Physical & Digital EST: The Future of Home Video Discussion Thread

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

It makes zero business sense to continue offering a movie that makes no money. That becomes even more true when there are licensing disputes that have to be dealt with to continue offering a movie. I also covered a bunch of other potential problems in a previous post, none of them can affect physical media:

Originally Posted by zodwriter

What makes you so sure this paranoia will have any impact whatsoever on people's existing libraries? Using only VUDU as a digital example the possibility of them going into every account holder's collection and removing movies they aren't selling or a studio is no-longer licensing seems silly. Over the years I've seen VUDU stop selling dozens of movies I have in my library and I have not lost access to anything. I think it all boils down to studios covering their butts when they give the two year disclaimer. It doesn't mean they are going to make it a point to take anything away from their customers. VUDU has been a nice change of pace from the unreliability of Blu Rays for me. No skipping, no strange hiccups or bizarre freezing. No waiting for commercials and warning labels prior to playing films. Portability to watch whatever I have in my collection wherever I am whenever I feel like it. Seriously Blu Rays are just digital copies on a coaster, there is nothing special about them and frankly it seems like disc only people have a far more difficult time arguing their position than those of us who are digital only or enjoy both formats together. Studios are not stupid. They make all these commercials and have campaigns against piracy. Stealing honestly purchased and legitimately owned content from your digital library would make them no better than the people they are fighting against who download everything illegally.

I'm with you, Penguin seems to think Movies have to keep making money in order to be Supported in your Collection. Like you, I say it's all Digital whether on a Disc or Provider's Server. No matter what anyone thinks, Studios don't want to take advantage, they just want to be fair about selling Movies. Once you buy that Movie Disc or Digital, it's yours no one wants to take it away. That won't benefit anyone.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by alchav21

I'm with you, I was saying if my Digital Collection last 99 years I'd be happy but more realistically all I need is a good 50 years. Like you said, life is too short to worry about what might happen tomorrow.

Originally Posted by veritas

odds are extremely unlikely all of the digital distributors will last even 50 years. I would say the odds are like a 50% chance one of the major digital distributors (google amazon, microsoft vudu or itunes) will leave the business within the next 10 years.

Yes, and your Point is? That Digital Movie will still exist, and be on someone's Server to access. Like it was brought up before, Disc is just a Storage Device, so why not just Store it on a Local Media Server for access.

[alchav21]

Originally Posted by alchav21

Life is too short to worry about what might happen tomorrow.

Originally Posted by whipnet

Planning for tomorrow is also a popular concept.

But you can't worry about it.

[flyry]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

It makes zero business sense to continue offering a movie that makes no money. :

I just fail to see this logic still as it's just existing in the cloud. I doubt someone is monitoring how long it's been since someone purchased What Lies Beneath.

It just sitting there with the possibility for future sales makes more sense than them just removing it.

Plus I'm sure Vudu is making money from the ads that play on their "movies on us" section since I know you will counter with how much it supposedly costs to maintain their servers. Vudu has over 23,000 movies and I expect that to continue to grow

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by Texan26

Yes it does make sense because if they remove movies, customers will stop buying any more digital movies. I've had True Lies on Vudu digital HD for many years since they last had it available. It doesn't make them any money. Still in my library.

http://www.vudu.com/movies/#!content/7686/True-Lies

What is your definition of many years? I'm talking about movies being removed when they've barely sold in 10-20 years. That obviously isn't the case with True Lies because Vudu hasn't even existed for 10 years.

Plus many people have commented that if a few movies disappear after a while then it isn't a big deal. I think that's the general attitude. Therefore digital providers won't lose many customers by deleting unpopular movies.

Are you honestly saying that if a single movie you care about gets deleted then you'll stop buying digital movies?

Originally Posted by flyry

Vudu has over 23,000 movies and I expect that to continue to grow

23,000 is practically nothing. More than that are released every couple of years. Since the vast majority of them get extremely few sales it doesn't make sense to spend tens of millions on extra storage just to make sure every movie ever released remains available.

Originally Posted by alchav21

No matter what anyone thinks, Studios don't want to take advantage, they just want to be fair about selling Movies. Once you buy that Movie Disc or Digital, it's yours no one wants to take it away. That won't benefit anyone.

Nothing about removing a movie that hasn't made money in decades is unfair. It's extremely entitled to say that because you paid $10 for a movie the digital providers are required to keep storing and providing that movie for the rest of your life.

[willbfree]

Originally Posted by zodwriter

Fact 2: Disc only supporters keep claiming that the studios can and will eventually delete people's digital collections simply because they have the ability to do so and are not going to wanna pay the pennies required to maintain movies that aren't selling anymore in people's existing Collections.FALSE: This makes no business sense whatsoever. If people's digital collections start disappearing so does the money studios receive from the people purchasing their digital products.

There are supporters of digital distribution who have been as vocal as disc supporters about the possibility that titles will not be perpetually available (digitally) from studios. Stating that this is coming from some marginal "disc only" crowd is not accurate.

And why do both supporters of digital distribution and supporters of discs comsider this possibility? Because it makes no business sense to continue to offer a title when that title's income is less than that title's expense.

How would a studio justify to its shareholders (or to itself if privately owned) spending even a cent on a title that doesn't pay for itself?

This isn't an argument between disc lovers and digital lovers, it is an argument between people who view businesses as profit-driven and people who view businesses as interest-driven.

[Texan26]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

What is your definition of many years? I'm talking about movies being removed when they've barely sold in 10-20 years. That obviously isn't the case with True Lies because Vudu hasn't even existed for 10 years.

Vudu came out in 2007. Their HDX movies started coming out in 2008. Walmart bought them in 2010. Ultraviolet format debuted in 2011. They are not a new format like many of you keep mentioning.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by alchav21

I'm with you, Penguin seems to think Movies have to keep making money in order to be Supported in your Collection. Like you, I say it's all Digital whether on a Disc or Provider's Server. No matter what anyone thinks, Studios don't want to take advantage, they just want to be fair about selling Movies. Once you buy that Movie Disc or Digital, it's yours no one wants to take it away. That won't benefit anyone.

Comedy post of the month. Well done! studios don't want to take advantage? In my opinion, that is very false.

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by Texan26

Vudu came out in 2007. Their HDX movies started coming out in 2008. Walmart bought them in 2010. Ultraviolet format debuted in 2011. They are not a new format like many of you keep mentioning.

10 years is new. It certainly isn't enough time for them to start removing movies that haven't made any money in decades.

[Talal86]

Originally Posted by darkknightman

Has anyone also considered the possibility that many people don't feel the need to own movies at all anymore? That is the trend I am seeing in my social circle. People watch a movie once and that is it.

I'm becoming more and more like this, I still like buying movies, but whenever I feel like watching one, I go for something I haven't watched before

[zodwriter]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

Nothing about removing a movie that hasn't made money in decades is unfair. It's extremely entitled to say that because you paid $10 for a movie the digital providers are required to keep storing and providing that movie for the rest of your life.

The biggest flaw in your logic is automatically assuming that movies that aren't selling will be deleted from people's libraries. If the movie is sitting in the cloud and not selling and you bought it they aren't going to be looking to take away your access. They may stop selling that title from time to time but because of the nature of it being digitally stored it could easily be brought back into circulation if it becomes something that is in demand again or a studio decides to re-release it. It makes no sense whatsoever and would be a waste of resources bothering people's purchased content when the whole idea of this in the first place is for people to keep buying movies! The instances in which you could lose access to a movie through VUDU would be about as often as you need to update your Blu Ray player to play certain discs, which is to say, that the rarity of it should make people very confident in amassing digital collections without worry. The majority of your digital collections will remain intact just as the majority of your Blu Rays will mostly play just fine.

[ThatOneGuy]

Originally Posted by Talal86

I'm becoming more and more like this, I still like buying movies, but whenever I feel like watching one, I go for something I haven't watched before

Depends on the movie for me.

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by zodwriter

It makes no sense whatsoever and would be a waste of resources bothering people's purchased content when the whole idea of this in the first place is for people to keep buying movies!

What resources? It could easily be an automated program. If the movie is over 10 years old and has sold less than 10 copies in the past year then it gets deleted. That would be thousands of unpopular movies but the vast majority of their customers wouldn't even notice. Of the few that do an insignificant percentage would care enough to curb their purchases.

If you've already downloaded the movie it isn't going to be deleted off your hard drive, but you wouldn't be able to redownload it or stream it anymore. Nor would you have the requisite DRM to transfer it to any other hard drives. They aren't doing anything to you personally they are just deleting their own files that are losing them money.

Originally Posted by zodwriter

The majority of your digital collections will remain intact...

I absolutely agree. I don't think anyone should be worried that a large portion of their collection will disappear. But I care about quality not quantity. Just because only a few movies will disappear from most people's collections doesn't mean their favorites are safe.

[zodwriter]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

What resources? It could easily be an automated program. If the movie is over 10 years old and has sold less than 10 copies in the past year then it gets deleted. That would be thousands of unpopular movies but the vast majority of their customers wouldn't even notice. Of the few that do an insignificant percentage would care enough to curb their purchases.

If you've already downloaded the movie it isn't going to be deleted off your hard drive, but you wouldn't be able to redownload it or stream it anymore. Nor would you have the requisite DRM to transfer it to any other hard drives. They aren't doing anything to you personally they are just deleting their own files that are losing them money.

The part your not getting is that they don't delete movies. They just mask them from visibility when they aren't being sold. They don't touch people's individual collections. If they did every single movie that was not for sale on VUDU would be removed or replaced with current studio versions. Here's an example the Akira Kurosawa film Ran is currently owned digitally by Lionsgate and on disc for distribution by Criterion. The copy I have on VUDU is distributed by StudioCanal. That means by your thinking that because Lionsgate currently owns digital sales distribution rights I should have automatically gotten Lionsgate's digital version of the movie in VUDU or lost access to it altogether because it's not being sold or distributed by the same company anymore. WRONG! The fact is I still have the same copy I purchased. It's from StudioCanal. No transfer updates, no replacement with the Criterion or Lionsgate version and I still have access to it and can watch it anytime. I think you overestimate the complexity of the filing system studios use for digital films. Even when they remove a title for sale you can tell it's not the same system because the non-selling title is not available through VUDU search. You have to scroll through your movies to find these missing titles but they never leave your personal collection. It could be as simple as a checks and balances kind of thing. If you have a VUDU account, you have a personal server keeping all your stuff intact. Again it wouldn't make sense for studios to just delete your movies because that's the equivalent of breaking into your home and stealing and or destroying your Blu Rays and DVDs.

One other little tidbit for you about VUDU and Ultraviolet. I called Sony Digital when I purchased Oldboy (2013) on Blu Ray because the digital code that came with it redeemed in SD instead of HDX. The person I spoke with on the phone corrected the error for me after I gave him the bar-code numbers on the back of the Blu Ray case. I asked him if he could remove the SD version from my library and he told me exactly: "Nobody can delete something from your library, you have to go in through your ultraviolet locker and remove it yourself. The only way something can be removed from your library is if you requested a refund that got approved through a digital provider like VUDU." That sums it all up. If I buy a movie from VUDU and decide shortly after that I don't want the movie the only way they can actually remove it is if I am refunded.

[Rocket Richard]

I wonder how UHD discs sale are doing?

[PenguinMaster]

I was talking about Vudu deleting movies, not the studios. When a movie is losing money for Vudu it wouldn't make any sense for them to keep storing it and providing access for decades.

The studios would still have a few copies in their archives so no movies would be lost forever, but the vast majority of people wouldn't be able to access those movies.

Originally Posted by zodwriter

Again it wouldn't make sense for studios to just delete your movies because that's the equivalent of breaking into your home and stealing and or destroying your Blu Rays and DVDs.

No it isn't. It would be like you paying someone a one time fee to use each of their Blu-rays and DVDs. At some point it's too expensive for them to store all of their movies so they start to get rid of some of them.

It doesn't cost anyone else a cent for me to continue to watching my Blu-rays and DVDs. But it does cost Vudu to continue storing and providing access to their old unpopular movies.

[unsung122212]

Considering that films like True Lies, Ace Ventura 1/2 and The Abyss are no longer for sale, and were made more than ten years, then that must mean all digital copies have been removed from people's collections. I mean the film's aren't making any money with new sales, so why waste resources to maintains files that only take up like 10 gbs. Sure, one of the reasons why digital start off as being between $15-20 is partly due to the maintains part of the provider in maintains their servers. It's not one can just play every copy film in the collection at once. So, as long sales continue to occur on Vudu, then they should be able to keep there servers maintain. I doubt target ticket had many sales on their site, so it became u profitable for target to keep. Vudu and iTunes seem to be doing well, and shouldn't have much issues maintaining their servers as long as they continue to get sales. After, once they receive the file from the studio, there shouldn't be much work needed to be done on the file itself, just the servers.

[PenguinMaster]

All of your examples are terrible: they're all well known and popular movies. Even though True Lies, The Abyss, and Ace Ventura aren't being sold anymore if they were removed a lot of people would notice and complain.

Plus we're still in a transitional phase. As long as physical media continues to outsell digital purchases then the digital providers will play it safe. They don't want to do anything to drive people back to physical media. When digital purchases become the standard and many people have hundreds of titles in their collections then the digital providers will start cutting corners.

To provide high speed streaming and downloads the movies have to be located on servers all around the country. So while a movie may take up only 10GB per copy, they need to store 50-100 copies of each movie. If each movie is taking up a terabyte of space and there are thousands of movies that aren't selling then that adds up pretty quickly. Obviously hard drive space is getting cheaper, but movies are getting larger as well.

[randian]

Originally Posted by PenguinMaster

I was talking about Vudu deleting movies, not the studios. When a movie is losing money for Vudu it wouldn't make any sense for them to keep storing it and providing access for decades.

Define "losing money". The marginal cost of storing 10Gb (3 redundant copies of a 3Gb movie, for example, I don't know how many replicated copies they actually store) is a fraction of a dollar per year now, and it's only getting cheaper. If discs last 3 years, one $10 sale in that three years pays for itself. It would cost you more to waste expensive IT labor hours actively managing your movie list. I didn't mention bandwidth costs, but movies with trivial sales consume less than your roundoff precision for monthly bandwidth reports. Or if you prefer, bandwidth costs are immeasurable and therefore irrelevant.

[PenguinMaster]

Originally Posted by randian

Define "losing money". The marginal cost of storing 10Gb (3 redundant copies of a 3Gb movie, for example, I don't know how many replicated copies they actually store) is a fraction of a dollar per year now, and it's only getting cheaper. If discs last 3 years, one $10 sale in that three years pays for itself. It would cost you more to waste expensive IT labor hours actively managing your movie list. I didn't mention bandwidth costs, but movies with trivial sales consume less than your roundoff precision for monthly bandwidth reports. Or if you prefer, bandwidth costs are immeasurable and therefore irrelevant.

Copies need to be stored all around the country to provide fast streaming and downloads. And HDX movies are close to 10GB each. So 100 copies at 10GB each is a terabyte of data. That costs about $15 and needs to be replaced every 3 years or so. Vudu only gets 30% of each sale so at $10 each it would need to sell 5 copies every 3 years.

Of the more than 15,000 movies released every year I'd estimate only a few hundred are still selling a few copies per year 20 years after they're released. Therefore the vast majority of movies are losing money at that point.