A comparison of PS3 and 360 as media players

[-tkf-]

On the one hand, I see what you're saying. But on the other...doesn't anyone else feel kinda worried that people are finding a 15 second wait unbearable? Personally I have no problem wating a half a minute to turn on a device and get it playing, but it seems as the world at large is becoming increasingly less patient, and the consequences of that can't be good. A little perspective suggests 15 seconds to do nothing, think nothing, and just be, or to think about something else, isn't a bad thing by any stretch.

I guess that's pretty OT though.

As for pre-film rubbish on BRDs, the last BRD I played in my PS3 allowed my to skip the federal warning with a R1 press, and went straight into the movie. Pre-movie rubbish is clearly an issue with the film companies and not BRD itself. It's been that way since DVD, and I guess that's a mojor plus for direct downloads. But then direct downloads could just as easily force trailers on people.

I think the most annoying thing about waits, is when you wait on something you don´t want, be it commercials(trailers) warnings about not copying a disc.. YOU JUST BOUGHT, an elaborate menu that only is needed when you want to watch extras, everything else can be fixed with the popup menu.

I just don´t get why the paying customers is never ever treated like solid gold, the best of the best, those you will never ever betray but do everything you can to please, instead the movie industry is just trying to milk those that pay for more money and disrespect them on purpose. And you got a really interesting point Shifty, at some point there will be no way to avoid those trailers, warnings etc, it will just be a part of the DRM controlled file that you bought

 

[joker454]

On the one hand, I see what you're saying. But on the other...doesn't anyone else feel kinda worried that people are finding a 15 second wait unbearable?

Well it's all relative to the options of the time. Instantly playing a movie is not only extremely common, it's basically the norm now. With blu-ray they are trying to degrade the experience for whatever reason. The problem there is why should one tolerate it when there are so many legal and non legal options available that let the user not have to bother waiting and have ads/messages thrust on them? It's a simple case of one just doesn't have to anymore. What hurts the movie biz more is that their insistence of providing a crappy user experience makes their paid option appear worse than the free (albeit non legal) option. Back in the day yeah you could copy a vhs tape, but it looked worse when you watched it. Today the pirated version of a bluray not only can look identical in quality to the original, or close to it if it's a qualtiy re-encode, but it will also provide a better experience. At the end of the day, who wants to spend more money for a worse experience? I don't condone piracy naturally, but when they provide these long load time movies with cant skip past them sequences they are really pushing people to the alternatives, because so many alternatives exist.

To make a more extreme case, imagine your laptop. Right now you open the lid and it instantly comes out of sleep mode and is ready to use. What if the next Apple, Sony or whatever laptops instead played an fbi warning warning about piracy every time you opened your laptop, then displayed some kind of advertizement before letting you use the laptop. I mean it's just 15 to 60 seconds of your time, so would you be ok with that? Or would you not buy such a laptop because alternate laptops exist that actually let you use the device the instant you flip it on?

But then direct downloads could just as easily force trailers on people.

If they go too far with digital downloads then they will push people to alternatives in that space as well. The old men running these companies need to realize they are not the only game in town anymore.

 

[mrcorbo]

I'd like to know if anybody has ever made a good DRM application or if DRM has ever helped a business.

I would say Steam would qualify. Determining what is a "good DRM application" is subjective though.

 

[mrcorbo]

In the US in 2012, over 1 Billion more movies will be consumed online (3.4B) than will be viewed on DVD and BluRay combined.

http://www.screendigest.com/reports/2012222a/2012_03_online_movies_the_future_today/view.html

Despite all of the scenarios where digital distribution can't work, it seems that where it does work, people prefer it.

 

[manux]

In the US in 2012, over 1 Billion more movies will be consumed online (3.4B) than will be viewed on DVD and BluRay combined.

http://www.screendigest.com/reports/2012222a/2012_03_online_movies_the_future_today/view.html

Despite all of the scenarios where digital distribution can't work, it seems that where it does work, people prefer it.

At least digital consumption and disc media(blu-ray) for me is completely different use cases. I watch stuff from netflix where quality doesn't matter(most of it).For movies which I want to own or quality matters I go for blu-ray purchase. I see future for both means of consumption for next 10-15 years. It's going to be long time before digital catches with blu-ray quality and there is enough consumers who care to feed the non digital market. Especially so if 4k format takes off with 100GB per movie

Revenue over these different medias would be more interesting than the amount consumed. After all does one monthly subscription to netflix and watching 5 movies count the same as 1 blu-ray purchase. The other one made less than 8 bucks but counts as 5 and the other one cost 20$ and counts as 1...

 

[-tkf-]

In the US in 2012, over 1 Billion more movies will be consumed online (3.4B) than will be viewed on DVD and BluRay combined.

http://www.screendigest.com/reports/2012222a/2012_03_online_movies_the_future_today/view.html

Despite all of the scenarios where digital distribution can't work, it seems that where it does work, people prefer it.

Would be great to have the actual rapport, indications are it´s a "bullshit" number.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/25/2901268/streaming-video-overtakes-physical-media-numbers

While there's no denying that the research shows that consumers are now comfortable with the notion of streaming movies (with help from video game consoles) and have internet connections that can handle the bandwidth requirements, the numbers appear to be inflated by unlimited streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video. Such services accounted for 94 percent of all streaming viewership last year, according to the IHS, with only 1.3 percent coming from pay-per-use services like iTunes and others.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Would be great to have the actual rapport, indications are it´s a "bullshit" number.http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/25/2901268/streaming-video-overtakes-physical-media-numbers

Maybe, but the writing's on the wall. It'll all be streamed eventually. the issues of faffing around ripping copies and trying to get them to play on different devices will help with that.

 

[-tkf-]

Maybe, but the writing's on the wall. It'll all be streamed eventually. the issues of faffing around ripping copies and trying to get them to play on different devices will help with that.

The writing was on the wall since Napster introduced the internet to the rest of the world in 1999, and as other articles on the subject so nicely points out, iTunes was introduced in 2001 and we still have CD´s, even though music is so much easier to stream, buy online and pirate, there is even a growing market for vinyls.

Who knows, maybe movies will just make a giant leap and surpass music on that front? But i seriously doubt that there will be another broad physical format like the Blu-Ray we have now. Whatever 4K that may be dreamed up is unlikely to get a broad reception and see a bunch of weak catalog titles being released, it will most likely stay niche but that did not stop laser disc

EDIT, Numbers:
http://www.thenewage.co.za/mobi/Detail.aspx?NewsID=39705&CatID=1022

Digital album sales rose nearly 20% to 103 million, while CDs fell nearly 6% to 225 million. Digital singles sales rose nearly 9% to 1.27 billion.

The jump to 458 million album sales overall was bolstered by British singer Adele's's international hit album 21, which sold 5.8 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Adele's 2008 debut album 19 also sold 856,000 copies last year.

Now we just need some solid numbers for movies

 

[mrcorbo]

Would be great to have the actual rapport, indications are it´s a "bullshit" number.

How often are the limited catalogues and delayed releases of streaming services forcing people to view movies on disk that might otherwise choose to stream them? While the "all you can eat" model is surely skewing the streaming numbers, the content producers, in trying to protect the higher revenues disk-based viewing provides (around 8x higher according to the Verge article), are artificially inflating the disk numbers as well.

 

[-tkf-]

How often are the limited catalogues and delayed releases of streaming services forcing people to view movies on disk that might otherwise choose to stream them? While the "all you can eat" model is surely skewing the streaming numbers, the content producers, in trying to protect the higher revenues disk-based viewing provides (around 8x higher according to the Verge article), are artificially inflating the disk numbers as well.

Disc sales would be higher if they didn´t force people to go to the cinemas.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The writing was on the wall since Napster introduced the internet to the rest of the world in 1999, and as other articles on the subject so nicely points out, iTunes was introduced in 2001 and we still have CD´s

Except they are phasing out as sales plummet, same as LPs did. Yes, LPs are around for a niche, but they aren't a mainstream format. People are buying download singles en masse now. Give it another 10 years (if that) and CDs won't exist. Another 10 after that and DVDs/BRDs won't exist. A next-gen console may well want media playback. The generation after that I'd wager won't, as content will be virtual. We're just starting to establish common download libraries, and of course the media companies are being crap about it, but they'll sort themselves out eventually.

 

[-tkf-]

Except they are phasing out as sales plummet, same as LPs did. Yes, LPs are around for a niche, but they aren't a mainstream format. People are buying download singles en masse now. Give it another 10 years (if that) and CDs won't exist. Another 10 after that and DVDs/BRDs won't exist. A next-gen console may well want media playback. The generation after that I'd wager won't, as content will be virtual. We're just starting to establish common download libraries, and of course the media companies are being crap about it, but they'll sort themselves out eventually.

When i was looking for those numbers i came across some indications that CD-Album sales was rebounding..

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2011/11/14/album_sales_increase_for_first_time_since_2004

But lets take a note, in 10 years cd´s will be gone and in 20 years physical movies will be gone.

Right now i doubt the CD will be gone in 10 but 20 for movies seems ok..

 

[Arwin]

Except they are phasing out as sales plummet, same as LPs did. Yes, LPs are around for a niche, but they aren't a mainstream format. People are buying download singles en masse now. Give it another 10 years (if that) and CDs won't exist. Another 10 after that and DVDs/BRDs won't exist. A next-gen console may well want media playback. The generation after that I'd wager won't, as content will be virtual. We're just starting to establish common download libraries, and of course the media companies are being crap about it, but they'll sort themselves out eventually.

It would definitely seem likely that this is the direction we'll go in. You have terminals, and based on your account, you can access data from the terminals. All sorts of devices will be able to be terminals. The only issue there is that it is still kind of scary to not be able to own something - if you own the licence to a book, movie or game, and some nut decides to stop serving that content for economic or ideologic reasons, that content will simply no longer be available.

That is actually still a rather big issue, if you ask me, and one we're going to run into a lot the coming years. You already notice it now with online servers being shutdown, removing online features from all games that don't have the ability to host on their own machine as well as on those servers, but there are also applications and tools that simply require an online connection to a validation service to run ... it's been discussed to death, I know, but it is still one of the main attractions for actually buying or downloading something and being able to make that 'physical'.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

When i was looking for those numbers i came across some indications that CD-Album sales was rebounding..

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2011/11/14/album_sales_increase_for_first_time_since_2004

They're slightly up, across all mediums. It doesn't break down how many CDs versus digital downloads. I found this article that show album sales dropping and singles exploding. That's better facilitated by DD. Hence CD sales dropping.

Movies are effectively singles so will have the same value as singles. People will want to watch a movie so will click the buy or rent button and watch it then and there.

Arwin's right about the risks, but it doesn't matter. Consumers aren't going to buy physical media just-in-case. People live in the moment, and will consumer content in whatever way is most convenient and comfortable. If the servers then get silenced, they'll grumble but it'll be too late.

 

[upnorthsox]

They're slightly up, across all mediums. It doesn't break down how many CDs versus digital downloads. I found this article that show album sales dropping and singles exploding. That's better facilitated by DD. Hence CD sales dropping.

Movies are effectively singles so will have the same value as singles. People will want to watch a movie so will click the buy or rent button and watch it then and there.

Arwin's right about the risks, but it doesn't matter. Consumers aren't going to buy physical media just-in-case. People live in the moment, and will consumer content in whatever way is most convenient and comfortable. If the servers then get silenced, they'll grumble but it'll be too late.

And yet, the article you link to is titled Digital Music Isn't Enough to Rescue Music Sales

And DD exploding?

"While physical music sales in 2010 dropped by almost two billion dollars from 2009, digital music increased only about $0.2 billion. Keep this rate of decline up and CD sales will be nonexistant in less than six years,"

As far as "People live in the moment, and will consumer content in whatever way is most convenient and comfortable" yea they'll keep pirating music like they have been, and when the next napster gets closed down they'll grumble and move on to the next torrent site.

 

[-tkf-]

It would definitely seem likely that this is the direction we'll go in. You have terminals, and based on your account, you can access data from the terminals. All sorts of devices will be able to be terminals. The only issue there is that it is still kind of scary to not be able to own something - if you own the licence to a book, movie or game, and some nut decides to stop serving that content for economic or ideologic reasons, that content will simply no longer be available.

That is actually still a rather big issue, if you ask me, and one we're going to run into a lot the coming years. You already notice it now with online servers being shutdown, removing online features from all games that don't have the ability to host on their own machine as well as on those servers, but there are also applications and tools that simply require an online connection to a validation service to run ... it's been discussed to death, I know, but it is still one of the main attractions for actually buying or downloading something and being able to make that 'physical'.

We just need a few of the big players to go bankrupt to shake up the streaming business. On the PC i have way to many eggs in the Steam basket, on the PS3 i have several things i bought online. These are all serious risks and i can´t expect either to last forever. I know this, but the average consumer has no idea whatsoever, and at some point people will get burnt.

We have some small examples, still waiting for the major meltdown to spice things up a little

 

[Shifty Geezer]

And DD exploding?

I didn't say DD was exploding.

I found this article that show album sales dropping and singles exploding.

The industry is making less money overall because instead of buying a whole $10 album to get the two songs they want, people are able to buy the 2 songs as singles at $1 each. Check the article and see that sales of singles is up to around where sales of albums used to be. People are buying as much content as before, piracy or not. It's just they are choosing to buy smaller amounts.

 

[Gubbi]

As far as "People live in the moment, and will consumer content in whatever way is most convenient and comfortable" yea they'll keep pirating music like they have been, and when the next napster gets closed down they'll grumble and move on to the next torrent site.

I don't know anybody above the age of 20 that pirates music. Most buy their music on iTunes or similar, the rest use subscription based music.

The largest ISP here in Denmark, TDC, offers free access to 15 million songs if you are a broadband customer (DSL or cellular). Spotify's premium service is just $10 / month.

With subscriptions you don't give a toss if your provider tanks, you just move on to the next service.

I don't see why the same won't happen to movies.

Cheers

 

[AntShaw]

I didn't say DD was exploding.
The industry is making less money overall because instead of buying a whole $10 album to get the two songs they want, people are able to buy the 2 songs as singles at $1 each. Check the article and see that sales of singles is up to around where sales of albums used to be. People are buying as much content as before, piracy or not. It's just they are choosing to buy smaller amounts.

The article was rather misleading and off point. The fact of the matter remains that the music industry currently is raking in more money than they ever had in the history of their industry. That doesn't happen by slumping sales in both the digital and physical formats as the article tries to outline. There's no difference overall in buying an album at $10 as compared to 10 single purchases at $1.

 

[-tkf-]

I don't know anybody above the age of 20 that pirates music. Most buy their music on iTunes or similar, the rest use subscription based music.

The largest ISP here in Denmark, TDC, offers free access to 15 million songs if you are a broadband customer (DSL or cellular). Spotify's premium service is just $10 / month.

With subscriptions you don't give a toss if your provider tanks, you just move on to the next service.

I don't see why the same won't happen to movies.

Cheers

Subscription based is not as risky as buying digital copies, it´s a different thing.

Spotify is $18, TDC has a weak platform support, Spotify requires facebook login, Wimp is weak on some of the dance genres. I guess all of them are weak on anything not mainstream.