Jeffrey Katzenberg: The New Pricing Model For Movies Will Be Based On The Viewer's Screen Size
from the no-it-won't dept
It's been pretty well established that one barrier to movie studios making more money is the silly release windows they apply to their films. As such, you can be sure that many great thinkers and deft minds have been hard at work trying to figure out a new model that will produce just as much coin while nixing the release windows entirely. This article is not about one of those models.
No, this article is about a big bucket of crazy coming from Dreamworks' Jeffrey Katzenberg, who claims that the future business model will be to price out what you pay for a movie based on whatever the dimensions of the screen you're planning to watch it on. Seriously.
Those who watched on a "movie screen" would pay the most while those using smartphones would only pay a small fee, Jeffrey Katzenberg said. This pricing model will be common in 10 years' time, he told a US conference. The pricing model he suggested was $15 (£9) per film for a movie-sized screen, $4 (£2.40) for a 75in (190cm) TV and $1.99 (£1.20) for a smartphone.This won't happen. I don't mean to say it won't be tried. It might. But it won't last. Why? For a myriad of reasons, not the least of which are the technical hurdles.
The Verge thought the idea faced some technical hurdles.And that, frankly, is the least of the reasons why this won't work. Add to that the simple methods for getting around the pricing model (such as hooking up a smart phone to a television screen with a $2 cable), not to mention the simple plain fact that this doesn't make any economic sense. Basing the price of a product upon a physical device that isn't owned by the producer is a bold move. By which I mean it has no basis in established economic theory. Can you imagine iTunes trying to charge you different prices for music based on the size of your speakers? Or video game makers charging more or less based on how much power your computer packs? The product is the product and where it is consumed is the purview of the consumer.
"Given the diversity of video streaming options available today, it's hard to imagine a security system that would reliably recognise the exact size of the screen it's being displayed on," wrote commentator Vlad Slavov.
That said, it's nice to see that industry folks are at least coming around to the idea that release windows are going away. I just wish they'd come up with replacement business models that didn't make my head hurt.
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Filed Under: business models, jeffrey katzenberg, movies, pricing, screen size
Reader Comments
The First Word
“You're wrong!
This model would work just fine and is already in use!How to keep the price related to the screen size? Simply offer the movie at different resolutions! For a mobile device, the movie can be set at a resolution of 640x400 and it would look good on your mobile phone but bad on a moviescreen. Make the resolution bigger and it would look great on a television-sized screen. And offer it at 4K resolution and there's your movie theater quality.
It is already possible to buy movies at SD or HD formats, at DVD or Bluray, where BluRay is supposed to have a better quality image.
No one will watch a 4K movie on a mobile phone either, since it takes a huge amount of disk space and processing power. Just as no one would use a movie at SD format on a 4K-able monitor. It would look just pixelated.
Don't think it will never happen since it's already happening today. It even happened yesterday, the day before that, and even further in the past. Jeffrey Katzenberg is correct that price would vary based on resolution. He just refers to this as screen size.
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2 inch screens !!!!
fuck the usa and its lazy fuckers
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Re: 2 inch screens !!!!
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besides, its HARD for us cockroaches to hit both keys at once...
hee hee hee
ho ho ho
ha ha ha
ak ak ak
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Projectors?
What a bunch of bullshit.
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Anti-Circumvention Measures
That could be considered a circumvention measure, subjecting you to criminal copyright infringement liability.
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isn't that exactly how an increasing amount of business software works. They change by CPU core and increasing the amount of RAM that is in the system. see sql, oracle, vmware as examples. and it is now accepted in the industry. It hasn't moved to consumers level products yet but give it time.
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Chromecast
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Of course the studios will have to provide a better experience than Netflix before I would even consider paying those suggested prices.
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If I buy the Bluray, I expect to pay more than if I buy the DVD. Not because it's really much more expensive to produce, but simply because I'm getting a higher quality output.
FWIW, I'm the kind of guy that doesn't usually mind watching 480p (widescreen) movies on large screen - most movies are enjoyable without high definition. And since I like to keep copies of my movies on my NAS for easy access, I usually rip them down to a lower resolution anyway so I can store more.
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Even that might not be a big deal if all I ever watched was my library, but what about movies friends loan you, movies you receive as gifts, movies from the public library, or the thousands of movies that aren't getting released on bluray?
They missed their chance to make bluray mainstream.
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Kinect for Xbox One and PCs can detect number of people in the room. Microsoft has already patented this for DRM purposes.
http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-patent-spies-on-consumers-to-enforce-drm-7000007102/
There's talk of building Kinect into televisions. Other console makers have their own versions.
For licensing by screen size or resolution to work, you already need a new version of HDCP to ensure that the screen is reporting back the correct resolution. (Which of course wouldn't work with existing monitors, TVs, tablets and phones. Even those which are currently HDCP compliant cannot be upgraded.) Adding one more requirement is a no-brainer for those who feel so entitled.
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Beautiful. Just beautiful.
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...In other words, if a license only covers one individual viewing and you're watching a film with friends or family, content simply won't play...
..."facial recognition techniques" could be used...
...The patent also mentions that age and identity can be detected in relation to whether a viewer is authorized to see particular content. The technology can also enforce time frames that users are allowed to see media...
If you "buy" a movie, not only can they stop the movie when others are in the room, but if they can stop it if someone else tries to watch it. Or if you watch it at the wrong time - like Disney was able to switch off purchased Christmas specials during the Christmas season because they retroactively wanted an exclusive.
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Considering the quality of motion pictures these days they would have to pay people to "experience" it.
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HDCP-2
The new pricing model for movies will be based on Katzenberg's sense of entitlement.
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You're wrong!
How to keep the price related to the screen size? Simply offer the movie at different resolutions! For a mobile device, the movie can be set at a resolution of 640x400 and it would look good on your mobile phone but bad on a moviescreen. Make the resolution bigger and it would look great on a television-sized screen. And offer it at 4K resolution and there's your movie theater quality.
It is already possible to buy movies at SD or HD formats, at DVD or Bluray, where BluRay is supposed to have a better quality image.
No one will watch a 4K movie on a mobile phone either, since it takes a huge amount of disk space and processing power. Just as no one would use a movie at SD format on a 4K-able monitor. It would look just pixelated.
Don't think it will never happen since it's already happening today. It even happened yesterday, the day before that, and even further in the past. Jeffrey Katzenberg is correct that price would vary based on resolution. He just refers to this as screen size.
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Otherwise - as others have pointed out - he'd have to charge by resolution. And not by screen resolution, since that can be faked anyway, but by stream resolution.
Do you get the impression we're doing his research for him?
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Samsung and Apple need proprietary adapters, but Samsung and others are moving to the Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) standard.
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Leave off "for your device" and I agree with you, that seems more likely because it's actually doable. It's not, however, what Katzenberg is proposing. He specifically said "size of the screen", which is unrelated to the resolution of the video.
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I also assume that devices know the resolution they are using and are thus capable to select the proper resolution based on this while streaming movies. If you have a 4K projector/screen then it will most likely ask for the best resolution streaming, thus the most expensive package. Your phone probably knows it's screen is too small or that it doesn't have enough bandwidth to support movies at bigger resolutions. It would request the smallest resolution and thus has a great performance while displaying the movie over a slow Wifi connection.
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Also, if a device knows the screen resolution, the viewer software on the device would also know it. The software can tell the stream which resolution it wants, thus linking screen size through resolution to the price of the movie. You might be able to change this preference, but it would result in a different quality of your movie.
Which for some movies won't make much difference. You could look "Rio Grande" with 'The Duke' on your 4K device but it still won't change the quality of the images, since they have been made with an analog camera in black&white instead of full color.
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Re: You're wrong!
...Huh... That would work, I think. Maybe.
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Re: You're wrong!
I can't believe that a simple slip-of-the-tongue would end up spawning so many news articles, blog posts, and heated comments. This "story" is not the least bit news-worthy. Most of us understood perfectly well what Katzenberg meant, even if he might have said it somewhat clumsily.
Sadly, it's resulted is a big argument over nothing. Absolutely nothing.
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So, SD is slightly more expensive to create but a lot cheaper to distribute...
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I think they'd make more money by lowering the price of rentals and having the same price for HD and SD streams.
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Here's a clue. While all my computers are capable of HDMI not one of them is hooked up that way. I don't miss HD at all. I will never pick HD because I have no need of it.
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EDID
As others have already mentioned, this completely breaks down for projectors, since the image size depends on the distance between the projector and the screen. That doesn't matter, since they are greedy they would treat a projector as the largest screen size available ("movie-sized screen").
It's not possible to know the screen size with the old non-computer analog interfaces (RF, composite, component), but since these interfaces are not "protected" by their "encryption" they will probably not allow these interfaces to be used.
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Of course, this is not to mention that outcry that will occur if users with analogue non-EDID find out that they can't watch any movies PERIOD.
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HDCP (on Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, satellite TV, cable TV) works by sending the encrypted video stream through the PC, driver and video card to the monitor untouched, and having the monitor itself decode it. Old non-HDCP compliant monitors and HD TVs won't work.
You would need a similar encrypted data channel going in the other direction for the EDID data, right from the monitor hardware to the stream's source. And since that's not part of existing standards, it won't work with any current screen of any size.
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Per character
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Brilliant! But not as brilliant as this idea!
Big screen or little screen. Close or far. I just want to watch a damn movie for a reasonable price without any hassle.
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Timothy Geigner gets it wrong. Very wrong.
I can pardon the (unnamed) BBC writer for being a technology dunce. But not a Techdirt writer. Come on, Tim, you can do better!
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Re: Timothy Geigner gets it wrong. Very wrong.
Tim got it right. If he'd altered Katzenberg's statement to say "resolution" instead then you'd be calling him a liar instead of an idiot.
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Re: Re: Timothy Geigner gets it wrong. Very wrong.
Maybe Katzenberg doesn't understand the difference between resolution and screen size. But I suspect he probably does, but may have been using technically-incorrect terminology in order to make his point more understandable to a wider audience.
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Re: Re: Re: Timothy Geigner gets it wrong. Very wrong.
Regardless of all that, Tim & the reporters were talking about what he actually said. It's disingenuous to call them stupid for reporting his words accurately.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Timothy Geigner gets it wrong. Very wrong.
Let's just say that Lisa Westveld (the highlighted comment of the day) wrote an excellent analysis of the situation.
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Re: Re: Re: Timothy Geigner gets it wrong. Very wrong.
You can argue he's "dumbing it down" but that doesn't work when either way it doesn't make technical sense.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Timothy Geigner gets it wrong. Very wrong.
Even if your iPhone might have the processing power to decode high-compression/high-definition video, are there any cell providers (especially here in the US) that grant customers enough monthly bandwidth to make streaming (or downloading) HD movies and TV shows feasible, or would phone streamers have little choice but to choose a lower definition video to stay under the bandwidth cap?
While I agree that Katzenberg could have -- and should have -- made his point using more accurate terminology, I think that most of us understood what he was (clumsily) trying to say -- which was nothing we didn't already know years ago.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Timothy Geigner gets it wrong. Very wrong.
"HD" video decoding isn't exactly the most intensive process. The iPhone 5, which is fairly old by smartphone standards, is a dual core 1.3 ghz processor with 1 gb of RAM. The phone my parents use, the Note II, is a quad-core at 1.6 ghz with 2 gb RAM. Either are plenty to run smooth, compressed video at 720 or even 1080p. I've used Chromecast to play Netflix on my projector screen at the same resolution as it plays from my computer.
You can try to spin it how you want but "screen size" is not a simpler way of saying "screen resolution." That's like saying "speed" is the same as "horsepower." Sure, the two could be related. But they're not. And when you come out and say you'll charge a 50 horsepower engine $10 for going 10 miles per hour and $5 for going 5 miles per hour, and then people say you really meant you'll charge $10 for 50 horsepower and $5 for 25 horsepower...well, you can't say that in a way that makes technical sense regardless of how you slice it.
Sorry.
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I think that some economist simply realized that screen-size correlates with income and willingness to spend money on movies. (Of course, from the technical side it's crazy...)
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Katzenberg = Idiot
1 Release to theaters - worldwide at the same time
2 About 1 month later release DVD, steaming video services (Hulu, Netflix), and to premium cable channels - worldwide at the same time.
3 Finally release to non-premium tv/cable channels, maybe a 1 year later.
The first release to theater is likely to be determined by contracts anyway, so release there first but worldwide at the same time.
The second release is due to the major box office revenue normally does not last very long. So release the fee based services and to DVD, again world wide at the same time. But do this while there still is a buzz.
The third release is again is drive by the declining revenues from the first two releases. At some point you are not going cannibalize any sales in the other channels.
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A Business Model with a Distant Similarity Was Once Common
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Re: A Business Model with a Distant Similarity Was Once Common
It was the same for cable TV. So people just wired up a spliced line and used an independently-bought converter box, saving themselves a wad of cash every month. England used to also charge for television (tax) licenses based on the number of TVs in a house (Maybe they still do).
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Yes, this was because you had to lease the phones from AT&T. It was illegal to use any telephone equipment that they didn't supply.
This started changing in 1968, when the FCC declared that AT&T had to allow Carterfone equipment to be used on their systems as long as the phones didn't adversely affect the network. The real sea change happened in the '80s, when third party phones became so affordable that people started buying and using them in quantity.
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I figure it would sit at a high price "for a while", the "release window," and then decay towards a sustainable long term price.
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Circumvention device
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Economic theory
Actually, it would fall under price discrimination.
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Perhaps instead they should...
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Re: Perhaps instead they should...
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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121105/21564420943/microsoft-patents-tv-that-watches-back-c ounts-heads-charges-admission.shtml
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