Longterm, do you think Netflix or Redbox are bad for the movie industry?

As much as I like being able to go to redbox or watch movies on netflix, it has affected my movie buying habits. There has been a couple times where I have planed on going out to buy a movie, but after seeing it on netflix I end up just watching it online.

I think websites netflix, hulu, and amazon's streaming and redbox rentals are much different then just buying it from itunes, and has to affect a movie's return.

The new york times did a piece about redbox :
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/bu...dbox.html?_r=0

A few articles I found on Netflix
Hollywood execs hate it:
http://www.dailytech.com/Hollywood+E...ticle21075.htm

Netflix saves movie industry:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/29/because-theyre-idiots/

Netflix wants to replace theaters:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_4169752.html

I know Disney and Pixar has always had a price demand for dvds/blu rays, but disney has a lot of their movies streaming now.

I found a college paper online that discusses it in more detail:
http://home.uchicago.edu/~mferri/mfe...arketPaper.pdf

As much as I like being able to watch movies for 8 bucks a month, I kind of think theaters and studios should be more restrictive, and have higher standards. They're lifting their skirt too quickly for something that will have a larger impact. They don't quiet understand the internet so they're giving it up too the first company that comes along.

I especially don't understand why studios would give it to a website to stream, when they could just as easily stream from their own website. Especially a studio like WB who has thousands of movies. I understand why itunes is needed, and why movie production companies don't own theaters, but giving your movie to another website to stream, seems like such a bad business decision that they'll come to regret.

It really reminds me of what happened to the music industry, with napster-itunes-itunes copies- and how it effects the music industry today.

It also seems silly to me that people argue over digital versus film, or green/blue tint in movies, when this will have a much greater impact.

Agree? Disagree?

The movie industry needs to learn to adapt. Want me to buy your movie instead of streaming? Make it more appealing. $20 for new releases is crazy this day and age. Make some really good extras on the Blu.

I don't even use Netflix or Redbox. I rent for free from my local library. Nothing beats free.

Netflix is underpriced, but theaters are overpriced and studios should do SOMETHING to lower the costs there. Anything more than $10 for one ticket is ridiculous, especially on the tiny screens most new theaters have plus they subject you to commercials before the movie which they also make money from.

Redbox killed off most of the video stores, but it's always funny to see people lined up for them. I don't think I'd have the patience to do that on a regular basis- I only rented movies from those when they gave out free codes every week, and there were several times when I had to wait a few minutes to return movies because of people ahead of me just looking through the movies they had for rent. Almost was late for work a few times because of that.

I don't think Redbox killed off the video stores so much as it swooped in for the rebound after they were already on the way out.

I didn't read the linked articles yet, but to answer lukewarmwater's question directly: yes, both Netflix and Redbox (in their current format) are bad for the long term health of the movie business. However, the production studios are the ones who have allowed this to happen.

It is not necessarily anything that Redbox or Netflix have directly done that has harmed the movie industry ... it is the pricing structure that has been a slow death for 3 decades now. Now that movies are available for $1 per night or literally next to nothing (if you divide out the $8 cost of most streaming services by the content available), the product itself has been devalued. However it isn't the delivery side of the industry that did this ... it was the production side for allowing this to happen.

Honestly, you can trace the root of this all the way back to the elimination of rental windows and the advent of day-and-date sell-through titles. Movie studios thought they were being clever and capturing a bigger slice of the revenue by cutting the rental cycle out ... in the long run they only cut their own throats.

Alan Smithee -- Redbox did not kill off most video stores. Blockbuster and Hollywood ran the independents out of business and then put themselves out of business by making poor strategic decisions. Redbox is a complimentary alternative to video stores, it will never become a complete substitute.

^ Yep, what he said.

Umm no but they're both bad for the Blockbuster video rental industry.

I imagine most Hollywood execs loathe Netflix, as they don't believe it pays them enough and devalues their product at the same time. Outside of very old content that was mostly worthless in the first place, studios despise the all-you-can-stream model for a low monthly fee.

Their revenues from casual watchers probably haven't changed all that much, but the studios are certainly capturing less revenue these days from hardcore movie watchers that don't care about physical media.

Maybe but the movie industry is already rubbish to me, don't care for 99.9% of the new releases these days.
Catalog titles for life for me!!!!

Well, at least until today's new releases become catalog titles?

Pre-'00s for me then.

Cinema's last gasp was the release of Any Given Sunday on December of 1999. No worthwhile film has been made since. 100% agreement.

I don't pay for Netflix. Though I've access to it on my PS3 via my sister's account. So she lets me use it. Anyway... I think Netflix is great. The volume of material is awesome. I think the pricing is pretty solid, for just streaming. At the amount of films I watch? It's a steal... If I was paying for it. Lol. So depending on your use. It could be too much.

Saying all that... I tend to use Amazon Instant Video more. But that's cuz it comes with Prime and it at times has something that Netflix doesn't.

I don't really see how much has changed. Redbox is just Blockbuster without a store & Netflix is just a cable network without the cable. Sure they're cheap now, but the studios will one day see to it that our costs is as bloated and over priced as cable & movie theaters.

I think the real problem is that the DVD boom was a once in a lifetime, lightning in a bottle phemonenon that the studios keep hoping to repeat. No one hoards movies anymore (except maybe Alan Smithee). And most people who did, are now realizing that a room full of 1,500 DVD's is kind of cumbersome & useless. But man, back in the early 2,000's those little discs were addictive.

With Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant, and VUDU at my disposal, I am a happy guy.

Especially with the massive Criterion library on Hulu+. Amazing!

If you're lumping legal services with illegal ones, then your argument in invalid.

And btw, what has happened to the music industry? Licensed, legal download and streaming services have captured the mainstream market? And the problem is?

No. Movies that aren't making money on DVD/Blu sales or VOD tend to be the ones that migrate to Netflix, which means they make more money.

Remember when the removal of the Blockbuster-approved "rental window" (want to buy this release? $140!!) was going to spell the end of the movie industry?

No. They're bad for the home video physical media industry, which was kind of a bubble. Average people didn't own a whole lot of movies before VHS/Beta, and even then, only "movie buffs" had extensive catalogs (in my experience, anyway). DVD blew the market wide open, but now things have settled again, where most people don't even bother, or better... they just don't care about physical media.
Same goes for the music industry. CDs became a MASSIVE market for the mainstream, but they've run their course, and are fading away. There's a few random anomalies like Adele who manage to sell a shit-ton of albums, but that means nothing for the physical media industry. It's a drop in the bucket.

The way I see things currently (from my own skewed, biased perspective)
Video content: I go to the theatre when I MUST see it sooner than later. I buy Blu-ray when I must own something. Otherwise, Netflix/Vudu/Hulu+ for content that I just want to watch.
Music content: I go to concerts for bands I HAVE to see. I buy vinyl when I must own something. CD if it's a special package of some sort. Otherwise, I stream via Spotify (or whatever service). This can be frustrating because bands I love (ie: Tool) COULD be getting more plays from someone like me, but I'm not going to carry my CDs around, and I can't be bothered to "rip" my music anymore (ain't nobody got time for that!)

Anyway, for the movie industry in general, I think it's just a matter of a re-appropriation of how content is delivered. I see it as:
Cinemas: First-run big-budget flicks, high-profile comedies, anything with any real buzz that could translate to asses in seats, etc.
VOD: independent or low-budget, low-profile movies. I know the quality of VOD isn't as good as a decent cinema, but that's where I see this is heading. Arthouses just can't keep, it seems. They're mostly doomed to failure or "cinema club" type experiences. There are at least 3 films in the next two weeks that I'm going to rent on Vudu because they won't be played in local cinemas in the next few months, if ever.
Blu-ray: for the collectors
Netflix/redbox: for any content that isn't first-run or exclusive to VOD for a few months.

My "grand" idea (today anyway) is that ALL movies should be on VOD day-and-date with the box office (or sooner for the smaller flicks), if they get a box office release at all. Content should be exclusive to VOD/cinema for 6 months on average. After that, Blu-ray and Netflix take over. The problem is BIG movies won't be on VOD because of piracy concerns, and smaller flicks have the "It'll just be on Netflix in 2 or 3 months anyway" perception. If there's some sort of guarantee that BIG movies can't be pirated (never gonna happen) or a guarantee that the smaller flicks have 6-month exclusivity, I think more people will go the VOD route to see it sooner than later.

All just my own perception/opinion, of course. Wishful thinking, and I know it'll never pan out the way I want/expect.

I think Netflix and Redbox have their place in the movie industry, and that they are NOT bad for the industry as a whole. They're just bad for the (already dying) "I own this piece of physical media" market.

Currently the problem I personally see with VOD is that the picture quality is so poor. I have a 84" screen and every on demand type thing I've watched looks so shitty. I need to try netflix maybe it's better. I've twice payed $5 to watch HD on demand movies on directv. This is 40 was not in its correct aspect ratio and Prisoners looked shitty. Every dark scene revealed so much compression.

Those of you who have shifted from DVD and blu to streaming; why are you willing to tollerate the decline in picture quality?

For most consumers, convenience trumps quality every time.

Disappointing, but all too accurate assessment of the general public.

Yeah, the same people who swear that upconverted DVD is the same as BD.

On my system, digital HD looks great, but not as good as BD. I did buy a $5 SD digital version of Olympus Has Fallen, and wow, did it make my eyes bleed. It felt like everything was in a perpetual cloud of dust, which was actually not inappropriate for that movie.

Studios hated it when Redbox devalued their movies to $1 each, and now Netflix has given them a value of zero, people saying they'll wait till they can watch it for free, nevermind that they're paying for the subscription service. But it's a good point that we're working from a recent perspective when movies had a value of ~$20 in the DVD era. It's not so bad when you look at it from a longer-term perspective.

There really wasn't one. Both Netflix and Crunchyroll stream at 1080p, and look indistinguishable from Blu-Rays at least 90 percent of the time.