Comcast proposing "instant rental with ownership" PPV

Comcast, always hunting for new revenue streams, has been making the Hollywood rounds lately with a proposal that would allow digital cable subscribers to order a pay-per-view movie and receive the same movie in the mail a few days later, in the form of a DVD; even though less than half of Comcast's 21 million subscribers own a digital set-top box, 9 or 10 million captive viewers are still an attractive target for Hollywood's wares.The proposed service would cost $17-a-pop, and would offer certain movies several weeks in advance of their regular PPV premieres.  So now instead of wasting several dollars on awful PPV movies (and even more for those "special" films- arthouse flicks, of course), we can spend even more money to receive a hard copy of the movie that we just watched and decided that we hated.

[Via Slashdot]

[Timmy @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

This might be useful for those who don't have a DVD burner, but (to use an overly used Engadget figure of speech) LET'S FACE IT, $17 dollars is way more than I'd want to pay for a DVD when I can purchase a new one online for at least $5 less.

[Dustin Tarditi @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Ooh - better: PPV for the movie, then get a discount if you want it or not afterwards... prevent the purchase of a movie if it's a dog that way.

Basically, pay your normay $4ppv and you can elect (really anytime during the "rental" period) to buy the media for, say, $10 + S&H.

[Mark @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

This might make sense if you could buy a PPV movie at home and then, if you liked it, apply the PPV cost toward actual purchase. They'll never do that though because they know that 99 times out of 100 after you watch it you won't want to buy it.

[Drewsky @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

I agree that the PPV cost should be deducted from the purchase cost...and that $17 is too much. I have another thought, though. What if the set top box had a DVD burner? Then if you liked the movie, you could pop in a blank DVD, have your copy now and billed for it on your cable bill. Obviously there would have to be some fairly tight controls on this. They could expand this further and allow you to select various TV shows for burning to DVD and charge you fair market value for the programs (DRMed of course). I would prolly take the current season of the simpson and stargate...then by the end of the season you have the whole thing on DVD and they have their money. Oh, and since the user pays for the media their margin would be better than sending physical product. Just some thoughts...comments, criticisms?

[Ginnal @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

This would be great for things like boxing matches.

In fact I can't think of any other time where it makes sense.

[Teve Torbes @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Oh yeah, I know I'd love to have a hardcopy of a boxing match to watch over, and over, and...

[lecco @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

@#4: that's a good idea except the DRM part. They will not get a cent on me with anything that has to do with DRM.

[MDB @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Lame.

They should have a suck factor rating at the end of the movie as an opt out for getting the disc. Charge for the movie at the old rate if you hated it.

Ditch the Comcast box with DVD Burner. You can burn the movie now onto DVD at the same rate ($4.99) if you have TIVO w/ burner / DirecTV. I pay $5 additional to my satellite bill for TIVO...burn from TIVO to disc. Done.