4 ms·

I think the tech community thinks the MPAA is much more monolithic than they actually are. The individual companies are not going to agree on what content to of

I think the tech community thinks the MPAA is much more monolithic than they actually are. The individual companies are not going to agree on what content to offer at what rates in a new high-speed market, so the MPAA is going to talk about the one thing its members agree upon: piracy=bad. I honestly have no idea why the MPAA spokesman decided to go on the record about Google Fiber. If it were me, I would have just managed expectations by pointing out that it's probably not in the interest of of MPAA member studios to remaster their content for gigabit rates, given such a small potential audience. It's not like these studios just have uncompressed 4k files of every movie they've ever made just sitting on a hard drive somewhere, waiting for someone like Google to say "can you offer 500 Mbps versions and see what the residents of Kansas City are willing to pay for them?". Even if they did, every writer, director, etc. entitled to royalties from future releases would be up in arms saying they're not charging enough.

alexqgb 14y ago
Actually, starting around Spider Man 2 (2004) major studios have been making growing use of DI - digital intermediates - which are usually 4k files from which they generate the negatives from which they strike the release prints. And with the shift to digital projection they skip the prints and just deliver the files to theaters directly. So yes, they do have have them just sitting on hard drives, because that's how their business already works. Increased royalties are not a huge concern. Studios will avoid them when they can, and and minimize them where they can't. But they won't leave money on the table to avoid paying them outright. If there's business to be done, they'll do it. The serious opposition is likely to come from the theater owners. They're still vitally important partners for the studios, and they hate anything and everything that has the effect of narrowing their window of exclusivity on access to content, or creating a home-viewing experience big and bold enough to make the theater unnecessary. If someone is going to park a 4k display at the delivery end of a pipe fast enough to supply it, they want it to be them and them alone. And they will be tremendously forceful in opposition to any threats on this front, actual or perceived.
magicalist 14y ago
> It's not like these studios just have uncompressed 4k files of every movie they've ever made just sitting on a hard drive somewhere, waiting for someone like Google to say "can you offer 500 Mbps versions and see what the residents of Kansas City are willing to pay for them?". Even if they did, every writer, director, etc. entitled to royalties from future releases would be up in arms saying they're not charging enough. Well, that sounds like an opportunity for most industries, not a problem, but momentum there is what it is (the dig at writers and directors is odd, since of course the studios are in line for by far the most royalties, they're the ones that insist on ever more draconian DRM schemes and higher prices to "preserve" the perceived value of film, and in the 2007 writers guild strike they wanted to give the writers nothing for royalties on streaming video). But even streaming bluray quality video, which is available for every movie on bluray, would be a huge step up, and much more realistic for the speeds we'll see over a "gigabit" network. I was leaning more toward Amazon video for tv shows and movies recently, but the new 1080p itunes video has made me switch back. Even though it's relatively poor quality for the resolution, the step up from the 720p versions has been fantastic. Moving up to something approaching bluray would be something else entirely, I would pay as much or more for it as I do on itunes, and the instant gratification is something no torrent can match. Now the economics might not be there -- most people will mess up the video input or not even notice the bump in resolution, and to be honest, I almost always rent movies on itunes, not buy them (though doing so at a steady rate basically turns me into a willing subscriber who owns nothing, which is pretty much their dream) -- but there certainly is a viable technical option.
- esonderegger 14y ago
  I didn't mean it as a dig at writers and directors, although going back and re-reading my post it certainly seems like it (my bad). I merely wanted to point out how large the number of stake-holders is for your average motion picture. One significant reason the film industry is so slow to catch up to the internet is because it's so hard to get those stake-holders to agree to anything and, at least until recently, their contracts weren't written with an eye to technologies that didn't exist yet. I think the reason we've stand-up comedians be among the first to offer audience-friendly distribution is that they don't have to go back an renegotiate all their contracts to allow them to give the audience what they want. I agree that blu-ray quality video streaming to the home would be a huge step forward (and actually a very reasonable usage of that bandwidth - the higher bitrate codecs are mostly useful for reduced latency, which really isn't an issue for Hollywood content). There would probably still have to be some remastering, at least of the audio, which is not optimized for streaming, which would be expensive given the current market size.

alexqgb 14y ago

Actually, starting around Spider Man 2 (2004) major studios have been making growing use of DI - digital intermediates - which are usually 4k files from which they generate the negatives from which they strike the release prints. And with the shift to digital projection they skip the prints and just deliver the files to theaters directly. So yes, they do have have them just sitting on hard drives, because that's how their business already works. Increased royalties are not a huge concern. Studios will avoid them when they can, and and minimize them where they can't. But they won't leave money on the table to avoid paying them outright. If there's business to be done, they'll do it. The serious opposition is likely to come from the theater owners. They're still vitally important partners for the studios, and they hate anything and everything that has the effect of narrowing their window of exclusivity on access to content, or creating a home-viewing experience big and bold enough to make the theater unnecessary. If someone is going to park a 4k display at the delivery end of a pipe fast enough to supply it, they want it to be them and them alone. And they will be tremendously forceful in opposition to any threats on this front, actual or perceived.

magicalist 14y ago

> It's not like these studios just have uncompressed 4k files of every movie they've ever made just sitting on a hard drive somewhere, waiting for someone like Google to say "can you offer 500 Mbps versions and see what the residents of Kansas City are willing to pay for them?". Even if they did, every writer, director, etc. entitled to royalties from future releases would be up in arms saying they're not charging enough. Well, that sounds like an opportunity for most industries, not a problem, but momentum there is what it is (the dig at writers and directors is odd, since of course the studios are in line for by far the most royalties, they're the ones that insist on ever more draconian DRM schemes and higher prices to "preserve" the perceived value of film, and in the 2007 writers guild strike they wanted to give the writers nothing for royalties on streaming video). But even streaming bluray quality video, which is available for every movie on bluray, would be a huge step up, and much more realistic for the speeds we'll see over a "gigabit" network. I was leaning more toward Amazon video for tv shows and movies recently, but the new 1080p itunes video has made me switch back. Even though it's relatively poor quality for the resolution, the step up from the 720p versions has been fantastic. Moving up to something approaching bluray would be something else entirely, I would pay as much or more for it as I do on itunes, and the instant gratification is something no torrent can match. Now the economics might not be there -- most people will mess up the video input or not even notice the bump in resolution, and to be honest, I almost always rent movies on itunes, not buy them (though doing so at a steady rate basically turns me into a willing subscriber who owns nothing, which is pretty much their dream) -- but there certainly is a viable technical option.

esonderegger 14y ago
I didn't mean it as a dig at writers and directors, although going back and re-reading my post it certainly seems like it (my bad). I merely wanted to point out how large the number of stake-holders is for your average motion picture. One significant reason the film industry is so slow to catch up to the internet is because it's so hard to get those stake-holders to agree to anything and, at least until recently, their contracts weren't written with an eye to technologies that didn't exist yet. I think the reason we've stand-up comedians be among the first to offer audience-friendly distribution is that they don't have to go back an renegotiate all their contracts to allow them to give the audience what they want. I agree that blu-ray quality video streaming to the home would be a huge step forward (and actually a very reasonable usage of that bandwidth - the higher bitrate codecs are mostly useful for reduced latency, which really isn't an issue for Hollywood content). There would probably still have to be some remastering, at least of the audio, which is not optimized for streaming, which would be expensive given the current market size.