your car - is it a high-touch work of art or do you do just fine with a "transportation appliance" that you probably see for more hours per week than you watch movies? Are your clothes bespoke or off the rack?
Sure, in a very few areas of their lives most people have different (possibly better, but at least different) t
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Go back a few years, and the stuff you listed would be the middle of the road, bulk pablem. Seriously, another comic book movie? You didn't list a thing with a new and original story line... I'd put something like Inception ahead of all of those. Hell, i'd put low budget films like The Big Empty above any thing you listed.
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You didn't list a thing with a new and original story line...
There are no original story lines. Only stories you haven't heard of.
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Only true if you vastly oversimplify every story to a ridiculous degree, to make it fit your silly dogma.
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Only true if you vastly oversimplify every story to a ridiculous degree, to make it fit your silly dogma.
You don't think it's silly to judge the quality of a movie entirely based on how original the storyline is? Which is what you did in your post.
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Entirely, yes, but that whole *story* thing is and should be the single biggest contributing factor to the quality of a film.
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Entirely, yes, but that whole *story* thing is and should be the single biggest contributing factor to the quality of a film.
That's fine......we disagree though. I judge a movie based on how much enjoyment I get out of sitting there watching it. I enjoyed LOTR even though I already knew the story completely. For me, the telling of the story is more important than the actual story.
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Presumably the movies that got requested more would receive a larger chunk of the pie.
Re:Quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
If movie producers got a flat, monthly paycheque, there would be zero incentive to make *good* movies.
Right? I mean, what crazy person would think that the exact same model that pretty much every productive human in the nation lives by would work for the denizens of Hollyweird?
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What world do you live in that everyone lives by that model?
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What world do you live in that everyone lives by that model?
America.
And, for the record, I didn't say "everyone," I said "pretty much everyone." Big difference.
Re:Quality? (Score:4, Insightful)
Strange. I have lived in America my entire life, and have not heard of anyone with this arrangement.
So.. you've never known anyone who worked a normal, 8-5 job, for a normal, essentially set amount of pay?
Idle rich? Otherwise, I find your tale dubious at best.
Oh, you think you are being clever,
You probably don't realize this, but that comes off as exceedingly troll-ish (i.e., intentionally inflammatory and offering no advancement of the topic). Proceed with caution.
and you mean employees, right?
Who else would I mean?
Are you implying that movie producers are not employees of someone? Do you know what the word 'employee' means? The actual definition, not one you've made up in your own head?
So tell me, how much cost and financial risk (to you) is associated with your job. Don't tell me, I already know ($0).
OK, dingus, now I know you're trollin'.
Since you seem to think you know me better than I do, you already saw this coming: Piss off and go bother someone else.
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Holy crap! You can't really be that stupid, can you? On second thought, maybe you can.
This article is about giving a flat rate to a STUDIO, not a PERSON. When the OP said 'movie producer' he was obviously referring to the studio, that, you know, PRODUCES MOVIES, not the person whose job title is 'producer'.
You can NOT compare a company that invests real dollars in something hoping to make it up in sales with an employee that collects a paycheck no matter what. If the product fails, the company can go b
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if its anything like spotify they get paid based on how many people saw the movie
but then you can game it like app store rankings of paying kids to watch the movie
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Why would producers get a flat paycheck? Production houses might, but they would still have incentive to keep their catalog improving so they could keep the subscription price up - people won't pay as much for a subscription that only gets your reruns and drivel.
Individual producers, actors, etc. could still be paid according to arbitrary and convoluted contracts having little bearing on the quality or profitability of their work, just as they are today.
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the fact that cable TV is a major industry has determined that is a lie.
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Note the "as much". Would you be willing to pay *more* for cable if there was consistently something new and interesting worth watching? (Or alternately would you consider signing up for cable in the first place?)
Cable is also infected with bundling - if you paid for only those stations you actually want to watch then the individual station producers would have far more incentive to carry things things worth watching instead of carrying so much "filler". If you paid by the individual show or episode then
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MERCHANDISING! (Score:2)
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If movie producers got a flat, monthly paycheque, there would be zero incentive to make *good* movies.
Or new ones.
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Never stops there (Score:1)
So you're saying there's a way they can make even more money than they do now? $15 a month is laughably optimistic.
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Especially if that's a fee to one movie studio. How many major studios are there? It's kind of a big business.
The Revenue Substitution Principle. (Score:4, Informative)
Out of curiosity, I looked into how much revenue a top rated network sitcom earns for a single broadcast. That amount was equal to how much revenue would have been generated by 1/10th of their viewing audience paying for the SD version of the episode on Amazon or iTunes.
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sitcoms make money on syndication
the itunes and are like dvd sales revenue
the cost to make a sitcom is so high you take a loss on the original airing only to syndicate it to the crap channels on cable for people to watch it when they have nothing to do. this has been the strategy for decades
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The cost of a sitcom is absurdly inflated.
There's no good reason they couldn't make a profit on iTunes style PPV. The fact that they can't or won't right now just indicates an economic instability that is bound to be corrected sooner or later. Big content is taking advantage of a situation that really isn't sustainable and it will crash sooner or later.
Re:The Revenue Substitution Principle. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
Are people in China going to agree to this? 45% of the entire world's internet subscriber base strikes me as absurd.
Sure if Photoshop sold for $3 to every single person who owns a PC they would make way more money than if they sold their software for several hundred dollars. But it's not going to happen.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:4, Funny)
Are people in China going to agree to this? 45% of the entire world's internet subscriber base strikes me as absurd.
Sure if Photoshop sold for $3 to every single person who owns a PC they would make way more money than if they sold their software for several hundred dollars. But it's not going to happen.
for $3 I'd pay $5 a copy and pass out legal copies to everyone I meet. I would do it so hard. I might spend hundreds of dollars making sure everyone I've ever met has Photoshop. It wouldn't even make sense but I'd do it.
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I'm curious though as to how many people there actually are counted as subscribers. Internet cafe's are much more popular in those parts of the world already because of the cost of having your own equipment and connection.
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The report costs 395 pounds to access, but the article does get slightly more specific:
Forty-five percent of the world's broadband subscribers equates to 348 million people.
I do not know whether this is inserted from ComputerWorld or if it is copied from the report, but I hope that the report gets far more specific than that.
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> If they were certain to make more money by selling
> Photoshop for three bucks, why wouldn't they do it?
The post that started this sub-thread stated...
> Sure if Photoshop sold for $3 to ***EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO OWNS A PC***
(my emphasis)
Not everybody on the planet would want Photoshop, even if it was free.
Shut Up and Take My Money! (Score:5, Informative)
I would gladly pay $15 per month to access all movie content. I don't think I know a single person that wouldn't pay that. It's considerably more than I pay to production houses right now. My only movie expense currently is Netflix. $8/mo and production companies have to split that with Netflix.
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Can't Truss It (Score:5, Insightful)
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It won't work in Trinidad.
Do you often watch movies in Trinidad?
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for $15/mo I would pay but I want EVERYTHING. ANYTIME. ANYWHERE. For Decades.
they won't give me that. They'll drop some shows, they'll only last for a while. they'll block it in Canada offer different choices in Europe. It won't work in Trinidad. And without all that I'm not paying.
And that's why the best way to combat torrents is to join them.
If they offered their own competing torrents for clean, guaranteed-quality, DRM-free digital copies at a nominal charge, well, people would be all over that. I haven't checked lately, but last I heard Apple was doing pretty well with their TV show revenues, and that's for a DRM-riddled file that only works on their proprietary platforms...imagine how many more people would be interested in getting a copy that they could play on whatever they li
Not going to happen (Score:5, Informative)
"Online subscribers" is defined by the article as everyone in the world with Broadband, and 45% of them are the 348 million broadband customers who would have to pay $15 annually to watch movies. Here's the problem. Of those 773 million people, 174 million are Chinese, which are 22% of the broadband users. I was just reading an article how China has not even been releasing Box Office revenue from foreign films showing at theaters. I don't think there's much chance of milking any considerable amount of money through video streaming out of that country at this point in time.
I think any studies like this can only realistically look at US and similar western broadband markets as potential customers for video streaming service, as opposed to this study which includes every single broadband customer on the planet.
Mod parent up! (Score:2)
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773 million minus 174 million is 599 million.
45% of 559 million is 269.55 million
At $15 a pop, that's $4,043,250,000.
Not $29 billion, but still a sizable amount.
Pirate Bay monthly subscription fee is now $19.99 (Score:2, Interesting)
My check for this month's in the mail. Now, go away, **AA, and leave me alone.
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Pirate Bay manages the site, keeps the books and distributes the shares to the various companies on the basis of the proportion their properties make up out of the total downloads. The companies give up the hassle of distributing DVDs and/or running a subscription service,
Data charges (Score:3)
Thats OK if you have a (truly) unlimited internet.
If something like this happened, every ISP would have data caps/overcharges, and the price would go up for those that already do
The /. post and the original post vary slightly (Score:2)
45% of all internet subscribers? (Score:2)
Since it's unlikely to get 45% of all internet subscribers, consider a reasonable subset of them such as just America/Europe subscribers. However, if it were $50 and I had access to every movie/TV show ever made, I'd pay that every month, and they would probably only need the America/Europe market. Maybe an extra $20/mo for access to 'new releases' provided they were available on the standard plan after maybe 60 (90?) days. They could even do an extra 'HD' surcharge of $20-$30/mo I used to pay more than
$15 per month... per service (Score:4, Insightful)
If this was deemed viable and studios signed up there'd be no consensus on how to run it. So, there'd be 2 or 3 (or more) different services, all offering you "all" of their movies for $15 a month. But you'd find Disney films only one one service, Marvel superhero movies only on another and so on...
It might be that it were possible to get all the back catalogs of movies all available to stream, but I'd strongly suspect it would take several flat fees to do it.
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But Disney acquired Marvell.
In the future, all media is Disney.
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they seem to have figured it out with ultraviolet
not perfect but i can buy stuff on target ticket and watch it on Vudu or Cinemanow
same with Hulu and Spotify for TV and music. Hulu is even owned by the content owners themselves
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If this was deemed viable and studios signed up there'd be no consensus on how to run it.
That should be the studios' fucking problem...
Free with ads? (Score:5, Interesting)
What I can't figure out is why they're not offering two downloadable, DRM-free versions of their content: one that's free-as-in-beer but contains ads, much like peole get from their cable subscriptions now, and a second 'premium' version that is ad-free for a nominal charge. Make both versions easy to access via a hosted torrent site, with value-added tools such as offering the ability to track new episodes of favourite programs, or notify / auto download when available for upcoming titles. Not only would the end-user love it, the distributors could track the popularity of shows/movies even before they're released and negotiate ad revenues accordingly.
Sure, the premium version will get shared around somewhat, but at least the average Joe has a place where they can go to directly support shows/movies they like, and in the end they have a useful commodity that they can actually say they own: can back up as often as they like, play on any device, can alter it if needed / desired, or can lend to a friend or family member without hassle. I would pay for such an unencumbered file in a heartbeat, if it were reasonably priced (say a buck or two for an episode, up to $5 for a movie...approximately $2 per hour of entertainment sounds about right), and I'd use the free ad-supported versions to review new shows and see if I'd like them...I would easily spend over $15 a month just on the shows I like now :)
The proposed streaming model is great...if your customer has access to reliable, unlimited broadband wherever they might want to watch your content, and is willing to only watch the content on devices that work with your particular streaming protocol. Thing is, with people getting more and more tech savvy, even the theoretical average Joe is starting to realize that they don't have to put up with that crap if they don't want to...
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> There will always be ads.
Then there will always be crackers in Antigua providing up to date decryption tools to get rid of the crap and nonsense.
My entertainment experience has been ad free since the introduction of the Tivo in 99.
Ewe Boll will like the income (Score:3)
I don't think it is a good idea:
All content ever produced instantly licensed will provide income to a legion of Ewe Boll imitators to produce volumes of work.
I shudder as I glance at the size of $5 bin at Wallmart as it is.
The WWE Network is about to switch to this model. (Score:3, Interesting)
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In addition, you'll have access to the shows that play on cable, as well as terrestrial TV on the same day the networks get them, as opposed to just the back catalog and PPV's. Good deal if you're a fan.
Did you have to use a comma in the headline? (Score:2)
Online Streaming As Profitable As TV, Disc Sales By Charging Just a $15 Flat Fee
Could you really not stretch for the extra three characters to put a more readable "and" in there?
You don't even see this in print nowadays.
Capitalism does not work that way... (Score:2)
Easiest Solution (Score:2)
Give me a monthly bill with:
$10 for Unlimited Music Streaming + $15 for Unlimited TV Show Streaming + $20 for Unlimited Movie Streaming = $45 Total
I would never feel the need to pirate and everyone would win. Throw in a $10 surcharge for multiple device / independent streaming.
Can someone please make this work?
HBO (Score:3, Insightful)
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HBO doesn't want your money, because they earn a billion dollars a year from the middle-men you want to snub. They have enough competition that those middle men would happily drop HBO if they saw signs that they will soon threaten their traditionally profitable business model. Customers would complain a bit, get a few free months of Cinemax, Starz, Showtime, etc., and then HBO would lose their billion dollars, and forced to be nothing but another Netflix competitor with the same slim margins.
Is that cost right? (Score:2)
"Chinese Marketing" (Score:4, Insightful)
This concept...the viability of a business model defined by "if X% of Y population buys this for $Z" is so classically suicidal that it is literally taught in management 101 in college as one of the most sure-fire signs that a business will fail. It is called "Chinese Marketing," as a lot of early examples involved pipe dreams of how much profit could be had with even modest market penetration within the Chinese population. Such a simplistic approach fails to take into account many things:
-how long it may take to reach that level of penetration
-currency valuation challenges
-IP law differences between countries
-how many of the world's online population has access to sufficiently high bandwidth
-how many of the world's online population has their own computer (as opposed to just using an Internet cafe...substantially increasing the cost of subscribing to those potential customers who are on the margins of affordability)
-who would be the clearing house/sole distribution provider that would distribute all of the movies on behalf of every movie company
The model falls apart quickly when you take these factors into account, and I am sure there are at least a few more that I don't even know about.
I for one would be inteersted in this (Score:2)
If it was possible for me here in Australia to buy a reasonably cheap streaming account and watch the shows I want to watch when I want to watch them I would be very interested. Be much easier than trying to find copies on dodgy YouTube-clone streaming sites.
But as long as Rupert Murdoch and his Foxtel empire exist, it will never happen.
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How can it be extortion? It's not like you will die if you don't watch movies and TV series.
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You laugh but suburbanites are like the Stepford Wives. If you don't conform, they will tell their children to shun your children.
Now that I've cut the cord, I'm wondering when Montag is going to show up.
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if they get enough people to pay up there won't be anyone sharing this stuff on p2p
sure someone might do it, but less than now