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Author
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Topic: Apple In Talks To Collapse Video Release Window Down To Two Weeks
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-22-2016 02:42 PM
quote: Lyle Romer
The reason it "worked" in the music industry is that iTunes launched songs for 99 cents. It made it cheap enough that somebody was less likely to illegally download a bootleg vs. when you had to buy a $17 CD to get one or two songs.
There were more factors that helped iTunes' business.
The government fought to shut down various mainstream file sharing applications like Napster, Kazaa, Limewire, etc. Some people know how to use torrent clients to get all sorts of pirated software or entertainment, keep their activity anonymous and avoid many of the pitfalls involved in that activity. Those people are in a small minority. For most people it was simply easier to pay 99¢ for a tune than do all sorts of tech-head stuff to get the music for free.
The general public started worshipping the Apple brand in a big way once Steve Jobs returned to helm. Music via iTunes was just another part of the Apple "halo."
The closing of so many brick and mortar retail music stores has forced more customers to buy music discs online at places like Amazon or download the songs one at a time from Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. The falling sales of physical CDs has cut down on the sharing of entire albums via torrents or in person via dubbed CDs and the "sneaker network." Many new computers don't have any optical disc drives to play music CDs. So many people are listening to music primarily on their smart phones. It's all the more reason to click a song in iTunes, Google Music, etc. and buy it instantly.
Lately the "all you can eat" music streaming services have been eating into Apple's iTunes business model. Paid subscription services like Amazon Prime cut out all the ads. Music labels are getting hurt by this since it's yet another thing to further erode their income. The music performers seem pretty quiet about it. But that's only because the music labels have been screwing them out of royalties for the longest time, forcing the performers to make their money touring and selling merchandise. Why should an artist fight for a recording label to get paid fairly when it's money the artist will never see?
People are still on the lookout for an easy way to get movies or music for free. The MPAA and others have been trying to kill off the Popcorn Time torrent client. Every time they shut it down it seems to re-appear elsewhere, even with updated software. Now there is a piece of ransomware in the wild using the Popcorn Time name as bait to trick unsuspecting users into installing it.
quote: Eric Hooper
For me though, it's not necessarily that I want to only watch movies at home. For me, it's the incompetence of so many theaters lately that make me not want to go to them anymore.
I sure hate visiting crappy theaters. But I still feel obliged to find the best theater I can and support it. If theaters don't have enough customers to keep them in business there also won't be any new big budget movies getting released either. All of that will come to a stop. At least here in America. Maybe the movie industry could continue elsewhere in the world, but I think we're trying very hard to bring it to an end here in the United States.
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Tyler Purcell
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 180
From: Van Nuys, CA
Registered: Dec 2015
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posted 12-25-2016 05:57 PM
Here is the problem... The studio's are banks, no more, no less. Their business is loaning money and they expect high returns on their investment. They want their money back ASAP, so they've resorted to raising the prices on everything, so they can achieve this goal. Prices this year alone have gone up 2 dollars here in California. I personally think we're finally reaching critical mass where a $16 ticket for normal showings and a $20 ticket for 3D are the absolute cap. Ticket sales are DOWN, yet profits are up. So to recoup, they will continue raising prices because they're just pencil pushers who don't understand the industry what so ever.
I said years ago, the SAG/AFTRA deal would be the end of the cinema as we knew it. Prior to the SAG/AFTRA deal, SAG productions needed to be captured AND distributed on motion picture film. This means, very little piracy because when you're working in an entirely "film" workflow, it's nearly impossible to make digital copies of elements. Camcorders in movie theaters look horrible due to the flicker and getting anything but theater speaker audio, was nearly impossible. It also meant the studio's had less control over what the theaters did. Theaters could get one print and cycle it through multiple screens if they wanted. Also, the investment theaters made in their equipment and staff 20 years ago, would have continued paying off for decades to come. The "theater" was a special place with a look that could not be recreated at home.
Once the SAG/AFTRA deal was made, the studio's were looking for ways to save money and thanks to James Cameron, they pushed for everyone to switch over to digital. This cost the theaters LOTS of money, which raised the prices of ticket prices and that will never stop. With new innovations coming out every few years, theaters will constantly be forced to continue upgrading in order to keep up. This was all part of the strategy from the very beginning. It's no different then the move to digital television, forcing everyone in the world to buy a new TV. These forceful technology booms are the only reason the technology companies are in business. Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, these guys were dying on the vine and these forceful technology pushes, reset the clock. Then after all that money was spent, the studio's forced theaters to pay 3D movies, which means they have to charge more for tickets. Worst off, the content in theaters is now officially no different then the BluRay or digital download. It looks the same, it sounds the same, there is nothing "unique" about the cinema anymore. As a consequence, since the SAG/AFTRA deal, the studio's have single handedly started the downfall of cinema as we know it. Now academy members get DVD screeners that they pass out to family and friends. Now movies are easy to pirate because there is no flicker on digital screens, so the ol' camcorder trick works great. Heck, there is even in-house pirating more now then ever because all of the assets are entirely digital.
The future of cinema is a model that I've discussed many times with friends. A company like AMC will have an app available for devices that allows users to stream theatrical content at home. It won't be day and date right away, there will be at least a week delay. However, they will charge a premium to see the movie at home, maybe upwards of $50 dollars. This way, families with kids don't have to pay for a babysitter, don't have to pay for a "night on the town" they can stay home and watch new content. This will expand the viewership of content and that's what the studio's are after. They see the dwindling ticket sales and a lot of people simply can't go to the cinema for those aforementioned reasons. This new distribution method will start soon and by 2020 I feel the prices will stabilize and that will be how everyone watches new content in the next decade.
Of course the next big steps which will be coming at CES 2017 are 8k HDR televisions and 4k laser home theater projectors. Both of which will be reasonably priced by 2018. With .h265 streaming technology and bigger servers and faster internet speeds, we will have real 10 bit 4:2:2 4k streaming by 2018 and 8k streaming by 2020. Theaters will be simply uncompetitive in the home theater market. I assume big theater chains in cities will still exist, but they will push the gimmicks hard because otherwise, what they offer will be substandard compared to what you get at home. I predict by 2020, we will start to see theaters closing as day and date internet releases become more and more profitable. I think the small independents will stay alive for a while, but they will probably switch to the budding "revival" cinema market. That's where the money is at these days, showing BluRay's on a big screen for people who just don't have the fancy internet speeds and/or simply want to get out of the house. I'm hoping influential filmmakers will try to repress this new distribution model, but the studio's can simply not fund their next projects. It's a loose-loose model for the filmmakers and the history of cinema as we know it.
The only good thing that COULD happen is that after the dust settles, maybe film will come back in a big way again, as that "unique" experience the retro loving millennials need so much. With record players being the #1 electronic gadget in 2015... I do think there is something to be said about cinemas returning to their grass roots.
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Tyler Purcell
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 180
From: Van Nuys, CA
Registered: Dec 2015
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posted 12-26-2016 06:15 PM
Well, we're talking first run movies at home, day and date for $50 bux. There is an astronomical market for that business model. Right now it costs me and a friend $40 to visit a movie theater when you include everything; gas, parking, popcorn/beverage and tickets. For an additional $10 bux, we'd just invite a friend over and split the cost 3 ways. Just think about families, people who NEVER get out to the cinema because they're stuck at home watching their kids. $50 bux is nothing when you have to pay for babysitter, dinner, gas, parking, popcorn/beverage and movie ticket. Most couples will spend over $100 bux for a "night on the town" in order to see a first run movie. With this service, they will pay $50 bux and their kids can watch too!
The way to run the online service is just like a movie theater. There will be mandatory commercials, trailers and everything that goes along with a standard theater presentation. Part of the revenue stream will be generated from that marketing content. Plus, the viewer will not be allowed to fast forward or rewind the movie. Users will log into the system at a certain time and the movie will start just like at a cinema. It's not "on demand" you can't just watch it over and over again, it's just like a cinema release, you watch it once and it's over.
Every stream will have a watermark somewhere in the image that's undetectable by the human eye, that can be decoded for anti-piracy purposes. There will be a warning about it before the movie starts and it will be crackable. It will be rendered on the fly as the video is being streamed, using the decoder engine within the playback device.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-26-2016 09:46 PM
quote: Tyler Purcell
Well, we're talking first run movies at home, day and date for $50 bux. There is an astronomical market for that business model.
IF there is a market to support such a thing it absolutely would survive at the expense of commercial movie theaters. The more successful the home-based 1st run business is the more it will eat into the ticket sales of commercial movie theaters. With the kind of overhead today's movie theaters have it won't take much of a downturn in ticket sales to put the viability of movie theaters at great risk.
There are lots of families with very young children who don't go to commercial movie theaters. They do avoid movie theaters out of concern for having to get a babysitter. But they also avoid the theaters over price since having kids these days will bust the living hell out of most any household budget. Many of these families are content with waiting for a movie to show up on DVD or Netflix to save all that extra money.
quote: Tyler Purcell
The way to run the online service is just like a movie theater. There will be mandatory commercials, trailers and everything that goes along with a standard theater presentation. Part of the revenue stream will be generated from that marketing content. Plus, the viewer will not be allowed to fast forward or rewind the movie. Users will log into the system at a certain time and the movie will start just like at a cinema. It's not "on demand" you can't just watch it over and over again, it's just like a cinema release, you watch it once and it's over.
Forced trailers, forced commercials, no pausing and no rewinding are all deal breakers for me. There's no way in hell I would ever pay $50 to watch such a thing, even if I'm chipping in as part of a group.
One of the key things about home movie/TV viewing is being able to pause the show in order to go to the bathroom, get a snack, take a phone call, etc. People time-shift TV shows on their DVR just to be able to fast forward past all the damned commercial breaks. It's easy to understand why a movie in a theater cannot be paused. Customers won't put up with a no stops allowed policy in home viewing. The only way home viewers accept such a thing is when they're watching a live pay per view event, such as a UFC fighting event.
As short as release windows have become I would have no problem whatsoever to simply wait a couple or so months and be able to buy a Blu-ray of that movie for $20, or rent the movie for much less. Wait a couple or so months after that and it will be on premium cable or Netflix. And when you play a movie on Netflix the movie itself starts when you hit the play button. No trailers, commercials, etc.
quote: Tyler Purcell
Every stream will have a watermark somewhere in the image that's undetectable by the human eye, that can be decoded for anti-piracy purposes.
So far every anti-piracy measure for home based content and mainstream computer software has been thwarted by hackers. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if hackers have managed to break the encryption present in theatrical DCPs. If home-based 1st run movies become a big thing, I would expect dupes of those streams to show up quickly on movie piracy web sites.
quote: Frank Cox
You're missing the fact that the theatre is a night out and something that you don't do every night of the week.
I think the general public is so short sighted it would not miss commercial movie theaters until they were suddenly gone and their abscence adversely affecting the local economy.
All this shit in recent years of romanticizing online business as a new paradigm of business over "old-fashioned" brick and mortar retail really needs a harsh reality check. Many local economies across this nation depend on real brick and mortar based business. Commercial movie theaters actually employ real people in a city or town. Some online-based viewing thing would employ no one locally.
Commercial movie theaters are often a key "anchor" in many shopping centers, be it an older enclosed mall or one of these new "town center" designs. Neither concept works well without plenty of outlets for dining and entertainment. Retail stores are suffering badly as it is, thanks to online merchants not having to charge sales tax at the time of purchase. That horribly unfair inequity is causing many retail stores to close. I've seen a lot of closures in my town and it makes me pretty damned angry.
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Tyler Purcell
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 180
From: Van Nuys, CA
Registered: Dec 2015
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posted 12-27-2016 03:23 PM
In response Bobby, I'm NOT an advocate for any of this. I thought it was a HUGE mistake to make HD BluRay and switch from SD to HD television. Once you deliver content at quality equal to cinema's at home, you then negate the reason for going to cinema's in the first place.
However, I'm also pragmatic about the whole thing and understand this new future of 1st run movies being available at home, is coming very fast. The studio's see huge dollar signs from it and I do as well. Imagine cutting out the middleman and selling movies direct to customers. This makes the studio's far more money then they already make and they can do it with LESS viewership! There are 310 million people in this country. If they get 3 million of them, so we're talking 1 percent of the population, to pay $50 bux for each movie they release, they will make $150 million dollars right there, without involving the theaters at all. Then they continue doing theatrical runs, which brings in even more money.
The encryption problem is easy to fix, it's called a "roving key", one that is associated with every user, that changes per viewing. This is why DCP's can't be hacked, because the key changes per copy. You can easily do the same thing with software and have a constantly changing key for decoding based on the specific user and region if you need. However, it doesn't stop someone plugging an HDMI cable into a recorder and capturing the image. It also doesn't stop someone shooting the screen with their camcorder, something that's hard to do at a cinema. So those are two issues that would need to be addressed through invisible watermarking.
In terms of being locked into viewing it like a cinema, the moment you can pause, rewind and fast forward, is the moment you get corruption in the system. You can't allow the system to buffer very much and you certainly can't allow it to be paused overnight or something like that for re-watching the next day. Now maybe for $50 they'll let people do that, but I think it's a huge mistake. People who want to watch the next XYZ movie without leaving their house, most of them will hit the "buy now button" and simply watch it.
No matter what we do or say, I do think the movie theater is doomed. Attendance is low in the US, though profits are up thanks to higher ticket prices. Audiences are bored of the content and going less and less. As you pointed out Bobby, they're simply waiting for home video. People don't even buy anymore, they simply rent from Red Box or pay for that Netflix subscription. Even though the home-video market is huge, it too is dying on the vine, BluRay and DVD's are almost gone outside of discount retailers like Walmart. So I don't know the solution, but what I do know is if the current business model continues, things will just get worse. The studio's know this, the big theater chains know this and I think everyone is waiting for someone to make the leap. Maybe it's the new itunes system, maybe it's the day and date release system run by theaters, who knows.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-27-2016 09:02 PM
quote: Tyler Purcell
I thought it was a HUGE mistake to make HD BluRay and switch from SD to HD television. Once you deliver content at quality equal to cinema's at home, you then negate the reason for going to cinema's in the first place.
HDTV was going to happen regardless of the effect it had on the movie industry. The consumer electronics industry and computing industry are both far bigger than the movie industry. They're going to pursue their own best interests even if it comes at the detriment of the movie industry. If the movie industry didn't up their standards on the quality of home video product they were selling it would not have taken long for ordinary TV shows to look a whole lot better than Hollywood movies on home video.
The huge mistake the movie industry has been making, and keeping making worse, is shrinking the exclusive window between a movie's theatrical release and its release on home video. There is hardly any wait anymore. Compound that with derivate, predictable content that doesn't stand up well against the glut of series TV available from cable and streaming services. Theatrical box office ticket sales are down. The near extinction of video rental stores and mass disappearance of video/music retail stores have sent physical movie and music disc sales on a very dramatic downturn. But the movie studios just keep doubling down on shrinking release windows further, thinking that's somehow magically going to grow revenue or at least increase positive cash flow. They're ignoring the past 15 years of history showing the strategy clearly does not work.
quote:
However, I'm also pragmatic about the whole thing and understand this new future of 1st run movies being available at home, is coming very fast. The studio's see huge dollar signs from it and I do as well. Imagine cutting out the middleman and selling movies direct to customers. This makes the studio's far more money then they already make and they can do it with LESS viewership!
I'm sure that's how the bean counter sales pitch sounds in various board meetings where they float this day and date idea. I still contend it would be a suicidal step for the movie industry.
First of all, this standard is still very present in the minds of consumers: a movie isn't a real movie unless it plays in movie theaters. It's a made for TV movie otherwise. The home viewing market is already a very crowded space. Netflix and Amazon are both producing their own long form, uncensored TV series and standalone movies of their own. Manchester by the Sea is generating Oscar buzz; Amazon gave commercial theaters an exclusive first run of the movie.
In the end, some $40 or $50 single viewing of a 1st run movie on ordinary TV is not all that great a deal, not when there's no wait at all to get the "HD Digital" or Blu-ray version and not much wait after that to just stream it on Netflix.
quote: Tyler Purcell
In terms of being locked into viewing it like a cinema, the moment you can pause, rewind and fast forward, is the moment you get corruption in the system. You can't allow the system to buffer very much and you certainly can't allow it to be paused overnight or something like that for re-watching the next day.
Baloney. Streaming a 1st run movie isn't going to work worth a damn without the system being able to buffer the content. Playback would be horribly erratic and even prone to glitches on the fastest Internet connections if buffering was not allowed. Either way, no pausing, rewinding, etc. is just an out and out deal breaker.
Watching movies in a commercial theater and at home are two entirely different things, both with their own pros and cons. In giving up the pros of watching a movie in a theater I would fully expect to still utilize the advantages of watching at home, like being able to pause the movie to take a piss break. I don't need all the cons of the theatrical movie viewing experience if I'm just going to be watching on the ordinary TV screen. It's a whole lot easier to wait a few months, save a shit load of money and watch the movie how I want to watch it.
quote: Tyler Purcell
No matter what we do or say, I do think the movie theater is doomed. Attendance is low in the US, though profits are up thanks to higher ticket prices. Audiences are bored of the content and going less and less. As you pointed out Bobby, they're simply waiting for home video. People don't even buy anymore, they simply rent from Red Box or pay for that Netflix subscription.
With as short as the wait is for a movie to show up on Netflix I guarantee $50 rentals to watch 1st run movies on ordinary TV will go nowhere. And if it does gain traction it will indeed do so at the expense of commercial movie theater business.
If movie theaters are doomed, so is the movie industry itself. Without commercial movie theaters all you have is TV. It doesn't matter what intros play in front of the feature, how it is packaged, etc. If the feature never plays in a theater it is just a TV show.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-28-2016 12:00 AM
quote: Tyler Purcell
I'm not sure how they do this currently, because this system already exists and is working flawlessly in rich people's homes. The price tag for admission is $500 bux and it uses thumb print identification. Not a big deal for rich people, but it's the same tech that will be used for the consumer version.
It's one thing to sell a unique playback hardware/software system to a douchebag in Hollywood who can't stomach the idea of watching a movie in a theater with mere commoners. IMAX was floating the idea of a home version of Lie-MAX, yours for like a million dollars or something if I remember right. It's another thing altogether to expect regular middle class people to buy new playback gear just to play $50 1st run movie rentals on a very infrequent basis. If Apple and Hollywood studios can't get their idea to work entirely within a software app, with no hardware purchase required, it won't have the first chance of getting anywhere.
quote: Tyler Purcell
So far this year, none of the movies I want to see are available on video yet. So the window isn't THAT short, some of them have been out of theaters for months.
Which movies specifically?
There could be exceptions, but as far as I can tell every major Hollywood release is now taking no more than 4 months after theatrical debut to arrive on "HD Digital" and then Blu-ray/DVD. Many are taking only 3 months or even less in some cases. That's a very short wait compared to how long the window used to be. Combine that with the fact everyone has some "catch up list" of shows they have yet to find time to watch. So even if you have to wait 5 or 6 months for some new movie to arrive on Blu-ray, you're still going busy trying to get caught up on other shows that it will be a chore squeezing that movie into the viewing schedule.
I remember being amazed when The Matrix arrived on DVD September 21, 1999, just 6 months after its March 31, 1999 theatrical release. The disc was priced cheap and became the first DVD to sell over 1 million copies in the US. Back then viewers could wait upwards of a year before a movie arrived on VHS or DVD. Hell, many of us were still waiting for Saving Private Ryan to finally arrive on DVD. The movie was released in July of 1998, but appeared on DVD in November of 1999.
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Tyler Purcell
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 180
From: Van Nuys, CA
Registered: Dec 2015
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posted 12-28-2016 11:25 AM
Yea, the rich people get all the toys.
Kubo and the Two Strings was the movie I missed and it JUST came out on BluRay few weeks ago, right before the holidays. It was released initially in August, so 4 month window.
I use to work at a Laser Disk store as a kid and remember releases taking more time for sure, but that was mainly because movies back then stayed in theaters longer. I remember movies being in theaters for months, not weeks. Today, movies come and go so fast, if you aren't at the theater in the first weekend, you may not even get to see it at a big theater. The studio's pressure theater owners to push, even well selling content, to smaller theaters in order for their new/big release to come out, especially this time of year.
Now I'm a filmmaker, so I also want to see the smaller movies, which are nearly impossible to find at normal theaters, even during awards season.
It's true, most people watch TV over movies anyway. However, a lot of that is convenience. If first run movies were at home, they would be watched, almost no matter what the price. So even if they don't get the numbers off online sales they expect, at least it's an option. I for one would use it on a regular basis because the consistency of theaters is all over the map and people are disgusting pigs these days with no respect for those sitting next to them. It's a real problem and it's killing the theater business for people like myself.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-28-2016 01:04 PM
quote: Tyler Purcell
Kubo and the Two Strings was the movie I missed and it JUST came out on BluRay few weeks ago, right before the holidays. It was released initially in August, so 4 month window.
Kubo and the Two Strings was released theatrically August 19. It arrived on Blu-ray November 22. That's only 3 months from debut on theater screen to store shelves on disc. I don't know when the "HD Digital" download version was available to buy, but it's a good bet it preceded the Blu-ray version by at least 2 to 4 weeks.
quote: Tyler Purcell
I use to work at a Laser Disk store as a kid and remember releases taking more time for sure, but that was mainly because movies back then stayed in theaters longer. I remember movies being in theaters for months, not weeks.
I think movie studios first started over-doing it with print inventories in the 1990's. During the 80's and 90's a movie considered a "wide" release would send 2500 to 3500 prints to first run theaters in North America. Then some studios started flooding the market with upwards of 6000 prints or more for some releases. It was all about trying to get bigger and bigger opening weekend grosses, regardless of how wasteful it was of 35mm film prints. And these guys had the audacity to whine about film costs while pitching "digital."
Attention spans are so short now that barely anyone even looks up a movie's final domestic box office haul. After opening weekend movie fans move on to something else. This probably makes it easier for movie studios to play accounting games, like the "rolling break even." The bean counters do want all the money now, not later. They look at a movie like Forrest Gump that hangs out in first run for several months as something that is costing them money, not making them more money.
Movies these days can go from the theater screen, to disc, cable and then forgotten in under a year. The whole operation has a very throw-away feel to it anymore. And some good movies get dumped in that list of forgotten shows.
quote: Tyler Purcell
Today, movies come and go so fast, if you aren't at the theater in the first weekend, you may not even get to see it at a big theater.
That's the hidden penalty of the "premium screen" business model. You have the one or two "good" screens in the complex and the rest sorta suck.
For the longest time I've been guilty of snubbing movies much of the time if I missed them when they were playing on the best screen in the complex. In the 80's and early 90's it was about catching the 70mm version of the movie. Then it was about seeing it in the THX-certified house equipped with DTS. Back then there wasn't an extra premium to pay for that. And a big movie might hang out on that "good" screen for weeks. Now we have the alphabet soup of acronym labeled auditoriums where they all charge you extra, even if it's just the same old 2K/5.1 experience but with the sound cranked up.
Most movie goers don't care about that technical crap. Likewise, they're just as ambivalent about seeing a certain movie in the theater at all. This is essentially why day and date release would murder the movie theater business. Audiences by large have no loyality, much less any love, for movie theaters. If a cheaper way to see a movie is available customers will gravivate to it.
quote: Tyler Purcell
If first run movies were at home, they would be watched, almost no matter what the price.
Price still matters a great deal. And so does time. Pay $50 to watch a movie on TV that I can't pause or rewind now versus wait three months and rent it for $3? That's a pretty damned easy choice.
quote: Tyler Purcell
I for one would use it on a regular basis because the consistency of theaters is all over the map and people are disgusting pigs these days with no respect for those sitting next to them. It's a real problem and it's killing the theater business for people like myself.
I think this problem varies from theater to theater and city to city. It also varies when you visit the theater.
Nevertheless, commercial theaters are trying pretty hard to cater to changing customer tastes. Some chains put themselves into bankruptcy with the building binge of stadium seated theaters. They're now sacrificing seat counts and max ticket sales by installing recliners while upping their maintenance costs. Theaters have done the industry-wide conversion to digital. It's rare to find a theater auditorium that doesn't at least have 5.1 digital surround sound. Now they're being asked to do more upgrades for 3D, Laser projection, next-gen surround sound, etc. Movie studios aren't doing shit to help theaters absorb these extreme high costs. Movie studios also aren't doing shit to help theaters afford higher staffing numbers to better police disruptive customer behavior either. The movie studios are only looking out for themselves.
I don't know how my habits compare with other customers, but I have actually seen by far more movies in theaters over the past few years than I have bought on Blu-ray. But that's only because my Blu-ray buying habits have dropped off to near nothing. Anymore, I just rent a Blu-ray or maybe catch it on HBO or Netflix. I have no urge to buy a 4K UHDTV or UHD Blu-ray player.
If these studio guys really want to kill off the theatrical side of their business they had better realize the home video side of their business is not doing well either.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 12-28-2016 01:23 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
I have actually seen by far more movies in theaters over the past few years than I have bought on Blu-ray.
I have found, that if I don't get a chance to watch a movie in the theater, then I just miss it completely. If it shows up on Netflix, then I "might" watch it, but I don't subscribe to the DVD service, I'm just connected to their rip-off streaming, so 90% of any movies I would want to see aren't available anyway. So I'm left with the choice of buying them.
Here's the full list of movies from this year I am interested in buying:
Sully
That's it. I haven't seen any others that I care to see again, and even "Sully" is iffy because I didn't love that movie to the point of wanting to see it over and over...I just only got to see it once and wouldn't mind seeing it again, plus I'd like to see some kind of "behind the scenes" that you normally get on a BluRay.
It just baffles me that the studios are using this thought process:
Theatrical is doing steadily well -> Home video is tanking -> Instead of doing something to help theatrical, let's make things worse for them, in the hopes home video will get better
IT WON'T WORK, you studio idiots! Home video is in the tank because people have plenty of options to watch, so they don't need your dumb movies. Media purchases are down because streaming is easier/faster/cheaper. People will balk at paying $50 for a new movie. They'll watch other stuff in their "queue" and wait till the price drops, if they even watch the movie at all, so if you want "big numbers" you'll need to drop the price sooner. Then home video will be....that's right, tanking again.
I don't even have a college degree and only run a single-screen theater and yet I understand this stuff...how come all these highly paid MBA-types can't get it?
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