Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kevin Wood]

Some kind of electronic direct distribution would half the costs, but it would obviously have to be heavily DRM'd, which always gets people's hackles up.  It would also be another nail in the coffin of the High Street - sadly how many High Streets now have unique independent shops, rather than the usual chains that every other town has?

This is the problem I have. I buy DVDs and CDs because I want to build up a collection. There is value (perhaps 12 quid's worth, so the price seems reasonable) associated with having a nicely packaged CD / DVD, relatively free of restrictions, on a shelf, that I can play whenever I feel like it.

A file on my PC, that is inferior in quality in the first place, will get lost if my hard disk dies, that probably won't play again without loads of hassle if I upgrade my PC due to the DRM cr@p, which locks me in to having a Micro$oft OS. One that I have already paid via my ISP for the delivery mechanism to my door, can't play in my car, on a portable player or take round to my mates and watch (not without untold hassle, at any rate) is totally worthless IMHO, so you won't find me paying for downloads - at least not until the price is down to pennies per album / film where it should be.

Downloading is a convenient format, however, if you want to try an album or DVD cheaply and in low quality when it's not convenient to go down to the shops and buy it. ERGO, illegal downloading exists. If the media companies recognised that their downloads simply aren't worth as much as the pigs are trying to charge they might have more success, and they'd be cheap enough not to go to the hassle and risk of illegally downloading so they wouldn't have to mess about with DRM.

Kevin

[TheBoy]

Valid points Kevin Wood, but I suspect films will never come to music prices, if they ever allowed downloads:

1) A feature film is often $50m+ for the top films now, as opposed to a few 10s of thousands of £ for an album

2) The delivery infrastructure will be considerable more expensive, as 7G file storage, plus 7G transit per download bandwidth will hit hard.

[Kevin Wood]

1) A feature film is often $50m+ for the top films now, as opposed to a few 10s of thousands of £ for an album

2) The delivery infrastructure will be considerable more expensive, as 7G file storage, plus 7G transit per download bandwidth will hit hard.

True. It's a problem, I agree. To the industry, the cost is in producing the material in the first place but to the consumer the value is in what they end up with in their hand / on their PC. Somehow they need to make their money but they won't do it by alienating the customers who are prepared to pay. They need to make the "pay" route a no-brainer so people don't bother with the illegal route.

I think a lot could be done to improve their products at the premium end. Cinema picture quality is looking rubbish these days in comparison to HD, as mentioned, and I',m sure that could be addressed to justify charging £7 plus a seat. DVDs have always had copyright warnings on the packaging, it doesn't need to be rammed down people's faces every time they sit down to watch it. These are the people who've already paid, after all. Preaching to the converted.

As to delivery, we would have been saying delivering MP3s over the internet was not viable 10-15 years ago. It became viable and the music industry were not ready for it. Will they make the same mistake twice?

Kevin

[TheBoy]

1) A feature film is often $50m+ for the top films now, as opposed to a few 10s of thousands of £ for an album

2) The delivery infrastructure will be considerable more expensive, as 7G file storage, plus 7G transit per download bandwidth will hit hard.

True. It's a problem, I agree. To the industry, the cost is in producing the material in the first place but to the consumer the value is in what they end up with in their hand / on their PC. Somehow they need to make their money but they won't do it by alienating the customers who are prepared to pay. They need to make the "pay" route a no-brainer so people don't bother with the illegal route.

I think a lot could be done to improve their products at the premium end. Cinema picture quality is looking rubbish these days in comparison to HD, as mentioned, and I',m sure that could be addressed to justify charging £7 plus a seat. DVDs have always had copyright warnings on the packaging, it doesn't need to be rammed down people's faces every time they sit down to watch it. These are the people who've already paid, after all. Preaching to the converted.

As to delivery, we would have been saying delivering MP3s over the internet was not viable 10-15 years ago. It became viable and the music industry were not ready for it. Will they make the same mistake twice?

Kevin

I think the 'piracy is theft' bit is probably on there to stop people borrowing a friends DVD and copying it - ie more a reminder than a deterent, if that makes sense.

As to downloaded films to the masses, as well as the film companies not being ready (or found financially viable delivery mech), I don't think the public are ready.

Take someone like my Mum for instance - she has relatively modern TV setup, with a good quality DVD player and a OK-ish Pace twin tuner Freeview recorder. Nothing that will play content from the Internet without a lot of difficulty (for a 72 year old, she is bloody good with technology, but burning MPEG4 to a DVD may be a bit too difficult for her).  OK, she could plug her PC into TV via S-video, but the quality would be appalling. Also, she wouldn't want an ugly box next to the telly (hence why I cannot change the case on my MCE, and am struggling to find a suitable motherboard).

So the only people who would be willing to download films legally are the ones savvy enough to know how/where to download illegally, and a fair proportion of these people believe there is no harm in not paying for stuff that can be acquired for free.