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Both Pirate films cracked before their HD Launch (1 Viewer)

JackKay

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Marc Colella

It's hard to actually really tell how much the Studios and Record Labels are losing money because the pirates aren't raising their discs in the air to be counted. The thing is, is that we all see it everywhere, because it is everywhere.

Everytime you take something without paying for it it's called Stealing.

Why not steal 10 CD's from a Music store and a week later return 7 of them and pay for 3 because you liked those and didn't like the rest?

Or sneak into a Movie Theater without paying, because you wanted to see if you want the DVD?
 

alphanguy

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The reason is that the music business is not as consumer friendly as it used to be. In the 70's, you didn't need to steal anything, because you walked into a record store and were able to listen to an album before you bought it. At least places like borders are offering listening stations with short clips of SOME titles, so improvement has happened. And of course, the death of the single is the biggest thing that encouraged piracy in recent years. If the companies would price CD's ar 12.99$ instead of 17.99$, then you'd also have much more sales. You know, as much as they bellyache about downloading, if the internet dissapeared tomorrow, then people could STILL record their favorite new songs off the FM radio transmissions. They need to just concentrate on having good product at a good price, and not treat all consumers like criminals.... THEN they will see good sales once again.
 

SVTStingRay

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the record and movie companies have used and wish to use draconian methods in order to squeeze every last dime out of people. the record and movie companies would argue that us (as a consumer) shouldnt need to have a original movie or cd hence all the arguing over the original divx and the cd schemes that are pay-per-use. i want to be able to collect as many movies or music as i want and be able to watch them whenever i want. most people feel that way, why do you think the movie rental business changed when movies starting selling at a sell-thru price instead of that inflated rental market price, where us (the consumers) were forced to rent movies for months until the cheap version came out. i understand struggling artists who deserved to get there pay, i have no sympathy for billionaires who want to get every last penny.

there will always be piracy but you cant crack down so hard that it affects the actual law-abiding consumer.
 

Ryan-G

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Would every downloaded movie be a lost sale? No, certainly not, it'd be insane to think it's 1:1 ratio of potential sales/lost sales.

But what would have happened? What did people do before? They went to the theaters to see the movie, they rented the movie, they waited for it on HBO, or perhaps they borrowed it from a friend. In every one of those cases someone payed for a legitimate copy.

Piracy isn't as generous though, where the worst case scenario is borrowing from a friend who perhaps killed a few sales, a ripped DVD is handed out tens of thousands of times. Someone's losing money there, and it's most likely the Theaters and the Rental Chains.

It only stands to get worse, as bandwidth increases and technological resistance decreases, it stands to impact TV as well. Cable's not cheap, and if you only watch a few shows, it won't take long for many to connect the dots.

I don't know about your area, but in mine: My closest theater with only 2 rooms has gone out of buisness 3 times in the last 5 years, my closest theater with a state-of-the-art setup is completely out of buisness and has lain dormant for 3 years now, the theater on my college campus went out of buisness a year ago and no one's replaced it, so there's no theater on one of the countries larger universities(We graduated 6,000 people this spring, and the name is *extremely* well known), my local Blockbuster went out of buisness 18 months ago.

My closest movie theater with a good setup is now 30-45 minutes away, my closest rental chain is easily 45 minutes to an hour away. I live near one of the two buisiest commercial sectors in the city. My city is mid-sized, supporting a football team, a hockey team, and a baseball team.

Did DVD do all of this? Can DVD be responsible for a huge college campus being completely berefet of a single movie theater? Sure, it's possible. But I find it difficult to believe, I think there's more at work here, and I think there's probably a correlation between piracy and the things I'm seeing.

So you have to understand, I go to work and see these people, I go to school and I see these people, and go home thinking of the movies I want to see. Then I realize that to see them I have to invest a minimum of 3-3 1/2 hours of time counting driving, for a long movie 4-4 1/2 hours. The gas I burn and time I waste going to find a rental makes it more cost effective to buy the movies. So I'm understandably very concerned about this issue.

That my other favorite hobby, gaming, is being affected heightens my concerns.
 

SVTStingRay

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you cant just say piracy is the reason for all the troubles of the movie industry. look at all the reasons theaters are losing money
high cost of movies
high cost of food
gas
god forbid you cant afford a babysitter or dont have one available
crying babies
loud people
cel fones
laser pointers

piracy is costing the industry but its not the only reason.
 

Marc Colella

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I agree with SVT... while piracy has some impact (and maybe to a large degree around Colleges - I'm not sure) I think a major blame for declined theatre sales is DVD.

VHS movie sales were nowhere near the level of DVD sales once introduced.
Today more and more people are waiting for the DVD release to watch a movie. The amount of money spent on a one-time viewing at the theatre for a couple (and especially for a family) are higher than it is to own the DVD which you can watch as many times as you like - while also containing supplemental material. DVD is much more convenient and cost-effective than going to the theatres.

The movie industry has gotten greedy - plain and simple. They cry about the decline in theatre revenue and blame piracy but always conveniently fail to mention that DVD sales and rentals have given them a powerful revenue stream they never had before and that it's cutting into theatre revenue. There were always cases of movies failing at the boxoffice, but with DVD it's given the studio's another chance at recouping their money. DVD sales have become just as important as boxoffice nowadays.

The movie industry still wants us to spend big bucks at the theatres while also purchase the DVDs. They're already crying now that DVD sales aren't as high as they were a few years ago... boohoo, it's still pulling in amazing numbers especially considering this revenue stream never existed before.

Sorry, I'm not going to feel sorry for the movie industry because the studios aren't as rich as they want to be - especially when most of the movies released in the majority of theatres are pure crap.
 

Cees Alons

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And I believe that the primary cause lies elsewhere, and both are a symptom of the same change.
I think the emphasis of being entertained has changed to more enjoying in the home environment (TV was a first and great step towards that too) from the more 'social' events in large groups. At the same time, those that are still attending the larger groups (read: theatres) tend to be less sociable, which in turn irritates others and drives them away - to their homes.


BTW, an aspect of the downloading of music that was not frequently mentioned by the music companies, is the free advertising. It helps to make a track "cool" and popular, and thus increases sales.

I don't know about the US, but here in Europe, music companies are talking about dropping the DRM altogether, because, apparently, they feel it hurts sales!


(And personally I still don't believe the Pirate otC BDs were "cracked" while on BD. I think they were illegally copied and sold alright, but by - or close to - some insider.)


Cees
 

JackKay

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Marc. I know it seems to you that the Studios make too much money, but in a free country, you have no more right to cap their income than they have to cap yours.
 

Douglas Monce

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Well strangely enough theatrical revenues are actually up quite a bit from the low point of the early 70s. There was much talk 2 or 3 years ago about a slump in movie ticket sales, however it was only a slump if you consider that it was only the 4 best boxoffice year on record and the revenues didn't exceed the year before. This talk of declining revenue from theatrical releases is much ado about nothing. The number of U.S. admissions to movies has gone up steadily from 1.09 billion in 1987 to 1.45 in 2006.

The average ticket price to see a movie nation wide is $6.55. Adjusted for inflation its actually cheaper to see a movie today than it was in 1977.

Doug
 

SVTStingRay

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i remember watching an evening harder with kevin smith and he talked about how studios care less and less how movies do when released in theaters because of whats happened with dvd. theater releases are just one long commercial for the dvd release. the problem is studios got very used to the widespread explosion of dvd and its popularity and expect it to be that way always. first there were video rentals, then video sell-thru (i believe top gun was the first movie that came out on special). video sell-thru killed blockbuster and the rental business in general. dvd has now replaced vhs and for the most part movie theaters because dvd helped to pave the way for better home theater technology. now HDdvd and Blu Ray are just a extention to dvd and wont be widespread until the prices go down and become available to joe shmo. most of the companies are looking foward to video-on-demand but thats not gonna happen until technology makes it cheap and readily available also.

and obviously a college campus full of young, intelligent, computer-savy people and a high-speed internet connection, of course your gonna have pirated movies.
 

Ryan-G

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I honestly don't think Direct Downloads are going to happen in any major number at all for Movies.

Aside from the numerous technological issues, Ownership is a major problem. Itunes showcases it pretty well. Download a song and it's yours only so long as you back it up. Something happens to your library? Tough. Gotta pay again. They keep an entire log of all of your purchases, I've been told before "You have already purchased this song in the past, do you want to continue and be charaged again?" So they know I already paid for it, but since my HD bought the farm, they want me to pay full price again. Yes, it can happen to discs, but a disc going bad isn't comparable to hundreds of gigabytes of data disappearing within a moment. I think that alone will keep DD from mainstreaming.

The other issue I forsee is Piracy. Ripping a disc is one thing, but providing a file is another. All a file has to do is be run through a "Stripper" that eliminates the DRM, they exist already for DRM laden media. One click and you've got a ready to share perfect digital copy. Big problem, too easy.

As far as DVD goes, I'm certain that it bears a significant part of responsibility. But I still wonder about other factors like Piracy.

As far as Movie Revenues go, I have to wonder, are the Theatrical releases in general doing better, or is it a case of a small number of Blockbusters are pulling sufficient people to make it look healthy while good-but-not-blockbusters are languishing?

I do admit though, a large part of revenue issues for theaters are undoubtably due to DVD's. I'm 100% certain that mediocre and "Well, I'd like to see that but I don't have to see it Right Now!" has become DVD buys rather than theater trips.

I don't think Movie Costs are out of line. 8 bucks per person isn't all that expensive, and I think if you do the math and allow for inflation the number probably work out to show that movies really aren't much more expensive now than 30 years ago.

As far as food goes, it's not out of line with any other "event". I get gouged for the same amount of money or more at any given amusement park or sports game. More alot of the time, it's not uncommon to pay more for one beer than a 6-pack costs at alot of events.

I think Gas is a null-factor, because when the problems started Gas was still well under $2/gallon.

The people though...I can definitely see the people driving Home-viewing. People have gotten exponentially ruder, and theaters don't enforce politeness anymore. It's a shame we live in a society that no longer has rules about politeness.
 

Ted Todorov

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While your concern of hard drive failure is perfectly legitimate, I don't think it's what is holding people back from buying stuff from iTunes. (To give myself as an example, in my 23 years of computer ownership, with countless internal & external HDs, I am yet to experience a HD failure -- on the other hand I've had a bunch of DVDs (and a few CDs) fail on me.)

For iTunes to successful, Apple needs to overcome three things:
1) Quality -- the current 640x480 is not ready for primetime. The need to go 720P, or at a minimum full "DVD quality" -- 480P.

2) Selection/price -- while the iTunes store has an excellent TV show selection (only #1 keeps me from buying more), movie selection is pretty bad. Apple has only 3 of the 6 major studios (plus Lionsgate) and doesn't offer new releases from Paramount/MGM. And of course only a small fraction of those studios' DVD catalog is available. Plus many DVDs are priced at under the $9.99 iTunes charges, with better quality and extras. On the other hand if Apple went 720P, suddenly the price would be excellent and only selection would matter.

3) Ability to play purchases on your TV (as opposed to computer monitor): Currently the workarounds for #3 are buying an AppleTV or having an HTPC (i.e. connecting your computer to your TV). Allowing DVD burns would help a lot.

All that said, I believe the mass market future for HD are downloads, not Blu-ray or HD-DVD.

Ted
 

Douglas Monce

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Download times for a full length feature in 1080p even on the best high speed cable connection would take days. Someone on a DSL connection would take the better part of a week to download. For most cable systems to go beyond the current speed would take an over haul of the whole system. Not likely to happen anytime soon.

I can see short films being popular downloads in HD, not unlike what you see on YouTube now. But features are no where in the future.

Also the harddrive doesn't have to fail for the boot sector to become corrupt. You loose your boot sector and everything on your drive is gone unless you want to spend thousands of dollars on a data recovery service.
Doug
 

Ted Todorov

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Using this math a 10GB download (the outer limits of an imaginable 720P download) will take 1.5 hours -- in other words you could start watching the movie 10 minutes into the download. And even with a much slower DSL, you could download the film overnight.

So far as your hard drive corruption fears, I am mystified: Why would you use your boot drive to store your HD downloads? And if you are so afraid of spending "thousands of dollars on data recovery services" why not spend $150 on a backup drive?

Ted
 

ChristopherDAC

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Riiight.
And just how often do you get the full capacity of your network connexion down the pipe? Not very often. That's part of how the Internet works.
 

Douglas Monce

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This assumes that you will actually get your full download speed from the a service like itunes which almost never happens. I've downloaded some TV shows from them which are typically at a resolution of 640x480, they frequently take over 2 hours to download a 44 min program. Add to that I can't take it with me when I go to someone else house, or even to another room of my house.

I don't use my boot drive to store video. In fact I have 2 terabytes of storage for video editing. However I build my own computers and worked in IT for quite a few years, but MOST people do use their main drive because frankly they don't know any better. You are assuming an enormous amount of technical ability and patience from the general public, and it just doesn't exist.

Doug
 

Ryan-G

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I can agree with all of that, and see it as "A mass market future", but only for rental replacement and TV. Long term storage isn't as much an issue when we're talking about "Watch Once" movies that people will never go back and see again, or TV which is often pretty disposable. Some shows have long term value, but many more are of the "Watch Once" catagory that no one actually goes back to watch over and over. I mean, I loved "Married with Children", but I've no desire to collect them all over again. But given an opportunity, I might D/l and watch a couple of the better(for me) episodes.

I don't think it's a replacement though, don't think it'll ever be. Key thing behind Downloads is that it's gotta be stored on physical media somewhere to make it work. So I mean, going Downloads, is still Physical Media in the end.

Of course, perhaps the Holographic Media will be usable by then, and that'll solve the storage issue.

Outside of that, Divx style Downloads aren't going to work out well. Timed downloads that expire inherently are turn-offs, on the off chance you "Want to keep it". Again, might replace the rental market, but won't replace Physical media. Anyone with a kid who's had to sit through "Finding Nemo" 467 times knows what I mean, it's still got it's place.

As far as Hard Drive failure goes, I've had a number of them. Maxtor's failed on me a number of times. Just bought a brand new Seagate a few months ago and had to RMA it 4 weeks later. Though I bought a couple IBM Deathstars that never died, go figure.

Then we're also talking about some new usage patterns here too. consider people's viewing habits, I mean a family can easily have a TV on all day. Streaming data onto a HD and off of a HD for 16 hours a day straight adds up pretty quickly, it's a pretty heavy usage pattern, and I'm not confident that consumer level HD's can sustain that kind of usage long-term. I know the MTF's state they should be able to do it, but since everything in this day and age is disposable, I'm not confident they're honest.
 

Shawn Perron

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Well, both formats are wide open until AACS updates thier security again. People have found the processing Key for both formats again. So much for the vaunted security update. I can't imagine this bodes well for those awaiting movies from Fox or Disney. It's beginning to look like BD+ is Fox's only hope for releasing secure movies. Much like CSS, it's looking like AACS will only exist only to annoy paying customers. Those that don't pay can get an unencrypted copy.
 

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