People will spend seven to nine dollars for VOD

[pixelthis]

According to an article on MSN.COM people would be willing to pay seven to nine dollars for "day and date" VOD of movies, etc.
Time warner found out that when they do day and date their margins hit 60 to 70%,
compared to 20 to 30% for DVD rentals
Comcast currently has over 10,000 titles in its libary, and the market for VOD is expected to be 11.4 BILLION by 2011.
So being the winner of the so called "format" war is no guarentee of being successfull
for Blu ray.
The great unwashed seem to be buying into blu, but ultimately it will fall on the shoulders of HT enthusiasts to make sure this "collectors" format surrives
http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/to...no-thanks.aspx

[blackraven]

There's no way I would pay $7 for VOD. Hell, I have trouble spending $7 for a Movie at the theater. I would like to see the demographics in that article.

[filecat13]

Apparently people will rent or buy 50,000 movies a week off iTunes already. I am surprised by that number. At the current rate of accelerating growth, that could be three to four million movies in this calendar year.

Yeah, yeah, it's not that much, so let's not have any economic Einsteins lecture me on that point. My sole point is that it's more than I expected.

[Feanor]

According to an article on MSN.COM people would be willing to pay seven to nine dollars for "day and date" VOD of movies, etc.
Time warner found out that when they do day and date their margins hit 60 to 70%,
compared to 20 to 30% for DVD rentals
Comcast currently has over 10,000 titles in its libary, and the market for VOD is expected to be 11.4 BILLION by 2011.
....

Interesting item, that. I can get VOD through my satellite provider, (Bell ExpressVu), but I've never used the service and I've never checked the prices. Likely up here in the Great White North, the prices are higher(?). Frankly I never think of it.

We have several hundred DVD and still some VHS cluttering the place. Most belong to my wife and daughter; half of more I've never watch due to lack of interest. Do I really want hundreds more BluRays or whatever??

Anyway, I rarely want to watch a movie more than once, so rental is a sensible option for me. I rent maybe 6-8 DVDs a year but I'd rent more if the selection at the local Blockbuster were better. Selection, and the ability rent without having to haul my backside out in the heat or slush, might eventually draw me to VOD.

[bobsticks]

There's no way I would pay $7 for VOD. Hell, I have trouble spending $7 for a Movie at the theater. I would like to see the demographics in that article.

I agree. Not only would I like to see the demographics (did they poll non-driving, city-dwelling, computer geks) but the questions as well.

"Given the escalation of gas prices with no end in sight, would you be willing to support the conservation of energy supplies by paying a little more for the convenience and earth-friendly option of downloading at home?"

[Rich-n-Texas]

There's no way I would pay $7 for VOD. Hell, I have trouble spending $7 for a Movie at the theater. I would like to see the demographics in that article.

Demographics? Cavemen and women with dial-up mostly.

[markw]

I can walk into Blockbuster and walk out with a DVD for under $5.00 and have it for 2 - 5 days. Comcast's on-demand is the same price but that's only good for 24 hours.

[bobsticks]

I can walk into Blockbuster and walk out with a DVD for under $5.00 and have it for 2 - 5 days. Comcast's on-demand is the same price but that's only good for 24 hours.

...Generation X, Generation Y, Generation Lazy-Ass...

[Rich-n-Texas]

I can order 3 movies though Blockbuster "Total Access" and keep them for a month. Or I can watch 20 movies in a month and pay $18/mo. And I can play 5 movies at a time on my DVD changer. Whoop-de-do!

[pixelthis]

I can order 3 movies though Blockbuster "Total Access" and keep them for a month. Or I can watch 20 movies in a month and pay $18/mo. And I can play 5 movies at a time on my DVD changer. Whoop-de-do!

Are these HIGH DEF?
Same day and date as dvd?
I think that is what a lot are missing.
We are talking movies released the same day on DVD and hd vod..
The question is, before you hop into your car, drive to the store, burn gas at 4 bucks a gallon, pay five bucks, and then have to drive back a few days later , would you rather push a button and get the same feature in HD?
as for keeping a title 2 days or so, my local blockbuster now only allows for one
days rental for new releases.
And you have a DVD changer rich? Sacrilige!

[kexodusc]

I confess, I am using VOD more than ever, probably 25% of all rentals now, but I am probably an exception. I would point out the highest quality HD VOD I've seen is DVD quality at best - still scenes are higher quality, but the higher compression Dolby Digital (no DTS or lossless formats such as on BluRay) and the picture quality during fast moving scenes betrays itself. Dunno if it's H-264 or what they use. HD cable/satellite at its greatest right now is NOT true HD like BluRay. Wish they wouldn't call it HD.

My service provider makes VOD available at $$5.99-7.99 (Cdn) in HD though. Not unreasonably priced. I live 4 miles from the closest Blockbuster, so if I attributed 16 miles round trip I'm using what? About 1/2 a gallon of gas in an average car? Price is fairly comparable that way. Of course, like most Blockbuster renters, I rarely drive to Blockbuster unless its incorporated into a trip along the way to other places, and my Blockbuster is on the way to work so the driving really isn't an added cost or inconvenience time wise for me. Kind of a bogus argument.

I can also keep my new releases for 5 or 6 days with no late fees regardless of the 1-day rental deadline, I can't rent HD videos for more than 24 hrs no matter what (though I hear they may change that to 48 hrs).

I would say in 3-4 years at the rate of past progress, that the networks might be able to offer comparable video quality if they decide to upgrade - but all the crying I see from companies about bit torrent maxing out network capabilties suggestst that ain't gonna happen. There's also the likelihood that profit maximization, not quality delivery is the primary goal of the cable companies. So no incentive to upgrade capability with respect to quality (sheer capacity is different) for quite some time. To that extent, I doubt VOD will ever match BluRay in quality. The question then is will consumers sacrifice quality for convenience? I think many will. I would not be surprised to see VOD achieve 50% of the rental market in the next 5-10 years. I think pay-to-own downloading of BluRay quality movies will ultimately limit VOD though. For 2-3 times the VOD rental cost, you could buy a permanent copy of the movie in superior quality format and watch it forever. No brainer. Game, set, match. The lure will be too great for piracy concerns to hold it off for long. Especially if VOD is perceived as affecting potential movie sales.

I'm curious to see what Blockbuster and the likes do to fight VOD when it does start stealing significant market share of the rental business. They seem to be turning to gaming, but will they also fight with price discounts and better rewards plans? I hope so, the consumers could use a good video price war.

[nightflier]

I think the one factor that a lot of people are forgetting is the cost savings to the distributors for switching to VOD. No more delivery of boxes of new releases to the local blockbuster, no more disk production costs, and for now at least, very low piracy rates. Yeah yeah, I know it isn't cheap or green to run a server farm, but those costs go way down as soon as the site is up. The real beauty about this is that as the VOD catalogs increase, the accessibility of thousands, if not millions of movies at the touch of a button makes this so much more convenient to the consumer.

As for quality, if we consider how fast low-quality MP3s increased in popularity, I think the same will happen with DVD-quality or even broadcast-quality movies. We should also not forget that much of what people will want to watch is TV shows that now are released on DVD (well after then end of the season), and for these, broadcast-quality is already expected. With VOD, people won't have to wait 6-months to a year to get them anymore either.

Even if quality is an issue to some (certainly not for the Apple TV / iTunes / iPod generation), there will still be BR on disk, a niche market that will slowly fade in much the same way that SACD has. There are several obvious reasons for this, but the fact that BR quality movies will eventually become available as VOD will be the nail in that coffin.Yes, there are still technological hurdles to overcome before those become widely available, but I am optimistic that those will be overcome quickly as the market forces the necessary infrastructure upgrades.

All told, in five years we'll all be asking what all the hoopla about Blue Ray was all about. The more I read about VOD and the rise of downloading alternatives, the less I am inclined to buy a BR player. At first I wanted to have one because of the quality and the sound, but realistically, I am far from buying all my favorite movies again on BR. I have a large collection of DVDs and the reality is that while I dote over a great many of them, I rarely watch them anymore - there just isn't enough time in the day to do that in addition to watching new movies, reading, and listening to music. And that's just the A/V stuff - I still work 9-5 and I have a family too. Speaking of music, I re-listen to my CDs and LPs a whole lot more than I re-watch my favorite movies, so a VOD solution via something as convenient as Tivo is becoming more and more attractive.

[pixelthis]

That is why I bouight a lot of music video on laser, you could watch it over and over.
AND I rarely watch my "collection anymore.
But heres the funny thing, how much is "enough"?
WHEN DO YOU STOP CHASING THE LAST SCINTILA OF PERFECTION?
Is dvd "good enough"?
In spite of my av gear being several years old, it still works fine, and my thoughts keep gravitating to spending my "toy" money on improvements in the audio side of things.
Super high res wont increase the enjoyment of the type movies I watch greatly ,
and they probably wont be on blu for awhile anyway.
So DLWD works fine for right now, especially with the classics they are coming out with, like "the love guru" (gag)
However music has to be as good as possible, cant stand less than the best I can afford

[audio_dude]

...especially with the classics they are coming out with, like "the love guru" (gag)

But then again, we've got movies like "Wall*E" and "Get Smart"

[mbbuchanan]

Seven bucks a pop huh? I don't know, but with gas prices it won't seem as ridiculous when it's seven bucks a gallon, for people to pay that VOD price to save fuel. For right now I'll stick to Block Buster.