Warner Bros. Hates Libraries, Wants To Embargo DVD Sales To Libraries For A Month

from the oh-come-on dept

The movie studios' short-sightedness knows no bounds, apparently. Warner Bros., which has been the most aggressive of the big movie studios in getting companies like Netflix and Redbox not to rent its movies until 28-days after they go on sale, has now decided to do the same thing for libraries, putting in place a 28-day embargo on all DVD sales to libraries, from the time of the DVD release. To make it even more obnoxious, they're removing bonus features and extras from movies sold to libraries.

Here's the thing, though. What's to stop a library from just buying an official version and lending it out? The whole thing is pretty silly anyway. Is Warner Bros. really thinking that if someone can't take out one of its movies from the library, that they'll really go buy the DVD from WB? Also, doesn't this seem like a form of price fixing?

In the end, though, it's unlikely to actually help. Slightly more enlightened studios, such as Paramount, actually tested such 28-delays and looked at the data, which said Netflix and Redbox don't cannibalize sales, and appear to "expand" the movie business. Too bad Warner Bros. hasn't seen that movie yet. Perhaps they're still waiting for the 28-day delay to pass.

Filed Under: delays, dvds, libraries, rentals, windows
Companies: warner bros.

Why Does Hollywood Insist On Making Online Movies So Annoying?

from the simple-questions dept

With Google announcing that it's now offering 3,000 movies for "rental" via both YouTube and Android, it's worth asking a simple question:

Why does Hollywood insist on making online movies so damn annoying?

If you look at pretty much all of the online rental options (with the exception of Netflix), the deal terms are almost always identical. Prices range a bit, but for big name movies they're $3.99. The rental term is 30 days from when you pay... but once you start watching, you only have 24 hours to watch. This particular limitation is particularly annoying to those of us who don't always watch movies in a single sitting or a single day (it's amazing how your movie watching gets fragmented once you have little kids).

Obviously, this has become the standard set of terms that the Hollywood studios are demanding, but these limitations are annoying and make no sense. Why put artificial limitations on offerings like this, making them less valuable and a lot less interesting? It also means that there's little innovation in the space. Basically, every offering in the space (again, with the exception of Netflix, who got grandfathered in with its unlimited model) is basically the same. The only innovation is around the device or the very front end of the service. There's no innovation in the actual model, which is a shame, because this "standardized" offering is really quite annoying and not at all compelling.

Filed Under: movies, online, rentals

Studios Offering $30 Movie Rentals; Theater Owner Complains That He Can't Compete With That

from the yeah-that'll-work dept

A few weeks back, we noted the rumors that a bunch of studios were getting ready to offer $30 video-on-demand movie rentals, in an attempt to create a new tiered "window" much closer to the original theatrical release date. It appears those stories are now confirmed, as DirecTV has said that it will, indeed, be offering $30 film rentals for movies just 10-weeks after their theatrical release. Of course, before we discuss how bad an idea this is from the studio's perspective, let's look at the even more braindead response from movie theaters:

Regency Theatres, based in Calabasas, California, will pull "Just Go With It" from its second-run theaters, where it was among the top two titles last weekend, said President Lyndon Golin.

"We don't want to show movies that are on TV," Golin said in a telephone interview. "We want to protect the movie-going experience."

Protect the movie-going experience? Huh? Does Golin even hear what he's saying. First off, how does pulling the movie out of the theaters protect the movie-going experience? It seems to do the opposite. It seems to tell people "we don't want you to enjoy the movie-going experience" with this movie. Golin seems to be flat-out admitting that his movie theaters suck. After all, if he can't provide a better movie-going experience than a TV at home, then apparently his theaters really aren't worth going to, right?

I've pointed this out in the past, but I can never understand theater owners who complain about competition from rentals or video streaming. The whole point of a movie theater is that it's a social experience. It's "going out" to the theaters. It's enjoying the overall event on a giant screen. Obviously with home theater systems, there is some competition, but theater owners can certainly provide an overall excellent theater experience, if they put some effort into it. What Golin's statement here says is that he's not interested in trying, and he doesn't think his theater's experience can compete. That's really more of a statement about problems with his own theaters than about this new rental window.

As for the rental window, it'll be interesting to see who actually pays $30. I understand the studios' logic. They think they're providing extra value by making a movie available earlier. But that's not -- at all -- how consumers are likely to view this. They're going to compare it to Netflix or other PPV/rental options and have no idea why the studios and DirecTV think they can get away with charging many multiples higher.

Of course, going back to the theaters' response, it seems even more ridiculous when you realize that Regency doesn't even think it can compete with a ridiculously overprice home rental option that very few people are going to choose.

Filed Under: movies, rentals, theaters, windows

Redbox Realizing That Caving To Hollywood On 28-Day Delay Was A Bad Idea

from the duh dept

We were pretty surprised when Redbox caved in to the Hollywood studios, and agreed to annoy its customers with a ridiculous 28-day delay. We had many commenters say that people wouldn't care and it wasn't much of a big deal. However, the company is now admitting that the 28-day delay resulted in much lower holiday rentals than it had expected. Meanwhile, the only studio that has publicly released information about how its experiments with the 28-day delay went, Paramount, has said that such delays are bad for business, as it doesn't increase sales of DVDs, and that allowing Redbox to rent movies sooner actually helped the studio (and Redbox) make more money. So why do we still have those delays?

Filed Under: delays, movies, rentals
Companies: paramount, redbox

Movie Studios Purposely Crippling Rental DVDs In Misguided Effort To Get People To Buy

from the taking-away-features-is-not-a-strategy dept

What is it about the entertainment industry that actually makes them think that it's a smart move to take features away from consumers? They seem to focus on building business models by pissing off as many people as possible, and then wondering why those people seek out alternatives. Case in point, visual77 points us to the news that movie studios are increasingly offering up feature-limited DVDs for the rental market, and then encouraging you to buy the DVD itself if you want all the features. As Consumerist reports:

Consumerist reader Joseph brought this to our attention after he spent $3.99 to rent the DVD of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World from Blockbuster. When he went to the disc's main menu and attempted to watch the Blooper Reel special feature, he was greeted by a screen telling him: "This disc is intended for rental purposes and only includes the feature film. Own it on Blu-Ray or DVD to view these bonus features and complete your movie watching experience."

This is the same thinking that leads the studios to seek to have rental places delay movies for a month. The entire business model seems to be centered on creating artificial scarcities that piss off people. Is it really so difficult for the industry to realize that they can make more money by adding value and actually delivering what people want?

Filed Under: dvds, features, movies, rentals, value

Warner Bros. So Thrilled With Netflix 28-Day Delays, It Wants To Have Longer Delays

from the driving-fans-to-piracy dept

Hollywood continues to seek new and ever-more creative ways to shoot itself in the foot and drive movie fans to unauthorized copies of movies. Earlier this year, Warner Bros. studios was successful in pressuring Netflix and Redbox to delay rental releases by 28-days, with the hope that people who couldn't rent the movie would buy it. Warner Bros. has been claiming this strategy succeeded and that they've sold more DVDs because of it. I would doubt that it's the delay that's increasing sales, and it seems like a pretty short-sighted strategy to look to increase sales of a format like DVD right now. Either way, Warner Bros. is now claiming it may try to increase the window over 28-days. It's as if they want to drive more people to get the movie from unauthorized providers. Making it more difficult to let people watch movies the way they want to isn't a solution that will work long-term.

Filed Under: delays, movies, rentals, windows
Companies: netflix, redbox, warner bros.

Story Recycler: Oh Look, Google Interested In Renting Videos... Yet Again

from the we've-heard-this-before dept

Almost exactly a year ago, the tech press went nuts over rumors that Google was negotiating with movie studios to allow movie rentals via YouTube. At the time, we pointed out how odd it was that none of the press coverage seemed to point out that when Google first launched its Google Video offering, it was all based around video rentals with annoying DRM, and it failed miserably. Instead, everyone went to YouTube, and Google eventually had to buy up the site. And, again, when the company ran a trial earlier this year, reports came out about the fact that very, very few people actually paid. Google and video rentals don't have a very good history.

So again, I'm at a bit of a loss as to why the tech press is pushing a story of rumors that Google is negotiating with the Hollywood studios to do movie rentals via YouTube. It's nearly the identical story to the one this week last year. If I didn't know any better, I'd think that someone at the Financial Times, who "broke" this story, just misread the year on an email somewhere. Perhaps somewhere along the line Google will figure out a way to do movie rentals that work, but the silly fawning over "video rentals" just because (oh my goodness!) Google is supposedly entering the market seems misplaced (especially when no one seems to want to talk about its previous failures). The Financial Times report says that Google's new offering "has caused excitement in Hollywood," but, if anything, that seems like even more evidence that it's doomed to fail.

Separately, I should note that I'm not linking to the FT version of this article, because FT's paywall makes it difficult for most people here to read it. A PR person from the FT sent me the article, but I'm not sure what they expect me to do with it. It doesn't do much good for me to link all of the readers here to an article they can't read, does it?

Filed Under: rentals, videos
Companies: google

Comcast And Blockbuster Team Up To Make Us Wonder Why They've Teamed Up

from the hey,-Comcast,-you-have-a-fat-pipe dept

It seems like Comcast is a bit confused about the technology that it offers to its customers, which involves a generally fat broadband pipe to users, through which they can access all sorts of content, including on demand videos. So, you might think that if Comcast were to team up with a company like Netflix or Blockbuster, it would be to deliver streaming content. Nope. Apparently Comcast has done a deal with Blockbuster to deliver DVDs by mail. That's literally what the two companies are calling the product: "DVDsByMail." It's not like this hasn't been done for ages by both Netflix and Blockbuster. It's not clear what Comcast brings to the table here other than the "um... why?" factor it adds by wondering why Comcast is involved in something that doesn't involved delivering content over its own network, but using the US Postal Service's "network" instead.

Filed Under: dvds by mail, rentals
Companies: blockbuster, comcast

Paramount Says 28 Day Delay On Redbox Makes No Sense; Doesn't Cannibalize DVD Sales

from the good-for-them dept

While some of the Big 6 studios have been incredibly anti-Redbox, Viacom's Paramount has always been the most reasonable towards the DVD-rental kiosk provider. So it really comes as little surprise that Paramount has announced that, after testing delayed movie releases through Redbox it sees absolutely no reason to keep delaying such releases and instead will offer new release movies on Redbox at the same time the DVD goes on sale:

"There were two conclusions we came to," said Dennis Maguire, president of Paramount Home Entertainment. "There hasn't been a cannibalization of DVD sales from Redbox, and Redbox was allowing us to expand our business and ultimately make more money" than if the studio held back its DVDs to Redbox for a period of time.

Of course, this is exactly what many people said when studios like Warner Bros., Universal and Fox demanded the 28 day release, but it's nice to at least see Paramount actually looking at the data and realizing that Redbox isn't the evil destroyer of Hollywood that some of its competitors have made it out to be.

Filed Under: delays, dvds, rentals
Companies: paramount, redbox, viacom

Blockbuster Using Its Deal With Warner Bros. To Mock Redbox And Netflix

from the getting-desperate? dept

You may recall that, at the end of March, Warner Bros. studios did a new deal with Blockbuster that seemed likely to confuse the hell out of consumers. That's because Warner Bros., in its backwards-looking wisdom, had already done deals with both Netflix and Redbox to not make new release movies available to rent until 28 days after their release. There is no good reason for this, other than it pisses off customers all around, and makes them less interested or inclined to bother watching Warner Bros. movies (hint to WB: you have competitors).

But the Blockbuster deal seemed confusing -- because most consumers wouldn't be following these silly deals and wouldn't understand why a movie had been "released" but wasn't available via their favorite rental service. Apparently, Blockbuster's answer to all this is to mock Netflix and Redbox for not carrying new releases. Seriously. Reader Daylyn sends in the following ad he recently saw that points out that Netflix and Redbox don't carry this movie: Apparently, this is all part of Blockbuster's new WB-partnered advertising campaign: "hey, the movie studios screwed over our competitors! rent from us!" Looking around, it appears a few others have noticed this campaign as well, which went into place quite quickly after the WB deal was announced.

Filed Under: delays, dvds, rentals
Companies: blockbuster, netflix, redbox, warner brothers