The Content Distribution Problem
Let’s rewind the hands of time a little bit, to the days where I wasn’t employed and couldn’t plan what I was going to buy on a month-to-month basis. Back then, I had a backlog of stuff I wanted to buy, and everything was sorted according to a mix of need and greed.
Some things in the backlog came hand in hand. Case in point? A Full HD monitor and a PS3. We’re talking about 2007 here, when I knew I wanted the PS3 just for two games: FFXIII and GT5, even though everyone was telling me it wasn’t a good investment and to get the XBox 360. To this day, I still don’t have a Full HD monitor nor a PS3, but the point is, they came hand in hand due to a very simple concept: we had a TV in the hall, but I watched most of my TV shows on my (at the time) 17" laptop, so I wanted the monitor to both enjoy my shows in my room and game on the PS3.
Eventually (I thought), the PS3 would open the door to something else: buying Blu-ray Discs. I think I’ve never bought a single DVD film for myself, despite wanting to have a lot of films at hand without them occupying my hard drive space. The reason was quality: DVDs were already inferior to the 900p resolution I had in my laptop’s monitor, and if/when I got my monitor, I’d regret spending all that money in DVDs.
So what happened? Macs happened. I’ve never had a PS3 (and I don’t know if I will; the next ‘hot’ item I want is a DSLR), and instead of a Full HD monitor I ended up buying a 27-inch Apple Cinema Display that’s incompatible with the PS3’s HDMI connector. That leaves me with a very simple (and expensive) solution: since Apple isn’t putting any kind of Blu-ray units in its computers (my brand new 17" MacBook Pro can’t even read BRDs!), the only way out is to buy an external Blu-ray reader. Perfect, right?
It is, except it dawned on me one day that I didn’t really want Blu-ray discs. I was sitting on my house one Saturday morning, and realized I wanted to see Ridley Scott’s Alien that night with a pizza. I thought: “is it worth buying?” Probably. “The solution?” iTunes. For just €7.99, I could have Alien in 720p, the Director’s Cut (let’s not enter into the discussion about which version’s better now, ok?), without losing any of my precious disk space. I could download it the day I wanted to see it, or even stream it, and erase it when I was done; iCloud would make sure I could have it back any time I wanted.
A couple of hours before dinner, I decided I’d make the purchase to get the film fully downloaded first. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the film was in Spanish and that I couldn’t see it in English. Despair hit me. For a few minutes I tried to make up an iTunes USA account but I couldn’t get through using tutorials because they were all a couple of years old, so I gave up, thinking I had nothing to do. Then a tiny spark hit me: Amazon. I did have an Amazon USA account, and Amazon has an online video streaming service, right? Yes it does, only its films are available in a Flash-based format for computers, which I find almost insulting.
You can argue this problem only happens outside America and UK, and that if I really wanted to watch the film I should’ve gotten it in Spanish. But that’s not the point, is it? The point is, 20th Century Fox lost my money because they didn’t provide me with the content they had, at a minimum cost (no packaging and shipping of discs required, only Apple’s fees), and in this era where everything’s on demand, the customer sets the rules. Still, it’s no entirely their fault; it’s also Apple’s fault for not offering the film in its Original Version (which in the pay-per-view TV era was a standard) like they do with new releases, but in the end, it’s not their fault either, it’s everyone’s fault.
In a year where we might see 4K OLED TV sets hit the market, Apple’s 720p “HD” quality is a little long in the tooth, Amazon doesn’t package its films well, and Netflix doesn’t cover my desire to purchase films even if it was available in Spain. Why do I want to purchase films? Because I do, and I just can’t explain it. Maybe if I tried Netflix I’d be more convinced, but I don’t see their catalog stable enough to guarantee I’d have all the films I want at the moment of my choosing. For TV shows though, it seems ideal. (And yes, I know hulu’s even better for that.)
So what’s the takeaway from this post? That there’s actually no content distribution problem whatsoever. The content distribution method is clear: it’s the Internet. Apple is going to seriously start ditching optical media this year, and with iTunes by their side, you can’t really blame them. Yes, Blu-ray discs offer superior quality, the best you can have right now, but do you really want boxes full of smaller boxes full of discs that you’ll only use from time to time? Do you imagine having to carry all of that to your new house one day?
Luckily, that’s a problem our generation can have solved, if only streaming films directly into our computers and TVs got standardized. Quite frankly, I have to admit Apple is the best positioned in the business: they offer a system you’re comfortable with and that conveys trust, but it’s not perfect. We can all imagine their answer against Full HD: “it won’t provide the best user experience for most customers”, and in the mean time, the 5% of us who enjoy watching a film at the best quality you can get (and please keep in mind even Full HD won’t be fully crisp in my 1440p Cinema Display) have nothing to do but stay in the past with optical media, or, keep doing you know what.
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- dinesharjani posted this