DreamWorks Animation CEO: Movie Downloads Will Move To Pay-By-Screen-Size

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of Dreamworks Animation, speaking at the Milken Global Conference in California, opined that the future pricing model for movie downloads will revolve around screen size. In his view, larger screens will incur larger download prices. As he says, 'It will reinvent the enterprise of movies.' Unclear is how physical dimensions, rather than just resolution matrix, will be determined. Will we soon be saying 'hello' to screen spoofing?" Can you fake the physical dimensions reported in the EDID block when the connection is using HDCP? Aside from the implication that this would mean more DRM (and seems pretty unworkable, but with the rise of locked bootloaders on even x86 hardware...), the prices he predicts seem alright: "A movie screen will be $15. A 75-inch TV will be $4. A smartphone will be $1.99."

value scales with screen size

[Noah Haders]

this makes sense based on my own experience. I get a lot more value from a movie in my home theater than I do from watching the same movie on my phone. So if I have to pay $5 to watch it on my big screen tv, I'm not going to pay $5 to watch it on my phone!!! The post implies that katzenberg is making an arbritrary technical distinction. in fact, what he's saying is that customer value scales with screen size, and the price should too.

Re:Projectors?

[Samantha Wright]

I'm sure that would fall under the most expensive category, just to be "safe."

We already have a unit of measure for billing

[thechemic]

We already have a unit of measure for billing which is referred to as "mega bits per second". Now they want to bill us by "screen size per viewing"? Every @#$%'ing time I try to go legit, they force me back to illegal downloads with their senseless bullshit.

Perhaps He Meant Resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he was really referring to resolution when he was talking about screen size, perhaps he was addressing a non-technical audience. I agree with him for the most part. He's talking about expediting digital distribution to only 18 days after the initial release, as he figured the major cinemas have made about all they're going to make by the first three weekends. He sounds very forward thinking. Pay X3 for 4K, X2 for 1080P, X1 for SD.

Much ado about nothing

[timeOday]

If you ask me, odds are 70% he was just using "Screen Size" as a proxy for "Resolution" in the first place, either because he doesn't know the difference, or (more likely) was talking down to the audience. In any case, it is one person's speculation about the future, nothing more.

Pay per pixel?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think basically, he's proposing pay per pixel. If you have a phone-sized screen, you have lower resolution, and they aren't sending you as many pixels.