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Sorry this is off-topic but does anyone know why there are no independent Netflix services? I'm thinking back when you could go to your neighborhood movie renta
by personlurking 14y ago
Sorry this is off-topic but does anyone know why there are no independent Netflix services? I'm thinking back when you could go to your neighborhood movie rental place...well, now imagine that selection is specific (ex. Western) or curated, and also imagine it is online, available for viewing. Is this just too hard to get the rights to? How did local movie rental places get the rights to rent out films?
People sell pirated films on the street here in Brazil and I once heard of a cultured 'pirate' who only sold pirated, high-brow DVDs. It got me thinking
- garethsprice 14y agoLicensing terms are really hard and expensive to get, streaming services are expensive to set up/run and Internet brands are a "winner takes all" situation that make it hard for regional or niche brands to compete. You can buy a physical media copy of a film licensed for rental quite easily through a standard-ish system (expensive, I think it's a few hundred bucks for the disc?) but there's no standard system for licensing streaming and as long as the studios are scared of the Internet there won't be one. There's a few indie streaming services out there but they're small. Film critic Roger Ebert runs "The Ebert Club", an online subscription club with limited runs of fairly obscure older movies. I remember one for horror/arthouse stuff too, but can't find it now. LoveFilm is really big in the UK.
- glomph 14y agoAlso check out mubi.com