Why There's No iTunes For Movies 474
theodp writes "Slate's Farhad Manjoo would gladly pay a hefty monthly fee for immediate access to recent movies and TV shows — if someone would just take his money. In reality, he pays nothing because no company sells such a plan, and instead resorts to getting his programming from the friendly BitTorrent network.
Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
It's under 'Movies' in the iTunes Store.
Well but the problem is... it's iTunes. I don't buy Hard- or Software from Apple. Why should I buy my movies from them. Completely neglecting the fact I can't even install their shitty software -of course.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Interesting)
Why do you boycott Apple?
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Mods on crack, asking him why he doesn't like something is not flamebait.
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Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Informative)
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I tend to boycott Apple MP3 players mainly because of their proprietary formats and hardware lock-in................
Funny thing is that apples audio formats have to be the easiest to convert to another format . I find putting everything in mp3 works well as itunes drops and plays mp3 files.
apple's hardware is also in my experience very easy to circumvent , its almost as if apple is "just going through the motions."
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Informative)
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I also dislike itunes but there are a lot of suitable replacements. I have been syncing my ipod to winamp since I got my first one (4g color)...I don't even have itunes installed anymore. I've also used amarok on linux to interface with my ipod and it s
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THey most certainly are not the 'best' on many levels. THe ONLY real advantage Apple had this late inthe game was the Itunes DRM. Now thats gone, ther eis no reason not to pick up a MUCH more user friendly pplayer. Ipods only allow you to do things in VERY presrcibed ways and its utter bullshit. Ill list a few
Cant use it cross platform, if you want to transfer songs from a PC and your ipod is mac formatted you are fucked, which is jsut plain retarded.
Cant just drag and drop files on it like almost any othe
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Insightful)
Then don't format the iPod using a Mac -- format using a PC. In fact, iPods come formatted by default using FAT. FAT formatted iPods can be used for both. iPod's (except for the Touch/iPhone) are just seen by the OS as a mass storage device. Windows doesn't support HFS natively. If you have a third party HFS driver then you can use a Mac formatted iPod with Windows.
And we all know that the majority of people get their music from iTunes and not from their own CD's or from p2p networks.....
So exactly how do I subscribe to podcast, automatically sync only unplayed podcasts back and forth between the player, start listening to a track on my computer and finish on my player without losing the spot, set up smart playlist, set up multiple playlist with some of the same songs without the songs being duplicated on the player, etc.. using drag and drop?
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
>>Fuck that, Apple is just another Microsoft, and the reason people don't see it is this weird blindness people get when the "in-thing" is around
Gosh, I really am tired of this argument. I think it's annoying because when you say that someone bought something just because it's the 'in thing', you are telling that person that they are so stupid that they don't know what they want, don't know why they want what they want, and in fact want stupid things.
My iPod is not a slap bracelet or zubaz or a mullet. It's a tool that I use to get something done (it plays music for me). I don't use it in public. Only one of my friends owns an iPod besides me. In addition, it comes with tools for managing and aquiring music, videos, podcasts, games, and other stuff.
Maybe, just maybe, you could get off your high horse and admit that some people aren't fucking idiots and consciously chose iPod over something else for good reasons. You want a car, I want a truck, and I don't need to hear your theories about why owning a truck makes me a trendy redneck asshat. Some people buy trucks because they're remodeling their house and can't fit lumber and sheetrock in their geo prizm.
Sorry to pick on your post but I am pretty sick of pretentious trolls considering anything popular to be crap.
-b
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Fuck that, Apple is just another Microsoft, and the reason people don't see it is this weird blindness people get when the "in-thing" is around.
Not quite. MS is known for avoiding interoperable standards at all costs. Apple is not 100% open, but they're a hell of a lot better than MS when it comes to formats.
Examples:
MS sells music in WMA format. Apple sells it in AAC.
MS's browsers... 'nough said. Apple makes Safari and sponsors the development of the open-source WebKit engine.
MS's web solutions usually feature a closed-source httpd and a proprietary server-side language. Apple ships Apache and PHP.
MS ships Monad. Apple ships bash, tcsh, and
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Informative)
AAC? My new Nintendo plays that! You don't need iTunes (as others have commented on) but for me at least it's a nice "one stop shop" for media files. As for "hardware lock-in" well there are plenty of after market widgets for iPod; I don't need to get my charger from Apple, I can buy speakers from almost anyone, most iPods work with any headphones (even the new Shuffle if you have a widget to replicate the control buttons).
I see no more "lock-in" than any other popular make of "MP3 Player".
Now the studios are letting Apple remove their DRM I can even convert iTunes bought Music to another format.
On the subject of the "Shuffle" it's not like I'm going to be trapped by my purchase - if I decide I want to use something else in the future I can just convert the music and bin the player (it's cheap enough).
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Informative)
You do understand that you can use iPods (as well as many other players) without having to use their proprietary formats, right? iPod will play the standard format MP3s as well its apparent successor, AAC. As for hardware lock-in, you get that with any MP3 player. Wanna use your Sansa case with an iRiver? Nope. Not going to fit. As for managing music goes, I once had a device where I had to drop and drag. Here's the problem with that: It got extremely cumbersome after a dozen songs. You may think you want "control" but when you have to manage 10,000 songs manually, it's a pain.
As for your friend, I think it's rather short-sighted to reject a car worth tens of thousands of dollars because it has an optional feature he didn't want that could be replaced for hundreds of dollars or better yet, simply just not used.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
> You do understand that you can use iPods (as well as many other players) without having to use their proprietary formats, right?
This isn't about someone complaining about music. This is someone complaining about Movies.
iPods are very picky about what they will play when compared to other devices.
This leads to the consumer needing a special purpose app just to deal
with it rather than taking a generic converter and using it's defaults.
If iPods were as picky about Music as they are about Movies, most people
would conclude that they were proprietary.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple does NOT use "proprietary formats" for its iPod, that's just FUD spread around by people who never even tried one.
The iPods are compatible with MP3, AAC, DRM'ed AAC, Apple Lossless (yes that one is proprietary but since it's lossless nothing would prevent you from converting back to something else later on, such as FLAC), MPEG-4, H.264. I may even have forgotten a few formats (such as Audible, but if that one is proprietary I don't think it's from Apple).
Good luck with that, with today's portable media players being 1~160GB+ capacity it would be practically insane to manage files by hand. Let go of this useless obsession and learn to use metadata on your files. You'll probably even like smart playlists once you start using them.
As for your friend, he probably won't be able to buy a car in a decade or so (...just kidding).
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Insightful)
Both Amarok and Rhythmbox support standard metadata in files. Even the metadata that iTunes uses in all its supported formats are standards (mostly, all programs tend to throw in one or two extra fields that only they use).
Ordering by filenames are nice if you only want to store the song names and artist, but many people prefer to have more information than that.
Also, if you're manually tagging songs, then you're doing it wrong. We have this amazing thing called "the internet" now, and it has massive amounts of useful and searchable information on it. Many programs connect to this "internet" and retrieve information from it automatically.
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m4a is proprietary to Apple? Since when?
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Informative)
"In fact, you can do that. Plug the ipod into a PC without itunes and it appears to be a usb drive."
But then you can't play the mp3's you copy to it. He depends on a "internal database" which is generated by iTunes.
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Just so long as you put them in the right place, the iPod can read off the ID3 tags. Not all features will work without the internal databasing (like playlists, favorite tracking, Genius listing and whatnot; things that are iTunes-specific features), but general song playing works.
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This place is always against proprietary, unless its apple proprietary and then BEND OVER BABY!
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
So you are saying, rather than buying an MP3 player that does all this properly without installing bloatware (such as my Zen or my Sansa)
1) Your Zen or Sansa lacks a lot of features iPods have. Last play time/date, skip count, play count, and so on, that all two-way sync back to itunes. And I use this meta data heavily to generate smart playlists that automatically rotate tracks to the ipod etc.
Some of that stuff needs a separate database.
Sure it would be better if that database were open instead of proprietary. But quite bluntly, until someone defines an open standard, and Creative and Sansa step up and implement it, the iPod will remain my mp3 player of choice.
2) I don't -want- to manage my music library by dragging dropping files around. I do -want- to manage it by creating smart self-updating playlists based on meta data including play history, song ratings, and so on, and to have that automatically sync to the device. So installing a piece of software to handle the sync is something I'd be doing even if I didn't have to.
we should cripple ourselves to satisfy the apple fanboys on /.?
Using a Zen or Sansa is crippling yourself.
This place is always against proprietary, unless its apple proprietary and then BEND OVER BABY!
There are a lot of things I don't like about apple. I don't currently own a Mac because they refuse to release a tower with anywhere near the specs or price I want. There even a lot of things I don't like about itunes. But I've had other mp3 players... Sansa, Yepp -- the iPod is, for me at least, the best device hands down.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Insightful)
I would recommend Zen or Sansa to anybody over an iPod. I don't hate iPods, they're decent players, but the other two companies just build better-working players. I've never had to do TECH SUPPORT for a friend to get their Sansa working, or move their music to a new machine, etc; I have had to to that with an iPod.
You can have your favorites, and if you like the iPod better, that's fine; but you're blatantly wrong if you try to can claim as a fact that those other players are "crippling yourself". Reasonable people can disagree.
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I do pretty much all of that via winamp and my zen. Winamp generates my playlists based on listening habits, automatically syncs new content to my zen every time its connected(via a usb mini cable you can obtain anywhere for a few dollars instead of a proprietary POS connector, I might add).
Another feature Zen's have over the competition is recording from FM radio. I attend conventions regularly and I can record a clean copy off their FM transmission, avoiding any noise/gain issues with a mic. Lets see an i
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but the other two companies just build better-working players.
No. They don't.
I've never had to do TECH SUPPORT for a friend to get their Sansa working, or move their music to a new machine, etc; I have had to to that with an iPod.
My Sansa died the first week I owned it, and had to be exchanged for a new one.
As for moving music to a new machine; that's a cop out. The only time that's ever an issue is if you have DRM'd tracks. And having trouble moving DRM tracks between computers is a DRM issue not an ipod
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Winamp generates my playlists based on listening habits,
Based on your listening habits on your PC. itunes incorporates your listening habits ON YOUR IPOD.
automatically syncs new content to my zen every time its connected(via a usb mini cable you can obtain anywhere for a few dollars instead of a proprietary POS connector, I might add).
You can buy a 3rd party dock-usb cable for a few bucks all over the place.
As for whether the dock connector is justified... hard to say. It was introduced at a time w
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nd with both WMP11 and the monkey it really isn't hard to cook up playlists like "Songs I haven't heard in a month" or "songs I like on weekends".
Is that "songs I haven't heard in a month on my pc"? Does it sync back meta data from the device? After all, songs I haven't heard in a month on my PC, but listened to 10 minutes ago on my mp3 player should not be in a "Songs I haven't heard in a month" playlist.
This is why I've defended the proprietary ipod 'database' system. It tracks and syncs all the meta data
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Some features will be broken without the iTunes link, but obviously since some other programs like Winamp can be made to sync to your iPod, there are more options. And for anyone just looking for "generic song playing," they'll work just fine. (I'm pretty sure drag-and-drop playlist management would be a PITA
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http://blog.adaniels.nl/articles/iphone-amarok/ [adaniels.nl] would appear to indicate otherwise.
Unless the information there has become obsolete, you need to manipulate the device (at least the 'touch' generation of iPods) in a way Apple has taken steps to prevent you from doing. Generally I'd feel uncomfortable buying a device which has been designed to restrict how I can use it (even if the cost of the device is subsidised because of those restrictions).
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http://blog.adaniels.nl/articles/iphone-amarok/ [adaniels.nl] would appear to indicate otherwise.
That applies to the iPhone not the iPod. Well, technically it applies to the iPod touch, but that's not a normal iPod it's really just a crippled iPhone. Here is Amarok's supported iPods list [kde.org]. You'll notice they're all listed as working, except the iPhone and iPod touch, which work partially.
Unless the information there has become obsolete, you need to manipulate the device (at least the 'touch' generation of iPods) in a way Apple has taken steps to prevent you from doing. Generally I'd feel uncomfortable buying a device which has been designed to restrict how I can use it (even if the cost of the device is subsidised because of those restrictions).
Wait you want to buy a locked phone, restricted to one network by the demands of the network provider. You further want to buy a device that plays video and works with mainstream offerings of that video, but you don't w
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a) MOV is not a video format. It's a standard container format. Specs for it are available and free.
b) No argument there, but opinion is not fact.
c) Having certain options turned on by default in the installation program is not the same thing as forcing you to leave them enabled. Also, Quicktime is available without iTunes, which prevents it from installing anything even vaguely iPod related.
d) Installing software to watch videos? Madness!
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
I must have missed that 'iTunes for Linux' release announcement...
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for Linux, how about on OpenBSD for SPARC?
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What about Songbird - looks pretty good? Then you can use an iPod with Linux, probably that a "better" solution than iTunes for Linux (which I'm sure wouldn't be acceptable for a large number of Linux users anyway - being "closed source").
Honestly, is it only me that thinks: "meh" - I mean I put up with a lot worse to get the damn GPU to run under Linux (binary drivers). I'm not sure a music player is worth getting your panties in a bunch over (perhaps I'd feel differently if I were a pro musician, or even
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it is precisely Apple's fault. If they didn't make their formats proprietary, then the choice of operating system would not make a difference.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is the protocol used to communicate between ITunes and the server. If it was open it would be possible for third party users to implement their own linux interface. I don't se why Apple would have a problem with that. You would still buy the music from them, and it would not cost them anything.
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While iTunes might not be something you want to use, it was the topic of the article.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
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Itunes is available for windows.
Installing apples "shitty software" is very simple and free.
Download and click install it then upgrades itself to latest version.
The nice part about itunes is it contains a search built-in for movies and tv episodes. Every things "there for you on a plate" and you can subscribe to tv episodes.
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Itunes is available for windows.
Is it also available for Wine?
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There is one problem with it, and it is not the fault of Apple. Since the distribution rights are owned by a silly amount of silly people in a silly amount of different countries, those countries won't get movies distributed in iTunes.
Apparently they see some magic gain in *not* making their product available in *preferred* distribution channels. Basically they are assholes twice over. First to their customers (us), and then to their shareholders (why aren't we making money? Oh, because the distributers are
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metric crap ton
That's metric crap tonne. Interestingly enough, this weighs precisely the same as a metric My Little Pony tonne.
It Ain't Philosophy, It's The Business Model (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently they see some magic gain in *not* making their product available in *preferred* distribution channels.
It's not magic, it's real money. Follow the entertainment trades like "Variety" and you will see that the studios are selling nice lump-sum deals for some movies into broadcast and cable distribution windows even before they hit the theaters. The domestic and foreign TV distribution channels are not going to pay this big money if the movie is widely distributed in one form or another prior to their contracted window of distribution. The studio *must* restrict online distribution -- or at least make a big show that it is trying to. It's part of their contractual obligations.
When a studio gets confident that the money it can make via "easy early global online" distribution will be enough to off-set the reduced fees it can charge its "old school" distribution partners, believe me, they'll pull the trigger on it. But the old school guys pay big bucks, and, currently, the new skool online direct-to-consumer model is, literally, pennies.
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It does seem to me though, that iTunes has proved the "If you build it they will come" theory of digital distribution. The music industry kicked and screamed and cried and refused to build a good digital distribution center both because they were worried about piracy (which didn't really seem to get any worse), and because they were completely unconvinced it could ever make any amount of money. So Apple built iTunes, which is at best a "decent" attempt at a distribution center, and it's a license to print
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"but do remember that literal pennies add up to literal billions when you aggregate receiving literal pennies from millions of consumers. "
Er... literal pennies from literal millions actually adds up to literal tens of thousands of dollars, not billions.
Perhaps you were meaning the figurative kind of 'literal'?
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Insightful)
internet, and no, that do *NOT* mean through some crap IE webbrowser crap solution with sub par quality
It also doesn't mean iTunes. Sorry, iTunes may be great software, but it is not the web, and not everyone has or wants iTunes.
DRM is only part of the problem, and getting rid of it is a great step forward. Now let's see this the rest of the way -- just the Internet, or at most email -- better yet, publish that website as a REST API to allow anyone to develop an iTunes-like client.
HTML and FLAC over HTTP for the win.
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Apparently some recent movies have started to include something called a "sound track". Bad idea, if you ask me, taking away jobs from hard-working organists.
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Informative)
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Except I think they have a much greater percentage of music than movies. Pretty much everything release by a major label in the last 20 years or so is on iTunes, as is a lot of older stuff released by major labels. Pretty much anything released by minor and indy labels in the last 5 years or so is on iTunes, and a lot of them are making efforts to release their older catalogs. A good bit of stuff released completely independently (no label at all) is even available on iTunes assuming the band has a least
Re:Actually, there is an iTunes for movies (Score:5, Informative)
It sounds like a hopeless situation and it looks like the best option is to use the ubiquitous peer to peer sources which offer free convenient downloads of just about anything you could want.
Marketing 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
My ISP offers a movie service, BUT you have to install a proprietary player to play the movie on.
I'm a customer, I want the option of having the product as a .avi but the service is not giving me the service I want and am willing to pay for.
So I use The Pirate Bay, money has nothing to do with my decision Movies cost nothing anyway even on DVDs it's all about the service. The Pirate Bay simply provides a better service than the studios can so they get all my downloads.
Considering how big the market for movies is that must be a fair bit of money they are missing out on, all because they want people to use a certain piece of software.
AVI codecs are patented too (Score:2)
My ISP offers a movie service, BUT you have to install a proprietary player to play the movie on.
.avi
I'm a customer, I want the option of having the product as a
In what codec? The United States is home to Slashdot, the major motion picture studios, and two-thirds of native English speakers in the developed world. But in the United States, most codecs used in AVI files are subject to several patents. For example, the codecs commonly used in DivX .avi files are MPEG-4 Part 2 video (patented) and MPEG-1 layer 3 audio (also patented). So the software needed to play .avi files is just as non-free as your ISP's player.
Re:AVI codecs are patented too (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot education (Score:5, Funny)
In school, we had a trademark infringement lawyer come speak to us during computer science telling us how bad it was to illegally download music movies and such. But now as I read this, since there is no where to buy these movies piracy seems like the only option.
I'm glad Slashdot is here to educate me.
Re:Slashdot education (Score:5, Interesting)
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The possibilities are endless. Piracy is not the only option. For example, not listening/watching "music movies and such" is an option.
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Miro (Score:2)
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Segmentation (Score:5, Interesting)
Itunes pricing is already segmented. (Score:4, Informative)
Itunes pricing is already segmented. Amazon's digital offering is region locked. As are all the other players.
I'm not sure your point holds.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Segmentation (Score:5, Interesting)
We need to put an end to regional distribution deals for the internet. The internet should, in fact, be considered it's own region and that would allow them to get around existing distribution deals.
False right (Score:4, Insightful)
So basically Manjoo is saying that copyright holders are obligated to make their works available to him in the format and timing he demands, or else he has the right to get them illegally?
I think we call can agree that current copyright is unreasonable and undemocratic (since it was bought for by the music/movie industry). But Manjoo's reasoning doesn't make a ton of sense either.
Re:False right (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps he doesn't have the right, but the MPAA shouldn't act so surprised when people do it.
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The RIAA and MPAA shouldn't have the right to subject anyone to
vengance if they are otherwise a non-entity to them and would never
be offered a work anyways. There is simply no "damage" there to be
"cured" buy the relevant civil action.
Re:False right (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically Manjoo is saying that copyright holders are obligated to make their works available to him in the format and timing he demands, or else he has the right to get them illegally?
No, he calls himself a scofflaw. He's saying that there's a market for works in the format and timing that the customer chooses. Currently it's a black market, and the studios are going to lose a ton of money because they don't offer a legal alternative.
Re:False right (Score:4, Interesting)
So basically Manjoo is saying that copyright holders are obligated to make their works available to him in the format and timing he demands, or else he has the right to get them illegally?
A customer expecting the seller to sell him what he wants in order to get his money? Why, the very idea!
Re:False right (Score:5, Interesting)
If they aren't selling it, they they are losing nothing when we pirate it. This in turn means that there is no damage to them, and thus no case against us.
If they are selling it, but there are artificial barriers caused by legal restrictions on over-riding region coding and the like, then this could be argued to be an illegal restriction on free trade under WTO rules, although we all know that no-one with the money to fight such a case ever would.
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Well, you cant buy it for any price. So you Bittorrent it.
And if prices are stupid, like a soundtrack going for 17.99 vs the movie itself going for 15.99, guess what? Piratebay here we come.
It's called competitive pressure, and that's how the free market works. If copyright and patents were more sane, they'd be more respected and crap like this wouldnt happen. So, the path of least resistance is downloading.
Those who call me names: I dont care. I have what you spend money on and mine isnt crippled.
Those who
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[repost - I forgot I wasn't logged in the first time....]
He isn't saying he has the RIGHT to get them illegally.
Just that he WILL get them illegally.
And for companies interested in doing business - "right" is not important - it is what your customers will tolerate, and pay for, that matters.
Remember, when you are talking about "rights" that copyright (and patent, trademark, etc...) is a right conferred because it is in the public good. It is a profoundly "conditional" right. And when that conferral ceases t
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So basically Manjoo is saying that copyright holders are obligated to make their works available to him in the format and timing he demands, or else he has the right to get them illegally?
I have some sympathy with this viewpoint. Copyright is a bargain between society and the creator, where the creator gets a time-limited monopoly in exchange for distributing their work. If they are not making a bona fide effort to distribute their work, then should they be able to retain copyright? I don't believe that they should, and I think that compulsory, nondiscriminatory, licensing should be a requirement for being granted copyright. That said, I disagree with his conclusion. He should be arguin
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However the bad laws are not going to be repealed or amended no matter how much people complain because vested interests will not allow it. Therefore the only alternative is a mass campaign of civil disobedience.
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But Manjoo's reasoning doesn't make a ton of sense either.
What about it doesn't make sense? If copyright doesn't serve society, then it should be abolished. The only kind of works it seems to promote are mass market bullshit. I don't give a fuck about protecting or promoting those. True art needs to be made. And finally, anyone who releases any media without a license saying that it enters copyright when copyright originally expired is taking advantage of bad laws, and doesn't deserve copyright protection — but that appears to just be my opinion. There is no
Money, again (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting article. It seems that the studios etc. are wary of losing the guaranteed revenue that comes from the premium and pay-per-view TV channels. But what happens when these channels wise up to the fact that an increasing number of people are getting these films for free online? Will they become more reluctant to pay the studios for the right to show a movie that everyone's already seen via bittorrent?
Does anyone have any figures on how pay-per-view services are doing? I wouldn't be surprised to see that the number of people paying for the Hollywood blockbusters is on a downward trend as broadband speeds increase.
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Yip (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a fan of the show, I want to watch it legitimately and if I could I would pay to do so.
It just goes to show how far behind with the times the entire industry is that people *want* to pay them and can't, so they break the law instead.
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What those involved don't appear to understand is that this kind of "staggered release" actually encourages piracy.
At the end of the first series I bought the DVDs of the season, and I intend to do the same for the second. I've tried to find a legit way to watch it, mainly because I would like to contribute towards the ratings of the series.
The way ratings a
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Not really. I do the same thing, and I know plenty of others who do. In Australia, we're lucky to get some series half a year or more after they start airing in the US, and even then there are heaps of hiatuses and breaks.
IIRC, this approach is also especially common among fans of anime, since western channels don't usually air it until a dub is produced and many hardcore fans would rather watch an original subbed version than a dub.
Re:Yip (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, having just done this a couple weeks ago, I can tell you that at least in my case they send you a little booklet for each TV that you use and you're supposed to write down what you watch on that TV.
Interestingly, I don't have cable (television, I do get my internet access from Time Warner over a coax cable), I don't have satellite TV, and I don't watch OTA broadcasts. I DO however watch movies and television shows via my internet connection. The interesting part is that I told the nice lady who called and asked me about being a Nielsen family all of this and she actually sounded excited. She informed me that they really wanted some perspective on the viewing habits of people who do that, but for some reason (I suspect it has to do with Nielsen's mission statement) only if they pipe the video to a TV to watch it. I do exactly that in 3 rooms of my house, so they sent me the packets.
I wonder how Thundercats and He-Man are going to enjoy their ratings boosts... The late, great George Carlin is going to be highly rated this month too, as well as some online-only media outlets that probably have never seen a rating point.
The fact that they were highly interested in my survey suggests to me that some media companies see the writing on the wall, and want accurate information about my viewing habits in spite of the fact that they keep screaming that I'm killing them by watching online content exclusively. A small critique I have is that if they're going to start recording activities of people who use their TV like I do, they're going to have to make the box for you to write the channel name into bigger, so I can properly fit a URL into it.
Finally, I'd like to say that I don't know how large of a sample they take any given week, but I hope it's low enough that a media company or two takes notice that someone out there is seriously using sites like Hulu and netflix, and considers expanding the content available via such channels.
Here's the answer.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer is twofold. First, the vast majority of people will not pay a hefty monthly fee for immediate access to recent movies and TV shows. So there really is not market for it. You cannot compete with free by putting a "hefty" fee on it. God, that's fricken ludicrous. Why is this completely asinine idea even posted here?!
Second, the movie industry makes a lot of money with its gated approach to releasing movies. First, to theaters. Then to premium TV channels and pay-per-view. Then to DVD/Blue-ray. Than the normal TV. If the studios started releasing new movies as soon as they were released in they theaters, or even soon after, the money from the premium TV/pay-per-view/DVD/Blu-ray releases would drastically decrease. It's all about making the Benjamins, not about making it convenient for the viewer.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
First, the vast majority of people will not pay a hefty monthly fee for immediate access to recent movies and TV shows. So there really is not market for it. You cannot compete with free by putting a "hefty" fee on it. God, that's fricken ludicrous. Why is this completely asinine idea even posted here?!
Presumably, if the writer would be willing to pay a hefty fee, he would also be willing to pay a reasonable fee.
Re: (Score:2)
But would that "reasonable" fee for immediately access make up for the money lost on pay-per-view/premium TV/DVD/Blu-ray? (I'm talking about movies here, I have no idea why anyone would pay anything to watch TV!)
Re:Here's the answer.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I pay around $20/month (approximately, at the current exchange rate) to be able to rent almost as many DVDs as I can watch, and have them shipped to me. This is the only way I watch any TV shows now, by renting them after they are aired. I would be more than happy to pay the same amount to be given access to a library of DRM-free downloads to watch, saving the shipping costs of transporting the DVDs to and from me. I would not pay for DRM'd media, because that would almost certainly prevent me from watching it on some of the devices I may wish to use for playback.
The movie industry needs to realise that the rental and sales models are doomed. Few people watch the same movie over and over again (small children excepted), and so the benefit in owning a copy of a film is small. Rental simply can not work for soft copies, because rental requires a scarcity that is not applicable. What they can offer, which has great value, is timely access to new material and large archives of older films. If you can download any film or TV show you want for a fixed monthly fee, in high quality with a good download speed, the incentive to pirate them disappears. Some people will download everything they can and archive it to massive hard disks, but most people won't. Why would they? If they want to watch something again they can just download it again and not have to worry about paying for the local storage and backups.
Re: (Score:2)
The answer is twofold. First, the vast majority of people will not pay a hefty monthly fee for immediate access to recent movies and TV shows.
Unless that includes every single show on earth as soon as it airs...
Since when? (Score:2)
Millions and millions of households are quite willing to pay a monthly fee for cable or satellite television, even when free OTA signals are available. Why would another method of delivery be different? All it has to do is A) not suck technology-wise, and B) be fair in price.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> First, the vast majority of people will not pay a hefty monthly fee for
> immediate access to recent movies and TV shows. So there really is not market
> for it. You cannot compete with free by putting a "hefty" fee on it.
A significant chunk of the population already pays a hefty monthly fee for whatever crap their cable/satellite providers choose to send them. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that people might be willing to transfer that hefty bit of change to something they actually want
Re: (Score:2)
"Tell that to the vinyl record industry."
Tell what to the vinyl record industry? That it's a tiny niche market because only a minuscule percentage of people buy vinyl compared to other forms of access? Heck, I bet you don't know this, but profits from the ringtone market totally dwarfs the mighty iTunes. And vinyl is a mere drop in the bucket compared to iTunes.
And why are you comparing quicker access to movies and TV versus a higher fidelity sound recording? People want LPs for a completely different r
Re: (Score:2)
You have no idea what you're talking about. I agree that the quality of vinyl decreased. However, that was an intentional decision by the music industry to get us over to the CD. I worked at a music store back in the 80s to early 90s. The LP didn't die off, it was murdered.
And I have no idea what you're talking about a tiered approach to music. Other than releasing a single to radio, or releasing a single early to whet listener's appetite, all music was and is released for sale at the same time. Movie
Re:Here's the answer.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to admit, if I could buy a movie on the way out of a theater, I probably would in some circumstances. And think of all the parents who would have to buy the movie right then because their kids are screaming, "We want it now, we want it now, we want it now!!!"
I think the movie industry is missing out on some nice profits there. But, maybe I'm an idiot when it comes to profiting. As a poor idiot, I'm probably not qualified to make such judgments.
Re:Here's the answer.... (Score:4, Funny)
And think of all the parents who would have to buy the movie right then because their kids are screaming, "We want it now, we want it now, we want it now!!!"
wow spineless parents. That explains a lot about society today.
the correct answer to "we want it now" is... "Hows it feel to want?"
Amazon has a service where you can purchase movies (Score:5, Informative)
They even have their own download client. Search on Video on Demand.
one stop media service (Score:2)
Movies have ALWAYS been about restriction... (Score:5, Insightful)
Read something like Terry Ramsaye's "A Million and One Nights," about the early history of the movies--up to the early twenties--(Ramsaye doesn't believe the talkies have much of a future)--and, to a technical guy like me, it's incredibly boring.
It's all about complicated business maneuvers based on artificial restrictions. (The phrase "B movie" dates back to the days when distributors wouldn't rent a good movie to a theatre unless they agreed to rent a lousy movie too). The various Laemmles and Selznicks and Zukors are doing nothing but finding clever ways to restrict product flow, cutting complex deals to outdo each other.
The movies themselves are sort of a byproduct of the real industry, which is business deals. The movies are sort of a necessary evil, like the chips that are needed at a casino. Who cares who designed the chips, or whether the artwork on the chips is great or mediocre?
Patents, too. Patents and patent pools and trusts and cartels, the whole nine yards.
Why is the movie industry associated with Hollywood rather than New Jersey? No, it's not because of reliable daylight. Anyone old enough to be familiar with the little loop of film in a camera or projector that buffers between the intermittent motion at the film gate and the smooth motion of the reels, so the claw doesn't need to pull against the inertia of the reels and tear the film? You need that if you want to put the film on reels and run continuously for more than a couple of minutes.
Well, that's the famous patented Latham Loop, and the people that held the patent refused to sell cameras, only rent them at exorbitant costs. So a bunch of people decided to make movies with pirated, illegal cameras... and they did it in California to make it harder for the process servers to find them.
Printing has always been about making books cheap and available... starting with the Bible. Movies have always been about restricting product. It's in their DNA.
Car Salesmen (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a certain point in my consumption of media where things just became absurd. And then I became a pirate.
It's similar each time I go to buy a car. I'm there at the lot because I want to buy something but first, I have to deal with the first enemy, the salesman. I usually know exactly what I want but almost but not quite invariably, he tries to sell me something else first. Then he tries to sell me a couple things I don't want before I can manage to leave. I looked up your inventory and the inventory of your competitors before I came, don't try to BS me. I have Edmunds and AutoTrader right here on my phone, why make me distrust you by lying to me? This is changing, but not fast enough for my tastes.
The movie/TV industry is the same way. They're either trying to sell me what I want in a way that I don't want them or don't sell what I want at all.
First, let's get this notion of having to sit down at a certain time to watch a TV show out of the way. It's an obsolete mode of thinking. We started with primitive VHS, but now we have DVRs and even those will eventually be replaced by streaming.
I find it remarkable that the torrent of a popular show is usually up within minutes of the show airing. Lately, even the HD versions are up lickety split.
Yet, despite the pirates offering a mostly superior product (commercial free, 720/1080p), I have yet to torrent a single episode that I can watch on Hulu instead. But then again, once Hulu's not allowed to stream an episode that I "missed," guess where I am? You got it, TPB. There's a months long gap between "legit" online availability and the DVDs being released where I physically can't access the content.
That's if it's even online in the first place. Show me where I can watch The Big Bang Theory online. I can't. Thus, I will download it.
And man, I would pay for this if I could. In fact, I did. Then I gave up. I rented video on iTunes for a while until I realized what a sham it was. It's not that I didn't want to pay, (though the prices are way too high for TV episodes), its that once I pay, I don't want to be told when, where, and how I can watch or otherwise be forced to pay for the same content again. This is why Blockbuster is gasping its last breath and NetFlix is standing over its dying body.
I could potentially be the best consumer the movie/TV industry has, but instead, I became the enemy for no other reason than the industry treated me as such.
This stuff about complex contract systems and embargoed air dates is a product of a system that's no longer appropriate for the technology of today, much less the near future. And you know what, this is THEIR problem, not ours (the consumers). They're paid the big bucks to solve the problem before it gets to us, instead of just passing the problem along to us. I really couldn't give a shit about the contract between Warner Bros and HBO. That's really not my problem and by making it my problem, you, the content provider are my problem. Thus, I will torrent.
I want to pay. But you have to give me what I want, not what you think I want.