DVDs ARE THE NEW VINYL
Nov. 8th, 2011 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogITEM: Hollywood movie studios are making plans to kill off the DVD format because everyone watches movies on the Internet now.
Well, not everyone. But with home entertainment revenues down 40% and with viewers becoming armed with more and more consumer-electronics with Internet connectivity, to include TV sets, in the next few years, studios are realizing they need to embrace direct downloads and streaming to keep up with demand (and, presumably, to keep people from resorting to torrent sites like they do now).
While that does indicate a drastic change in mindset (imagine the music industry deciding to kill the CD format in favor of iTunes and Spotify), I'm a little skeptical that DVDs (whether classic DVDs or these fancy Blu-Rays the kids enjoy today or whatever) are going to go anywhere anytime soon.
There will always be a market for physical media as long as the number of people who (1) have a broadband connection) and (2) use that connection to watch movies online is smaller than people who don't. Online video will have to hit some kind of critical mass to justify dropping one format in favor of another. That’ll probably happen maybe 20 years from now, but not in “the next few years”.
The other thing is that they have to make online streaming video as attractive as possible, and that’s going to involve doing things that make movie studios nervous – like letting people watch stuff on as many screens as possible, be it a flat-panel TV set, a laptop, an iPad or a smartphone. That creates a lot of licensing headaches and DRM compatibility issues, and goes against their preferred business model of charging you per-view or requiring separate subscriptions for each individual device (ka-ching!).
This is, after all, the same movie industry that wants to make it a felony to share yr Netflix account with anyone else.
So yeah, even if Hollywood wants to drop the DVD format, I don’t think the market will let them. Not if they're going to replace it with an inferior and inconvenient experience, and not when people have torrent sites as an alternate option.
Slipped discs,
This is dF
Well, not everyone. But with home entertainment revenues down 40% and with viewers becoming armed with more and more consumer-electronics with Internet connectivity, to include TV sets, in the next few years, studios are realizing they need to embrace direct downloads and streaming to keep up with demand (and, presumably, to keep people from resorting to torrent sites like they do now).
While that does indicate a drastic change in mindset (imagine the music industry deciding to kill the CD format in favor of iTunes and Spotify), I'm a little skeptical that DVDs (whether classic DVDs or these fancy Blu-Rays the kids enjoy today or whatever) are going to go anywhere anytime soon.
There will always be a market for physical media as long as the number of people who (1) have a broadband connection) and (2) use that connection to watch movies online is smaller than people who don't. Online video will have to hit some kind of critical mass to justify dropping one format in favor of another. That’ll probably happen maybe 20 years from now, but not in “the next few years”.
The other thing is that they have to make online streaming video as attractive as possible, and that’s going to involve doing things that make movie studios nervous – like letting people watch stuff on as many screens as possible, be it a flat-panel TV set, a laptop, an iPad or a smartphone. That creates a lot of licensing headaches and DRM compatibility issues, and goes against their preferred business model of charging you per-view or requiring separate subscriptions for each individual device (ka-ching!).
This is, after all, the same movie industry that wants to make it a felony to share yr Netflix account with anyone else.
So yeah, even if Hollywood wants to drop the DVD format, I don’t think the market will let them. Not if they're going to replace it with an inferior and inconvenient experience, and not when people have torrent sites as an alternate option.
Slipped discs,
This is dF
