I want to talk about convenience

EZTV shut down 5 days ago, one of the most popular pirating sites on the internet. Now i don't want to go on a rant as i'm sure they'll find a way to recover just like TPB.

What i want to talk about is convenience.

Question: How many of you would pay for a service, or way of obtaining/watching a form of media as soon as it airs/releases?

I know i would. Let me give you an illustration, does anyone pirate PC games today? Yes. Is that amount substantial enough to hurt the company? Possibly. But thanks to digital distribution methods (Steam, GOG, etc) PC games have had a significant reduction over the past decade. Even most games (Ubisoft *sigh*) opt for DRM-less activation.

So why hasn't the TV industry caught on? Simple its a huge cash cow with ads running every 15 minutes. TV networks take priority in US by airing everything there first while the world lags behind. There's a reason why GoT is the most pirated show of all time, it's because organisations are not taking into consideration customer convenience, a vital aspect in the marketing world.

I've tried using HBO NOW in the hopes to watch last week's episode of GoT, first month is free then you have to start paying 15 dollars a month. Didn't work because only US can utilize that service. Obviously i'm going to cancel my sub, but that isn't the point here. The point is that don't these companies see that their's a large market pool willing to pay for convenience if it was available to them? I understand that a lot of countries are a political/bureaucratic nightmare and that IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) aren't enforced (Case in point, CHina) but in a globalized world where economies and governments are more interdependent (EU, NAFTA, GCC, etc) shouldn't this at least be possible by now?

I can't wait for the day when Cable TV finally dies out, it is an absolute travesty. There's a reason why i haven't watched more than 6-8 TV shows, many TV shows nowadays (bar a few) become jaded in networks' desired for continued profits and writers' ability to complete a coherent story.

I don't even want to start on the pricing plan of cable TV.

TL;DR f*ck cable TV, piracy can be greatly reduced (impossible to eliminate), cater to your customer's needs, expand your horizons.

Also, its 4:21 AM atm, i may not have articulated my point well. But i hope you guys can get the gist of it.

First thing, EZTV didn't shut down because of court orders, but because of scammers. However your thread is still relevant and even without the EZTV reference it stands fine. As it's a big issue nowadays anyways.


You mentioned PC gaming and I'll expand that. PC games were the most pirated entertainment along with music and movies back in the days. To a point it did kinda hurt the gaming industry because unlike other industries, games profits are shared among many different parties and people do suffer at some point in the chain. However they acted to that and Steam is probably the best answer they could fine. People still pirate games obviously, but more and more people have now realised how it's much better to play games using steam rather than downloading them. That's mainly because how easy it is via steam.

Music industry has done the same with Spotify, Itunes and youtube.

With TV/Movies it gets messy. I completely agree with your post that it's not easy for everyone to watch certain shows. GOT (for non USA-UK) is only accessible via HBO go which only exists in USA. We can watch it on sky atlantic in UK and record it even while USA guys can do it via HBO Go. However someone from elsewhere is stuck because he will have to download it or torrent it. He might be willing to pay for it, but there isn't an option for him to pay for it.

That's why netflix and Hulu got popular. People don't mind paying for Netflix because they have actual content which is accessible easily. And I hope moer and more shows makes it over there as it will reduce piracy anyways.

But channels like HBO will never let their shows make it to netflix etc sadly.

If there was an option to pay like £10 for every show on one site. Then I will happily spend it instead of pirating it (I don't anymore). I hate watching shows on crappy quality. To a point i don't watch anything unless it's on TV or netflix. I even started buying blurays of films I love.

But yea, cable should die.

We have HBO Nordic in Scandinavia which is the same.

Don't worry, cable tv will die out soon. Tv in general will and the netflix model hopefully will prevail once they figure out how to make it global with rights etc.

The thing I'm most scared of is losing the movies, if people don't pay to go to cinema's that experience will be lost. And I don't care what anyone says, nothing like a cinema experience. VoD can't compare.

+1

Wasn't a cinema guy before Inception came out but now I am addicted. Would have never realised how amazing films like planet of the apes or interstellar are in Cinema compared to DVDs.

I think Cinemas will last long. It's been there for centuries and the trend is not going down anytime soon.

Netflix model needs to be applied for TV shows though. Really glad Netflix have started producing shows themselves too. Hope they keep buying rights along with it.

Freeza I don't think we're at the risk of losing the cinemas.

I think what we may lose is quality of films or certain genres who don't can't even break even in the box office become completely VoD. Big blockbusters will never let the cinemas die imo.

Don't call me James wrote:Freeza I don't think we're at the risk of losing the cinemas.

I think what we may lose is quality of films or certain genres who don't can't even break even in the box office become completely VoD. Big blockbusters will never let the cinemas die imo.

I agree that's what I meant with my post. If people don't pay to go, you'll lose the choice of a cinematic experience

I find it absolutely stupid there isn't one big, all-encompassing service for digital entertainment, or at least one for each industry.

Take the music industry, for example. We could just pay, say, 3 euros a month, which would allow us to legally download or stream any music track from one big service where all record companies and independent artists would put their catalogs. The 3 euros added to our Internet Service Provider's bill. And everything would be found from one place instead of your Spotify's, Youtube's, illegal filesharing, iTunes, Amazons, Napsters, what ever there are. And that 3 euros a month would probably be more than enough to have everyone involved in music industry better off than they're now, because this would be simply the best service available and therefore pretty much everyone who consumes music would sign up for it.

But we can't make such a service happen, because everyone are just trying to protect themselves. The ISP's don't see a reason to help, because they reckon there's nothing in it for them. The music industry isn't strong enough to implement such a service themselves, although they control the copyrights. And then these services like Spotify and iTunes and all the rest exploit the music industry's weakness, they get the licenses to sell the music with decent profit for them and peanuts for the music industry and even less for the artists. The music industry doesn't like it, but are powerless. Their only weapon would be withholding the copyrights, i.e. the songs, or trying to sell them for dearer, but that would only mean an increase in illegal filesharing and even less money for the music industry.

This all could be brought under one single service with everyone making money from it who are making money from the current state of things, but there's just no common will to make that happen. The result is unnecessary inconvenience and higher prices for us consumers and the digital entertainment industries suffer because the Internet makes their one great power - having the copyrights, owning the material - so much weaker because there's always the option to acquire the material illegally for free.

The means are there to make it better, but there's no will.

Thanks for reply gents.

@RG and Freeza: I sort of agree that cinema won't die (anytime soon, at least) as RG said, its an experience you can't emulate. I tried watching Interstellar home, didn't feel right. At the cinema, it was the ambiance, the loud speakers booming with Hans' orchestral masterpiece, the quality of IMAX, the whole cinema breathless trying to see if Cooper could dock it or not.

My point exactly was that ALL films are better in a cinema imo. Blockbusters will never die, just like Theater is till alive and well. But aside from Broadway the choices are very limited, and I fear that this will happen.

Cable tv is more expensive than buying a Netflix, HBO, ViaPLay premium membershit in Denmark, all of these basically gives you all the content + sports etc. at the same price with you choosing when you want to see it.

Cinema is a bit like live concerts to music, they won't go anywhere.

Art Morte wrote:Cinema is a bit like live concerts to music, they won't go anywhere.

Well not entirely, music Industry makes much more of their money from tours etc than the other way around.
Cinema will always be there, or at least for my lifetime.
But still I doubt the choices will be limited eventually as Netflix expands with their film content.

We get Game of Thrones first time here as it premieres in the US

Satellite tv, incase you are wondering.