big e

I think that was his point as well. And something to remember, the $8/month is just for one of the plans and you don't have access to the same titles on streaming as you do with the disc plans. I have both and just going off what I currently have in my disc queue, out of 75 titles, only a dozen or so are available for streaming.

PhantomStranger

I find the streaming catalog on Netflix fairly limiting as someone with genre tastes. It's pretty apparent that Netflix mostly licenses junk because that content is cheaper for them to acquire. Hollywood is mostly giving Netflix its leftover garbage it doesn't think it can net more money from elsewhere.

JimRochester

I apologize if this point has already been brought up, but with the tablets being the latest and greatest, that has to have an impact on physical media as well. I purchased a BR player for my Surface only to find out they aren't supported. I don't see where Samsung has them either and naturally iPads have no ports for them. So its either streaming or downloading but no discs. I still take my laptop with me on business trips just to play discs.

dvdshonna

One thing is certain. As soon as you start offering content in bulk at $8/mo you can count on $5 to $20 disc sales taking a big hit. The "convenience" factor is academic.

Making content available for $8/month online may be efficient, convenient, and eliminate manufacturing costs, but most likely will not be more profitable (judging by the music industry).

"These ‘All You Can Eat’ models has also significantly undercut (if not destroyed) the value of owned content. Growing up, my parents must have purchased 80% of the Disney animated library (better get it before it goes back into the Disney Vault, anyone?). Today, that same behavior would seem wasteful. Why buy Dumbo for $24.99 (even if it comes with UltraViolet/digital download) when that same movie (and tens of thousands of others – including much of Disney’s animated library) can be watched on Netflix for $7.99? Come 2016, the entire Disney back catalogue, as well as films from Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm will also be available on the service. In exchange, Disney will reportedly receive $200-300M for this (exclusive) deal. However, this works out to only $1.70-2.54 per household per year.

Some will argue that OTT-led reductions in spend represents value lost by channel partners (i.e. DVD manufacturers, retailers), rather than content producers/owners. But this simply isn’t the case on either a revenue or profitability basis."

http://redef.com/original/if-video-i...es-evaporating

BuckNaked2k

April 25:

bruceames

It's been a reeeally slow April for disc.

dvdshonna

My point was going with bargain priced box sets would have been more profitable than licensing content to netflix, amazon, etc. As in, they shouldn't have licensed content to netflix. It was suicidal.

Plenty of evidence the movie studios want consumers to make the transition to renting/buying movies online instead of discs (netflix licensing, releasing digital movies before they are released on disc).

It didn't work for the music industry. I don't believe it will work for the movie industry. I don't know about new releases, but I believe bargain priced box sets will be a part of the future.

big e

Impulse buys? I’m guilty of buying movies only to dump them years later (and only watch them once or twice).

It happens. I’ve seen a lot of movies that I considered to be very good and well made that I just don’t have any desire to revisit. Thanks to Netflix, I’ve been able to view a lot of films Criterion has put out. I may enjoy the film or find it interesting but a lot of times, I’m satisfied with that single viewing. Then again, there have been times where I’ll get a movie from Netflix that I like so much, almost immediately after it’s done I get on my computer and order a DVD or BD of it from Amazon.


When I first started buying DVDs (Sept. 2000), a bulk of my purchases were VHS upgrades or replacements for stuff I recorded off TV. When my DVD buying began to speed up, around 2004, I was buying a lot of titles because, at that time, the only way I could see some of the stuff I wanted to see was to purchase it. Hulu didn’t exist, I didn’t know anything about Netflix, and the local video stores kind of sucked as far as content went. Many of these purchases were one-and-done views for me. I watched the movie once or, in very rare cases, twice, then put in on my shelf and never thought about it again. Once I joined Netflix, these types of purchases practically disappeared from me. If I had Netflix 10 years ago, even though it would have been the middle of the DVD buying boom, I would not have bought anywhere near as many DVDs as I did. And I would have been just fine with that since, with a majority of those movies, all I wanted to do was check them out.

I think this is what the general public started doing during the DVD buying boom. They were impulsively buying cheap titles without putting much thought into whether they would rewatch them or if they really wanted them. Now, I think they realized they didn’t need all those DVDs (like the radio DJ in my above post) and a subscription to Netflix, or Amazon VOD or a RedBox rental is enough to satisfy that craving for when they want to watch a movie. Plus, I’m sure the general public doesn’t watch anywhere near as many movies as some of the posters on these boards do.

dvdshonna

This sounds like a more realistic or accurate description of movie purchases.

The majority of titles are not worth the $15 to $20 purchase price for new releases.

May be too late now, but I believe it would have been more profitable to sell movies in box sets (One new release with 9 catalog titles) for $20 to $25. More profitable than licensing to netflix and what are they losing by adding the 9 catalog titles? Movies that most people wouldn't be purchasing anyway.

The few winners they come up with every year (Frozen, Twilight, Hunger Games, etc.) are going to sell anyway, but 90% of the mediocre new releases they churn out would fly off the shelves as 10 movie box sets at $25.

Edit: Some people are so goofy, they would buy the 10 movie box sets for $25 (thinking $2.50 per movie), watch the new release, never watch the catalog titles, and think it was a bargain because it was only $2.50 per movie.

BuckNaked2k

Think of the bargains you'd be able to score on the used sites.

dvdshonna

Why do you think I'm promoting these "advanced concepts"?

I'm trying to reduce my used movie purchaes from $1.00 per movie, to 50¢ per movie.

hanshotfirst1138

I'm not THAT clueless , let me rephrase: if you offered someone $0.25 Blu-rays, do you think it'd have the same cache? Yes, I know price is the driving factor. I'm not a fool. But having access to such a huge amount of content instantaneously without having to buy discs, take them back, etc. is a huge factor. Of course I don't "doubt that it has anything to do with pricing," that's obviously the driving factor. But beyond that, I'm saying that there's clearly an instant gratification factor.

PhantomStranger

2015 was always going to look terrible in comparison to 2014 due to the loss of a juggernaut like Frozen.
Here is the deal. Hollywood saw that many, many young people were torrenting their content for free. They quickly realized that generation was never going to worry about physical media, even after they grew up and got jobs. That is why they are trying to get ahead of that locomotive coming to hit the industry.

They want to offer a viable, legitimate streaming option now hoping to protect future revenue streams. Hollywood understands it is cannibalizing current media sales, it's a long-term bet they can tame society enough to pay for their Hollywood digital content. Some eggs have to be broken when you are baking a cake. Blu-ray is the format bearing the brunt of that loss.

Once the digital streaming infrastructure has been built up enough to handle 80% of the country, expect Hollywood to lock down their content better than ever. I would expect new legislation passed by Congress, written by and for Hollywood's financial interests.

dvdshonna

I'm a big DVD fan, so I guess I'm a little touchy when people tell me how much they love netflix for $8.00/month for thousands of movies and TV seasons (and the agony of storing DVDs and pulling titles off the shelf to watch).

I'm like, Well Duhhhhh ....If you priced DVDs at pennies per movie, people would be going mental over DVDs too.

Edit: Atleast I'll have stories to tell my grandchildren. "When I was your age, we had to look through hundreds of disc on the shelves and put the disc in a DVD player". It will be fun watching them gasp in complete horror.

dvdshonna

Suits me. I plan on making a fortune selling DVDs when redbox is gone and prices go sky-high online. If the $2.99 to $5.99 VOD rentals are any indication, I should make windfall profits.

BuckNaked2k

Isn't there some new Avengers movie out? That schlock isn't my cuppa, but the masses do seem to queue up for it over and over again.

Our optical disc collections will be like our grandparents' 78 rpm records. Our heirs will have no idea what to do with them.

Michael Corvin

I'm not quite sure why people are so enamored with such a limited selection (Netflix streaming is about 1 for 10 when I search for a movie to watch) and being at the mercy of what the movie companies will allow and delisting titles. If I want to watch Man of Steel I walk over to the shelf and pop it in. Netflix? Nada. Amazon Prime? $3 rental.

Streaming, despite the low cost and convenience still falls way below physical media for me. Just too many checks in the cons column. Until there is one mega service with damn near everything (and no rotating titles/delisting), it'll never be my go to option. I doubt we'll ever see a service like that.

dvdshonna

I apologize for overposting;

....but one thing that is not usually discussed on this forum is the economy. $8/mo is what a lot of americans can reasonably afford for entertainment (non-essentials).

1 in 4 renters pay more than 50% of their income for rent and utilities.
There are 60,000 homeless people in New York
1 in 6 american kids are under nourished (going hungry).
The real unemployment rate for those 18 to 25 is about 18%. 30% of millenials (18 to 25) still live with their parents.
The economic crash in 2008 is not over. There are grim numbers comming out for the first quarter of 2015.
Most of the new jobs replacing jobs lost in 2008 pay less and are part time.
You can't pay workers $10/hour, pass laws that make auto and health insurance mandatory (the insurance isn't worth a shit anyway), and expect the economy to grow.
Our politicians are bought and paid for (both parties). Our supreme court is bought and paid for.
The chance of economic conditions improving for working class americans in this century are nil to none.

Regardless the path movie studios take, its hard to sell to a population that has little to nothing spend on non-essentials.

BuckNaked2k

^ All good points, but you left out the crushing tax burden faced by most Americans. Up and up it goes, never pausing or dipping back down. The beast must be fed, its appetite is voracious, and it is never sated. Up...up........up.

dvdshonna

Other random facts: The bonuses received by wallstreet CEOs is more than the combined wages of all the minimum wage workers in the U.S. .....So when the CEOs start crying, how raising the minimum wage will ruin them, we know they are talking about their bonus money.

1 in 3 U.S. households have delinquent debts in collections. Roughly 77 million Americans, or 35 percent of adults with a credit file, have a report of debt in collections.

Edit: This is crap I read on the internet. 50% of it might be true. 100% might be partially true.

hanshotfirst1138

This is my concern as well. Digital is fun for the moment, but once they've moved everyone off of physical releases and have tighter control over it, there's going to be backlash and things will likely get ugly. I don't condone illegal downloading, but the fact is that it's everywhere and you can never, ever recover the damage it's done. Without physical existence, the damage this does to business isn't going away, and the various solutions seem like liquid slipping through a strainer. This is a scary time. But I agree with you, this will have repercussion, they aren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

rw2516

I don't believe pricing has anything to do with it. If a cd costs $5 and downloading it costs $10, a lot of people would prefer to just pay the extra $5 and download it. Downloading and streaming is a service that has monetary value and people will pay for the service on top of the content.
I believe Netflix would have crushed Blockbuster even if a single rental cost more from Netflix.
The guy that started Dominos Pizza said it best, "The one thing people like more than pizza is not having to go get it."
I believe we are at the point where the monetary value of convenience has overtaken the monetary value of product.

As to the limited selection of streaming. Those who prefer streaming probably don't care about what's not available, it fits their needs. Those who do care probably have their own copies. Those who complain that everything that has ever been available on disc is not available to stream are griping about a product that has never existed and probably never will.

bruceames

I wasn't referring to the YoY comparison but just the raw numbers. 3 weeks in a row with Blu-ray under $23 million (which are pretty much floor figures) and it's not even the slow season yet. And Blu-ray getting only around 28% those weeks even though DVD is setting all time low revenue marks (under $60 million).

I agree Frozen and the strong legs it had is really warping the YoY figures. But if Frozen boosted 2014 numbers and Blu-ray was down nearly 10 percent from 2013, what does that say about this year? Hopefully Avengers 2 will keep it from at least being down in double digits by the EOY.

What will be interesting is to see if Blu-ray will be down more than DVD for the whole of 2015. It was the second half of 2014 and is also the case so far this year. That is crazy and means that BLu-ray is actually losing back market share to DVD.

davidh777

Netflix did crush Blockbuster, even before they started streaming. People liked renting by mail instead of driving to the store. Yes, all-you-can-eat pricing and no late fees played a part as well, but convenience is huge for busy people.

big e

I'm more paranoid about extended/alternate cuts of films being the only cut available and theatrical/original cuts all but disappearing. We've already seen this where movies re-released on HD-DVD or BD are only the alternate cut with the theatrical cut no where to be found. I had to repurchase the DVD of The Warriors because the HD-DVD and BD are only the shitty "director's cut." All these movies coming out in alternate cuts makes the theatrical cut feel almost like a unofficial beta version of the movie.