Movie Burning Kiosks Coming To Retailers 173
Vitaly Friedman writes "The motion picture industry is in talks with some major retailers about installing DVD burning kiosks in stores. It's an interesting idea, but one that almost entirely misses the point. Hollywood's movie distribution system is in dire need of a fix - very few will dispute that. Movie attendance has been suffering, DVD sales are slumping, and all the industry has managed to do is come up with a half-baked, unpopular download service and a scant handful of simultaneous releases. In another attempt to sort of give consumers what they want, the motion picture industry is thinking about allowing retailers to set up in-store kiosks for distribution."
Why would I buy... (Score:5, Insightful)
* Will last much less time than a standard DVD before failing
* Not play in all of my DVD players
* Mean I have to wait around for it to finish burning
* Probably cost as much, or more than, a regular DVD
I won't, that's the answer to that. Get with it Hollywood, you need to offer movies to download at a significantly discounted price, or with no DRM. Offering me less for more, which is what you try to do at every step, doesn't make me want to give you my hard-earned cash.
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:2, Insightful)
The cost could essentially become lower, if they actually want to lower the price, because you eliminate the need of transporting the fully packed DVDs, you remove them from the
Distribution Economics from an early attempt (Score:4, Interesting)
On-Demand downloads weren't very practical - but pre-loading movies as they're released works quite well, especially since that's what you're most likely to sell. A 1 Mbps network connection lets you download 75 GB a week, which is about 15 movies, depending on resolution, 2-disk-sets, etc. Hollywood seldom produces more than 10 movies a week, and Bollywood's pretty similar. (The pr0n industry produces a lot more.) So if you've got a cable modem or decent DSL connection, you can keep ahead of the mainstream movies and have some bandwidth available for CD-quality ad-hoc downloads. Network availability can be a problem - the obvious place to put DVD burner kiosks is in malls, but they often don't have cable, and they're usually far away from telco offices so DSL bandwidth is lower. On the other hand, grocery stores are usually in/near residential neighborhoods, so they've usually got cable nearby and often have decent DSL.
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:3, Interesting)
If I'm standing in a retailers and I feel that a movie is worth paying for, I'll pick up a ready-pressed DVD from the shelf in a glossy box, pay for it and leave.
What exactly is the benefit of this servi
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:2)
Of course, theres still
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:2)
I for one would jump at the chance to repl
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:2)
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:2)
BUT if the movie was ever released on VHS, or ever shown on TV, going to DVD is almost free. After all, I can buy a $200 gadget that will copy my old VHS tapes to DVDs - use a more professional version of this gadget and start with a really clean copy and you should get a very good DVD (far better than I could get with a $200 burner and a 2
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:2)
I remember in the early days of DVD, the market was flooded by VHS based DVD tranfers -- lo-res 4:3 pictures with 2.0 stereo sound. I don't think anyone would accept this quality today, even clearly branded and at a bargain price today, when you can pick up a fairly recent and in every aspect high quality DVD such as Return of the King for less than $10.
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:2)
Not sure why everyone says the production and marketing costs for DVD are alot.
Someone is printing and selling the DVDs of very old shows at 7-11 for $1.00. I see the box of them empty and refill quite often. (alot more often than the rack of $25.oo new releases, in fact) It would seem the expense is not the physical but IP part
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:2)
I wonder whether it's partly because they can't/shouldn't admit that there are second
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:2)
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:2)
* Will last much less time than a standard DVD before failing
It would depend on the cost.
* Not play in all of my DVD players
New players cost as low as $50. There is Divx certified player at costco I saw recently for $50.00.
* Mean I have to wait around for it to finish burning
If it was connected to an online warehouse it could be worth the wait. If it just dispences the usual hollywood crap then it probally wouldn't be. I can imagine it would be handy to those who wanted for example to b
How this could work (Score:3, Informative)
This plan can only work if the films being distributed are:
- Not available from Hollywood. This is great for the thousands of films made in Europe and India that don't get any distribution or review in the USA. The disadvantage of distributing films (or anything in the 'long tail') in this manner is that noone knows which few titles are good, and which of the remaining ones are
Re:How this could work (Score:2)
Let it be "airline" complicated. Sell a fixed number of dvds at various price levels. compute the starting price level for each film based on the previous month's national volume.
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Fixed it for you.
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:2)
Pay per view the only drawbacks are:
- you have to watch on their schedule unless you
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:2)
Fixed that for you.
You can't expect people to pay to download movies and not be sure that they'll play anywhere they take them. You can hit people with a couple bad experiences, but it won't work in the long run. In fact, the only reas
Re:Why would I buy... (Score:2)
DVD+-R archival lifetime isn't so great (Score:3, Insightful)
Adaptation (Score:4, Insightful)
If only could they realize they gotta adapt instead of run hacks to keep the good ol' days.
There weren't plenty of typing machine manifacturers that started making keybaords and mice as well I think. They just tried to keep the old ways and ceased to exist.
Re:Adaptation (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, who ever heard of a rusty old anachronism like that typewriter manufacturer International Business Machines competing in the new economy. [etypewriters.com]
Re:Adaptation (Score:2)
Re:Adaptation (Score:2)
Re:Adaptation-Intelligent Complaint. (Score:2)
My my, it seemed you just wanted to vent, never mind what I said has nothing to do with your reaction here.
Where did I even mention that everyone should have one?
Not everyone wants their music on a burned disk, or stored on their hard drive. The "old ways" are the old ways because they work for the majority.
Is the pianist at your local mute cinema still working there?
Not some whiney minority wh
Movie burning? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Movie burning? (Score:1)
Re:Movie burning? (Score:2)
Re:Movie burning? (Score:2)
The more expensive versions could come with a DVD furnace, though.
Could do it on the cheap... (Score:2)
Now theres a movie burning booth people would queue up for!
Re:Movie burning? (Score:2)
benefit? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:benefit? (Score:2)
It might be nice if they sold high quality DivX files of TV episodes burned onto DVD for cheap. Of course, they would never do that
Re:benefit? (Score:2)
Imagine this. A store like Target still has a traditional display of DVDs in shiny cases, and it has one of these machines. The machine would have maybe a thousand or two movies in its local storage. It also has access, via high-speed connection, to a databank of hundreds of thousands of movies.
You know you want to buy a movie and you're going shopping at Ta
Let them know what you think! (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and if you'd be so kind, could you also let them know that The Pirate Bay is back up? They seem to still be under the impression that it's down... (PDF link) [mpaa.org]
Oh. You might need their numbers [mpaa.org]:
Washington: (202) 293-1966
LA: (818) 995-6600
New York (listed as their "anti-piracy office"): (914) 378-0800
Re:Let them know what you think! (Score:2)
Give value for money! (Score:1, Interesting)
If DVDs are sold for a reasonable price (here in Finland that is definitely not the case), then people buy it. And if the DVD burnin
I have one already... (Score:5, Funny)
It's called BitTorrent.
AE
Re:I have one already... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, yes, the movie companies are almostly solely producing overpriced undifferentiated mush. However, it's clearly mush a lot of you want. As such, is it so crazy to suggest you either pay for it, or if you genuinely feel it's over priced, make a stand by neither buying nor copying? All you're doing by copying movies/music/games/etc. is saying to the producers "I want your product, but don't want to pay for it".
The MPAA/RIAA are both fairly clearly evil incarnate, I agree. However, copying everything you want is not actually going to help, it's just going to give them more legal leverage. If you actually feel things need to change, stop buying, and stop copying. Go read a book or something
Re:I have one already... (Score:2)
Halleluia. Then we better keep copying, in case they figure out the way is by releasing free copies over the internet with ads in them. Movie shows are doing pretty well running just with ads for their income.
Price is part of the problem, availability is much larger. If I can neither buy it since it's not available nor watch it in the cinema, what options do I have? Yea go figur
Re:I have one already... (Score:5, Insightful)
While I somewhat agree, you need to realize that (unlike most geek-oriented issues), that attitude reflects what the majority of humans feel.
People do not, and did not ever, respect the concept of copyright as more than a good idea in theory if not in implementation. But until very recently (historically speaking), individuals didn't have the option of violating copyrights on any significant scale, so the system remained basically intact.
Even prior to last 50 years, "piracy" still occurred (how many hand-painted copies of the Mona Lisa exist? I recall reading a number in the thousands recently). It just took much longer, and the resources necessary to pull it off on a large scale almost guaranteed detection.
But from moment photocopiers gained widepread availability, college students have photocopied textbooks. The introduction of the cassette tape also saw the introduction of massive music sharing - likewise for the VCR. As soon as software-compatible PCs appeared, everyone swapped software among friends. When CD burners appeared on the scene, they just replaced the cassette tape, and likewise for DVD burners.
And when the internet made piracy ever so much easier, people flocked to using it for exactly that purpose. When P2P made finding and downloading copyrighted content as close to trivial as any user-initiated action can get, the P2P networks turned into nothing short of massively distributed digital radio stations with the users as the program directors.
So why do I write the above? For perspective. You say that in-your-face piracy as a form of civil disobedience won't work for swaying minds - But no one's mind needs swaying. Society has seen the idea of copyright, and rejected it outright whenever physically possible.
We don't need to win mindshare buy-in - The media producers need to come up with a model that allows them to make money while accepting that people will copy their work regardless of the law.
And if P2P scares the RIAA, wait until the next step. Some wireless-enabled portable music players already allow sharing songs actively, but it still takes too much effort to consider more than a quirk. When (not if) that turns into a passive action, compatible with devices just about everyone has (whether iPod-like players, or cell phones, or PDAs, or wrist watches, or some new killer toy we haven't even imagined yet) - When everyone you pass in rush-hour traffic, or on a busy sidewalk, or in a crowded mall, automatically sends you their entire music library almost instantly and without the need for you to even click "okay" - I think that really will mean the absolute death of anything similar to our modern content-selling industries. And what I just described will happen - Some portable music players already can do exactly that, they just need faster transfer rates, more storage space, and most importantly, either ubiquity or compatibility with other devices.
The RIAA and MPAA has until then to come up with a new trick. If they want to focus their energy on litigation, or even on a laughable anti-piracy PR campaign - They may as well close up shop today.
So when you see geeks saying "I will pirate it if I can, stick it to The Man!", don't bother getting annoyed - Whether or not such people know their "real" motives, they don't say anything new, or surprising, or even express an unpopular sentiment. Instead, look at them as a symptom of a badly broken system, broken from the start and finally approaching complete disintigration.
Re:I have one already... (Score:3)
People do not, and did not ever, respect the concept of copyright as more than a good idea in theory if not in implementation.
True. Further, I think the legislation purchased by the media industry over the last couple decades has actually made it worse. The man on the street in 2006 doesn't even know that copyright does expire, or understand that it's supposed to be a short-term sacrifice for a long-term good. Seriously, go ask a few non-geek, non-lawyer, average people who owns the works of William S
Re:I have one already... (Score:2)
Re:I have one already... (Score:2)
Um, the reason so many handpainted Mona Lisas (or any famous painting) exist is that the Mona Lisa was public domain (I don't know if Da Vinci had "copyright in his time) and student artists often paint famous pictures to master their ar
Re:I have one already... (Score:2)
*sigh* /.'s attitude of "It's okay to copy anything I want" is really, really getting tiring.
The MPAA's commercial propaganda claiming "It's not okay to copy anything at any time" is also really tiresome.
Your assumption is playing right into the MPAA's biased view of the world. Try to think outside their box. Don't think of the elephant [smh.com.au].
People have been sharing since the dawn of time and it's the MPAA's self servi
Re:I have one already... (Score:2)
And by the way, I don't necessarily think the cost of renting a movie is outrageous. Sometimes I rent movies, rip them, return the DVD, and watch them a couple times before I delete them. The problem comes when they want to charge me $20 for the whole movie. There are maybe ten movies that I'm actually willing to pay that much for, because I will watch them over and over and over again. The r
Re:I have one already... (Score:2)
Yeah - at 8 bucks a pop. I remember being OUTRAGED when I bought The Stainless Steel Rat for 3.25. It was thin, and _expensive_. I keep hearing that the Science Fiction book market is dead, but I've got more new authors than I know what to do with, and a couple of them (Hi, Charlie!) are as prolific right now as Piers Anthony ever was. But I cannot believe that books are 8 bucks a pop. Annoys the hell out of me. I could go see a movie for that. Sure, it's only two hours,
If they want better sales... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If they want better sales... (Score:2)
Re:If they want better sales... (Score:2)
If you'd seen the film, it'd have been the last film you saw at an arthouse theater too. "Art" movies aren't better than the big budget ones for us plebs. They don't even have better actors. They don't even have different actors. They're just cheaper.
Better Movies Don't Sell? (Score:2)
Here's the thing though: worse movies don't sell either.We can tell this, because they've been trying it for a decade now, and all we hear about is the MPAA moaning about falling attendances and DVD sales.
Do you not think you mey be confusing "better" with here "pretentious and inaccesable and aggressively anti-populist"?
Re:If they want better sales... (Score:2)
How will that result in better sales when Slashdot is convinced they have the right to pirate everything? Better movies will just mean more visits to the pirate bay.
Re:If they want better sales..then don't listen to (Score:2)
People will grab things for free that they'd never pay for. It's the hunter-gather mentality.
Well, I guess the obvious question is... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Well, I guess the obvious question is... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Well, I guess the obvious question is... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Now where's that Offtopic mod...
Re:Well, I guess the obvious question is... (Score:2)
We already have these in Thailand (Score:3, Informative)
Industry insiders describe... (Score:3, Funny)
~jeff
Sales/attendance slumping... why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks, guys.
numbers (Score:2, Interesting)
Like I said,
The Marketing department has done it again! (Score:2)
Instead of mass-producing a product as cheaply as possible, then charging a relatively large amount for retail purchase, they give the reproduction task to the end retailer.
To the point: cheap burnable consumer DVDs are cheap for a reason, their often crap and are rarely last as long as ones used in DVD reproduction factories.
Sure it's a nice idea, it probably looked good when the marketing guys were presenting it.. But it misses the point!
The reason we have bur
Re:The Marketing department has done it again! (Score:2)
>To the point: cheap burnable consumer DVDs are cheap for a reason, their often crap and are
>rarely last as long as ones used in DVD reproduction factories.
That's because they are a different technology, not quality. Ones from factories are pressed so that the data is physically in the media. Burnt ones just make ink in the disk become visible.
Here's what I would buy (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, these films would also end up on peer to peer networks, but at that price it just wouldn't be worth my time and effort to get them illegally.
I don't want any more DVDs. I own fifty or so movies on DVD, but I stopped buying new ones over a year ago. They are simply not worth the money; when I can rent close to thirty for the price of buying one it's only a good investment to buy if I plan on watching it more than thirty times[1].
Sadly, I don't think the movie industry is likely to adopt such a model for quite some time.
[1] The opposite is true for music. Looking through my iTunes library, the vast majority of tracks have a play count of 50-80, making music rental services a very bad financial choice for me.
Re:Here's what I would buy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Here's what I would buy (Score:2)
I really don't see the benefit of your suggested program from the MPAA perspective.
I don't see what the problem with music rental services as they exist, for the cost of less than album a month you get access to a few million tracks. If you spent that much in your lifetime on CDs, that
Re:Here's what I would buy (Score:2)
People would actually use it.
It's not about money, it's about convenience. Is it really worth it for mom & dad, or even me, to set up a P2P system and download a song -- maybe, if it's popular enough -- versus a nicely put together system where I could click, pay, download, and play.
Re:Here's what I would buy (Score:2)
I don't see how your music playing contradicts the music rental service. A missing data point is how long it took you to get to a play count of 50-80.
One thing that differs from a music subscription service is there is no limit on how many songs you listen to a month (unlike your 30 movies a month limit which you set).
On th
Re:Here's what I would buy (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's see - 30 (films per month) x £10 (DVD) = £300 net sales that are being replaced by a £15 fee.
Yup, I see them going for it!
They own the content - they make the price. While we continue to buy DVDs they will continue not to offer cheaper downloads as the economic model of DVDs is clearly working for them and only the geeks are havin
Re:Here's what I would buy (Score:2)
Riiight. Except that I would happily pay a £15/month access fee, while I doubt I would by more than one DVD a year at £10 (I bought one in the last year, and that was made by a British TV company, so no money for the MPAA there).
They own the content - they make the price
Not true at all. The content is worthless to them. It is nothing more than an item for trade. As I ex
Niche markets? (Score:2)
And while we're on the subject of desirables: why should those kiosks just mirror the inventory of the store (which is what the articles seem to imply)? Make it so you can "order up" obscure movies or create compilations an
The answer (Score:2)
They need to be:
1.Available (one big reason people pirate, especially for TV shows, is because they cant watch it legally). This includes making stuff that is not currently cost-effective to put onto DVD and distributing and marketing and etc available (the costs of putting all those old TV shows that you just cant get anymore onto an online download service would probobly be negligable other than the inital one-off cost to digitize the shows into
Re:The answer (Score:2)
Yes, it does. That also goes hand-in-hand with
free of ads, anti-piracy messages, anti-fast-forward locks etc etc
The fact is, if we don't demand that they remove their restrictions, they'll continue to abuse them. Also, DRM does nothing to stop piracy, and it never will.
First Amendment issue: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:First Amendment issue: (Score:2)
Wasn't the movie, "Burning Kiosk" a Russian disaster flick?
Uh but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Uh but... (Score:2)
Well, given they want to keep changing the format, plus the fact that discs get scratched all the time unless you are very careful with them and many if not most households have kids in them that aren't careful. Plus many people buy or rent a disc and watch it a few time
DVD cannibalising the industry? (Score:2, Interesting)
Whenever I go to a cinema (unfortunately rarely these days), I am subjected to trailers which often show me really cool movies that I then want to go to see. So if I go to one movie, chances are I'll g
Re:DVD cannibalising the industry? (Score:2, Funny)
True, but instead we get non-skippable "informational" commercials calling us pirates and sprouting corporate bullshit about how pirates are not only evil, but also communists.
Re:DVD cannibalising the industry? (Score:2)
Seriously, as far as Im concerned "cinema" is dead and the
Re:DVD cannibalising the industry? (Score:2)
1.) Digital. Ok, I know that's changing too fast for theaters to keep up, and it might not match film quality yet, but it will, and it won't degrade. I've noticed that movies reels degrade significantly as they keep getting played over and over and over again. If I miss opening night or a few days after that, there's usually not much point.
2.) Insulation. This isn't a problem for my hometown theater, but many multiplexes are just too small and thin and try
Re:DVD cannibalising the industry? (Score:2)
DVDs canabalised the market for VHS too for instance. TV canabalised the market of the theatre to a degree (and probably cinema too come to that).
Wouldn't it just be that maybe, just maybe, we've all outgrown the cinema.
Too early for slashdot (Score:2)
caused one of those cheesie web kiosks to catch on fire?
Cool.
A Brief, Feeble Defense of an Execrable Idea (Score:2, Interesting)
The motion picture industry's line of thinking (if it can be called that) probably ran something like this:
Re:A Brief, Feeble Defense of an Execrable Idea (Score:2)
Re:A Brief, Feeble Defense of an Execrable Idea (Score:2)
It's like trying to build a flying machine by tying two bricks together.
+5 Insightful, if only I had mod points. Must file this under "important analogies to remember later".
Huh? (Score:2)
Better idea (Score:3)
A good idea if (Score:2)
Here is what I was thinking. There are a fair number of movies that are not being served by the DVD market. Either they are not going to sell enough to justify the cost to press, or will not move enough in the stores to justify the spa
They did it to themselves. (Score:2)
Hollywood's movie distribution system is in dire need of a fix.
Actually -- it's not. Unless you have no retailer and no internet access to purchase DVD's, the distribution system works.
Movie attendance has been suffering.
If you're a single person going to a theatre spending US$8.50 for entry, $4.00 for a medium drink, $5.00 for a box of candy or nachos, one person might be able to handle it. Now, imagine being a family of four and doing all that?
In all though, I
What? (Score:2)
I thought movie attendance had actually picked up this year over last. Maybe not a huge increase, but it's not "suffering" --- and DVD sales are not slumping. Their rate of increase has been slowing down, but that's a measure of acceleration, not speed or distance.
This'll hopefully help digital downloads (Score:2)
Two words.... (Score:2)
Not that it'll be used for that, but the potential is there.
Rejoice (Score:2)
Think about it. They are giving in, even if it's only a little. Inch by inch, they will eventually be forced to realize that switching to a non-centralized online distribution format will make them more money.
No, not as much money as they once made per film, but more money TODAY, than they would otherwise lose to online piracy (which often is caused by users not having the choice to buy online cheaply). Need proof? Just look at what iTunes did for the
This is great news! (Score:2)
DVD sales are slumping (Score:2)
DVD sales are slumping
Besides the crapfest that has been the movie industry lately, wouldn't this also be caused by people holding off on purchases since they know another format is just around the corner?
Re:attribute your sources! (Score:1)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
The people who amass music are long time music enthusiasts. You don't sound like one. I have absolutely tons of CDs and I reguarly 'dust off' old CDs. And CD expiry, to an extent is a myth which has never really been tested fully. My dad has CDs from when CDs were first released (early 1980) which still work as well as new, and I have some CDrs from 10 years ago which still work as new.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
However, the problem with your scheme for movies is that the mechanism for "play once" would be "play once the way I want to". I want to be able to download a movie, keep it around for a few days, play it with whatever program I want, then delete it. As you said, most people don't want to have