 markopoleo
join:2003-04-02 Bonne Terre, MO
·Charter Pipeline
| Did not read report..but all the current services fail.
Who cares what it costs to stream a movie, the fact remains no online movie store currently can offer a product worth it to consumers.
The only way to do it is to offer a full movie in compressed AND full format for cheaper than you can buy it at a store to make it attractive to customers. No DRM, no restrictions. Simple as that!
Why has it not happened? bickering between movie companies and online companies. Heck even major movie studios that want to open there own stores can't do it right.
Is it any wondering why movie piracy is rampant? The pirates do a better job than companies in distributing movies and giving what people want. lol |
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  44402812 Hack The Planet Premium join:2006-08-28 Plattsburgh, NY
1 edit | Good Online Movie Store
There is only one good online movie store which is called BitTorrent It is open 27/7, has no late fees, and you can get all the new release while they are still playing in the theatres! :P
P.S. Did I mention all the movies are free with no DRM? |
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 StEaLtHBuNnY
join:2002-10-12 Bergenfield, NJ | yup bittorent is my favorite movie store |
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 chemaupr
join:2005-06-06 Alexandria, VA
| reply to markopoleo Re: Did not read report..but all the current services fail.
Zero DRM will not work either. But DRM with reasonable and generous use may work. I'm hoping for more services like Vongo, and Vongo to increase the quality of their downloads. I do not believe they have HD yet.
The other problem I see is that diff studios want to go diff ways... they sould just concentrate efforts in one or two tech and services. |
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  Digital_Boy
@sbc.com
| reply to markopoleo This is not meant to be an alternative to purchasing movies for ownership.
This would be a shot at the heart of services like Netflix or blockbuster and the transfer of physical media in and out of a residence for rental purposes.
You pay your fee, watch the movie X times during a set period of time (48 hours, whatever), then you delete the file when you're done watching it.
Buying a copy would be an entirely different set of variables. |
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 amungus Premium join:2004-11-26 America clubs:
| sounds about right.
"I'm hoping for more services like Vongo, and Vongo to increase the quality of their downloads. I do not believe they have HD yet."
yeah me too... I'm a little miffed at Vongo for deleting my account for no reason, but they have a sound idea with subscription based movies online. If there were more content, the quality a bit better, it'd be worthwhile. Oh, and HD would really rock for sure.
The whole "raising the bar" makes me laugh though.. Over compressed video looks like garbage. Flash video is better than some mpeg, but it's horrible unless it's at very very very high quality. Scales badly. MPEG-4 is finally good after all these years, and I think it's the way to go for streaming, or most any online content. Microsoft essentially ripped it apart, and put it back together with DRM and a couple tweaks, their compression is about the exact same as DIVX/MPEG-4. ...Raising the bar would seriously entail some high quality video with surround sound. Otherwise, this is all a joke.
This is all still a HUGE step back from even standard NTSC IMHO... Until 'net video is at LEAST as smooth and clear as standard NTSC is on a TV, it's a WASTE of time. They can do quality video, but there doesn't seem to be much interest in doing it RIGHT for the regular joe who just wants to push play. Vongo has that part right at least, making it simple, wait a minute, play a movie, on a TV if you want. ..Quality/selection are the biggest problems.
We should have subscription based video like Rhapsody/Napster by now that beats the pants off of Vongo. Sadly, too many old school, slow to adapt people in charge of making it really happen. Until then, real DVD's, and real HD quality are the only way to go. Sure, it'd be nice to have zero drm, but that's probably not going to happen any time soon. For now, drm that doesn't bug you much would be nice. I could deal with encrypted movies that can't be burned if 1) subscription deals are good, 2) quality isn't jerky, overly compressed, and sound was decent coming through good stereo/surround setups. |
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 vinnie97
join:2003-12-05 Mesquite, TX | reply to 44402812 Re: Good Online Movie Store
quote: open 27/7
Amazing, the "store" must be operating in another dimension.  |
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 markopoleo
join:2003-04-02 Bonne Terre, MO | reply to chemaupr Re: Did not read report..but all the current services fail.
True true, i can see a time limited feature in every download that makes sense as long as its not restrictive other than time limit. But the ability to purchase full movies for a discount price online should not have any restriction imo. |
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 pnosker Premium join:2003-03-26 Stockton, NJ clubs: | reply to amungus Re: sounds about right.
Yeah, WMV has come a long way... though AFAIK it's Mpeg-4 based so that would make sense. |
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  TKJunkMail Enjoy the sun Premium join:2002-03-03 Avalon, NJ
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·Comcast
| Don't see any NUMBERS backing Burstein's guesses
Well, I read the Burstein article, and I don't see any numbers backing his 25 cents estimate. I did see a lot of statements like "I'd guess", "I don't have enough data", "probably", the "actual costs for any given network will be different", etc. And while the UK Report claimed cost of $39 is high, I see nothing in Burstein's column to back up his claims either. -- -- Join Red Room Forum BLOG tkjunkmail.blogspot.com My Web Page |
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 RadioDoc 58ef2c0 Premium,ExMod 2000-03 join:2000-05-11
·AT&T Midwest
| And that's per stream...
OTA Broadcast still beats the diapers off of Internet streaming for one reason: There is no incremental cost per viewer. It costs the station the same amount of money to transmit to one TV as it does to transmit to six million. Satellite has similar economics, and cable does too but they have to actually connect the subscriber and maintain the delivery channel and bandwidth necessary to get to them so it's not the same as the "free" delivery OTA has.
Until a viable broadcast mechanism exists on the Internet this is all just a pipe dream (pun intended).
Dave might want to sharpen his pencil though: "This compared to broadcast over the air video, which costs a few pennies per hour to distribute." That's absurd. The electric bill for one transmitter is far higher than "a few pennies per hour", let along what the operator gets paid, the station's fixed overhead, and what it costs to get the program to the station in the first place. However, once you pay for that you're home free. -- Toolmaster of La Grange. |
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  dvd536 as Mr. Pink as they come Premium join:2001-04-27 Phoenix, AZ
| reply to 44402812 Re: Good Online Movie Store
said by 44402812 :There is only one good online movie store which is called BitTorrent  It is open 27/7, has no late fees, and you can get all the new release while they are still playing in the theatres! :P P.S. Did I mention all the movies are free with no DRM? this is exactly what these online stores dont get. Its not that we're cheap its that we want to do with it once we buy it, i mean look, i can buy a DVD, rip it to watch either on my PC or on my bigscreen T.V. in stand-alone DVD player. - p.s. I shouldn't have to pay extra to burn! -- You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much Bandwidth |
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  53059959 Temp banned from BBR more then anyone
join:2002-10-02 PwnZone
| reply to chemaupr theres still some work to be done
 peru speedtest [tuxtepec.net] |  uk speedtest [adslguide.org.uk] |  japan speedtest [broadland.jp] |  here in virginia speedtest [visualware] |
observe what distances do to speeds above
it may be a 80 cents to stream n HD movie from a single location-but they are going to need some form of global internet caching to achieve speeds fast enough to stream it. |
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  owenhome keeper of the magic blue smoke Premium join:2002-07-13 Bentonville, AR
| You can't compare the two reports!
In one analysis, Burnstein's, the concluded costs involved are that of the content distributor.
In the other, the "UK report", the claimed cost is that which the ISP faces to actually deliver the content to the subscriber.
The ISP's infrastructure is INSANELY larger, and FAR FAR FAR more COSTLY than that of the distributer. We're talking billions against tens of thousands. When you consider the cost to deliver gig's and gig's of content to thousands and thousands of ISP subscribers and its associated infrastructure, of course the cost is going to be astronomically higher than that which the simple distributer faces with their one fiber line.
If you are a distributer, you have to build the infrastructure to distribute the media across the Internet. An ISP has to build the infrastructure for the user to actually connect to the Internet and receive the media. The two, both required for the others existence, are two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT industries, with COMPLETELY different costs. If AT&T could light up a city for $12K a month, we would be paying a 10cents a month for a 100/100 symmetrical connection.
I am not saying the UK article is correct. I would think the entire BB industry would be in the dirt if it was. But, this news article makes no valid comparison. You're comparing apples to Porsche's. On one hand we have the cost the ISP (AT&T, TW, CC, etc.) faces, and on the other, we have the cost the distributer (Google, YouTube, etc) incurs. How exactly are the two comparable, and whats more, how are they even related? -- Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference. |
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  nightdesigns Gone missing, back soon Premium join:2002-05-31 AZ
·Cox HSI
| Stream DVD quality, Yeah right
DVD quality my ass, DVD is MPEG2, no way you can stream that. HD compression is MPEG4, and true HD which is 1485Mb/sec, I'd love to see that streamed.
I already dis-credit it for false advertising. -- [[Your signature here]] |
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 algolly
join:2003-08-28 New York, NY
| reply to owenhome Re: You can't compare the two reports!
ISP infrastructure has multiple uses. While corps like to say that the cost of, say, a single phone call includes the price of building the transatlantic cable, the fact is that a large part of the infra was built for other uses and is already paid for.
In Bruce Sterling's Hacker Crackdown, he cites a legal case where a company claimed that a document cost the _entire value of the minicomputer it was written on_ but the defense showed that the "confidential" document was available from the company's own store for $10.
Of course, I haven't read the reports either, just saying. . . |
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  2lazy2register
@sbcglobal.net | reply to RadioDoc Re: And that's per stream...
IP does have something similar to OTA broadcasts.
Its called multicasting. Problem is that not too many ISPs have the hardware to support it. |
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  owenhome keeper of the magic blue smoke Premium join:2002-07-13 Bentonville, AR
| reply to algolly Re: You can't compare the two reports!
Well, that's true to a point. But real work vs. investment vs. revenue is all a very tangible, real world cost.
Like your computer example. If during the entire period that computer was in use, it only was used to produce that one document, their argument would have been just.
Broadband roll-outs cost their owners billions of dollars to deploy, any way you cut it. It's true that the vast majority of the infrastructure was in place, to some extent, but it is still very, very costly to adapt that infrastructure to support broadband. And then we have other situations, like FIOS, where the entire infrastructure is gutted and re-engineered. Now, each piece of equipment involved has a real cost. A DSLAM, for example, has a finite tangible cost. We can buy one and know what we paid for it. It will have a usable life span before it is outmoded, replaced, upgraded, etc. During that life cycle, it served X customers who paid X dollars for their service. We can look at those amounts and know what the real cost of that device was to each subscriber. Then we can look at how much data on average each subscriber used over that period and know how much it cost for that DSLAM to deliver a single packet to each customer. If we apply that same logic across the entire industry, to the bandwidth purchased by the ISP, to the equipment constantly rotated through the ISP, to the original cost of the original deployment of the BB infrastructure, and so on and so forth, we can put a real world cost on every aspect of Internet service. From each city, to each RT/node, to each block, to each customer, to each gig, to each packet, all the way done to the zeros and ones.
But what most people fail to realize is that with DSL, or with Cable, a part of the cost of providing Internet service is subsidized by other, more profitable services sold in conjunction with BB. Even if you come to the conclusion that a DSL service is sold at a loss, it is still profitable because it is sold along side POTS.
In the IT world, every part of our budget making and job costing must include life-cycle planning. The BB business is the same in that regard, but in many ways, much worse. In IT, we are not forced to upgrade our servers and networks every few months to keep up with the Jone's like ISP's do. We are not constantly undercutting ourselves, buying customers, just to get them under us. Consequently, Internet service provision is a revolving door of costs.
You could consider how much the ISP pays to push that data down the pipe to your computer, but that's not really relevant. You have to consider the ongoing cost of the entire infrastructure to find any kind of relevant real-world cost. When you look at that and see the big picture, it's a very large number. Much the same way that driving 20 miles doesn't just cost you in fuel, but also in car payments, service, tires, etc. putting the real-world cost of that 20 miles a lot higher than you'd think. -- Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference. |
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 Skippy25
join:2000-09-13 Hazelwood, MO
| reply to nightdesigns Re: Stream DVD quality, Yeah right
Correct me if I am wrong, but DVD's have an average of about 3.5mbps (up to 9.8mbps according to the standard for variable bit rate DVDs).
Surely it can be compressed and streamed at a lower quality that wouldnt typically be detected as "flawed".
Also you are not representing the MPEGs properly. MPEG4 is the newer standard and allows for compression to go as low as 1.5mbps. HD may use that, but you can still compress the hell out of that just as much as anything else and still end up with crap at the end (see cable and sat versions of HD). |
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  nightdesigns Gone missing, back soon Premium join:2002-05-31 AZ
·Cox HSI
| Yes you can recompress it, but then it's no longer DVD quality. Yeah i know it's a technical thing and the end user would probably never know the difference, but if you're advertising it as such, then that's what it should be.
It should be "equivalent DVD quality" -- [[Your signature here]] |
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