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Comment by T-hawk | Hacker News Reader

Why is buying a movie "rofl never" ? That still sounds pretty low on the friction scale. The playback hardware is thoroughly cheap and commoditized, and there's no DRM. If you just don't like the price for buying or don't want to store the media, you can resell it after watching.

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I rarely see a movie more than once. If it's on iTunes or Amazon Video I can rent it for $3-4 (just like a video store, would you imagine that) and see it.

Buying it has two problems:

- I don't want to spend $15-20 on something I'll see only once.

- I want to see it now. A lot of my movie viewing is spontaneous (e.g., "I'm tired and don't want to do anything tonight... what good movies haven't I seen?"), and I'm not a hardcore enough movie buff to maintain a physical backlog of movies I need to see.

- Reselling is a pain. How? Craigslist? For one thing, I'm not sure what the demand is for random obscure DVDs on it, and secondly, that's more time I burn meeting up with a buyer just to get $5 on a DVD.

I will buy physical copies of things that I truly love and intend to see over and over again (e.g., the Band of Brothers box set, or the Firefly box set...)

Why is buying a movie "rofl never" ?

More expensive ($10-$20), and I'm already paying for other services to rent movies from. I also haven't bought a movie in years. The large majority of stuff simply isn't good enough to own, and even if it's good I rarely sit down to watch a movie again (if it's on TV, and I have time, and it was good I may watch it again).

I also don't want to deal with physical media at all. And selling it afterwards? So now to watch a movie that is supposedly out at retail I need to buy it (go to the store or wait for it to be delivered), watch it, and then resell it? Add to the fact that many DVDs still have unskippable previews and the entire process is very high on my personal friction scale. All this and I'm in the US. It's even worse if someone is in another country. And people wonder why so many people pirate movies...

I don't know about the OP but I almost never buy movies aimed at adults because I very seldom want to see a movie more than once -- and certainly not more than once every several years. Just storing the movies becomes a burden. (We do buy kid's movies, because kids will happily watch the same movie many times, so it makes sense.)

You're incorrect in your statement that there is no DRM. All DVDs and Bluray discs contain DRM. You are not able to make copies even to format shift them in the United States without breaking several laws.

The illegal technology is so ubiquitous you don't even notice it. As far as I know the DVD player in VLC is illegal. Does anyone remember when the blueray key was released? Without that I just don't think opensource playback would be possible, and it remains illegal to distribute. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime

The cost of owning physical media is always underestimated (speaking as a person who ended up with a few thousand records, tapes, CDs, DVDs, etc): storage, maintenance and moving them if you should relocate to name a few. Re: selling them when you are done - it's not always so easy and if your purchase strategy includes "sell it when i am done with it" by default, you will end up losing quite a bit of money and time if you are more than a moderate consumer.

> there's no DRM

There is DRM on DVDs. You used to need DeCSS to play them on Linux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS

They're machine might be a network, or similar small device without a cd/dvd drive.

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