+ Top FAQs with Plex - for more help please check the WIKI.
- How do I add internet video such as TED, YouTube, CNET etc?
- Internet sources are added using the App Store found in the Applications menu. See the following screencast for more info. vimeo.com/3315184
- One of the plug-ins has stopped working.
- If a plug-in stops working, it’s likely that the structure of the site changed. This doesn’t happen very frequently with most sites, but it’s a definite possibility. When this occurs, an entity we call the “Campfire Robot” springs into action automatically and tracks us down to let us know, and shortly thereafter we can push an update. As such, if a site stops working, the best thing to do is to check the App Store for updates. If you have automatic updates turned on, check your install history to see if an update got installed while you were getting coffee.
- I don’t see the Applications Menu Item.
- If you previously used v5 of Plex we suggest deleting the folder called Plex found in ~/Library/Application Support/. Many things have changed and a fresh install will ensure the best performance with Plex.
- How do I make Movies and TV Shows show up in their respective areas with poster art, plot info, etc?
- View this screencast for more info vimeo.com/2758185
A Valentine’s Day Card to the Media Companies
Dear Media Companies,
I’m really beginning to think that things between us won’t work.
I have to admit that I’ve been cheating on you for a while now. I’ve been spending time with USENET. She’s old, she’s unattractive, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with her, but she does offer me one simple thing that you don’t: unencumbered access to ad-free media.
It didn’t have to be this way. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve never been a good listener. You seem more interested in your friends the Advertisers than me. And you’re terrified that I’ll steal your content, without realizing that (a) I already am and (b) you could offer me so much more.
In thinking of me as an untrustworthy thief, you’re missing some great opportunities. There is a holy trinity of things I want desperately from you, because I can’t get them anywhere else: availability, quality, and metadata. By availability I mean give me access to full catalogs of content. More is more. If I can’t get it from you, I’m going to have to go elsewhere, and you don’t want that. Secondly, give me quality: why would I go to you for SD content when I can get HD content elsewhere? Why would I go to you for ad-laden content when I can get ad-free content elsewhere? Lastly, give me rich metadata: reviews, related content, recommendations, transcripts, and credits. And give me an API interface to that data. In return I will give you my money every month, and I’ll rub your feet at least once a week.
I see you getting nervous, looking down at your shoes. Don’t you get it? I pay $30/month for my illicit relationship with the old hag, and she doesn’t offer me any meaningful part of the holy trinity – let’s face it, though, she only has to be better than you, and that’s not hard. She offers spotty availability, unreliable quality, and a paucity of metadata. The money I’m giving her could be in your pocket.
I would say that we needed counseling, but before that, I think you need to educate yourself a bit about basic economics; learn about concepts like tiered pricing and price discrimination. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that you’ve put your content online, but you’ve done it in a way that’s nearly useless to me. You want to offer it free, with ads? Great, but for the love of God, offer a subscription model where I can access it without the ads. Charge me a bit more and give me higher resolution content. A bit more and I get access to metadata for remixing your content.
(Remember two important things: (1) If you don’t give me what I want, I will go elsewhere and (2) You have the ability to give me things that I can’t get elsewhere.)
To reiterate: You have to stop being scared that I’m going to steal your content, because I’m already stealing your content. Your goal should be to get me to give you the money I’m already giving to others.
I’ll leave you with a win-win proposal. Sit down and run the numbers, and figure out how much I’m worth to you per month as a pair of eyeballs to your Advertiser friends. Double that amount, and that’s how much I’ll pay you for access to your content without any ads. Triple it, and that’s how much I’ll pay for high resolution, unencumbered content with metadata.
So please, take some time and think about things. I really think we could be great together.
37 comments37 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Wow , I hope some exec’s actually get to read this
Then they should get their IT guys to explain what usenet is
I think the ISP’s need to become the middleman for this sort of service , its the only way the media companys will operate
Virgin UK wanted to do something similar with a music service but the record companys killed the idea !
Exactly we are willing to pay, fair prices, $.99 for a movie, we really are not going to see it again, so dont charge us $3.99 for something that is only 90 minutes long and most of the time is shit.
Or make a subscription and some will watch more some will watch less but we are even willing to pay up to $99 dlls for EVERYTHING known to mankind from any year any era, any show, any movie we can think of without ads and with the best quality you can give us.
Think about it you can get $99 from me each month just give me everything and thats yours I swear and give me fast servers to download super fast.
So well written and so true. I feel the same way. Please, Movie and TV industry, take my money ! Give us, poor europeans, the US shows in a timely fashion. You don’t have to translate nor dubbed them. Just put it somewhere on the internet, take my money and give me a nice shiny MKV to watch.
Thanks Movie and TV industry, you have great assets, but you’re such a bitch to deal with everyday. Please change.
Fantastic letter, true down to the last letter. I may not agree with you on the tiered pricing, I don’t feel that I should pay more for something that costs them nothing and that should be the norm anyway. I’m talking about the quality. If anything, base price should be the highest quality, with a rebate should anything be available only in SD (like old shows). I refuse to pay more of my money for something I already should be getting.
Very well said and all very true.. Thanks for the chuckle..
I’ve been saying for years that the media companies have to quit ignoring their customers and give the people what they really want or they will find ways of getting it elsewhere.. And as a result, the ‘old hag’ is making a ton of money by giving the people what they want..
It’s not rocket science..
Amen to that brother!
Beautiful. Sadly, I think the relationship will continue to decay; you’ll just keep hurting each other until finally neither of you can pretend anymore.
I can’t agree more on all what is said. I would like to add: stop the DRM stuff: it’s not fair to pay 3.99 $ or € to rent something for 48 hours only (at this rate, for a TV show, it’s like the full season will cost 80 $ or €, although the DVD version will be less than 30, but 6 months later), and moreover only watchable on a single platform (guess which one). Also stop the stupidity of territoriality: conclude agreement on a world-wide basis, remember we are on the digital age, no more on the terrestrial road, with borders, one.
Thank you Elan for writing this “open” letters type Valentine’s card.
I really hope this will reach people inside those Media Companies them who can make this happen. I would subscribe directly to such a service. Yes I’d prefer a subscription model and they could charge more when content is fresh (in Cinema / Just released). I would like to be able to get all the formats (1080p – Iphone / mp3 – Loseless). And yes they could own the money i spend elsewhere now to get this content for free.
I hope they get this, I’m not interested in owning any Disk or files at all, let me subscribe, let me build my remixed catalogs / playlist, including sharing and accessing remixed content from / with others.
Of course we can’t forget most important, with API to pull of it into PLEX
I hope this will be more then a dream soon…
Wait a second.. You steal content?? How do you do that?
As a main developer, I don’t think it was a great idea to associate and identify with media theft on the Plex blog, as it paints the software with a certain political viewpoint. It really doesn’t seem the place to put such opinions. The software should stay neutral of such thorny issues.
Good letter but yeah, it might have been better off on a private blog. Especially since you are so connected to Plex, beeing the driving force behind it and all.
Anyway I agree. I would love a Spotify for movies, only without Spotify itself, just the API for metadata and movies.
Without the regional restrictions, mind you! Not all of us live in the US of A. Remember the poll from last year?
@brent and @gustav: I guess I see it the exact opposite way. I feel that I should speak up loudly especially because I am connected to a media center project.
Well said. I think the content producers have their own abusive relationship going on with the local and regional broadcasters, though, and it will be tough for them to make an end-run around them to get directly to the consumer.
That’s why you won’t see My Name Is Earl on Hulu until 24 hours after it ran on broadcast TV, even though NBC controls the entire distribution chain.
This open letter was definitely the best-written thing I have read all Valentine’s Day – and rings very true indeed. I’m a huge fan of Plex – keep up the great work!
While I may not agree entirely with the dismissal of ads (I find it hard to believe the in-content advertising would be so easily passed up even within a subscription model), as a resident of the world as opposed the world inside the U.S., I really haven’t much of a choice but to opt for solutions like Usenet, since iTunes (and pretty much everything else…) isn’t available for convenient purchase-by-download. The current legislation practically forces those doomed to live anywhere but the States to pirate music and media. I wouldn’t mind paying as I typically do for software, I just can’t bear the idea of breaking the law by proxy and a fake IP just order to pay up…
I do agree on almost everything, apart from the ad-free things. I have no problem whatsoever having ads in my tv-shows. Hell, make them so I can’t fast forward when they’re on. As long as:
1. I can watch whatever, whenever I want.
2. The ads are based on my profile.
Face it: I, Single, 30-ish want to decide what I want to see after a hard day in the office. And I have no use for buying diapers or fem-stuff.. Give me ads with loads of gadgets, movies and so on and I’ll promise I will have no problems with ads.
@ealz & @ube: I’m not saying that ads shouldn’t play a role – indeed, I think they play a very important role in allowing them to offer media for “free”.
However, what I’m strongly opposed to is not being given the *choice* of avoiding the visual/mind pollution of ads in exchange for compensating the content providers for the lost ad revenue.
There are plenty of providers of content (e.g. Pandora) who offer premium subscriptions in exchange for ad-free content.
I agree completely. The digital age is upon these guys and they have the opportunity to deliver on-demand stuff and capitalize on the concept, but instead we’re stuck with ridiculous DRM (closed codecs, time restrictions, player count restrictions, etc), ‘online streaming’ which is the worst idea known to man, SD content (I find the cost difference between HD downloads and SD downloads absurd, especially when both are broadcast freely via normal TV airwaves). I would love to be able to pay comcast $99/mo and get 16Mb internet and on-demand access to any/all TV content for the 2 or so hours a day that I get to enjoy it.
I’m sick of paying through the nose for prescribed content that I have no control over timing or order, and which goes unused anywhere from 18-22 hours / day. Give me a pricing model that makes sense for me. I don’t need 400 channels or digital phone service from my cable provider. I need content provisioning and a distribution framework that works for me. The only channels I can think of that are justified with the current model are the news channels (CNN, C-SPAN, etc) and the weather channel. Everything else should be some type of on demand service.
Living in the Great White North I feel the confusion of media the greatest. I don’t know what it is but seems like the 49th parallel creates an Iron curtain over our “free” country.
The media exec’s wonder why Canadians “steal” their TV shows left, right and center – Steal being an operative word because, we’ll, we can’t legitimately buy it, so how can we steal something were not allowed to buy…. Can we get Direct TV – Nope, how about Dish Network – Nope, wait iTunes, yeah we should have full access to that – Nope. Come on I can’t even watch a free show on the internet. You know what this kinda sounds like communism, huh seemingly close similarities…
Anyways enough about that rant. You know what, in all honesty I’ll take the ‘hag’ any day over the gold digging blonde bimbo. Yeah sure she’s great to look at and wild in bed but that only lasts so long. She’s dumber then a bag of nails and all she wants is your money. The ‘hag’ at least isn’t picky, she cooks and cleans and in the end she’s loyal.
So just grab yourself some USENET, setup sabnzbd, register a couple RSS feeds (This is an unbelievable feature, a few key words and it does all the work), let PLEX do the scrapping and have your shows the way you want them, because there’s no way I’m going back to cable.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Spreading the word of Plex at
http://bravelittlememe.tumblr.com
I have to agree 100 %. I have followed plex since it started more than a year ago and I think this is my first post.
If you think the situation in the US is poor, you cannot imagine how bad is in Spain…. no movies on iTunes, no movies on Playstation Network… (I’m not saying this should be the way to go.. no way, but we do not even have that)…
I am paying 40 € to my internet provider. They are the only ones getting the money…. c’mon, be smart !! I’m willing to pay much more for a subscription model ….
@brett, @gustav & others: I believe that you want reject the reality and replace it with your own.
Many people are downloading movies. Some of them are using this project to watch their movies. People love to have their HD mkv files in their huge screens. But nobody is listening.
The truth can be scary but that’s it.
BTW: I bought the Ocean’s triology. I lost it with my luggage. The media was “protected” (ok, you can laugh about CSS), so no copy could be made. Then I realized that to own a DVD is nothing… to enjoy the movie is everything.
I want to enjoy, I can pay for it. Does someone smell…. business?
Dear Elan, your love letter is what inspired me to start writing a small comment that is now turning into a long “dissertation” so I am considering placing it on a wordpress blog I started but never had time to publish… will update soon with the link and maybe will spark more interest in the viewers community. Lots to talk about for a short comment so that’s a raincheck until I will have the article up on my new blog page. In the meantime I really enjoyed your creative letter and everyone’s comment. I believe you all had the power to reopen a never-healing wound of mine with this thread
It’s 5.00 AM and have to work tomorrow, I couldn’t help but keep writing on a text file which is now way past the length it may be allowed to post here… All your fault! LOL ;P. More coming soon then… Elan keep up the great job, I’ll write also my impressions about the player as soon as I’ll have time to check it out, but for what I see now it’s already looking esthetically great!
yup i agree completely!
i would pay a monthly fee – hell maybe as much as tv or broadband, if i could download whatever shows i want, or whatever movies i want.
i’d save that on bandwidth and other related p2p/usenet costs!
but i won’t put up with DRM, low-quality and region-restrictions; which i don’t get with p2p/usenet, as a bonus i also get cover-art, subtitles and metadata from p2p/usenet.
i won’t buy a movie i can’t keep for more than a week and i won’t buy a movie i have to play using some windows media player spyware or some java/flash rubbish – i want to play it on my xbox or mac or linux box using xbmc or videolan or mplayer without having to “phone home” to acquire a license.
i don’t mind adverts on the website, i can always block those, i can even fastforward adverts you might put in the shows, although seems like a waste of bandwidth.
i never go to the cinema anymore, i’ve spent way too much on home theatre equipment to sit in some uncomfortable seat alongside complete strangers and pay through the nose for candy and get charged more than the price of a dvd for my ticket.
the music companies are starting to get it with mp3 – who wants to ask itunes if they are allowed to play their music using some broken implementation of aac only on mac/windoze?
The first rule of usenet is DO NOT TALK ABOUT USENET
Product placements in movies have to stop also…or the movies should be FREE (the pop corn is expensive enough as is!!!)
i somehow think if it ever became as easy as buying a simple subscription to access unlimited songs or movies, it might diminish my love for digital media. for some reason i like being able to access media on usenet that your average computer user doesn’t have the time/energy to figure out. similarly, i don’t think i would enjoy being able to walk into best buy and purchase a ready-to-go htpc with a bug free front end pre-loaded.
it’s the journey that we enjoy, not the destination (is that in some aerosmith song i downloaded on kazaa in 1991?)
this is a relationship that will end with “It’s not me, it’s you.”
Preamble: I know not if there is a posting limit, but I shall discover it as I tend to write extensively when it’s a topic I care about.
Dear Elan, thanks for such a wonderful truthful letter!
)
You produced it, edited it, published it and also distributed it, hosted it, broadcasted it (via web). You provided this letter for both my enjoyment as well as to keep me informed. You did all that without even placing a single banner ad on the page, which has ga.js, but that’s invisible and besides, analytics is usually not a form of advertisement anyway. You also did not place any intellitxt or similar text pop-up advertisement expedients (lame and annoying… not that I would see them since I block them
So… according to the corporate entertainment and news industries (broadcasting, movies, etc), how much do I owe you for entertaining and informing me with that letter? ;P :chuckle:
Sure you are open to Paypal donations and may be a keg of beer or two… but that’s not how corporate entertainment and news industry plays it! You got it all wrong! You should sell access to this blog and charge the crap out of the application! Yeah! That’s how you do it! Haven’t you learn anything from the big marketing wigs running the numbers and coming up with brilliant and effective ideas like Macrovision, CSS, DRM?! LOL!
Ok now let me put aside both sarcasm and cynicism (although not all of it ;P) and use, or at least try to use, a better part of me: logic and optimism
I share most, if not all, the feelings that permeate through the letter and all comments here above. I loved going through this entire thread as that’s the first time in a blog I have seen each comment being heartfelt, very personal and balanced, no matter the point of view they were expressing… gotta love freedom of speech when not abused!
Whether I agree or not to them, all the comments I found here are IMHO valid critical points of view. The “urban saying” about opinions (that opinions are like a-holes: everyone has one and it usually stinks) in this thread really doesn’t apply, and I am really glad about that, because as much as I love the web, since it has become so popular (and populated) it has inevitably and sadly started to fill up with all kind of garbage.
The topic in your letter represents one of my (several) ongoing struggles about the battle for a fair and usable system when it comes to today’s entertainment and information industries, the system used to make their products come to fruition, and the level of interaction, customization and decision-making left to its end users (we the people ;D). I feel quite strongly about it, because not only entertainment is part of life, but it’s of the aspects that reflects the freedom of choice, level of fairness, and technological progress of a society, I could elaborate more on the matter and become “all philosophical”, but I will leave it at that for now. (I am open to expand the dialog privately with anyone who would happen to feel like it ;D). Your letter, the comments I read here, and the way I feel about this issue, were the reasons that brought me to spend time writing this long comment.
I am an average viewer who unfortunately still needs to work an 8-hour day (or more and at times even weekends), therefore my time for video entertainment is fairly limited. I still need to sleep (at least 6-8 hours) and when I do have free time I try to also have a social life. I often prefer to spend time with friends or enjoying different kind of entertainment like those involving beer, wine and food
and btw there may be some news watching here, but it’s often online since I hate commercials during TV newscasts),
So where do I fit among the customer profiles so poorly considered by those marketing department in the entertainment business, who seem to live on another planet given the choices they make? Well let’s do some math shall we?
In an average week day, let’s say that how my time is spent:
8 hours of sleep (in average, but sometime less during the weekdays or more, if I can, during the weekends),
2 of commuting,
8 of work (again that’s a rough average since may be more),
1 hours for lunch (no TV/Film watching here!),
1 hour for dinner (once again in average since may be more because I do my own cooking… call me old-fashioned
So, what does that leaves this customer profile with?
Well… just a bit less than 4 hours, probably closer to 3, if I include also the time necessary for “bio-breaks”, showering, washing dishes and other tasks that may be trivial but are indeed unavoidable and do require some time allocation)
Now what can I do with “all of those 3 hours of time” I have left to dedicate to my enjoyment? May be watch some TV, if I manage to find something interesting that is. Ok, I have to admit that will be unlikely, plus I already know that I will turn it off after the first 10 minutes where I’ll get bombarded with commercials. Having cable TV is really a waste of money, for the price they charge is really not worth to have! May be watch a movie? Well… depending on the movie I’ve selected from NetFlix, I may or not be in the mood to watch it that night, because of the movie genre, or because I may think is a bit too long and that night I do not feel like watching a long movie, or may be I am just not in the mood to watch any movies and want to do something else altogether
We’re still humans aren’t we? So it’s conceivable that we may want to do something other than watch a film or TV! May be reading or surf the net? I happen to have several passions and one of them is playing instruments, so I’d rather jam a bit since I get disgusted by turning on the TV and flipping through a ton of commercial-laden channels. Not that the commercials are the worst thing on TV nowadays! If that was the case, it would actually be great news! Some programs are so worthless that some well-done commercials result way more enjoyable to watch and even become an entertainment masterpiece in comparison! It’s really sad to see what the world of entertainment has become today! The handful (one hand!) of channels worth to watch are still plagued by commercials, so even when despite all, I happen find something extremely interesting that I’d really like to watch, it all comes down to either giving up because I’ve got fed up with the way-too-frequent commercial interruptions, or (and that if I am relatively relaxed that day) I decide to stoically endure the pain and stay up almost 2 hours to watch a program that is barely 1-hour long. Because of the current situation I do not watch TV often as you can tell… sounds familiar anyone?
So back to the math… let’s say I have 3 hours to glue myself to the screen every weekday (for TV programs or movies), what about during the weekend? Let’s throw in another 10 hours between Saturday and Sunday, that should be a fair average between those who have the patience, passion and strength to endure back-to-back film watching for 2 days, and those who actually have a less “screens-driven” entertainment life
According to these figures the total so far is 25 hours of “intense” Film/TV viewing per week therefore 100 hours/month (take a mental note of this for later… ;D)
Paul from UK thinks ISPs should become the middleman for media companies, so that initiatives like that of Virgin UK, to bring subscription-based services to customers, will not be killed by record companies. I get Paul’s point, but unfortunately I had the chance to experience first hand the way record labels operate when it comes to web subscription services, and believe me when I say that unless Record Labels change their Modus Operandi and lower their greed threshold, trying to please Record or Movie companies won’t work because ISP nowadays are part of those media companies (My ISP is time warner cable) and share the same narrow minded utmost greed and complete disregard for customers community (aka all of us). To make it all worse in this globalized market there is no real competition or alternative because monopolization and healthy competition do not exist. To give you an example of de-facto monopoly, where I live in the US, I have no ISP choice, other than time warner cable. Sure there are other operators, like cable vision but when I called them up they told me I could not become a customer of theirs because I am “owned” by time warner… talking about freedom of choice! That’s mafia racketeering, where cities are divided in ownership areas. Because of this, it’s either I swallow what they give me, at the price they set, or I get no ISP service. I also have Verizon DSL in my area (no FIOS), but at their lower speed for the same price to switch to DSL would be “to cut my nose off to spite my face”. So as you can see, there is no interest for the players in the market to give a real choice to the customer (in any market) and that would not change when media companies get involved… it only gets worse. When it comes to media and related service that’s not a mall where you can pick and choose what food you’ll eat for dinner. It’s the same sh*t soup every night!
To mention one instance of how obtuse, illogical, fear and greed-driven the entertainment (and related) industry is, just think about Napster (and the likes) in their early days. Those system’s servers were not saving any copyrighted materials, nonetheless media companies rather than turning that “invention” to their advantage by making it become a system that they controlled and used to serve a vast variety of high-quality content to their customers (via paid subscription service for instance), what did they do? They freaked out, failed to see the real potential (hell.. they didn’t even have to finance R&D departments to come up with the Napster system) and as a result of ignorance and greed, they demonized and killed a perfectly good system, saying it was an illegal P2P because it was offering a mean of communication between peers who were exchanging copyrighted digital content. So by the same standard the entire Post Office system and shipment services like FedEx, UPS, DHL, should be shut down, because they put people in contact ergo those people can send each other copyrighted materials! Sounds absurd to shut down shipping services because of that, isn’t it? Well, if the the statements that applied to Napster (et sim.) didn’t sound absurd, why should it sound as such when compared to shipping companies?
Mike “Living in the Great White North” is the quintessential expression of the reasons why people use “other” ways to get their favorite content: there is no other legal alternative, and so far the only available ones are insanely priced? Give consumers a choice and allow them to be the one who are in control of their reasonably priced entertainment content and they will stop “borrowing” elsewhere! Even those who went for Hulu and “Boxee” (http://boxee.tv/) are now screwed because of the never ending greed of the broadcasting companies and content providers themselves and their disregard for the consumers (http://www.macworld.com/article/138899/2009/02/huluboxeedisconnect.html?lsrc=rss_main)! Hulu just pulled the plug on boxee service (http://origin-blog.hulu.com/2009/2/18/doing-hard-things)! So you see? They’ll never learn!
adrianc 1982 and damdamdam reiterated a great point that the media industry seems not to get to these days… we are ready to pay a fair price “rather than find other alternatives” as long as we are given the option of choosing what to watch free of loads of commercial interruptions. Now… the entertainment industry will need to re-think with a less greedy approach their idea of fair pricing, because judging from current DVD, CD, VOD and PPV pricing, companies and their consumer base (us) are definitely not on the same page. As adrianc 1982 puts it (and I guess he’s referring to Video On Demand) why on earth would anyone want to pay 4 bucks for a movie one is not going to see again? He quantifies that to be worth a buck, but I have a different idea when it comes to rentals of movies or tv shows.
Let’s take NetFlix for instance, whose success is ironically boosted by the inadequacy of other services and pricing provided by cable/satellite companies, as well as by the lack of streaming services of broadcasting companies. And I say NetFlix since it appears to me to be the fairest example given that as of today, with 10 Million subscribers, sounds like those subscribers all approve of NetFlix pricing to the point that they actually subscribed and keep using NF services. The highest tier the company offers costs 17 dollars/month, that will give you 3DVDs out at-a-time, plus unlimited online streaming (the quality is nearly indistinguishable from DVD, but do not expect blueray HD results). So as far as entertainment rentals are concerned, a fair price that I can deduce from the $17/mo Netflix pricing alone, is $0.17/hour because in the sample rough calculation of “entertainment time” above in a month the time available that someone can potentially dedicate to entertainment is an average of 3.3 hours/day or 100 hours/month. According to my fuzzy math, it’s apparent that the more time one has to dedicate to video entertainment via Netflix, the more they’ll be making their money worth. If one can get 200 hours out of a $17/mo service will have definitely made most out of their money at 8.5 cents per hour… but my advice to anyone like that would be to go out for a walk a bit more often ;P In the worst case you get to use very little the service like it often happens to me for a reason or another, consider that if only watch 2 movies per weekend at an average of 1.5h each movie although it’s usually more including special features, interviews, behind the scenes, making of, etc. (which btw is something you never get with cable/satellite), your rental cost would still lower than a $4 VOD session, because each rental would only cost you $2.125. And did I mention that your VOD session is only good for a 24h period, which means if you change your plans you just threw 4 bucks out of the window?
By now you can tell I am an happy (for lack of a better and equally funny term) “netflixer”. In my experience I’ve never had a problem with their shipping schedule and although, occasionally, a delivered DVD may result defective and non-playable, I simply ship it back and get a replacement one, sometimes the next day. When I send back a defective media, I usually include a note to try help with the NF system, as there may be a better chance they’ll dispose of that defective copy and avoid it’ll get re-routed to other subscribers. I’d like to think everyone would do the same, to prevent their fellow “netflixers” from receiving non-working media. I never had to wait more than a day or two to receive my DVDs and if you really are an avid movie watcher, between the shipped DVDs and those you can stream online (unfortunately you’ll need WMP10 and IE because they are DRM protected… thank you MPAA) one can easily overdose on Films and TV shows during a single month.
)… the sad truth is NetFlix is currently the only legal service I am aware of, that allows me to select and enjoy watching films and TV shows I like all for a fair monthly price. To me that is the best solution at the moment because I do not want to resort to usenet or illegal movie downloads. Two wrongs never make one right… yes a stressed consumer may potentially give into those practices due to lack of legal alternatives and it is indeed understandable, but that’s a quick patch rather than a solution to the real problem, nonetheless it’s still ethically questionable and should be discouraged by fighting to make those who can allow consumer to be back into legality for a unlimited service at a low monthly fee! My intentions couldn’t be further from sounding like preaching. The point of the matter is that those that CAN do something about it MUST start listening to the consumers who drive and make their business thrive!
One thing I love about NetFlix, is that I (my wife really since she’s the film buff ;P) get to choose what I want to watch, whenever I want, wherever I want. I can carry the DVDs with me so that I can enjoy a back-to-back movie-night with friends, while staying over at their place, or I can leave the DVDs at home and use the streaming service instead. And I can do the very same, while traveling half-way around the world, because there is no late fees to return the DVD (so they can travel with me for the entire trip), and then, when I am done watching the DVDs, I can still choose among the streaming titles and watch them on my laptop while still abroad. All for the same price! The only limitation is really the amount of titles available at NetFlix, but they are steadily growing.
I know I sound like someone working for Netflix (I am not, just to clarify
Netflix did! And because of that, from a small operation has now become a quite large company. Of course it can (and should) be improved, which would help NetFlix to become even more successful than it is today, which can only happen if the entertainment industry understand the advantages and allows companies like NF to progress and enhance their distribution services. With forethought over the possibility of its larger success, something I would not want to witness it to see Netflix become the only company holding the monopoly over this sector. I’d like to see more companies in the content delivery business (online or offline). If the media giants both music and video, will allow such distribution companies to thrive (thing that will require all such giants to curb their own excessive greed for ever-larger revenue streams), it would be a win-win situation for everyone. Those who produce content, those who distribute it, and those who “consume it”.
Something that the entertainment industry has to finally realize is that the reality of entertainment today has changed drastically. There are huge amount of possibilities they haven’t even started to tackle… only iTunes store has managed to get the greedy record labels at first, on some sort of digital distribution channel. The prices weren’t all that cheap for a low quality digital file encoded at 128kbps, but as soon as Apple showed the greedy non-believers entertainment big wigs that “if you build it, they will come”, the prices got lowered eventually by a little after the initial record labels’ crave was partially placated by those crowds of people, young and old, flocking to purchase tracks and albums tor their new shiny and overpriced iPods (for the record I am not against any of that… the iPods were overpriced no matter how good they looked… and yes I do own an iPod myself, it’s the old video one that I can still connect to my computers and mount as a drive, or watch on my TV via video cable adapter… try to do that now with a new iPod ;P)
Personally I have never bought a single track on the iTunes store because I am against DRM (now finally gone) as a principle… there was never a lock on my LPs or Tapes and I wasn’t about to accept DRM restriction to be imposed on my freedom as a user, a music listener and customer, just because some obtuse dinosaur at the RIAA or MPAA is certain I can’t handle honestly my freedom and the right to media free of any restrictions. Obviously we are all thieves in their minds, so they have to put in place measures to prevent us from committing a theft! DRM starts to sound like a minority report! All music shoppers are to be preemptively “incarcerated” inside the DRM facilities, and that’s for our own good of course, as it’s necessary to save ourselves from our own unavoidable thieving nature! Did you ever happen to see that commercial against piracy about illegal downloads, telling the viewer: “if you download illegally you are no better than a car thief stealing a car, a pickpocket stealing a lady’s handbag or a physical DVD from store shelves” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5SmrHNWhak
Well give me a g*ddamn break MPAA and RIAA both! Start understanding your market and you will cover yourselves in gold without the need of ripping people off!
In the past Record Labels had it easy… if you wanted to listen to a record you had to be well off enough to own a record player (the 78 rpm ones) or you may have been able to afford a tube radio… remember those you see sometimes on “antique’s roadshow” ? LOL! No piracy there… nobody was a thief!
With the introduction of more refined audio hardware such as the stereo record players, more records became available on an expanding market where the price per record was dropping and becoming more accessible. Despite those events when compared to the ratio of number of 78rpm records sold per each 78rpm player owned, people were buying even less music… add to it that not many people across the globe did not own stereos in their homes and cars, let alone portable players. Because of that and because LPs and Cassettes weren’t exactly cheap to buy, there were way less active/potential buyers than there are today! Let’s add that in this whole scenario LP and Cassettes weren’t “copy protected” and could be copied and shared, but was up to individuals not to infringe copyrights. Sure copying wasn’t as easy as with digital files today, although that easy comes at the price of quality, since an MP3 can’t even compare to the quality of sound given by a good LP player or a tape deck playing a “Metal-Oxide” tape.
Then, along came the CD, and despite the few attempts to copy-protect them they have always been protection-free and could duplicate and put them on your portable player so you could listen to your tunes on the go, at work, etc. So if record labels “trusted” consumers handing out a CD where digital tracks of higher-than-MP3 quality could be copied, why didn’t they do the same with lower quality digital fiels? Well they apparently felt in control when they were materially selling the media, but they had problems with selling the same content (not really since lots of the sound quality was trashed by compressing them), when it came to sell files online. But wait… didn’t all the illegal sharing started using content ripped from protection-free CDs? And why did the whole riping-craze start?
I will not deny that there were some who thought it was cool to have the collection of this and that artist without paying a dime for it. No matter what that is ultimately very uncool and wrong especially if one like those artists… true, the record labels charge an arm and a leg for the content, but ripping the artists off is no solution. The scope of the problem is wider.
Because the price of copyrighted content was so unjustifiably high that people rather sacrifice quality and get “unsanctioned” content elsewhere… record labels cry that record are expensive to produce and marketing artists requires loads of cash, well cry me a river then! Marketing channels like concerts, radio and TV will never be an excuse for ripping off the public! The public pays dearly for concert tickets and radios and TV broadcasting cost their operators broadcasting fees… all money that end up in the copyright holders pocket, so the argument that marketing artists is a costly business hasn’t got even a leg to stand on!
The digital revolution was in full spin and those who didn’t know how to handle it were panicing, they just weren’t and still don’t get the point in a quickly changing market. Less and less people buy music and films on media (CD and DVD) and even less people go to movie theaters. Is that movie ticket really worth the money? Why should I pay more than a movie ticket to purchase a DVD since I can’t watch it in the theater and I have to supply my own equipment to be able to view it? The decline in sale of the CDs not “all fault” of illegal downloads as much as MPAA and RIAA would want everyone to think.
Today an average household has several devices capable of reproducing and recording audio and video with quite good quality (to all audiophiles: I know, I know, I am applying “popular public” standards here ;D), and that includes portable devices… So how much money are media companies really loosing by failing to recognize how to move correctly in the digital world? They’re stuck in a time-warp! Film production giants are stuck in the past as much as record labels! At least as far as distribution and customer fruition is concerned. They are so used to deal with consumers the same way they did back when they were distributing reels to the networks of cinemas across the globe that at the time were the only revenue streams they had! My God… and they are complaining today? How dare they call us viewers, “thieves” in a preemptive manner! They do so by copy-protecting copyrighted materials. That’s offensive to say the least! They must be scared to death… but why I ask? May be they need a bit of introspection rather than telling us “it’s not me, it’s you!” in this horrible relationship the entertainment industry has with us consumers! And as a starter, they could to, at least, LISTEN for once! In the end they may even benefit from that listening as long as they understand what they are hearing and act on it!
Here here! I’m on the same page. If it’s easier to get it “legally”, then getting it “illegally” isn’t a problem, it’s a revenue stream.
Ads will never go away. Media and marketing/advertising have a symbiotic relationship and neither can exist without the other. Do you really think all that content is made for free? Or for cheap?
An ad-free reality is ONLY going to happen illegally or for a VERY HIGH PREMIUM. Seriously, if advertising was eliminated completely we’d all have to pay INSANE amount of money for the quality of programming/movies we are currently experiencing.
These are just hard facts. I wish I lived in Utopia too, but it’s just not going to happen.
Erik,
I have to respectfully disagree with you. In fact, I think it’s that sort of thinking on the part of the studios that Elan is speaking out against.
First of all, HBO put’s out *amazing* original programming, 100% commercial free, and for the relatively low cost of ~10$/mo. Secondly, look at appleTV (or whatever other similar service you fancy). They offer a season pass to commercial free broadcast programming, for 30-50$ per season. If you assume 22 shows in a season, at 4 shows in a month, that averages out to approximately 8$/mo/show. I only watch 6 or 7 shows on a regular basis, so that would be about 50$/mo, which is far less than I pay for cable TV.
I’m not trying to make a statement about the rights/wrongs/ups/downs/validity/whatevers of obtaining media via unauthorized sources. But I will say that i believe the media companies are shooting themselves in the foot in their vain attempt to hang on to their old business model. “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”
Appreciate the info guys, thanks
Every time i come here I am not dissapointed, nice post
It seems like something is missing, no?
counter to the spirit of what you’re saying here, but you don’t have to pay $30/mo to that old hag. there’s finally a reason to set up ipv6- free usenet servers with 120 day binary retention. there’s info at https://www.sixxs.net/misc/coolstuff/ – not as good as what the $30 gets you, but free is worth something, huh?