“Great to see you
folks, I’m glad you could all make it today. The reason I wanted to gather all
you media giants together today is really pretty simple. See we seem to have a major piracy
issue on our hands. It really
isn’t getting any better. So I wanted
to throw this idea at you and get your thoughts.
~
Let’s increase the cost of production DVD’s.
~We
can start charging people basically the same price for digital copies and just
give it to them a few weeks early.
Then we don’t even have to print or ship.
~We’ll
add a new kind of disk called a Blu-ray and charge even more for that. Then we can put them together and bump
the cost even more for the combo.
~I
also want to delay DVD release for as long as possible and then when it does
release only release it to certain vendors like Blockbuster. Everybody else will have to wait an
extra month.
~We
can also continue to pay “the talent” more and more every year into the tens of
millions so ticket prices at the theater are astronomical.
With all those new and
improved options out there, I
believe nobody will want to get their Smartphone out of their pocket and watch
our movies for free any longer!”
I don’t believe that those words have ever been spoken. Although to be honest I’m getting a
little tired of the game here. Let
me tell you why.
Due to the fact that my wife and I have young children and
are both busy and broke we were able to get to the theater a grand total of 3
times in the last 15 months. I am
a self-proclaimed movie buff, or was at one time, so that is very sad and
pathetic. That means we have to
wait until it comes out on DVD or Netflix. In my area there are a few choices. Blockbuster, Redbox and Netflix are
really the big three. Then there
are of course online renting deals such as Apple.
Well I waited until Tuesday of this week for my movie to
finally come out on DVD. It must
be said that it came out digitally a month before this week. I went to the local Blockbuster to
finally satisfy my cravings only to find out that blockbuster is closing its
doors and no longer renting DVD’s.
So they don’t have it.
Redbox won’t get it for at least 3 or four weeks if I’m lucky. That leaves me a little stranded (and
as you can tell irritated). I can
buy the DVD for a minimum of 17.99
or rent it from Apple for 5.00
dollars!! This is all after an
insanely long DVD release time.
Considering the DVD was probably just about ready at the time the movie
came to theaters.
So I’m mad and it’s not even because I just want to see my
movie. I can truly live without
it. We don’t even subscribe to a
TV service in my house for basically the same reason (and haven’t missed it for
one second). I’m mad because we have crazy technology right at our fingertips. I live just barely north of Hollywood,
and there is currently no way for me to rent this new release movie without
paying a premium. I wonder
if the studios ever take a look around and think before they make their
anti-piracy plea’s. By the way
quite a bit of this happens in other countries where it’s not illegal so are we
being charged for their loss overseas?
Nobody wants to bend a little bit and meet the public half
way? I understand that everybody
needs to make a living but REALLY?
There’s nothing better we can come up with. No better solution to this problem on either side of the
coin.
We’re being charged the same basic rate for a digital copy
of something today that we got in a case a few years ago. So where’s all the extra money for
printing and shipping and so forth going?
What’s the incentive to buy digital? I wonder what people’s limit on what they will spend for 2
hours of entertainment is? And how long they will wait. A hundred years ago we could pass our
books around and going to a state park was free.
Now?? Not so
much…