Warner Brothers Thinks What People REALLY Want In A Streaming Service Is Something That Costs More But Offers Less
from the artificial-scarcity-meets-artificial-infinity dept
Warner Brothers, one of the many studios to sign on to the rightfully-maligned Ultraviolet "service," and tireless proponent of lengthy arbitrary blackout periods, has decided to leap ungracefully into the streaming business with Warner Archive Instant.
Now, Warner Archive Instant isn't necessarily meant to be a Netflix killer. (Or even to take out the severely wounded Hulu.) It's way too niche for that. But it's unclear exactly what perceived gap in the market Warner is hoping to fill (other than a gap of its own creation). Here's a few of the underwhelming details.
Warner Archive Instant [is] a service that streams vintage films and shows from the vast Warner Bros. catalog. It's an offshoot of the existing Warner Archive DVD and Blu-ray site, but the digital selection is unfortunately rather limited — there are only 123 distinct titles available as of now. While most of these aren't typically found through other outlets, it's still a pretty small selection, particularly for the $9.99 monthly fee associated with the service. Warner says that it'll be constantly adding and rotating new content in and out, but for now it's not the most robust offering around.This certainly sounds like a studio-directed effort. More expensive with less selection! That's what people are looking for in a streaming service! Warner, despite dipping a toe into the Stream, seems to be relying on artificial scarcity to drive subscriptions. Many of the movies and shows it offers on Archive Instant aren't available through other streaming services or retailers. So, if you're absolutely dying to watch selected episodes from seasons 2 & 3 (but not the entire seasons, mind you) of 77 Sunset Strip (or late-80s insta-classic Disorderlies) and have nothing better to do with a ten-spot, Warner Archive is tailored precisely for you.
Of course, this being a studio effort, there are a whole lot of caveats to the severely limited, expensive, streaming service -- many that you won't find hampering cheaper services with more titles.
For instance, if you want true HD, you have a single option: Roku box to TV. That's it. Hi-def streaming for PC and Mac is not supported "at this time." Also not supported: smart TVs, networked Blu-Ray players, Wii/Xbox/PS3 or mobile devices. Here's more good news: the service can only be utilized on one device at a time.
This service is far too limited and far too expensive to appeal to about 99% of everybody. Perhaps several months down the road when Warner adds more (and it will need to add a lot) content, it might be tempting. But even with additional content, it will still be nothing more than yet another streaming service competing for market share in an overcrowded field.
Warner is making a couple of mistakes here (at least). The first is arbitrarily locking up certain content solely to "create" a market for the shackled products. The second mistake is assuming people are clamoring for a fragmented streaming market. Most people are satisfied with one or two services and very occasionally use others to fill in the gap. What they're not interested in is creating yet another account, setting up yet another device and adding yet another line item to the debit side of their bank accounts in order to access limited niche content. (And even the "niche" part can be argued. The titles available are hit-and-miss -- a collection of true classics mixed with below average films, accompanied by a bizarre selection of TV shows, some of which are represented as "best of" sets, rather than the entire season[s]. Archive Instant seems to have been set up by a faulty database query, rather than curated with the classic movie fan in mind.)
At the end of the day, though, Warner will still be able to say it tried. When the MPAA presents its anti-piracy legislation suggestions, it will point to this (and Ultraviolet) as evidence of the studios' willingness to meet
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Filed Under: limited selection, movies, streaming, streaming services, warner archive instant
Companies: warner bros.
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I LOVE paying more and more each month and getting less and less in return!
I'll finally be able to feel good about myself when I to sleep at night, because I'll know I'm helping some other good person get rich at my expense!
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Youve just described the state of our rights
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It isn't about succeeding...
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Re: It isn't about succeeding...
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Actually, the Edsel was a good car, and had some wonderful innovations that were adopted by everyone else (warning lights, for example).
The main reason that it failed in the marketplace was that it was ugly.
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That said, I prefer the Corvair to the Edsel.
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I learned that from an episode of Quantum Leap.
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Calling this thing some sort of conspiracy might be giving the guys at WB too much credit.
Don't assume malice when incompetence is sufficient.
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Re: Re: Re: It isn't about succeeding...
These are movies they can't make money on in a proper release because there is little audience for them. They are obscure, and the site is aimed at serious film buffs.
Their goal is obviously to make these movies available while spending as little money as possible.
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Compare the US and UK Netflix libraries, or the content on Love Film as opposed to Amazon Prime Video (which Amazon don't even offer here). The difference in content is stark and yet we have to pay the same subscription fees.
Regional blocking and windowed release models are feeding piracy, when will the entertainment industries realise this?
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Response to: Zakida Paul on Apr 4th, 2013 @ 9:27am
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Well, right o and all that...
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I think they are more interested in power over efficient business models (profits).
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In that case, they aren't very good at business.
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I have a suspicion they are closer to the x than to the peak...
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You can, by the way, access US content on Netflix via a VPN, you may just lose some of the additional features in doing so as it puts you into a travelling mode and it's less likely to be accessible from certain devices. I do it all the time from Spain, and rarely bump into problems, although mileage does seem to vary among my friends,
"Regional blocking and windowed release models are feeding piracy, when will the entertainment industries realise this?"
I've been saying it since the early 2000s at least, and for most of the decade I was just called names. At least they're offering *some* services to *some* people, although I dare say that Sky is probably going to the movie/TV folks' preferred outlet in the UK over Hulu in the short-to-medium term for a lot of content - more opportunities to collect a bigger slice of the pie and upsell to higher margin services.
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There is absolutely no technical reason content cannot be made available more widely. The only reason is control and maintenance of the monopoly that has been enjoyed for decades.
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Ignore the morons, I think they're just panicking that their "everyone who complains is a pirate" mantra looks even sillier when you can prove you're paying more to access a service than they do. I've been called a pirate here before when I explained that the reasons I picked an independent Blu Ray over a studio release were due to region coding and vastly inferior extras on the UK copy of the studio film. They literally can't comprehend that paying customers are the ones being negatively affected by their industry.
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That is what turns me off. Who wants to play that game?
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It's just one crummy idea after another for these guys isn't it.
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Your copy-paste left out is for fans of old movies,
And given the vintage of film, looks aimed at adults who'll actually pay up, not piratey kids wanting constant explosions for free, another point that may lead to success.
But while on subject of user-friendly: "theverge.com" has one of the worst website designs I've yet come across. The two (short) actual paragraphs of text are halfway down the page, buried in much distracting. So from that lousy design, I wouldn't take the opinion as too weighty -- though they do lean slightly positive, unlike Techdirt's pervasive negativism.
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Re: Your copy-paste left out is for fans of old movies,
probably available nowhere else. Possibly big selling point."
Really? All of the movies being offered in this service are literally not available anywhere else? I'm not even going to go to the bother of checking Piratebay. I know that most, if not all, of them will be there.
Oh, and FYI, I'm not a kid who wants constant explosions. I'm 24 years old, full-time employment, able and willing to pay when I deem I get full bang for my buck. Yet I still infringe.
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It's so bad that it keeps me from reading the site.
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Re: Your copy-paste left out is for fans of old movies,
All the titles are available either as on-demand or factory-produced DVDs.
Some are also available as BluRays.
Do you even think before you type, boy?
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Warner says...
Warner says a lot of things. I've heard that, sometimes, they even do what they say.
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The reason they're rare is simply because it costs too much to make them generally available - i.e. they have little commercial value. The original Warner Archives were print-on-demand.
The real point is that these movies should be public domain, but they remain in Warner's vaults, and we're supposed to feel lucky they're bothering to make them available to us at all. Now think about all the movies that aren't available at all.
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Too Little, Too Late
I don't pirate, I don't care enough to. I'll start sending Hollywood money once content creators figure out this whole "Internet" thing.
It might end up coming down to generation change among content owners.
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Chances are they want this to fail so they can go and say that if they make more things available online via streaming and licensing (like itunes does for music) that it won't/can't make money. Therefore they need more protection for DVDs, internet streaming, and to ignore the whole online avenue as a means to sell movies.
That's the only possible take I can possibly see the MAFIAA getting from a system it designed to fail.
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Warners is a huge company, and I suspect this is just one small division of the archives dept. that's really pushing to make these movies available and was probably setup to test print-on-demand over a traditional release. That makes sense for DVDs, but not for streaming, where licensing to Netflix or Hulu would help these movies find their audience.
I could see subscribing for a month just to watch the handful of films that interest me and then canceling - provided the handful I'm interested in are available for streaming. That's $10 more than they're getting from me now. But really I've just been waiting for Netflix to buy their DVDs and rent them.
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They're just noticing which way the winds are blowing.
Netflix got a lot more expensive when they split their service and it their catalog gets smaller every month. WB is just taking it to the next level.
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Purchase and Support Non-MAFIAA Content instead
MAFIAA you are Censored from my Wallet for life !
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Comparative Pricing of Classic movies.
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But they don't care about the customer anyway do they?
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Of course, that could always change. Warner claims the situation with Netflix is unrelated, so well find out in time if that's true r not.
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