Big media doesn’t want you to download their stuff. I should know, because for the past two months, I’ve abandoned DVD and Blu-ray discs, and tossed my cable box out the window. I was trying to see if big media had converged with new media. After winding my way through all the available choices, I’m here to tell you: This game is rigged, and not in your favor.
Hollywood movie studios and cable networks are impeding the future of entertainment. It’s because their business models don’t fit with the lubricated ease of downloading your movies, music and TV shows. Click on Continue and see how this tangled web of alliances and stubborn resistance of the new way of doing things is tantamount to the entertainment industry shooting itself in the foot.
Movie studios have similarities to the record companies, too. While the studios are obviously in the business of creating entertainment, if you think about it, they’re actually in the trucking business, just like the record companies. Their business model depends on moving truckloads of film reels, DVDs and now Blu-ray discs from point A to point B.
Meanwhile, the cable companies are clinging to their tired old business model of tiered services, making you buy layer upon layer of channels just to get to the good stuff you really want. They fight the a la carte idea every step of the way with lobbyists and tactics, continuing to subsidize unpopular channels by extracting fees from customers that nobody wants to pay.
As I explored each service for my Video Rebel series, I could just smell the greedmeisters trying to hinder the proceedings, every step of the way. Yet a click away is every single Blu-ray release, available for download via the illegal shadows on BitTorrent.
It’s not going away. The studios should offer for download all the movies and TV shows ever produced, at a reasonable price, in the highest practical definition, distributed by that protocol that gets faster as more people use it, BitTorrent. And the cable companies should be barred from the video-on-demand business, or sell unfettered bandwidth to customers. They should take all the tax breaks doled out to them over the past decade and spend them on building out the fiber network, and not just to the curb, but into every home that wants it.
editor@dvice.com
By TheAdlerian at 7:12 PM ON 06/12/08
"lubricated ease"
Sexy!
By speedblue47 at 8:43 PM ON 06/12/08
If the situation was so untenable, then why the artists that create this content move to new labels and studios that are into the categorically better download scheme(which I think would be better in the long term as well)? Because this suits them just fine. And that is THEIR right. If people turned off their radios, stopped going to blockbuster, turned off their cable and only partook in the content offered through DRM-free downloads(if that is the best option, which I am unsure of), then that would send a market signal to the "greedmeisters"(those people that through the profit motive have created every meaningful advance of the past 200+ years). They would then shift their business model accordingly and everyone would be happy.
But why aren't people doing this? Because the world is really about trade-offs that are incremental, not categorical truths and falsehoods that can be "righted" overnight. It's a process, and demeaning the people you wish to act is not the way to provoke them to lead the way to change.
By thexfile at 2:32 AM ON 06/13/08
he he finaly you cought on..... it's what i've been saying al along withe that bleuray thing insted of sd cards etc....
the whole thing is rigged like a mafia , the thing i dó'nt get is why govermants do'nt procequte these companies for ufair practice and for price rigging , becouse over here in europe that is a criminal afence....
By CableTechTalk at 11:35 AM ON 06/13/08
How are the economics of producing a 70-minute record album anything like the economics of producing a 24-hour cable network?
Movie studios are in the "trucking business"?
Just these two comments reveal very little understanding of telecommunications or the entertainment industry.
There have been charges against one cable operators of affecting P2P services like BitTorrent. Where is the evidence of any provider choking VUDU or Apple?
The cable industry has invested well over $100 billion of private capital over the last decade. No public money or tax breaks.
Good grief. Dude, the entertainment industry is moving to digital platforms. Just because you don't think they're doing it fast enough doesn't mean they're not.
By docquesting at 12:40 AM ON 06/14/08
I have been without cable or satellite for well over a year. There are plenty of free and legal non download places to watch free tv.
I concur that cable and sat co are stupid. Give the customer what they want and they will have more business. Forcing a customer into something along with bad customer service is well..................
By SeaNymphette at 4:37 AM ON 06/14/08
I hope the cable companies stay asleep and that they do die! What a bunch of freakin' "customer- no-service" crooks. We had Triple Play (cable, high speed, and telephone) from Comcast for over a year. It never worked correctly, we never got all the channels we paid for or working VOD, the telephone was never consistently in service, completely forget about the high speed! We had over 8 service calls (which we paid for), where various repair techs came out, with levels of knowledge and experience, from zero to rudimentary. When queried about the problem, each tech completely contradicted the previous tech. It was a complete clusterf*ck that never got resolved. Finally we cancelled them and they told us that we'd entered a 2 year contract (news to us!) and there was a penalty of hundreds of dollars for defaulting. We cancelled them anyway, and got DirecTV. DirecTV's not much better because most of their channels are shopping channels, but at least we get SciFi and the satellite works.
By ghosty191 at 1:16 AM ON 06/27/08
When we finally received cable out here in BFE, we were so excited to be able to see a TV channel without snow. After a few years of non-service and several ownership transfers, I got smart and went with Dish Network and traded no picture for clear and defined wonderment. After all of these years of a great picture, I have almost decided to eliminate the ever-more expensive satellite for another good HD roof antenna, which will pull in a great digital picture from the city over the air. The rest of my programming will come from the internet, and I haven't seen a video DVD movie lately, that I couldn't live without, so they will all lose in the end.
By MediaBytes at 11:10 AM ON 12/29/08
My two cents:
I own over 600 audio CDs, but I haven't purchased one in about 7 years now because of the way record companies treat their customers. DRM, prosecution, lobbying, and constantly fighting to limit what I can do with what the media I purchased are unacceptable to me, so I boycotted the RIAA members. I only buy independent music now. I hope the RIAA members all go out of business for the way they inconvenience their paying customers in the fight against a (greatly exaggerated) few bad eggs who wouldn't have bought the media to start with. Claiming billions in losses is plain stupid when they wouldn't have made a cent from those people. The fact is, their declining market is completely due to their own incompetence at moving into the digital age and the evil way they treat their paying customers.
I own over 700 DVD, BD, HD-DVD movies currently. The MPAA is treading the very thin line before they push me into boycotting them, too. Their DRM greatly inconveniences me when I want to watch my own movies on my iPhone, iPod, networked PCs in my home, and home theater. So far, they have only legally pursued the worst pirates making lots of money selling copies of their products. They also try to shut down torrent sites, which is fine by me, since I buy ALL of my media. They haven't rampantly sued or blackmailed tens of thousands of innocent people like the RIAA has. So for now, I still buy movies.
Then there is the cable company. I'm an artist and photographer. I deal with large image files. I deal with large video files. I deal with large music files. I pay extra for an upgraded cable connection in order to transfer these files to different locations. Despite paying for upgraded speed, I find my transfers never reach more than half the speed I'm paying for. Usually it is much less. As there are no alternatives at my location, I feel trapped into using their poor quality service.
The big question I always wonder is: "How can they get away with this legally? Any other business would be prosecuted by the government for fraud when they only deliver half what was purchased?"