Epix Provides "Free" HD Studio Content Via TV and Internet 68
It looks as though the movie studios are at least trying to learn from past failures and others' success with the upcoming launch of Epix (beta starts today), an HD television channel and accompanying online 720p service. The good part about this service is, if you are lucky enough to have a television provider who decides to become a partner, you wont have to pay extra to get it. The main downside, of course, is if your cable company decides not to plug this service in you will have no way to subscribe. "Like Hulu, the Epix movie service is a joint venture formed by the content owners; in this case, the service is powered by the movie studios Lions Gate, Paramount, and MGM. The Epix TV network will air movies that are in the "pay-TV" window — those weeks before a film appears on DVD in which it is available on pay-per-view or HBO, among others."
Cable providers biting the hands that feed them? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well I can't say for sure, but my guess would be that they're looking at how much revenue they're losing to online torrents and asking themselves, "Is there any way we can get that business?"
As for the alternatives, they don't care about cannibalizing DVD rentals, because they don't really make money from them. They could license the same content to HBO, but then they basically have to take the cut of profits that HBO gives them. Why not just start your own channel and keep all the profits for yourself? They might hurt DVD sales, but they might believe that DVD sales are already on the way out.
Ultimately they're faced with a problem. Their old business model depended on having complete control over distribution, so if you wanted to see a movie just out in theaters, you had to rush to see in in theaters or else wait a year for it to come out on video. If you wanted to see the movie during the time between theatrical release and video release, well... tough. These days, if you really want to see a movie, you can often get it online before the theatrical release, most likely before it comes out on video, and certainly once it's been released to video. The movie studio has to make it a little more pleasant and convenient for people to see the movies they want to see, when they want to see it, and how they want to see it, or risk having their current business model fall apart.
binary in their HTML code (Score:5, Interesting)
Lionsgate (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh great Lionsgate is involved. That means 99.9995% of the content will be crap. .0001% will be decent and .0004% will do nicely in overseas markets when put on DVD.
A "Polished Turd" will stink up the basket no matter how many flowers you put in the basket with it....
Re:ESPN Now Has this Model... (Score:3, Interesting)
How is this any different from AOL, CompuServe, Delphi, our ghosts in the past?
"Get access to our exclusive content, and internet too!" has been around for a long time and it's never (since there was an option) ever beat out vanilla internet.
It's hardly likely this to catch on either, and even if it does, it won't be universal by any means. They'll be companies out there willing to work for your buck by selling you 'cut rate connections without all that overhead' just as there will be companies out there telling you they have access to every 'sub-network' out there.