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I love movies. Whenever I visit my dad (other side of the country), we go to see movies. However, most of the year I live with my girlfriend who falls asleep in

by TACIXAT 10y ago

I love movies. Whenever I visit my dad (other side of the country), we go to see movies. However, most of the year I live with my girlfriend who falls asleep in theaters and can't justify the cost. This leads to me not seeing movies in theaters anymore. Now, I am subscribed to two streaming services. I don't pirate. I refuse to watch anything with ads, happy to pay, and somewhat ironically, the only ads I watch to completion are trailers that I haven't seen. I would love to catch movies as they are released but I have to wait until they're available on the streaming service. When they are available it is usually 5$ for a "rental". Is that a joke? I used to pay that at Blockbuster, and they had a physical location and employees! They've priced their digital content in such a way that I will only pay to see the movies that I really want to see. If it was cheaper, I'd be a constant consumer. It seems that is how most things in society get priced. Not for ultimate consumption, but to maximize the profit curve. I get that is how capitalism works, but that logic doesn't make sense to me for digital goods. They are practically zero cost to distribute once they are manufactured and your competition is people pirating them. If you're worried about audience size, lower the cost. You'll enable a lot more people to see a lot more movies.

chadgeidel 10y ago
I'm not sure what your economic situation is, but I feel that $5 is pretty reasonable - at least in the US. Remember going to Blockbuster and then discovering the movie you wanted wasn't in stock? Along with the 2nd and 3rd options in your mind? I don't know about you, but I went home empty handed several times. (Yes, I had already gone through the greatly limited back catalog of interesting movies at all my local movie stores).
- coredog64 10y ago
  RedBox will rent you a physical DVD for $1.50, and IIRC, $2 for a BluRay.
  - CodeCube 10y ago
    Yeah, but then you have to go get in your car, drive to the corner store, get out, wait in line, browse to find your movie, pay, get back in my car, drive back home. Ugh! I know I know, #firstworldproblems ... but some markets like where I live in Orlando, FL, driving is a pain in the arse (not a walkable city), so I just pony up the $5 for the digital rental to save me the hassle.
    - mixmastamyk 10y ago
      They are usually in grocery stores where you need to go anyway.
      - omginternets 10y ago
        I go grocery shopping once a month.
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      Do you ever buy groceries? Or do you have a personal assistant who does all that stuff for you? Maybe you don't buy groceries, but I do. I need to eat, so I buy food from a grocery store. Conveniently enough, my local RedBox is located at my local grocery store. There's always something I can buy there to restock my refrigerator or panty. And if I wanted to watch RedBox movies, it'd be very convenient because I could pick it up there, along with some food. If driving to your local grocery store is such a pain, you might want to re-evaluate your choice of city to live in. I've lived in a bunch of different places around the US and never seen a place where just getting to the local grocery store was that much time or trouble. (Work, sure, because the commute can be long and rush-hour traffic congested, but not the grocery store.)
      - ghaff 10y ago
        The nearest RedBox is only a 5-10 minute drive away. But renting that way still usually involves making a special trip to either pickup or drop off. Not really worth it to save $3 most of the time. I use RedBox but it's a very occasional thing--especially as I still have a minimal Netflix DVD by mail subscription.
  - chadgeidel 10y ago
    "Back in the day" Redbox didn't exist. :-D I've gone to Redbox and have the same problem. I feel that queuing up a guaranteed watching experience from Amazon is worth the hassle of an extra few bucks compared to getting in my car and driving somewhere. (Yes, I assume I could walk or ride my bike. I've never actually been to a nearby RedBox so I don't know how far it is.)
    - swsieber 10y ago
      There is the option of hopping online to check the specific RedBox you'd be going to, to see if there's a copy and if available, reserving it for yourself. Still possible for it to not have a movie you want, but at least you'd know that before leaving the house.
      - chadgeidel 10y ago
        Or, I can just rent it from Amazon. :-D
  - phhlho 10y ago
    I think the biggest failure of RedBox is that people don't seem to realize you can complete the entire transaction online and reserve the movie. I can reserve a movie Friday morning, then drop by the grocery store Friday night to pick it up along with whatever I need for dinner. So easy, and I get to watch in BluRay quality for $2!
- amorphid 10y ago
  What isn't reasonable is the difference in cost between different formats. SD should be the same price as HD, 2D should be the same price as 3D, etc. At least that's what I say.
  - iainmerrick 10y ago
    I'm curious, why? If you're OK with having a price tag and sharing restrictions on digital content in the first place (most likely involving some kind of DRM), why not let them set different prices on different versions of it? I'm on the fence myself. I dislike DRM in principle, but movies and TV shows need to be funded somehow, and I hate ads, so I'm happy to pay a reasonable price.
    - maccard 10y ago
      I feel the same, however the way I see it, the price you pay is to access the content, the delivery medium should be up to me (within reason - I'm not expecting a bluray or dvd release without having to pay shipping costs etc).
    - amorphid 10y ago
      Personally I am paying for the experience of seeing a movie in the theater, and I don't like 3-D. Last weekend I wanted to see Resident Evil. The local theater has seven 3-D showings times, and only two 2-D showings. If a theater is only going to mostly offer 3-D showings, I might go of the price was the same. Since I'm not interested in paying a premium for 3-D, I simply won't see the film if there isn't a 2-D option. If it is reasonable to not offer the product I want to buy, then so be it.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    SD & HD I can see being the same price but 3D takes way more effort to create than 2D. I found that BBC sell HD content for [~40%] more - which to me is crazy if it's more than a few pence more, all the people are paying for at the sale end is the cost of a little more storage. In a way the SD should be more as you have to transcode it, they're filming it in HD already.
minutillo 10y ago
Check your local public library and interlibrary loan system. You'll probably find a great selection, and you can't beat the price!
coldtea 10y ago
>I used to pay that at Blockbuster, and they had a physical location and employees! If due to piracy, newer entertainment options, etc., the number of people who digitally rent a movie is smaller, and the cost to make a movie is the same (or higher), then it doesn't matter whether blockbuster had employees, the costs could be similar to getting the digital version. In other words, the differences in operating costs between digital Netflix and store-based Blockbuster might not be the major factor of the actual cost (and thus the price to rent).
- digler999 10y ago
  I would guess brand perception might play into it too. I know I've read before (can't find a source though) about a concept in economics where even if you can afford to price your product/service super low, you shouldn't because customers will perceive your product of lower quality. suppose netflix had an ala carte option, and the shitty straight-to-dvd movies and shows were $0.25 to watch, but later block busters were $5-$10 per view. If you see too many $0.25 shows on your screen, you will (I think) begin to perceive netflix as a vendor of crappy, cheap content, which ultimately hurts their whole brand.
Pigo 10y ago
A good friend of mine _wink_ has been a pirate since the golden age of IRC. I, uh He, always said he'd pay for digital content when they made distribution digital. And when they did, I was happy to start paying for it. I was happy to have every King of the Hill on someone else's hard drive finally. Then the price for playing by the rules kept going up and up. Meanwhile there was less and less, and less, I cared to see. I can't even think of the last movie I actually itched to see. Maybe I've gotten old and don't have time to search for diamonds in the rough, but I don't see any more movies like Oh Brother Where Art Thou or Fight Club or Snatch that I can't get tired of. They can't cry poverty when every time Adam Sandler squeezes one out it makes $75 million. I know creative accounting makes it seem like they break even, but I call BS on that. If companies besides Pixar would actually pay for writing that moves people, their wallets would come with them.
- tajen 10y ago
  In Europe we get blockbusters with a delay (4 to 8 months), so the choice is, either you pirate now, either you go watch it in theaters in 6 months, either you pay for the DVD-with-unskippable-ads next year. Dumbed-down movies are also a result of trying to conquer worldwide markets with massive social inequality, from Brazil to Philippines. You need a movie that everyone can understand, including partly-illiterate people and people with various cultural backgrounds (try the same facial expression in 15 languaages and you'll run into constraints). And you also need to abide by China's policy. Result: The lowest common denominator, but distributed in 158 countries. Which is sad, because we'd prefer to see movies with half the production costs and a good scenario.
  - mrec 10y ago
    > either you pay for the DVD-with-unskippable-ads Blu-Ray seems to have avoided this slide into the adware sewer so far, which surprises me a bit. Maybe there's language prohibiting it in the spec, I dunno. They're not significantly more expensive than DVDs any more, either. Unfortunately the content industry seems to be winning the war on ripping for BDs, so I've had to stop buying them for the time being.
  - avar 10y ago
rayiner 10y ago
> It seems that is how most things in society get priced. Not for ultimate consumption, but to maximize the profit curve. Of course that's how things get priced?
- gizmo 10y ago
  The point being that you get a different price point when you want to maximize societal good or when you maximize revenue. Look at how expensive college textbooks and scientific papers are. Clearly making knowledge accessible to more people would be a great thing, but that's not what we optimize for. It's right to stop and ask why.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    > The point being that you get a different price point when you maximize societal good and when you maximize revenue. In a competitive market, the equilibrium price will maximize total social surplus: http://www.colorado.edu/economics/morey/2010/2010BookChapters/KW-Chapter6/KWCh06_3_Consumer_Surplus_Producer_Surplus_and_Gains_from_Trade.pdf http://www.colorado.edu/economics/morey/2010/2010BookChapter.... And as Netflix, Amazon, HBO, etc. are showing, the entertainment industry is highly competitive. They're toppling the giants by creating competitive products (original shows and movies). You have to remember that this is a coupled system. At the margin, lowering price will increase circulation (and thus consumer surplus), but it will also reduce producer surplus, and in the long run the incentive to produce. E.g. Netflix has a 30%+ profit margin. They could cut prices significantly and still make a profit. But that would also dramatically reduce their incentive to invest $5-6 billion per year creating new content: https://www.wired.com/2017/01/netflix-investing-original-shows-finally-pays-off https://www.wired.com/2017/01/netflix-investing-original-sho....
    - gech 10y ago
      And then higher prices reduce the incentive for the consumer to consume.
    - psyc 10y ago
      What if the producer does something totally insane, and keeps producing, because someone there likes doing it?
BeetleB 10y ago
Your post reads as if you chose digital streaming as an alternative to theaters. As such, streaming is ridiculously cheap - especially if you have multiple people watching.
digler999 10y ago
I get your point that blockbuster had rent, tax, utilities, and employees' salaries to pay. but its worth pointing out that blockbuster also went bankrupt. not sure if that supports your point or detracts from it.
- tracker1 10y ago
  It also peaked about 15 years ago.. there's been some inflation since then. I hate grocery shopping, I'm not sure if I'm just old, or if everything is getting to be too expensive.
  - FreeFull 10y ago
    Inflation wouldn't be such a problem if wage stagnation wasn't a thing too.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      Absolutely.. the middle class in particular has been significantly eroded... There are some quality of life bits that have significantly improved, but overall it could prove to be interesting. Rent/property costs are a much larger portion of expenses, and though I don't know that food costs will ever reach pre-wwii levels, it's getting expensive too.
  - npsimons 10y ago
    > I'm not sure if I'm just old, or if everything is getting to be too expensive. Yes. (I say this a someone else who is getting old and everything is too expensive).
  - ashark 10y ago
    I feel the same on groceries. ~12 years ago a $120 bill at the store meant an overflowing cart and an armful that wouldn't fit, without even coupon-clipping or anything. Now it seems like it means a 1/2 full cart at best. And I don't buy expensive meat or similarly-pricey things (much). Seems like prices took a big jump around '08-09, but I'm not sure the data backs that up so maybe it's just in my head. [EDIT] then again I guess I buy maybe 1/20th as much cart-(and caloire-count-)filling cheap garbage food like breakfast cereal and potato chips as I did back then. Maybe that's the "problem". Eating junk is hella cheap.
npsimons 10y ago
> I would love to catch movies as they are released but I have to wait until they're available on the streaming service. To be fair, the wait time used to be at least months, and then you still had to drive somewhere and hope they had something worth watching among their paltry selection. Things have gotten much better (yay progress!), but it has mostly been on the technology side. I also don't balk at the price so much, mostly because I am willing to go with SD (I don't judge the quality of movies by their resolution), and figure in inflation. Also, I am picky about what I watch, but that wouldn't change if the price came down . . . I like movies too, but I haven't been to a theater in years. I mostly have my own adventures now instead of living vicariously through others', but it's more than that. I feel that Hollywood has lost it's way, and it's partly due to pandering. One of my all time favorite articles is about the decline of movie quality: http://www.gq.com/story/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris http://www.gq.com/story/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris That was written in 2011. Now the article here talks about inefficiency, but I feel that if you aren't making good product, it doesn't matter how efficient you are.
SkyMarshal 10y ago
>When they are available it is usually 5$ for a "rental". Is that a joke? I used to pay that at Blockbuster, and they had a physical location and employees! They've priced their digital content in such a way that I will only pay to see the movies that I really want to see. If it was cheaper, I'd be a constant consumer. I don't see anything wrong with that pricing. Physical store and employees = time consuming and inconvenient. You should expect to pay a little more not evening having to leave your home to rent a movie, nor having to leave it again to return the movie. That said, good point about a lower price driving more sales. I assume the current price is optimized for total revenue, but who knows. And yes, the more expensive the rental, the more some will pirate it instead.
- dehugger 10y ago
  5$ in the digital age just seems ridiculous. That's 50% of my Netflix subscription for one film! If it was 1-2$ I would feel much better about renting a film online. At 5$ I'm halfway to a movie ticket, which is a much better experience (for me at least).
nandhp 10y ago
> 5$ for a "rental". Is that a joke? Pretty much. Redbox rents new release DVDs for $1.50/day; if you are in the US, you probably have a few boxes near you.
- pmlnr 10y ago
  > if you are in the US http://myrling-art.tumblr.com/post/153093626457/afusionoffandoms-chefpyro-fandom-for-an http://myrling-art.tumblr.com/post/153093626457/afusionoffan... (click for the pictures) fandom for an American TV show: don’t watch it online! watch the show on TV when it airs so the ratings go up! show your support! me, a mere European: No channels here. fandom for an American TV show: then at least watch it for free on their own website and support them through ads and hits me, a mere European: Geofence here. fandom for an American TV show: ok fine, then AT LEAST buy the DVDs when they come out and support the show through that! me, a mere European: No release for Europe.
- seppin 10y ago
  itunes charged the cost of a DVD/Blu Ray PURCHASE at one time for rentals, so 17-18 dollars
Retric 10y ago
Part of the problem is their model is based on people really wanting to see a movie. Then they fail to produce movies people really want to see. Star Wars 8 may be profitable, but Disney failed to make Star Wars 7 awesome and people are just not jumping through hoops for the next one. There are plenty of stories worth telling, but Hollywood tends to lag between what people want to watch and what they started making 5 years ago. Making great movies is hard, and playing it safe never works for long.
- tomashertus 10y ago
  I think that SW7 analogy does not work here. Disney is exception to this article and their movies are profitable, big time.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Profitable yes, but the question is how many hoops you will jump through to see the SW movie next year and the year after that. Remember, Disney put out 'Land before time 13' because they made money on the first 12 'Land before time' movies. But, 13 was never going to see a movie theater.
    - __david__ 10y ago
      I plan on seeing 8 and 9 (and the intervening Han Solo movie) in the theater on opening day with my brother, like I have for the previous 2. You keep comparing "Star Wars" to "The Land Before Time". I think you vastly underestimate the popularity of Star Wars, particularly the past 2 movies.
      - Retric 10y ago
        It was #2 for the year and wildly profitable. So, no I am not doubting there where plenty of people who loved the movie. The movie was above average and that's the problem. Hollywood depends on movies like The Sorcerer's Stone, The Fellowship of the Ring, A New Hope, Bourne Identity, even Iron Man to drive future revenue. Movies that build off of that success make money, but they don't prime the pump.
CaptSpify 10y ago
> I get that is how capitalism works, but that logic doesn't make sense to me for digital goods. They are practically zero cost to distribute once they are manufactured and your competition is people pirating them. If you're worried about audience size, lower the cost. You'll enable a lot more people to see a lot more movies. This echoes a drunk-blog that I wrote once, but basically I believe our current economic model no longer makes sense when talking about digital goods. We baked the manufacturing-cost of a product into each individual item, when it cost money to make an individual item. With digital goods, it only costs money to make the first item, every duplicate is essentially free. I think Kickstarter and the like are great examples of this, because they more accurately reflect how the costs actually influence the creation of the product.
- dilemma 10y ago
  The marginal cost of producing another unit of a digital good is close to zero. On the flip side, the cost of marketing that good is close to infinite.
  - orbat 10y ago
    Producing copies of an already existing digital good is, for all intents and purposes, free. Creating the original most definitely is not, and that's the issue here
    - SixSigma 10y ago
      An hour of labour is, for all intents and purposes, also free or 200 kcals of food at the most.
      - randomdata 10y ago
        The difference is the opportunity cost. It's easy to see what other opportunities labour has, it's not easy to see what other opportunities copying bits has, especially in the household capacity. I certainly don't see anyone asking to use my residential bit-copying facilities in any meaningful capacity, but I do see people asking to use my time.
becarefulyo 10y ago
> When they are available it is usually 5$ for a "rental". Is that a joke? I used to pay that at Blockbuster, and they had a physical location and employees! We're never going to get anywhere until people understand that cost+ pricing is not a thing.
- mixmastamyk 10y ago
  Doesn't change the fact that my consumption would explode if the price were half.
  - Mtinie 10y ago
    Would it though? I don't question that there would be some increase, but will it really be an explosion of consumption? Personally, the biggest constraint on my ability to watch the large amount of films that are on my "to view" list is not the cost of the individual rentals but the availability of time in which I can actually devote to sitting down to watch a 90-, 120-, 150-, or 180-minute long film. The ability to split up my viewings over multiple sessions helps but with the way that most online streaming rental services work for current films, 24 or 48 hour windows, I've had a number of films I've rented age-out before I've had a chance to finish them.
    - robryan 10y ago
      It really depends on the relative utility of that $5 to you. For some it would be a barrier, in that they would have free time that could have potentially been spent watching a movie but they didn't want to spend the $5. For others, the $5 is such a small amount that the barrier is time.
  - 1123581321 10y ago
    It's unlikely you like films enough to watch many more of them than you do now.
    - mixmastamyk 10y ago
ctdonath 10y ago
Supply and demand. A thing is worth what another is willing to pay for it. Those $5 streaming "rentals" are for those actually willing to pay $5 to watch that movie right now. It's worth it to them. Eventually the $5 rental crowd is satiated, and the "not more than $4" crowd gets a chance as the price is lowered to match what others are willing to pay for it. Eventually that price tapers off to "$8/month buffet" and ends up on my Netflix queue. They DO lower the cost - as those willing to pay higher prices do so, are satiated, and the audience temporal/economic demographics shift. It's not just about price per rental, it's price plus time per rental. Some movies I'll pay $15 to watch on day of release; some I'll happily "spend" time waiting for so I only spend $1 to watch it. And yes, I'd happily get "that, here, now" for $5 rather than pile 4 people into the car, drive to Blockbuster, ask if they have it, find out the 2 copies are out, and wander the aisles for an hour reviewing what they do have and picking something ("Masters of the Universe"!) just to not completely waste the whole exercise (and decide that just leaving would have been better than watching "Masters of the Universe" only because it was the only thing vaguely appealing at the moment). Even with Redbox I at least have the option of looking for something new in particular and reserving it, from whichever of several nearby locations, for $2 from the convenience of my phone. Come John Wick 2 I'll have already pre-ordered it and be watching it, without the crowd, the moment it's available (and happy to pay the $19 to do so, having seen John Wick twice thanks to the $1 streaming specials).
- PaulHoule 10y ago
  Great point. People complain about windowing, but it is a sign that the movie industry is flexible about pricing to maximize the value they capture, unlike the music industry, TV industry, etc. When a movie comes out these days it often comes out in multiple editions with different features (not to mention Blu Ray, DVD or both) at different price points. If you want it right away you will pay a high price, but the movie they sell for $20 one day will probably be on sale for $10 or $5 at some point in the future. Thus, go to a retail store, and you will be able to buy a movie at a price you can afford or you can pay extra to get a better edition of something specific. Contrast that to music CD and track prices that are almost always the same, or the "take it or leave it" bundle offered by the cable companies.
fasteo 10y ago
Off-topic, but my dad went through this and his quality of life has changed dramatically. Yes, I am a little paranoid now. Sleepiness is when you fall asleep at a time or place that is not what you intended. You may fall asleep at a movie theater or while sitting with someone at lunch Tell your GF to read this page [1] and check her symptoms. [1] http://sleepcenter.ucla.edu/sleepiness http://sleepcenter.ucla.edu/sleepiness
forgottenpass 10y ago
that logic doesn't make sense to me for digital goods It makes some sense. There is (effectively) no first sale doctrine for digital goods. One organization gets to set the price for every single consumer. There may be middlemen, but the licencing deal will (at least implicitly) control the lowest price the middleman can offer without turning the "rental" into a loss leader. The copyright holder can sacrifice possible sales/"rentals" today, to maintain the market's perception of what such a product is worth tomorrow. A lot of people expected all digital stores to take Steam's approach to pricing. The steam store is known for the price of games dropping rapidly after release, and multiple deep-discount sales throughout the year. Even outside of sales, steam's "new" digital copies of aging games can be (and are often are) priced lower than physical shops selling used copies. But things generally trend towards the PSN and Xbox route. Their stores are notable for keeping prices high. Even on aging titles, their prices can be higher than physical retailers selling (new, not used) copies. Retailers need both the shelf space and to cut their losses from over-ordering at release. I'm sure they both have spreadsheets and models that explain how they'll make more money in the long run. But, for either model to work AT ALL it was important to find a way around the first sale doctrine for digital goods. If resale existed on any of these platforms, prices would be forced to respond to market forces.
mikeash 10y ago
I'm kind of the opposite. I'm not a big fan of movies, and I only see a few a year. My problem is that I'm pretty picky, and it's tough to tell if a movie is worth seeing. When in doubt, I'll pass it up and do something else instead. When I'm looking at a movie I think I want to see and it's a $5 rental, my thought is always, what if it sucks? And then I usually decide not to risk it. What I don't get is why they don't offer the first 30-60 minutes of the movie for free. I'll be able to tell fairly confidently by then if it's any good, and would happily pay to see the rest once I'm hooked. Instead, I have to take a guess from badly edited and misleading trailers, and reviews from people whose tastes may vary enormously from my own.
- patwolf 10y ago
  I like the idea of getting the first part of a movie for free, although I can imagine movies would eventually be written and produced in such a way to hook you in at the beginning with less attention given to the ending.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Well, you just changed my mind. My idea might be great in isolation, but the secondary consequences would be terrible. Hollywood, please ignore the above. I was briefly overcome with insanity. (In case the strength of the above is mistaken for sarcasm, I'm being completely serious here.)
- ghaff 10y ago
  Reviews, trailers, etc. Not perfect of course but it's pretty rare that I rent a movie after having done a modicum of research that causes me to think I've completely wasted a couple of hours. (That's not to say that movies don't ever disappoint but that's a different bar from "it sucks.")
  - mikeash 10y ago
    I did mention those. That works for me, with a healthy bias towards "I won't risk it." Without that bias, I'd get a lot of stinkers. But I'm picker than most.
ttcbj 10y ago
Assuming you are a software developer, I think you should reconsider your "price should approximate production cost" reasoning. I think it will hold you back if you eventually try something entrepreneurial. When I started a small software company, I originally had a similar understanding. I subconsciously thought that the software should be priced to pay for its development cost, plus some profit. I was not very successful, until I realized that the product should be priced as a percentage of the value it delivered to the customer. Customers don't want you to do a lot of work, they just want their problem solved for a price that is reasonable relative to the benefit of the solution. This idea reverses several of your conclusions: 1. The product should be priced based on how much value it delivers, and only those companies that can deliver the product for significantly less than that price will stay in business. Once a company finds a need that people will pay for, it generally makes sense to drive the cost of production down while maintaining the same benefit, thus maximizing profit. 2. The more value a company creates with the resources it uses (the greater its margin), the more left-over resources it will have to invest in producing still more benefits, or to return profits to its original investors. So, going back to the cost of digital content, I am happy to pay for it, as long as I end up feeling the movie was worth watching for the price. And if they can produce great content without many resources (or with lower cost of delivery), all the better. My problem, right now, is that there is so much great content I cannot ever hope to watch it. But that is not a problem that really bothers me, I am happy to keep paying to have a long list of shows I'd like to watch, if I could just find the time.
- TACIXAT 10y ago
  I will keep this in mind, mostly because you described my mentality to a tee. That is absolutely my reasoning on software projects. Though I have yet to set up a payment processor on any, my intentions were to price them very low. Thanks.
- rjbwork 10y ago
  Indeed. It's a hard shift in perspective from the default that we developers are biased towards given our "in the trenches, know the details" position.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
vaishaksuresh 10y ago
You bring up a big issue I have with the streaming model. I used to be an avid movie watcher. A year before I moved to a different country, I watched 60 movies in the theaters, that is about 5 a month. This did not even include the hundreds of movies I watched at home. Now I don't have the time to go to the theater even if I want to. All the streaming services get the movie 3-4 months after the release. At which point I usually would have lost interest. To add insult to the injury, rental is very expensive for the flexibility it provides (24-48 hours once you start watching) and the different price for SD vs HD (who watches SD anymore?). I would gladly pay $20 (which is more than what the theaters typically charge) per movie if the studios let me stream the same day it released in the theater.
pfarnsworth 10y ago
I have a "good-enough" home theater. I don't want to watch movies in the theater anymore, because the experience sucks. I don't mind waiting for the movie to be out of theaters, but once it is, I really want it to be available for purchase. I would pay $20 for the blockbuster movies on iTunes, since that's less than the cost of 2 tickets. But they usually make me wait for months, usually until the end of the year, so I pirate it, guilt-free. Until they make the proper decisions and make them available quicker, I will continue to pirate movies until they make them available when I want to watch them.
JohnJamesRambo 10y ago
I don't intend this in a mean way, but has your girlfriend went to the doctor about narcolepsy?
ghaff 10y ago
> You'll enable a lot more people to see a lot more movies. In addition to ttcpj's comment, it may be worth observing that this elasticity is only true up to a point. People only have so much time and, at some point, even if you give films away, people have some upper limit to how many they'll watch. In fact, I'd argue that--among people willing to pay any non-zero price--I'm not sure renting movies in the $2-$5 range is a significant impediment to most people watching as many as they want to.
massysett 10y ago
> When they are available it is usually 5$ for a "rental". Is that a joke? I used to pay that at Blockbuster, and they had a physical location and employees! Blockbuster did not have to operate a huge IT infrastructure to bring you a movie. Also, with Blockbuster you had to make a trek to the store, hope the movie was there behind that huge wall of movie boxes, wait in line to check it out, take it home, rewind it (in VHS days), and then make a trip to return it. With streaming or cable video on demand, you push a button and get better picture quality than DVD or VHS too. Even the device is cheaper: I can get a Roku or similar for less than $100, while VHS and DVD players were more expensive than that for a long time. So in absolutely every respect it's a better product than Blockbuster, yet on an inflation-adjusted basis it is cheaper. But if you are really looking for cheap content with potential for being a constant consumer, Netflix still ships DVDs, and cable operators are always offering free on demand movies.
- chucksmash 10y ago
  > Blockbuster did not have to operate a huge IT infrastructure to bring you a movie. This gets it backwards, doesn't it? Surely the numbers for digital distribution are orders of magnitude better than those for physical distribution. Streaming Transmogrifiers 3 to 1000 people is much easier than ensuring at any given time 1000 people can walk into your last-mile distribution center and find a copy on the shelf.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  Blockbuster did not have to operate a huge IT infrastructure to bring you a movie. No; they just had to operate a huge logistics network to contract, (re)purchase, ship, store, catalog, track, and dispose of physical media. That's on top of the labor costs for 60,000+ employees over 8,000+ physical locations. Shifting bits around, even at Netflix scale, requires far fewer people and far less investment.
kbart 10y ago
Exactly. Prices for digital content is insane. 5$ for American might be pocket money, but in some developing country that's still considerable amount of money and despite that, distributors charge the same. A good example is Netflix - in Eastern Europe it cost the same as in USA, but you can only watch a fraction of available content due to stupid regional restrictions. The problem is that entertainment industry is stuck in the golden age of 1960-1990 and refuses moved on.

by TACIXAT 10y ago

chadgeidel 10y ago

I'm not sure what your economic situation is, but I feel that $5 is pretty reasonable - at least in the US. Remember going to Blockbuster and then discovering the movie you wanted wasn't in stock? Along with the 2nd and 3rd options in your mind? I don't know about you, but I went home empty handed several times. (Yes, I had already gone through the greatly limited back catalog of interesting movies at all my local movie stores).

coredog64 10y ago
RedBox will rent you a physical DVD for $1.50, and IIRC, $2 for a BluRay.
- CodeCube 10y ago
  Yeah, but then you have to go get in your car, drive to the corner store, get out, wait in line, browse to find your movie, pay, get back in my car, drive back home. Ugh! I know I know, #firstworldproblems ... but some markets like where I live in Orlando, FL, driving is a pain in the arse (not a walkable city), so I just pony up the $5 for the digital rental to save me the hassle.
  - mixmastamyk 10y ago
    They are usually in grocery stores where you need to go anyway.
    - omginternets 10y ago
      I go grocery shopping once a month.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    Do you ever buy groceries? Or do you have a personal assistant who does all that stuff for you? Maybe you don't buy groceries, but I do. I need to eat, so I buy food from a grocery store. Conveniently enough, my local RedBox is located at my local grocery store. There's always something I can buy there to restock my refrigerator or panty. And if I wanted to watch RedBox movies, it'd be very convenient because I could pick it up there, along with some food. If driving to your local grocery store is such a pain, you might want to re-evaluate your choice of city to live in. I've lived in a bunch of different places around the US and never seen a place where just getting to the local grocery store was that much time or trouble. (Work, sure, because the commute can be long and rush-hour traffic congested, but not the grocery store.)
    - ghaff 10y ago
      The nearest RedBox is only a 5-10 minute drive away. But renting that way still usually involves making a special trip to either pickup or drop off. Not really worth it to save $3 most of the time. I use RedBox but it's a very occasional thing--especially as I still have a minimal Netflix DVD by mail subscription.
- chadgeidel 10y ago
  "Back in the day" Redbox didn't exist. :-D I've gone to Redbox and have the same problem. I feel that queuing up a guaranteed watching experience from Amazon is worth the hassle of an extra few bucks compared to getting in my car and driving somewhere. (Yes, I assume I could walk or ride my bike. I've never actually been to a nearby RedBox so I don't know how far it is.)
  - swsieber 10y ago
    There is the option of hopping online to check the specific RedBox you'd be going to, to see if there's a copy and if available, reserving it for yourself. Still possible for it to not have a movie you want, but at least you'd know that before leaving the house.
    - chadgeidel 10y ago
      Or, I can just rent it from Amazon. :-D
- phhlho 10y ago
  I think the biggest failure of RedBox is that people don't seem to realize you can complete the entire transaction online and reserve the movie. I can reserve a movie Friday morning, then drop by the grocery store Friday night to pick it up along with whatever I need for dinner. So easy, and I get to watch in BluRay quality for $2!
amorphid 10y ago
What isn't reasonable is the difference in cost between different formats. SD should be the same price as HD, 2D should be the same price as 3D, etc. At least that's what I say.
- iainmerrick 10y ago
  I'm curious, why? If you're OK with having a price tag and sharing restrictions on digital content in the first place (most likely involving some kind of DRM), why not let them set different prices on different versions of it? I'm on the fence myself. I dislike DRM in principle, but movies and TV shows need to be funded somehow, and I hate ads, so I'm happy to pay a reasonable price.
  - maccard 10y ago
    I feel the same, however the way I see it, the price you pay is to access the content, the delivery medium should be up to me (within reason - I'm not expecting a bluray or dvd release without having to pay shipping costs etc).
  - amorphid 10y ago
    Personally I am paying for the experience of seeing a movie in the theater, and I don't like 3-D. Last weekend I wanted to see Resident Evil. The local theater has seven 3-D showings times, and only two 2-D showings. If a theater is only going to mostly offer 3-D showings, I might go of the price was the same. Since I'm not interested in paying a premium for 3-D, I simply won't see the film if there isn't a 2-D option. If it is reasonable to not offer the product I want to buy, then so be it.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  SD & HD I can see being the same price but 3D takes way more effort to create than 2D. I found that BBC sell HD content for [~40%] more - which to me is crazy if it's more than a few pence more, all the people are paying for at the sale end is the cost of a little more storage. In a way the SD should be more as you have to transcode it, they're filming it in HD already.

minutillo 10y ago

Check your local public library and interlibrary loan system. You'll probably find a great selection, and you can't beat the price!

coldtea 10y ago

>I used to pay that at Blockbuster, and they had a physical location and employees! If due to piracy, newer entertainment options, etc., the number of people who digitally rent a movie is smaller, and the cost to make a movie is the same (or higher), then it doesn't matter whether blockbuster had employees, the costs could be similar to getting the digital version. In other words, the differences in operating costs between digital Netflix and store-based Blockbuster might not be the major factor of the actual cost (and thus the price to rent).

digler999 10y ago
I would guess brand perception might play into it too. I know I've read before (can't find a source though) about a concept in economics where even if you can afford to price your product/service super low, you shouldn't because customers will perceive your product of lower quality. suppose netflix had an ala carte option, and the shitty straight-to-dvd movies and shows were $0.25 to watch, but later block busters were $5-$10 per view. If you see too many $0.25 shows on your screen, you will (I think) begin to perceive netflix as a vendor of crappy, cheap content, which ultimately hurts their whole brand.

Pigo 10y ago

A good friend of mine _wink_ has been a pirate since the golden age of IRC. I, uh He, always said he'd pay for digital content when they made distribution digital. And when they did, I was happy to start paying for it. I was happy to have every King of the Hill on someone else's hard drive finally. Then the price for playing by the rules kept going up and up. Meanwhile there was less and less, and less, I cared to see. I can't even think of the last movie I actually itched to see. Maybe I've gotten old and don't have time to search for diamonds in the rough, but I don't see any more movies like Oh Brother Where Art Thou or Fight Club or Snatch that I can't get tired of. They can't cry poverty when every time Adam Sandler squeezes one out it makes $75 million. I know creative accounting makes it seem like they break even, but I call BS on that. If companies besides Pixar would actually pay for writing that moves people, their wallets would come with them.

tajen 10y ago
In Europe we get blockbusters with a delay (4 to 8 months), so the choice is, either you pirate now, either you go watch it in theaters in 6 months, either you pay for the DVD-with-unskippable-ads next year. Dumbed-down movies are also a result of trying to conquer worldwide markets with massive social inequality, from Brazil to Philippines. You need a movie that everyone can understand, including partly-illiterate people and people with various cultural backgrounds (try the same facial expression in 15 languaages and you'll run into constraints). And you also need to abide by China's policy. Result: The lowest common denominator, but distributed in 158 countries. Which is sad, because we'd prefer to see movies with half the production costs and a good scenario.
- mrec 10y ago
  > either you pay for the DVD-with-unskippable-ads Blu-Ray seems to have avoided this slide into the adware sewer so far, which surprises me a bit. Maybe there's language prohibiting it in the spec, I dunno. They're not significantly more expensive than DVDs any more, either. Unfortunately the content industry seems to be winning the war on ripping for BDs, so I've had to stop buying them for the time being.
- avar 10y ago

rayiner 10y ago

> It seems that is how most things in society get priced. Not for ultimate consumption, but to maximize the profit curve. Of course that's how things get priced?

gizmo 10y ago
The point being that you get a different price point when you want to maximize societal good or when you maximize revenue. Look at how expensive college textbooks and scientific papers are. Clearly making knowledge accessible to more people would be a great thing, but that's not what we optimize for. It's right to stop and ask why.
- rayiner 10y ago
  > The point being that you get a different price point when you maximize societal good and when you maximize revenue. In a competitive market, the equilibrium price will maximize total social surplus: http://www.colorado.edu/economics/morey/2010/2010BookChapters/KW-Chapter6/KWCh06_3_Consumer_Surplus_Producer_Surplus_and_Gains_from_Trade.pdf http://www.colorado.edu/economics/morey/2010/2010BookChapter.... And as Netflix, Amazon, HBO, etc. are showing, the entertainment industry is highly competitive. They're toppling the giants by creating competitive products (original shows and movies). You have to remember that this is a coupled system. At the margin, lowering price will increase circulation (and thus consumer surplus), but it will also reduce producer surplus, and in the long run the incentive to produce. E.g. Netflix has a 30%+ profit margin. They could cut prices significantly and still make a profit. But that would also dramatically reduce their incentive to invest $5-6 billion per year creating new content: https://www.wired.com/2017/01/netflix-investing-original-shows-finally-pays-off https://www.wired.com/2017/01/netflix-investing-original-sho....
  - gech 10y ago
    And then higher prices reduce the incentive for the consumer to consume.
  - psyc 10y ago
    What if the producer does something totally insane, and keeps producing, because someone there likes doing it?

BeetleB 10y ago

Your post reads as if you chose digital streaming as an alternative to theaters. As such, streaming is ridiculously cheap - especially if you have multiple people watching.

digler999 10y ago

I get your point that blockbuster had rent, tax, utilities, and employees' salaries to pay. but its worth pointing out that blockbuster also went bankrupt. not sure if that supports your point or detracts from it.

tracker1 10y ago
It also peaked about 15 years ago.. there's been some inflation since then. I hate grocery shopping, I'm not sure if I'm just old, or if everything is getting to be too expensive.
- FreeFull 10y ago
  Inflation wouldn't be such a problem if wage stagnation wasn't a thing too.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    Absolutely.. the middle class in particular has been significantly eroded... There are some quality of life bits that have significantly improved, but overall it could prove to be interesting. Rent/property costs are a much larger portion of expenses, and though I don't know that food costs will ever reach pre-wwii levels, it's getting expensive too.
- npsimons 10y ago
  > I'm not sure if I'm just old, or if everything is getting to be too expensive. Yes. (I say this a someone else who is getting old and everything is too expensive).
- ashark 10y ago
  I feel the same on groceries. ~12 years ago a $120 bill at the store meant an overflowing cart and an armful that wouldn't fit, without even coupon-clipping or anything. Now it seems like it means a 1/2 full cart at best. And I don't buy expensive meat or similarly-pricey things (much). Seems like prices took a big jump around '08-09, but I'm not sure the data backs that up so maybe it's just in my head. [EDIT] then again I guess I buy maybe 1/20th as much cart-(and caloire-count-)filling cheap garbage food like breakfast cereal and potato chips as I did back then. Maybe that's the "problem". Eating junk is hella cheap.

npsimons 10y ago

> I would love to catch movies as they are released but I have to wait until they're available on the streaming service. To be fair, the wait time used to be at least months, and then you still had to drive somewhere and hope they had something worth watching among their paltry selection. Things have gotten much better (yay progress!), but it has mostly been on the technology side. I also don't balk at the price so much, mostly because I am willing to go with SD (I don't judge the quality of movies by their resolution), and figure in inflation. Also, I am picky about what I watch, but that wouldn't change if the price came down . . . I like movies too, but I haven't been to a theater in years. I mostly have my own adventures now instead of living vicariously through others', but it's more than that. I feel that Hollywood has lost it's way, and it's partly due to pandering. One of my all time favorite articles is about the decline of movie quality: http://www.gq.com/story/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris http://www.gq.com/story/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris That was written in 2011. Now the article here talks about inefficiency, but I feel that if you aren't making good product, it doesn't matter how efficient you are.

SkyMarshal 10y ago

>When they are available it is usually 5$ for a "rental". Is that a joke? I used to pay that at Blockbuster, and they had a physical location and employees! They've priced their digital content in such a way that I will only pay to see the movies that I really want to see. If it was cheaper, I'd be a constant consumer. I don't see anything wrong with that pricing. Physical store and employees = time consuming and inconvenient. You should expect to pay a little more not evening having to leave your home to rent a movie, nor having to leave it again to return the movie. That said, good point about a lower price driving more sales. I assume the current price is optimized for total revenue, but who knows. And yes, the more expensive the rental, the more some will pirate it instead.

dehugger 10y ago
5$ in the digital age just seems ridiculous. That's 50% of my Netflix subscription for one film! If it was 1-2$ I would feel much better about renting a film online. At 5$ I'm halfway to a movie ticket, which is a much better experience (for me at least).

nandhp 10y ago

> 5$ for a "rental". Is that a joke? Pretty much. Redbox rents new release DVDs for $1.50/day; if you are in the US, you probably have a few boxes near you.

pmlnr 10y ago
> if you are in the US http://myrling-art.tumblr.com/post/153093626457/afusionoffandoms-chefpyro-fandom-for-an http://myrling-art.tumblr.com/post/153093626457/afusionoffan... (click for the pictures) fandom for an American TV show: don’t watch it online! watch the show on TV when it airs so the ratings go up! show your support! me, a mere European: No channels here. fandom for an American TV show: then at least watch it for free on their own website and support them through ads and hits me, a mere European: Geofence here. fandom for an American TV show: ok fine, then AT LEAST buy the DVDs when they come out and support the show through that! me, a mere European: No release for Europe.
seppin 10y ago
itunes charged the cost of a DVD/Blu Ray PURCHASE at one time for rentals, so 17-18 dollars

Retric 10y ago

Part of the problem is their model is based on people really wanting to see a movie. Then they fail to produce movies people really want to see. Star Wars 8 may be profitable, but Disney failed to make Star Wars 7 awesome and people are just not jumping through hoops for the next one. There are plenty of stories worth telling, but Hollywood tends to lag between what people want to watch and what they started making 5 years ago. Making great movies is hard, and playing it safe never works for long.

tomashertus 10y ago
I think that SW7 analogy does not work here. Disney is exception to this article and their movies are profitable, big time.
- Retric 10y ago
  Profitable yes, but the question is how many hoops you will jump through to see the SW movie next year and the year after that. Remember, Disney put out 'Land before time 13' because they made money on the first 12 'Land before time' movies. But, 13 was never going to see a movie theater.
  - __david__ 10y ago
    I plan on seeing 8 and 9 (and the intervening Han Solo movie) in the theater on opening day with my brother, like I have for the previous 2. You keep comparing "Star Wars" to "The Land Before Time". I think you vastly underestimate the popularity of Star Wars, particularly the past 2 movies.
    - Retric 10y ago
      It was #2 for the year and wildly profitable. So, no I am not doubting there where plenty of people who loved the movie. The movie was above average and that's the problem. Hollywood depends on movies like The Sorcerer's Stone, The Fellowship of the Ring, A New Hope, Bourne Identity, even Iron Man to drive future revenue. Movies that build off of that success make money, but they don't prime the pump.

CaptSpify 10y ago

> I get that is how capitalism works, but that logic doesn't make sense to me for digital goods. They are practically zero cost to distribute once they are manufactured and your competition is people pirating them. If you're worried about audience size, lower the cost. You'll enable a lot more people to see a lot more movies. This echoes a drunk-blog that I wrote once, but basically I believe our current economic model no longer makes sense when talking about digital goods. We baked the manufacturing-cost of a product into each individual item, when it cost money to make an individual item. With digital goods, it only costs money to make the first item, every duplicate is essentially free. I think Kickstarter and the like are great examples of this, because they more accurately reflect how the costs actually influence the creation of the product.

dilemma 10y ago
The marginal cost of producing another unit of a digital good is close to zero. On the flip side, the cost of marketing that good is close to infinite.
- orbat 10y ago
  Producing copies of an already existing digital good is, for all intents and purposes, free. Creating the original most definitely is not, and that's the issue here
  - SixSigma 10y ago
    An hour of labour is, for all intents and purposes, also free or 200 kcals of food at the most.
    - randomdata 10y ago
      The difference is the opportunity cost. It's easy to see what other opportunities labour has, it's not easy to see what other opportunities copying bits has, especially in the household capacity. I certainly don't see anyone asking to use my residential bit-copying facilities in any meaningful capacity, but I do see people asking to use my time.

becarefulyo 10y ago

> When they are available it is usually 5$ for a "rental". Is that a joke? I used to pay that at Blockbuster, and they had a physical location and employees! We're never going to get anywhere until people understand that cost+ pricing is not a thing.

mixmastamyk 10y ago
Doesn't change the fact that my consumption would explode if the price were half.
- Mtinie 10y ago
  Would it though? I don't question that there would be some increase, but will it really be an explosion of consumption? Personally, the biggest constraint on my ability to watch the large amount of films that are on my "to view" list is not the cost of the individual rentals but the availability of time in which I can actually devote to sitting down to watch a 90-, 120-, 150-, or 180-minute long film. The ability to split up my viewings over multiple sessions helps but with the way that most online streaming rental services work for current films, 24 or 48 hour windows, I've had a number of films I've rented age-out before I've had a chance to finish them.
  - robryan 10y ago
    It really depends on the relative utility of that $5 to you. For some it would be a barrier, in that they would have free time that could have potentially been spent watching a movie but they didn't want to spend the $5. For others, the $5 is such a small amount that the barrier is time.
- 1123581321 10y ago
  It's unlikely you like films enough to watch many more of them than you do now.
  - mixmastamyk 10y ago

ctdonath 10y ago

Supply and demand. A thing is worth what another is willing to pay for it. Those $5 streaming "rentals" are for those actually willing to pay $5 to watch that movie right now. It's worth it to them. Eventually the $5 rental crowd is satiated, and the "not more than $4" crowd gets a chance as the price is lowered to match what others are willing to pay for it. Eventually that price tapers off to "$8/month buffet" and ends up on my Netflix queue. They DO lower the cost - as those willing to pay higher prices do so, are satiated, and the audience temporal/economic demographics shift. It's not just about price per rental, it's price plus time per rental. Some movies I'll pay $15 to watch on day of release; some I'll happily "spend" time waiting for so I only spend $1 to watch it. And yes, I'd happily get "that, here, now" for $5 rather than pile 4 people into the car, drive to Blockbuster, ask if they have it, find out the 2 copies are out, and wander the aisles for an hour reviewing what they do have and picking something ("Masters of the Universe"!) just to not completely waste the whole exercise (and decide that just leaving would have been better than watching "Masters of the Universe" only because it was the only thing vaguely appealing at the moment). Even with Redbox I at least have the option of looking for something new in particular and reserving it, from whichever of several nearby locations, for $2 from the convenience of my phone. Come John Wick 2 I'll have already pre-ordered it and be watching it, without the crowd, the moment it's available (and happy to pay the $19 to do so, having seen John Wick twice thanks to the $1 streaming specials).

PaulHoule 10y ago
Great point. People complain about windowing, but it is a sign that the movie industry is flexible about pricing to maximize the value they capture, unlike the music industry, TV industry, etc. When a movie comes out these days it often comes out in multiple editions with different features (not to mention Blu Ray, DVD or both) at different price points. If you want it right away you will pay a high price, but the movie they sell for $20 one day will probably be on sale for $10 or $5 at some point in the future. Thus, go to a retail store, and you will be able to buy a movie at a price you can afford or you can pay extra to get a better edition of something specific. Contrast that to music CD and track prices that are almost always the same, or the "take it or leave it" bundle offered by the cable companies.

fasteo 10y ago

Off-topic, but my dad went through this and his quality of life has changed dramatically. Yes, I am a little paranoid now. Sleepiness is when you fall asleep at a time or place that is not what you intended. You may fall asleep at a movie theater or while sitting with someone at lunch Tell your GF to read this page [1] and check her symptoms. [1] http://sleepcenter.ucla.edu/sleepiness http://sleepcenter.ucla.edu/sleepiness

forgottenpass 10y ago

that logic doesn't make sense to me for digital goods It makes some sense. There is (effectively) no first sale doctrine for digital goods. One organization gets to set the price for every single consumer. There may be middlemen, but the licencing deal will (at least implicitly) control the lowest price the middleman can offer without turning the "rental" into a loss leader. The copyright holder can sacrifice possible sales/"rentals" today, to maintain the market's perception of what such a product is worth tomorrow. A lot of people expected all digital stores to take Steam's approach to pricing. The steam store is known for the price of games dropping rapidly after release, and multiple deep-discount sales throughout the year. Even outside of sales, steam's "new" digital copies of aging games can be (and are often are) priced lower than physical shops selling used copies. But things generally trend towards the PSN and Xbox route. Their stores are notable for keeping prices high. Even on aging titles, their prices can be higher than physical retailers selling (new, not used) copies. Retailers need both the shelf space and to cut their losses from over-ordering at release. I'm sure they both have spreadsheets and models that explain how they'll make more money in the long run. But, for either model to work AT ALL it was important to find a way around the first sale doctrine for digital goods. If resale existed on any of these platforms, prices would be forced to respond to market forces.

mikeash 10y ago

I'm kind of the opposite. I'm not a big fan of movies, and I only see a few a year. My problem is that I'm pretty picky, and it's tough to tell if a movie is worth seeing. When in doubt, I'll pass it up and do something else instead. When I'm looking at a movie I think I want to see and it's a $5 rental, my thought is always, what if it sucks? And then I usually decide not to risk it. What I don't get is why they don't offer the first 30-60 minutes of the movie for free. I'll be able to tell fairly confidently by then if it's any good, and would happily pay to see the rest once I'm hooked. Instead, I have to take a guess from badly edited and misleading trailers, and reviews from people whose tastes may vary enormously from my own.

patwolf 10y ago
I like the idea of getting the first part of a movie for free, although I can imagine movies would eventually be written and produced in such a way to hook you in at the beginning with less attention given to the ending.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Well, you just changed my mind. My idea might be great in isolation, but the secondary consequences would be terrible. Hollywood, please ignore the above. I was briefly overcome with insanity. (In case the strength of the above is mistaken for sarcasm, I'm being completely serious here.)
ghaff 10y ago
Reviews, trailers, etc. Not perfect of course but it's pretty rare that I rent a movie after having done a modicum of research that causes me to think I've completely wasted a couple of hours. (That's not to say that movies don't ever disappoint but that's a different bar from "it sucks.")
- mikeash 10y ago
  I did mention those. That works for me, with a healthy bias towards "I won't risk it." Without that bias, I'd get a lot of stinkers. But I'm picker than most.

ttcbj 10y ago

Assuming you are a software developer, I think you should reconsider your "price should approximate production cost" reasoning. I think it will hold you back if you eventually try something entrepreneurial. When I started a small software company, I originally had a similar understanding. I subconsciously thought that the software should be priced to pay for its development cost, plus some profit. I was not very successful, until I realized that the product should be priced as a percentage of the value it delivered to the customer. Customers don't want you to do a lot of work, they just want their problem solved for a price that is reasonable relative to the benefit of the solution. This idea reverses several of your conclusions: 1. The product should be priced based on how much value it delivers, and only those companies that can deliver the product for significantly less than that price will stay in business. Once a company finds a need that people will pay for, it generally makes sense to drive the cost of production down while maintaining the same benefit, thus maximizing profit. 2. The more value a company creates with the resources it uses (the greater its margin), the more left-over resources it will have to invest in producing still more benefits, or to return profits to its original investors. So, going back to the cost of digital content, I am happy to pay for it, as long as I end up feeling the movie was worth watching for the price. And if they can produce great content without many resources (or with lower cost of delivery), all the better. My problem, right now, is that there is so much great content I cannot ever hope to watch it. But that is not a problem that really bothers me, I am happy to keep paying to have a long list of shows I'd like to watch, if I could just find the time.

TACIXAT 10y ago
I will keep this in mind, mostly because you described my mentality to a tee. That is absolutely my reasoning on software projects. Though I have yet to set up a payment processor on any, my intentions were to price them very low. Thanks.
rjbwork 10y ago
Indeed. It's a hard shift in perspective from the default that we developers are biased towards given our "in the trenches, know the details" position.
enraged_camel 10y ago

vaishaksuresh 10y ago

You bring up a big issue I have with the streaming model. I used to be an avid movie watcher. A year before I moved to a different country, I watched 60 movies in the theaters, that is about 5 a month. This did not even include the hundreds of movies I watched at home. Now I don't have the time to go to the theater even if I want to. All the streaming services get the movie 3-4 months after the release. At which point I usually would have lost interest. To add insult to the injury, rental is very expensive for the flexibility it provides (24-48 hours once you start watching) and the different price for SD vs HD (who watches SD anymore?). I would gladly pay $20 (which is more than what the theaters typically charge) per movie if the studios let me stream the same day it released in the theater.

pfarnsworth 10y ago

I have a "good-enough" home theater. I don't want to watch movies in the theater anymore, because the experience sucks. I don't mind waiting for the movie to be out of theaters, but once it is, I really want it to be available for purchase. I would pay $20 for the blockbuster movies on iTunes, since that's less than the cost of 2 tickets. But they usually make me wait for months, usually until the end of the year, so I pirate it, guilt-free. Until they make the proper decisions and make them available quicker, I will continue to pirate movies until they make them available when I want to watch them.

JohnJamesRambo 10y ago

I don't intend this in a mean way, but has your girlfriend went to the doctor about narcolepsy?

ghaff 10y ago

> You'll enable a lot more people to see a lot more movies. In addition to ttcpj's comment, it may be worth observing that this elasticity is only true up to a point. People only have so much time and, at some point, even if you give films away, people have some upper limit to how many they'll watch. In fact, I'd argue that--among people willing to pay any non-zero price--I'm not sure renting movies in the $2-$5 range is a significant impediment to most people watching as many as they want to.

massysett 10y ago

> When they are available it is usually 5$ for a "rental". Is that a joke? I used to pay that at Blockbuster, and they had a physical location and employees! Blockbuster did not have to operate a huge IT infrastructure to bring you a movie. Also, with Blockbuster you had to make a trek to the store, hope the movie was there behind that huge wall of movie boxes, wait in line to check it out, take it home, rewind it (in VHS days), and then make a trip to return it. With streaming or cable video on demand, you push a button and get better picture quality than DVD or VHS too. Even the device is cheaper: I can get a Roku or similar for less than $100, while VHS and DVD players were more expensive than that for a long time. So in absolutely every respect it's a better product than Blockbuster, yet on an inflation-adjusted basis it is cheaper. But if you are really looking for cheap content with potential for being a constant consumer, Netflix still ships DVDs, and cable operators are always offering free on demand movies.

chucksmash 10y ago
> Blockbuster did not have to operate a huge IT infrastructure to bring you a movie. This gets it backwards, doesn't it? Surely the numbers for digital distribution are orders of magnitude better than those for physical distribution. Streaming Transmogrifiers 3 to 1000 people is much easier than ensuring at any given time 1000 people can walk into your last-mile distribution center and find a copy on the shelf.
Karunamon 10y ago
Blockbuster did not have to operate a huge IT infrastructure to bring you a movie. No; they just had to operate a huge logistics network to contract, (re)purchase, ship, store, catalog, track, and dispose of physical media. That's on top of the labor costs for 60,000+ employees over 8,000+ physical locations. Shifting bits around, even at Netflix scale, requires far fewer people and far less investment.

kbart 10y ago

Exactly. Prices for digital content is insane. 5$ for American might be pocket money, but in some developing country that's still considerable amount of money and despite that, distributors charge the same. A good example is Netflix - in Eastern Europe it cost the same as in USA, but you can only watch a fraction of available content due to stupid regional restrictions. The problem is that entertainment industry is stuck in the golden age of 1960-1990 and refuses moved on.