10-28-2011, 04:11 PM
What Jake said. People buy a BluRay player to play BluRay DVDs. People buy a Playstation to play video games. These devices also, incidentally, do streaming. There is no reason to go out and buy a dedicated streaming box.
Nor would they want to. Which is why Apple as a streaming provider won't fly anytime soon. Maybe if they made the deal of the century and suddenly had all movies from all studios available to stream, people would be willing to buy an AppleTV. It would have to do something extraordinary which their existing plethora of streaming devices wasn't already doing.
I'm sure the real holdup on streaming is DVD sales, though. Much like the book industry does not want to stop selling paper, movie studios do not want to stop selling DVDs. Even though Amazon does a pay-per-view service, it's still hard to find top notch movies. I suspect movie studios not only don't want Netflix style streaming, they also don't want $4 rental streaming. They want DVD sales.
Stuff like Redbox and the Netflix DVD service likely gets around this because they are buying physical DVDs, which makes the studios happy.
Incidentally, interesting article on Redbox, which is also facing a price hike, for different reasons:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch...ss/247535/
One thing the article points out is that since Netflix did the split, if you ONLY want DVD rentals (which is all Redbox does anyway), then your price just went down. For the cost of renting 6 Redbox movies, plus change, you could just get the Netflix DVD service, have a much better selection, rent them as fast as you can mail them and get a much more lenient rental policy (Redbox requires next-day returns, if I recall correctly, whereas Netflix doesn't care).
Nor would they want to. Which is why Apple as a streaming provider won't fly anytime soon. Maybe if they made the deal of the century and suddenly had all movies from all studios available to stream, people would be willing to buy an AppleTV. It would have to do something extraordinary which their existing plethora of streaming devices wasn't already doing.
I'm sure the real holdup on streaming is DVD sales, though. Much like the book industry does not want to stop selling paper, movie studios do not want to stop selling DVDs. Even though Amazon does a pay-per-view service, it's still hard to find top notch movies. I suspect movie studios not only don't want Netflix style streaming, they also don't want $4 rental streaming. They want DVD sales.
Stuff like Redbox and the Netflix DVD service likely gets around this because they are buying physical DVDs, which makes the studios happy.
Incidentally, interesting article on Redbox, which is also facing a price hike, for different reasons:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch...ss/247535/
One thing the article points out is that since Netflix did the split, if you ONLY want DVD rentals (which is all Redbox does anyway), then your price just went down. For the cost of renting 6 Redbox movies, plus change, you could just get the Netflix DVD service, have a much better selection, rent them as fast as you can mail them and get a much more lenient rental policy (Redbox requires next-day returns, if I recall correctly, whereas Netflix doesn't care).