

Ask HN: How do you improve online movie purchases? - jstanley

In the physical world, you just choose a film, hand over your money, and take home the DVD. You can then watch it as many times as you like, on as many devices as you like, with no subscription fee to pay and minimal DRM (yes, there is CSS, but it is really only a token effort).<p>Why is there no digital alternative? I want to go to a website, choose a film, pay my money, and download a video file that I can then watch as many times as I like, on as many devices as I like, with no subscription fee to pay and minimal DRM.<p>Does such a service exist?<p>What are the barriers to setting up such a service?
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dangrossman
As far as downloading movies, we're at the same place today as we were with
music in the middle of the last decade. You can buy a movie from Amazon
Instant Video or similar stores and download a file, copy it to any device you
want as many times as you want. It's just wrapped in a PlaysForSure DRM
wrapper which limits what devices can actually open it. Exactly the same DRM
music had before the switch to watermarked MP3s.

There's not a lot of pressure to change that because of streaming. Most people
are content with streaming the movies they buy instead of downloading. There
are nearly no restrictions on streaming. When you buy something from Amazon
for example, you can stream it to any number of devices any number of times.
You can even stream it to two devices at the same time. The video looks good,
you can start watching it immediately, and you don't have to use up 25% of the
free space on your tablet to save one movie.

People whose primary concern is acquiring a file rather than watching a movie
are a niche market. Music in 2005 was a lot different than movies in 2013. A
lot more people cared about collecting files, hoarding discographies, and
transferring files to portable devices that had no internet connection. It's
not the same situation, so that pressure to abandon DRM isn't there now.

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mschuster91
The barriers are the major movie studios/distributors. They have not yet
learned the lesson that the music industry did with the advent of iTunes MP3
and amazon MP3 sales, namely that providing fair-priced, DRM free music deters
pirates.

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shrughes
Providing DRM free music has nothing to do with providing DRM free movies.

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mschuster91
Where's the difference? I see none, except that the cost of content creation
are vastly different between music and movies. But a ordinary user does not
care about this.

All a user sees is "Hey, they charge $10 for a movie and I can't watch it on
my iPad because I need to copy and convert it" and "Hey, this site offers the
movie for free and I can dump the file on my NAS and watch the movie on my
iPad, my TV and my computer without FBI warnings, unskippable ads etc"

I would pay the same amount I'd pay for a DVD, if I were allowed to do
whatever the f*ck I want with the content, no matter if the publisher goes
bankrupt, has server issues (online "activation" for movies IS possible with
BluRay). After all, I could have the exact same movie if I'd just download a
BD50 untouched rip instead of buying the BD, reading it and stripping out the
DRM/copy protection with AnyDVD HD.

