Interesting News Story -

[NightRyder]

Until Hollywood decides to stop putting out steaming piles of crap out on a regular basis and maybe make one or two movies a year I'll be intersted in... maybe I'll buy into this stuff.

It's a sad day when TV shows take up a whole section of Blockbuster's DVD's.

For that to happen people would have to stop watching "steaming piles of crap". Example: What was the highest rated TV program this year? Was it a well written and acted series? No, it was a worthless POS reality show. The outlook is not encouraging.


NightRyder

 

[dmodemd]

To bring things somewhat back to the topic of this thread....From every report I've read the DVRs Rupert is planning for his "big push" will not be Tivo based units.

Correctamundo....

Tivo and DTV parted ways. Tivo is now going to be doing its own content delivery.... via the Internet! Who needs Satellite!?

They can deliver VOD and deliver unlimited channels!... but wait, who needs channels?!? Such an archaic concept. Everything in the future will be by SUBSCRIPTION. Pick your shows, not your channels.

and they dont need high bandwidth... it can be transmitted slower than real-time and stored for later playback. Bye bye cable and satellite... the ISPs will rule, and WiFiMax ISPs will win.

Lee

 

[JimP]

Correctamundo....

Tivo and DTV parted ways. Tivo is now going to be doing its own content delivery.... via the Internet! Who needs Satellite!?

They can deliver VOD and deliver unlimited channels!... but wait, who needs channels?!? Such an archaic concept. Everything in the future will be by SUBSCRIPTION. Pick your shows, not your channels.

and they dont need high bandwidth... it can be transmitted slower than real-time and stored for later playback. Bye bye cable and satellite... the ISPs will rule, and WiFiMax ISPs will win.

Lee

Interesting concept. Is the internet robust enough to support the additional load???

 

[NEOSG]

Enormous, huh?

My 921 has a 250GB drive and I've had it for 16 months.

"enormous 160-gigabyte"

Yeah, I thought that was prety funny. That would last me less than 1 week of HD content

 

[dmodemd]

Interesting concept. Is the internet robust enough to support the additional load???

The Internet is as robust as demand establishes. For one thing, since you dont need the data real-time, it doesnt need to be any more reliable than it is now. As far as bandwidth, as demand continues to increase, the pipes will be made wider. Bandwidth is cheap between major points, its the final mile thats the biggest bottleneck.

Lee

 

[dmodemd]

10 years from now you will be watching your flat panel screen on the wall which is hooked up to a media center machine with hard drive and connected to the Internet which will be through WiFiMax.... a small antenna mounted on your house and 10's of Mbps coming in.

You will be taking down your Sat dishes, pulling up your coax, and covering up your telco jacks as you laugh about the old days when we used CABLES and DISHES!

Thats why the ISPs are clamoring to put out WiFiMax ASAP even before a standard is finalized. They can always swap out the equipment later, but he who gets the customers first holds the high ground.

Lee

 

[wied]

This is also why SBC is trying to et the wire2media box out.

 

[kevink]

I've given up waiting on the MediaPortal, at least for right now.

They have done a pretty good job on keeping information flow to a minimum since the press release in January.

Just ordered service, with the 522 instead.

I don't know if the MediaPortal will work with just SD TVs anyway. The little I read indicated it would do 1 HD TV, and 1 SD TV.

 

[waltinvt]

While I realize this is Hollywood's wet dream, pay per play, they are going to have a very hard time trying to sell this to the American consumer as a take it or leave it proposition. A limited version of this has been tried already, remember the Divx DVD format? It deservedly crashed and burned and cost Circuit City hundreds of millions of dollars. As far as pirates go, they will always find a means and a market, human nature.


NightRyder

I agree about Divx but that was a bad idea from the get-go. People are funny about "control" issues. They'd rather rent a video they "have" to bring back than pay for something that someone else can cause to "self destruct" at some point down the road. I know that's not really how it worked but what I'm saying is it's a physcological thing and I know I'm not being very clear about it.

Anyway, IMHO, no VOD system is going to catch on if it's based on any type of "temporary" ownership of the movie. People want to like have this huge library of choices that they can pick from at any given time. How many of us surround ourselves with videos, most of which, at best, we may watch once every few years ? It's not totally rational but more of a mindset thing - that I can control what I watch at any time rather than pick from someone else's choices.

So if there comes along a system that can fill that gap by offering any choice at any time, I thing people will be attracted to it BUT.....only as long as they can control it. Meaning, they pay a fee and they've got that movie forever. It becomes part of their library and their library is liminted only by whatever amount of storage space they have.

 

[long_time_DNC]

Anyone ever look at Movielink.com? They suffer from the same 45-day window restriction, and their rental prices for new releases are a bit stiff, but I've found it a useful way to check out movies I wouldn't otherwise buy (via pre-ordering) to determine whether or not I want to buy the DVD. Downloading via broadband is fairly quick and viewing is easy. It's not easy as PPV, but they carry a lot more titles than PPV.

Definitely looks like a potentially promising alternative.

Oh, and as for TV shows on DVD: it's popular because there are no commercials to suffer through.

 

[BrianMis]

It was an interesting read. But even as powerful as Murdoch thinks he is in the entertainment market, he is going to have a hard time pulling this off, or it is going to take a very long time. Wal-Mart is going to put up a stink about this, and who do you think is going to win that Clash of the Titans? My money is on Wal-Mart, it's all about moving movies after their release. Nobody is better than Wal-Mart at that. Love them or hate them, Wal-Mart has more DVD customers than Direct has subscribers. Now which one will Hollywood bow to?