$999 plus rental and market rate purchase fees? They're all on crack. The biggest killer here is DRM. Why would I spend my hard earned money to saturate my internet connection (which that costs you more than $50 dollars a month) and not be assured I could watch my content forever?
That's what it basically comes down to. A set top box with a spinning hard drive storing the movie, or a piece of plastic storing the movie. Which one do I trust more to protect my investment?
I can realistically control the piece of plastic and take steps to protect it. The set top box contains a SPINNING HARD drive. The MTBF alone would lead me to believe that the set top box WILL fail in 5 years.
So in the end, which medium inspires more consumer confidence? DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray.
DRM can also be removed completely from DVD, and it will inevitably be true for the beavis & butthead HD formats as well.
All I care about when I spend the money to purchase a movie is that I can reasonably maintain my rights to view it forever, and transfer those rights to another person if I wished. Quite reasonable of a position IMO.
Now if VUDU would create a RENTAL only machine, lease you the equipment as part of a monthly contract and offer $5 dollar or less rental fees... you got a winner. I would buy that in a second and cancel HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc.
I seem to remember that ideas like this have already tried and failed. Other DRM crippled business models that relied on downloads.
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
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They just never learn do they?
$999 plus rental and market rate purchase fees? They're all on crack. The biggest killer here is DRM. Why would I spend my hard earned money to saturate my internet connection (which that costs you more than $50 dollars a month) and not be assured I could watch my content forever?
That's what it basically comes down to. A set top box with a spinning hard drive storing the movie, or a piece of plastic storing the movie. Which one do I trust more to protect my investment?
I can realistically control the piece of plastic and take steps to protect it. The set top box contains a SPINNING HARD drive. The MTBF alone would lead me to believe that the set top box WILL fail in 5 years.
So in the end, which medium inspires more consumer confidence? DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray.
DRM can also be removed completely from DVD, and it will inevitably be true for the beavis & butthead HD formats as well.
All I care about when I spend the money to purchase a movie is that I can reasonably maintain my rights to view it forever, and transfer those rights to another person if I wished. Quite reasonable of a position IMO.
Now if VUDU would create a RENTAL only machine, lease you the equipment as part of a monthly contract and offer $5 dollar or less rental fees... you got a winner. I would buy that in a second and cancel HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc.
I seem to remember that ideas like this have already tried and failed. Other DRM crippled business models that relied on downloads.