Microsoft executive says,” Who needs Blu-ray?”

[Jeff Kleist]

But even if you forget that, just look at the obvious, in order to have access we will assume you had to create an account and give them a credit card (I don't think we are talking free service here). The second you login they know what CC you have registered under and since CC has the issuer # and part of that is the BIN, they can, if they want, know in what country you got the card and even wha institution. And since CCs are only issued to residents of the country, that would be a very easy and precise way to know what region you are in. Yes, if this is done if someone from the US is on vacation in Australia then he will have access to US films and not Australian but does that realy matter?

There are actually ways around that. iTunes for examle doesn't allow you to open an account unless you have a valid menthod of payment from that country. Fortunately iTunes gift cards work fine for that purpose, and like the Blues Brothers, so far as they're concerned I live at Tokyo Dome

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Teazle

These companies are big enough, vertically integrated enough, own enough content and are strong enough as brands to do their own digital distribution and profit by it. I mean easily.

Forget about Sony, that's an obvious case with Sony Pictures and Sony/BMG music and Playstation hardware and multimedia Walkmen and phones and PSN etc etc etc. Universal or Warner Brothers alone, between movies, music, TV shows and video games, really should have no need for an extra middleman to get their content to the consumer.

Or TWO extra middlemen in the case of Netflix on Xbox Live!

It hasn't happened yet, but I hope it will. I would love to see the extra $$ from digital get funnelled back directly to the content producers. Netflix, MS, Apple -- these are mere idle profiteers on somebody else's creativity.

It may just be a volume issue. When enough content goes online, and digital really starts getting up to scale, goodbye useless middlemen and hello to the digital, virtual online equivalents of Disneyworld and Universal Studios Florida.

I think you are missing two big issues.

1) consumers want something easy to use. They don't want a Sony player to use for Sony movies and a Disney for Disney and WB..... they want one device/one format/one click. Right? Do you think most people (even if it is on one physical player) will go "I want to watch/buy Wizard of Oz, It has the MGM logo when it starts but it is WB so I need to click on WB movies to DL it.

2) there are also small studios and indy studios/titles. Any real format needs to offer them as well

[Teazle]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

I think you are missing two big issues.

1) consumers want something easy to use. They don't want a Sony player to use for Sony movies and a Disney for Disney and WB..... they want one device/one format/one click. Right? Do you think most people (even if it is on one physical player) will go "I want to watch/buy Wizard of Oz, It has the MGM logo when it starts but it is WB so I need to click on WB movies to DL it.

2) there are also small studios and indy studios/titles. Any real format needs to offer them as well

Re: 1). I do not deny that. I brought out Sony as an unusually clear example of this fact: companies like Sony want to leverage their vertical integration and that tends to tell against interlopers like iTunes, MS and the like. Forget about the question of devices for a moment. The situation is roughly similar to say Warner having some formal affiliation with a CATV utility or Universal the movie arm with a Uni/NBC TV channel. These integrated entities do NOT want an intruder in their painstakingly built verticality. That defeats the whole point.

Re: 2) Yes, very small publishers like, I dunno, Blue Underground and Severin probably won't ever release enough content to man their own servers; digital distribution for these will have to be farmed out.

But anyway, for say 95% of digital video content, the situation I'm imagining for say 15 years from now, is NOT Best Buy/Walmart being replaced by MS/iTunes, but rather the big content makers distributing the stuff themselves via their own websites.

I think it has nothing specially to do with digital and everything to do with scale. WB and Uni are so huge and make so much stuff in all media, economics will favour them doing their own digital distribution just as (say) scale favours a big brewer such as Anheuser-Busch distributing Budweiser themselves and not having an extra distributor between brewer and retailer.

As for the consumer, all he really needs is a simple links page or content-neutral application to organize the content on the HDD and keep track of the new stuff as it's released. I think these details will eventually be worked out, as they must be since economics is merciless.

[Teazle]

One more thing I have to get off my chest. I personally will be overjoyed to see MS, Apple, Netflix etc leave the digital video distribution business, or at least face stiff competition from the content makers themselves. (Ultimately.)

It really bothers me to see these companies all scrambling to charge the "Entertainment Tax" while providing at best a minimal service to the consumer. The main thing they offer right now is the novelty of innovation. iTunes got there early so they got to stick their finger in the pie. MS is just an imitator. The idea that with the money MS makes from digital they will go pay a FUDmeister such as the executive mentioned in the title of this thread -- that thought is repugnant to me and I raise my bowstring fingers to MS accordingly.

These companies are parasites trying to feed off of somebody else's creative efforts. I would like to see iTunes cut out of the equation and their slice of the pie split between the consumer and the content producers.

Apple, MS do nothing to improve the quality of the content. Meanwhile content languishes. Hollywood scripts are rubbish and TV shows mostly unwatchable. And where is the new generation of good actors? We used to have William Holden and Jack Lemmon; now the best we can do is George Clooney and Seth Rogen?!! Writing even worse. Before, Billy Wilder, now J J Abrams?

Sorry for the rant but if there's one thing digital will be useful for, it will be in taking at least some of the savings (as against the costs of physical) and putting it back into the quality of the content. Where IMO it is desperately needed.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Teazle

As for the consumer, all he really needs is a simple links page or content-neutral application to organize the content on the HDD and keep track of the new stuff as it's released. I think these details will eventually be worked out, as they must be since economics is merciless.

local is easy and uninteresting. But "buying/renting" is where it gets hard. I guess you agree, that most consumers that want Movie X won't know where to go to get it and that they would not want to log into Sony, WB, Fox.... to find it. Which is why you say "all he really needs is a simple links page or content-neutral application", what you miss is that if someone does that then they won't do it out of the kindness of their heart. So you did not get rid of the middle man you just replaced him by this facade. The other thing is that if this org is the portal and they are where I buy my movies from, then I as a consumer would consider them responsible (if I want movie X and I go there and find it but when I click DL I get "server not responding" I will get PO at that place and not the studio that is the culprit. So why would they accept that situation?

Now don’t get me wrong, I can picture a handful of the big studios getting together and starting a third party company that they have a share in so they can share the royalties (the same way we have studios in AACS or BDA and we had in DVD) and in that way cut out MS or Netflix or Apple and also keep control. But there will always be a middle man, the only question is who will own it, and what will that format war look like.

[ThomasGOAL]

Who needs Blu-Ray ??

Microsoft : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YbmK...layer_embedded

[DavePS3]

This is coming from a company that releases programs riddled with bugs and when they finally work most of them out, they drop support and bring out a new one riddled with new bugs. They don't want people buying discs... they make zero money. Their thing is to get us downloading films at 720p. They make money that way!

[Rob71]

Originally Posted by ThomasGOAL

Who needs Blu-Ray ??

Microsoft : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YbmK...layer_embedded

And now their failure is complete.

“So, who needs Blu-ray?”

Apparently Microsoft does to beat back Apple.

[tilallr1]

Originally Posted by Rob71

And now their failure is complete.



Apparently Microsoft does to beat back Apple.

LOL ... that didn't take long. Watch those idiots backpedal now. Talking out of their asses as usual.

The real joke of that advertisement is that you couldn't finish watching the Avatar blu-ray disc with a single charge off any laptop battery anyway.

Media playback is really a joke on a laptop because of this big limitation. That's really what digital copies are for, which of course take a lot less power than an optical disc spinning. Especially on a solid state drive.