Letters to the Editor
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Why DVDs Are Probably A Rip Off
Used Netflix to get HBO's Deadwood.
The first disk I got only had TWO episodes on it!
Not much bang for your buck.
Plus all the "extras" that you get really have no value (at least to most people).
Does anyone really and truly want to hear the directors commentary? Are the deleted scenes really worth watching? What about the alt custome stills? Anyone really care?
Here's the problem: Apple is right. There should be a way to get a movie or a TV show for cheap, commercial free. But the studios know that they can make more money selling us "Deluxe DVD" sets with "bonus material" and "extras."
What, exactly, is the "value" of an episode of Deadwood sans "bonus material"? Apple says it should be between $1.00 and $1.99 (that is, if they were able to actually sell that show on iTunes).
Sounds resonable.
But what's happening is that the studios want to charge us more -- but it's kind hard to justify. Enter the DVD. DVDs allow them to justify a price hike. Could they put an entire season of Deadwood on two DVD's (or, hell, even one?) Yes they could. But if they space it out over five DVD's -- viola! Now you've justified marking it up to $75! But the actual "value" of the content (arguably) didn't change. But it seems like it does if you put on five disks and put it in a fancy "collectors" box (a box that costs only .75 cents to mass produce in China).
We're entering a new age here wherein "value" of some things (like houses and TV shows) is being seen by all as more and more subjective -- and less and less realistic.
I perfer the Apple model to DVD because I'd rather pay $24.00 for a season of Deadwood on Apple than $75.00 for the exact same content on DVD. Even if they throw in a "collectors box."
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Excellent Point!
If it's in high definition, I'll ponder it.
This is an excellent point.
If I can't watch an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond in Super Hi-def --- what's the point?
Well, okay, maybe that's a bad example.
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Why do you buy the DVD in the first place?
I think a great deal (even most?) people who buy series DVDs are doing it for the "collection" value of it. You've already seen the show, you buy the DVD because you love it and want to have it for always (a need that is not fulfilled to nearly the same degree with electronic files). Who would buy a DVD just because they missed one or two episodes of a show? Also, by the time the DVD comes out, the season is already over - meaning that there's no real suspense factor - whereas you can watch the show you missed on your ipod BEFORE the next week's installment comes out. I just don't see how the two things cross over - I think they're completely different products.
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Cable will fight tooth and nail to keep forcing you to buy things you don't want
I've ditched cable for good. WAY too expensive for the three channels I'd actually watch. This is why there will never be a la carte; masses would buy less than 10 channels (probably 5 or less!) and profits would dry up. Funnily enough I still get free cable (I pay for cable internet and when I decided to ditch cable TV the tech was unable to remove the filter without losing the internet, so he left it as-is. I can honestly say I make use of my free cable a grand total of 1-2 hours per month, and that's only when I'm really bored.) Even free, it's barely worth it.
I watch a lot of foreign TV shows, so I utilize a lot of torrents. I have a simple plug adapter for my ibook that plugs into my TV, easy as pie. The quality for avis is watchable (about like older VHS), and the quality for purchased iTunes eps is just fine on my 27" HDTV. In fact it's better than digital cable, which tends to cut out or pixelate at the merest suggestion of wind or rain (terrible in the Pac.NW...) If Apple were to succeed, I'd buy everything I was interested in at $.99 and treat it like disposible media; I'm more than willing to pay 99-cents to get something commercial free on my schedule. At $1.99, though, I want something a little more substantial (it adds up fast) and so I buy one or two series a year as used previous-rental DVD sets instead of as downloads. In other words, I'm totally untapped revenue for networks.
Apple has it right -- 99-cents is a magic price point.
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They'd definitely get more of my money if they'd go down this model...
Note: I am a fiction junkie. I prefer books, but I can appreciate the visual arts of cinema, television and graphic novels as well. It's not the news, it's not reality programming, it's not educational programming that make television even remotely interesting to me -- it's strong story-telling done well, that gets me interested and keeps me coming back.The rest of what TV uses to pay the bills... if it goes into a blackhole tomorrow, I won't mind at all.
I stopped having TV in 1992 when I went to college. I couldn't afford to buy one to take with me, and my rooms didn't have one, and we couldn't have afforded the cable bill anyway... and I was never much of a TV kid anyway. And I never picked that habit back up. Now I live in a dead zone where nothing broadcast shows up on our DVD-monitor (aka TV) without the assistance of Cable or Satellite. No big loss.
But over the years, I've heard enough word of mouth (and seen enough good reviews here) that certain programs (Buffy et al, Rome, Dr. Who) have been intriguing enough to catch my attention and I've Netflix'ed them. All the pleasure of good stories, none of the advertising, no strangers tromping all over my house, making messes by drilling through my walls and being insultingly baffled about how we survive without Playstations, Windows XP and the world created by Arbitron and Neilson.
I'm one of those people who would gladly pay $30 a month for a la carte cable for BBC America, HBO and SciFi... and nothing else. I would pay premium prices to not have to put up with nonsense and detritus. But since they force me to take the consumer peddling and Missing Blonde Girl networks and religious and neo-conservative propaganda channels with my fiction, they get none of my money.
However, iTunes and Netflix are getting money from us, because those are the streams where I can have the story without the break for commercials, the week long break for the next episode, or the annual hiatus for summer. And if I could have that faster, without the 3 day turnaround, I'd be in heaven. I've done several iTunes programs, especially to "try" out a series by picking up the pilot. It's worked.
What media companies - especially the creative companies - need to realize approximately three weeks ago is that no single service stream is ever going to serve all of the consumers they can potentially reach. Every television provider has missed me for fifteen years. A select few have gotten my tiny dollar contribution via DVD, and a few more would get a larger chunk of my contribution if their programming was available to me for reasonable download. I'm willing to pay creators for my fiction; they're making art that pleases me so they deserve compensation.
Besides, I don't know anyone who still watches television "traditionally" - no one plans to watch a program at a set time. Everyone I know has at very least a VCR and the ability to program it, or more usually a DVR or Tivo and has broken free from the programmers' clocks and advertisers' strangle. Nobody sees commercials anymore; that dollarstream is turning into a dry wash. Media providers would do well to look foreward instead of trying to maintain their dying, frantic grasp on what is a terminal horse (to mix many metaphors) and recognize that On Demand programming is where their future bread and butter lies. Advertisers would do well to realize that commercials are a dying art that must evolve into something else and start directing that evolution, much as a breeder directs the evolution of cattle.