Nothing is right :). We are not talking about whether a projector looks good or not. We are talking about what the decision makers will do and no amount of "passion" is going to get you that knowledge. You need to be on the inside circle of hollywood, read analyst reports that follow entertainment industry, etc to know.


I did not drop names. I said he is my *partner* in a joint company we own aimed and answering the questions being asked. That is not name dropping. If I wanted to drop names, your head would swing :). Warren opens any door in the entertainment industry and as a result, I have had the pleasure of meeting with every executive in the entertainment and services business. For the sake of not name dropping I won't list them but feel free to ask and I will do.

Bottom line is that you are average Joe speculating on what an industry may do in the future. Nothing wrong with that. Millions of people do that on forums. For me though, this is a profession and part of my investments and work. You can be resentful but that doesn't change the facts.

There is a good test for that. Why don't write a business plan for that and go get money for it? You have no competition. No one else is doing it. If you are right, you will be rich way beyond your imagination.


You are messing with us, right? Come on. You are messing with us. "cause last I checked, the enthusiasts don't like 256kbps AAC from itunes but the masses do. D-VHS failed precisely because it was for enthusiasts and not the masses.


Because K's solution is a "top of the pyramid" solution and since that is their stated tiny market, it makes sense in that context. Nothing about that is going to lead the mass market to go anywhere in that direction.


You must be messing with us :). I was talking about watching something you don't own for heaven's sake. I can do that online. Your basement has every movie ever released?


What on earth you are talking about? Let me give a version of reality. I know an entertainment executive that is worth tens of millions of dollars. He used to rave about Kaleidescape. Fast forward to last year and he says he ditched it for a bunch of Apple TVs. Why? Because he needed a unit for every home he has and didn't want to spend the money on so many K systems. And he says he is far happier now as anything he wants to watch is one click away. He couldn't care less about the difference in quality.


The browsing for content on Netflix subscription gives you the choice of thousands and thousands of movies. For a few dollars a month, the person gets to entertain themselves. It isn't for me, as I care about fidelity so I buy the darn disc but for many, that is yesterday's version of doing things. It is 7:00pm, they are bored, and with a few clicks the movie is in their living room. Your and my version of the world requires advance planning and work. That is not what a customer wants to do who didn't want to be bothered to change channels on a TV by walking up to it.


For you, it is discs. And so it is for me. The issue is that you think that therefore means everyone wants to act this way when all the facts point to something else. You and I are not representative sample. Why is this so hard to understand?


Anthony, if you can't act professional and use proper language to have a discussion, I will not engage you. This forum is indexed by Google and has a lot of traffic. You bring down our industry with such foul language. Let people appreciate me being wrong through your arguments, rather than your personal insults.


22M and consumer has not spoken? What many millions was it four years ago Anthony? Why was the company ready to ditch the disc business and go 100% with streaming? The future is *not* yet upon us. We are looking at indicators. And the indicators are that customers don't like to buy discs. They like one-off movie experiences and don't care about quality after certain low bar is achieved.


And the sun rises from the east... :)


And the sun rises from the east... :) :)


And the sun rises from the east... :) :) :)


You are wrong. We spent $250K with a third-party company as part of my other venture to survey consumer's movie consumption habits, what they are willing to pay, how they like to consume it, etc. The survey included 4000+ people. There absolutely is commonality to what they want to consume and how. Unless you have survey of your own, you are saying black is white.


That's right. You are both part of the masses in going to a fast food restaurant, and not other times. So?

What was this supposed to mean then:

"...that data would need to be 1.5x to 2x as high in order to work properly(TCP/IP over head and error correction for bits not reaching in the right sequence), so that brings us to more or less 100mbps..."

I am going to correct you if you state something that technically is not correct.   That is not "scarecrow argument."  It is making sure that we put out proper data for others to read and learn.  Your explanation of what takes up bandwidth above is just incorrect.  Out of sequence data requires higher bandwidth?  Really?  And have you heard of UDP Resend?

If it is hard to say, then don't say it :). And it is not so hard. Go and ask 10 people around you how much they care about 4K and 3-D movies at home and come back and report the percentage.

holy crap, i have been involved in some stupid arguments here, but this beats all! Anthony, surely you cant think what you are saying is true? Are you not a CI? Who in the heck are you installing systems for? Other than me, i dont even know anyone buying disks other than friends with children buying childrens DVDs. i always leave a bluray or two with a new client to give them something to show off the system etc. and see and hear it at its finest, but the first thing they want to know about is how to stream movies and listen to pandora.

But why? Is that because people are clamoring for it, or because sometimes it is the only option?

I know that the theater near me (and not close to any other theaters) tends to only show 3D versions of movies. Other theaters which have close competition tend to show both a 2D and 3D version. So sometimes if I want to see a particular movie (take the new Underworld movie for instance), I can go local and be forced to watch in 3D, or I can drive 20+ minutes and see the 2D version. Most times we choose to drive and see the movie in 2D.

Also, some BR are now being packaged where if you want the Digital Copy you have to buy the 3D BR where before you got BR, DVD and DC in one package for $25, now for the same price I only get BR and DVD and if I want the DC I have to pay $35 for the 3D version. Did this for a couple of BR's and gave the 3D 's to a friend who has a 3D set. From now on I will just rip the DVD for my DC.

So I think a lot of 3D "doing well" is it being forced on consumers.

the issue is his analysis is not factual and I find hard to believe the market has spoken (in favour of bad streaming/dl) when people are spending around 15B on physical media and 1.5B on stuff like Vudu, Netflix.....


there is a a lot more wrong with Amir's stuff than just storage, I did not read all of it, but grazing through it he speaks from both sides of his mouth. (something that you admit he tends to do, go m with what is expedient and not what is true) For example he writes how the doctrine of first sale will be one of the reasons that will make studios to stop physical media> for those that don't know what it is, simply put anyone can do what they want with the stuff they buy except for making copies, so a rental place can go on Amazon.com and buy the BD and then rent it, but since DD is making copies (i.e. if Joe is watching a film on Netflix there is the copy that is on the server in Netflixes office and a partial copy on the netflix player in the guys home, and if someone else is watching it at the same time that means another partial coy in some other home).

Now it is true first sale doctrine cannot apply to DD while it does apply to physical media . But when one tries to understand the reality it becomes irrelevant.

The issue is you have Joe that paid 1$ for that cheap rental, who says "why should I buy it, I don't know if I want to see it more than once and even if I do, I will need to see it many times before those 1$ add up to 15$ to buy the film" and the studio that says "man I would rather Joe had paid 15$ and bought it because I would have made more $ that way".

The issue is that people forget that it is all about what Joe pays. Let me give a simplified example. If a disk rental place thinks there are 10M customers that will want to see it in the first month and the average turnaround is three days and so 10 different customers in a month can watch one disk and so they will need 1M copies from the studio and let's say they pay 10$ each and so 10M$. On the other hand if a streaming service has 10M customers that will see it in a month and they pay 10M$ for the rights to distribute it, they both come down to the same thing from the studio perspective, 1$ per view.

The issue is one can't argue first sales and cheap in the same breath, the reason to want to circumvent the first sales doctrine is to be able to force higher revenue. And then we are talking DD being expensive to the consumer


there are always companies that fold, that is nothing new , You brought up Vizio, I did not even now they were still in business, a few years back everything was Vizio, now you don't even hear of them anymore.


first theology means the study of the divine, so I really believe you used the wrong word there

second, I don't give any importance to BD. It is not about BD but wanting a good image and sound. I don't get why people have such an issue understanding that. Simply put I (and anyone else) have a choice, watch something that looks and sounds good or crap, I choose what is good. If someone else chooses what looks and sounds like carp because it is cheap/h, they are too lazy or they are a sheep and mu8st follow the masses, I don't care and never told any of them to choose anything else. Why can't you guys understand that? maybe it is not the masses, maybe it is not most but it is a sizable part of the market that will choose quality.

thirdly, I have never committed ad hominem on Amire. The issue is that he came in this thread and tried to pass himself off as an authority, and as such not only is it normal and my right to question how much of an authority he is, but even more so it is ones duty to question if someone is an authority.

[Link: media-awareness.ca]

|Ad Hominen:"Ad hominen" is a Latin phrase meaning "against the man."



| Appeal to Authority


|Michael Jordan says "Eat Wheaties cereal so you can be like me."



but isn't Hulu and Netflix a middleman? there will always be someone in the middle. In the end the consumer does not want to say "I want to watch Wizard of Oz who owns the rights?", "Oh, I googled and it is MGM", go to MGM site, no, not there " I googled again, in the 80's Turner bought MGM and then sold the studio name back to the original board when he was in financial trouble but he ckept WOZ and than TBS holdings was sold to WB, so let's look there". The studios don't want to pay for high BW and server space that might not be needed (right, how many people wanted Avatar the week it came out, how many are watching Avatar this week, or even a Fox film). And manufacturers don't want it either imagine making a device that needs to connect to Sony.com and Disney.com and WB.com, DW.com, LGF.com, MGM.com, Paramount.com, Universal.com..... all using different specs and everything, what happens when studios change names or new ones emerge or old ones brake free?


I would not call it much better, it depends on the channel and the provider, at best it tends to be a bit better (assuming both are HD) and this is from someone that loves quality and cut the cord a long time ago. On the other hand I agree content rules, but here the discussion is not about content, physical media has more content then DL/streaming if you take it that way. On the other hand do some searching I know crazed fanboys will say it is because of Netflix or Hulu and stuff but MSOs as you call them tend to be losing people, and in reality OTA is the one gaining most of them.



that is the issue, none of you do. If I was saying studios would kill DL/streaming, you would have a point but what you guys tend to miss is that even if we assume people that want quality are a minority (which I have no problem accepting) they are still a very important minority that is spends disproportionately more and studios will always cater to them

I don't buy every movie, and I have not seen every movie, but I do buy every movie that I want to watch. I have not rented a movie in over 10 years. I find it is simpler just to buy them when they are on sale or if I am in a store and put them on my unwatched shelf and then when I want to watch them I just put them in. I always have a backlog of 20-50 unwatched films on my unwatched shelf, these are films that I bought but have yet to watch since I bought them (not necessarily films I have never watched). Do you rent every movie and have seen every movie ever produced? More or less every week I buy 2-5 movies some on-line others in stores at lunch time others in stores when I was there for other reasons..

A two second Google would verify everything I wrote in there regarding the state of the market: [Link: feldmanfile.blogspot.com]

"Tuesday, October 11, 2011No, we are not at the end of the road.  A trend <> final conclusion.  But to say otherwise is sticking your head in the sand.  Even theatrical veiwing is under threat:

[Link: homemediamagazine.com]

"With Netflix subscribers topping 20 million, Amazon on the cusp of launching its own streaming service and January box office revenue significantly down from a year ago, BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield says studios must cut the theatrical window by 50%.

Specifically, Greenfield said studios should expedite new releases on electronic sellthrough eight weeks (not 16 weeks) after their theatrical release. By doing so, the analyst believes studios can realistically charge $20 to $25 for electronic distribution while keeping about 80% of the revenue.

“Studios need to create an earlier release window where consumers do not have the ability to choose low-priced options such as Redbox or Netflix,” Greenfield wrote in a post. “Given that the first-sale doctrine does not apply to digital, it is logical to offer digital movies for sale/rent well before physical versions are made available.”

Currently only Warner Bros. has indicated it plans to bow select premium (rental) VOD releases in the first quarter. For some time now, studios have been touting transactional VOD and iVOD day-and-date with packaged media in an effort to generate higher-margin electronic rental revenue compared with physical.

Santa Monica, Calif.-based research firm Interpret found that 11% fewer active moviegoers (those who watch at least three movies in the past six months) are going to the theater, and those who do are watching fewer movies. At the same time, more moviegoers (36%) are streaming full-length movies online, increasing 16% in the past year, according to Interpret, which said the data underscores a growing trend among consumers showing less interest in being the first to see movies in the theater..."
-----------------

And:
[Link: articles.latimes.com]


Seems pretty significant to me!  :)


The bit about storage is a proposal.  I can't say more why I wrote it but there was a reason ;).  It happens however to fit the topic of this thread: Kaleidescape's future.  In that regard, storage does exist and is ready to transition to an online world, free of threads of DVD-CCA and AACS regarding them copying discs.


You didn't read it all but concluded that?  That is the issue, isn't it?  You don't spend five minutes reading something before screaming it is wrong. 


Best evidence of someone's case being weak is talking about the person, not what he has said ;).  So keep going that way.  It only shows that you don't know how to argue the points. 

BTW, were you the Blu-ray fanboi who quit AVS forum a few years back?  When you mentioned Darin, I thought you would be that Anthony.  If so, it would explain your motivation in all of this.


OK, let's watch this movie unfold:


Putting aside the non-coherent aspect of this argument (not following anything to do with First Sale), the last bit is what I clearly mentioned in the article: that the studios prefer a sale.  But preferring a sale does not equate forcing a customer to buy.  The customer sees rental and streaming as easy choices and combined with what you admit above that movie is a one-time experience for them, and he decides to not buy a disc.

So much for irrelevance!


I am sure that is true Anthony:   [Link: ocbj.com]

Vizio Still No. 1 in U.S., Extends Market Share in Q1

By CHRIS CASACCHIAWednesday, June 22, 2011Hey, don't let obvious facts like that get in the way of making your arguments Anthony.

I will stop here.  :)

So I just spent my afternoon trying to sort discs and covers of all my movies. I didn't count them, but it is somewhere between 150 and 200 discs, mostly Disney and other kid movies. It took probably 3 hours to find cases and all the discs and put the correct ones back together. My kids had most movies in travel cases to watch in the car or on their portable players.

What I found was several movies had been bought twice, either forgetting that we had it, or thought one had been lost. I found about a half a dozen covers that I couldn't find discs for. Two movies that came with both DVD and BD had th BD copy missing (really don't understand that one), and probably 3 discs had no case to be found.

I couldn't help but think of this thread pretty much the whole time I endured through my task. And the one definite conclusion that I reach, without any doubt in my mind, Anthony, you are absolutely nuts.

And that doesn't include afterwards when I had to find places to store the discs

no man, you don't get it, my passion is what makes me read many reports and follow the entertainment industry. And anyone with a passion can do that. Where it gets more tricky is do you know what to do with it.


Yeah man all the studios are giving you all their secrets. You always believed you had the inside scoop on everything. How long before you wake up and smell the coffee? Also you can't grasp half the stuff I post here since you already made up your mind that there has to be something wrong why would it be any different with those people?


resentful for what? I am an average Joe, but that does not mean I don't have a better grasp than you. IT has been proven countless times in the past.


not sure ehat you mean, BD already exists so no use of me re-inventing the wheel and howw it will cease to exist. If you mean the next level, then I am already doing that being in the CI buisness. People call us up and than we bring quality to their homes. I don't need a loan to help with it since everything is going every well servicing the enthusiast wanting quality.


why would I be messing with you? you do realize that
[Link: moneyland.time.com]


in the US with


and if we look internationally physical media has a much higher % then digital.

also D-VHS existed until 2006 when BD came out, was it a small niche, for sure everyone knew that HD disks where right around the corner so many people just waited.


not at all, I am a buyer/collector, that obviously does not aply to everyone and even to all enthusiasts. But like I said before I have around 1k BDs over 3k DVDs and honestly I have no idea how many VHS, but there are not that many, because they are in bins in storage. If I had unlimited funds I might have every movie ever released but no I don't come even close, but, like I responded to the other guy, I do buy every movie I want to see and they are there next to my HT and you did ask me what I do.


so he does not care, sucks to be him, sucks to work with him, what is your point, so you found someone that might not care, did I ever say everyone cares, I am sure you can find some other people that don't care either. The issue is that there are many people out there that do care and they are the ones that come to us.

where is the everyone? did I ever say everyone. That is the issue at hand. You guys say the majority does not want quality and I say the majority does not matter. I am happy being and catering to the minority. It is more fun. Instead of sitting at a desk getting 100 calls from the guy wanting me to sell him a TV cheaper thean WM or to install it for 20$ the TV they got from the interntet. I am happy getting a few calls from people that, for example like one we got last week, "I was at _____ house for a superbowl party and it was better than live, I had no idea this was possible at home".


depends. What about the 30M households that have BD players in the US? Don't you think those 30M mean more than the 22M especially if you assume the 30M are also paying at least a bit more per movie? Also if those 22M where happy with Netflix quality why are around half of them also renting disks from Netflix?
I could understand why someone that is not happy with the quality will do both, after all you guys have tried to make the case many times (looks like crap but at 8$ for all the films you can watch is cheap so why not keep it just in case there is nothing better to watch, or get a few more important films in good quality and fill up the rest of the free time with crap) but let's face it, it is hard to argue that someone is spending 8$+ to also have disks without seeing some value in them.



I don't remember them ready to ditch anything, they did try renaming the disk business, but how is that similar to ditching. If they wanted to ditch it then they would have.


I agree with the first part, but not the second. like I said if that was true none of the 22M people streaming from Netflix would also be using disks. Obviously since around half of them also rent disks at least around 1/2 of them want something better.


well if you tell me that everyone answered exactly the same in every question than that is 250k badly spent, since that should statistically never happen except if something was not properly done. If people did not answer 100% the same thing, 5% were different on some key questions and 10% on others so the % was small, what you are forgetting is that on 4k that is small but when you expand it to a city, state/province, country small % means lots of people.



that the guy that goes to WM to buy a 20" no name TV is not looking for the same thing as the guy that goes to BB and buys the 60" Panasonic and wants a Geek installing it and they are not looking for the same thing as the guy that comes to me.

You guys see black and white and only one can exist (what ever the masses choose), I see a million shades of gray and all of them can exist. In every market the masses cover a whole bunch of them but nothing wrong with the rest of them either.

lol man you really don't see the word and the sentence continuing, I did make one mistake I should have ended .... since I did not mean the list to be complete but

Some people can't believe that Bigfoot isn't real either.

Keep it up Fins and I'll have to conceed intelligent life exists in Red States. What would the world do without those Red State rants? Funny too.

I don't know why you needed to look for blog with mid year # when I posted earlier the end of year #

I don't know why they discuss 2008 since HM revenue has been declining since 2004

but once you remove the BS parts do you see where

"Blu-Ray sales, which were once seen as the great hope of the movie industry, were $810 million, up from $773 million a year earlier
so roughly 40M in growth

"Electronic media sales increased year-over-year, but only from $260 million in 2010 to $270 million in 2011."
so 10M.

so BD grew more. Yes people that want to pretend physical media is doomed add BD+DVD and say it is doomed while DL/streaming is the future, but if one takes his head out of their but long enough they can see that BD+DVD+DD shrank also and BD+DVD shrank less than DVD+DD

The reason we have shrinkage in revenue is simply because of deflation. DD is not an other revenue stream but a replacement, and if it is a cheaper replacement, that means less revenue. Now it is not just DD, right the guy that in 2009 was paying 10$ for one DVD at a time on Netflix is now paying 8$ for that. And we all remember when a film was expensive to buy and 5$+ to rent for a day.

As for the HMM article, the guy does have a slight point but he does miss the mark a bit as well. Until now many studios have a 28day window with Netflix/Redbox and , Netflix and WB just agreed to 56 days [Link: comingsoon.net] so it is not only possible to have a window with digital. And the issue is that cheap easy to stream content makes purchasing a bit more off putting to some.
As for Netflix, it has bounced back to where it was in Oct which is a fraction of where it was last summer as for how much content is Dled, you are confusing problem with solution. It is good if you are cisco but not if you are a studio. Having few people paying little money is not good even if they eat up a lot of content.

I did not bring up the idea of storage and honestly I did not read what you said so I did not mean to imply that what you said was either right or wrong, he said you where wrong and I was willing to accept he saw it that way.

I never screamed everything you said was wrong. I know your conclusion is wrong, but I know your conclusion, but as for saying you were talking from both sides of your mouth, part of it is knowing you but most importantly I said exactly how you did it in at least one instance and so that is enough to conclude that you did it in that article. I can’t do it for example with that article on the guy that is saying 20$ VOD is the answer because First sales doctrine could make that a bit hard in physical media, on the other hand he is wrong because it is obviously done as we speak with physical media because rental companies don’t want to pay full price for a copy on disk and so they agree to such windows. But if such agreements did not exist than what he said would make a lot of sense.


Yes that is me. On the other hand how does it explain anything?. I left AVS because I got tired of dealing with idiots that thought they knew everything and mods that were not evenly handed (even though I don’t fully blame the mods it was the structure of the place that made it an issue). It was not only because of the BD/HD-DVD discussions but just that the whole site became more noise than signal. Go back even before BD/HD-DVD discussions and you will see it. IMHO the problem was when they started getting popular and decided popularity was important and started adding stuff like HTIB sections. At that point it ceased to be about enthusiasts but people looking for cheap deals.


Agree and that is the problem. So let me try and make the point again.
-First sale doctrine: a rental place can buy any movie and rent it at any price to anyone. Once a studio sells a copy it has no more say.
-Start of issue for studio: that means rentalCo can buy a copy for 15$ rent it to 100 people 1$ each and make 100$ when the studio only made 15$
-Problem for studio: the guy that rents it for 1$ says “why would I buy it for 15$, that is too expensive, movies should be much cheaper” and that is where lost revenue happens (since if the guy bought it for 15+ rented for 1$ there would not be problem the studio makes more since they also sold that rental copy and if the guy would have not been able to rent it for 1$ the guy might have bought it in order to see it)

And that is where the devaluation happens

This is even worst with Netflix streaming. Several guys here and (you in your article) have said it over and over again. Right, why pay 10$, 20$, 30$ for a movie when you can see it and many others streamed for 8$ a month.

Right, that is why Stars pulled their content from Netflix streaming. They said the number of people that where watching it on there was killing their bottom line so they pulled the content. It is not adding but pulling from more lucrative distribution models.

The issue is you can’t argue cheap streaming means that customer will want DD and FSD means studios will want to abandon disks because they can make more on DD. Those are diametrically opposed notions. The studios can’t charge a lot if people are paying a bit.