Comment by bobsy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bobsy | Hacker News Reader

A thing to note is that it was a CAM recording of the film that was leaked.

I have only ever watched one cam recording of a movie before. I think it was 'The Illusionist.' I was at a friends house, he slapped it on. The color saturation was wrong, the sound was like mono and the camera appeared slightly off so the very top or bottom of the screen was cut off. It wasn't completely unwatchable but it spoiled the movie. Its like watching a film through a neighbours window.. crap.

Piracy has far more effect on DVD sales. This is for 4 reasons. The price of DVD's, the inconvenience of going out and getting the DVD, the bullshit adverts and unskipable junk before the film and the menu which takes 20 seconds to display before you can press PLAY.

If there was a DVD quality recording of the avengers I think it would have easily had 5x more downloads, probably 10x. However, realistically the cinema is an experience. If you enjoy the cinema you are going to watch a film like this at the cinema - then maybe download it. I am firmly of the opinion that if you make a blockbuster film, whether it leaks or not it will do well.

Imagine how much money they could make if they released a 1080p HD version online, globally, 4 weeks at most after the launch in cinemas, and for a price of $5.

That may or may not kill the cinemas in the long term, depending on how hard they fight to become more competitive and unique compared to watching the movie at home, but it would definitely not hurt the studios and movie makers. If anything, they stand to make a lot more money on average for every released movie.

When I imagine that much money, I imagine it is much less than what they make now. That's the nature of a disrupted industry.

Then you would see complaints from retailers on DVD sales declining.

I think that's a reality that DVD retailers need to embrace sooner rather than later.

They've already embraced it. Major retailers devote much less floor space to DVD than they did in the past. The entire industry is well aware DVD is on the downslope.

Why delay it at all? Frankly they shouldn't care how we want to watch a film, just that we want to and are willing to pay for it.

I like films but have small kids so I can't get to the cinema as often as I'd like. By not letting me give them money to watch their film (and I won't pirate it, I'll just do something else) they're throwing money away. Get me while the publicity and hype are out there, when I can discuss it with friends and colleagues. By the time it's out on DVD the moment could well have passed and my money has gone.

The cinema done right is a great experience and personally I don't think it's going anywhere. It doesn't matter how big my TV gets, I'll never have that social experience, the fact of getting out of the house where the phone won't ring and the door won't go, where I won't be tempted to pick up the iPad or whatever.

Watching at home, if done right, is a complementary market as much as it is a competitive one. And if it is competitive one then hey, what do they care if they're charging for it?

It's not going to be $5, probably more like $20 (think a couple of people, a couple of tickets equivalent, perhaps figure in the fact they can't upsell you popcorn and subtract some lower costs), but so long as the price seems fair next to the multiplex cost I'm fine with it.

Why delay it at all? Frankly they shouldn't care how we want to watch a film, just that we want to and are willing to pay for it.

If you watch the latest blockbuster on the day of release at home on your mega projector that you bought with all the money you saved by not going to the cinema, with your wife, your three kids, and your neighbours (5 more people), you pay for just one stream/ticket.

If all those people go to the cinema, they pay for 10 tickets.

That's a good rationale for why they care, imho.

A few people will do this but most won't. The fact a few people game a system rarely stops a business model. It doesn't have to work in every specific instance, just overall.

Actually I think most would - perhaps not at a 10x multiple, but at least 2-3x, maybe 5x. If I were to download a brand new movie that just came out today I would definitely watch it with at least my girlfriend, but possibly invite a few friends around for a movie night. Or some friends would invite me (I hope!).

I would end up watching a lot more movies, but providing much less income to the movie industry for each.

As I said in the original post, you wouldn't charge at a single ticket rate, you'd price it based on what worked. My assumption would be that most people would watch with maybe one other person and that the price would reflect that.

As I also said they lose the ability to up sell you highly profitable popcorn, you lose travel costs, the lose some overheads (but gain others) - there are a whole bunch of things to figure in. The release day cost of a movie rental wouldn't be a single cinema ticket price and it certainly wouldn't be a current rental cost. Off the top of my head I think you'd be looking somewhere around two to three times average cinema ticket prices, possibly varying by time (weekend evenings might cost more).

The last sentence is a good thing for them though not a bad one. If you watch 3 movies a week instead of one and pay on average $5 instead of $10, they've still got $15 instead of $10. Their costs will likely only be marginally higher with three movies vs. one (most of it being the infrastructure) which means that their overall profit is likely up.

You don't optimise a business for revenue, you optimise it for profit.

Interesting hypothetical.

Lets take a recent blockbuster. The first Twilight movie made $392,616,625 in the box office, $194,881,773 in DVD sales for a total of $587,498,398 (almost 600M - pretty good rake)

In your $5 they'd have to sell 117,499,679 of those $5 streams in order to make that equivalent revenue (so roughly one in every 60 people in the world need to buy a stream).

For more fun take the last Twilight Movie (Eclipse) which was a bigger draw ($826,423,724 total revenue). Then you'd have to sell 165M streams to get to those numbers.

Considering the $5 stream scenario could be shared across a family - I honestly am not sure your assumption that a studio could make more money is correct. The real X-Factor here is the cut the various distribution chains take.

I'm not sure your price point is right, but would you perhaps pay $20 for the same stream?

EDIT: Also I don't think the 4-weeks after theatrical release is going to work I don't think theaters are going to show your movie if you're going to kneecap them 4 weeks out.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Saga_(film_series)...

I think the grandparent post meant this as a replacement to DVD, not all sales. So you're replacing the 120M component of the total, not the total 500M. So we're talking closer to 40M people who feel the film is worth $5.

(Admittedly grandparent did acknowledge that this could affect the theater ruin, but to suggest it would supplant it is a bit much. Conversely let's consider some may sample it at $5 who may not have otherwise. The people who usually wait for rental or cable. Those people now have the opportunity to go see it in IMAX 3d or whatever.)

The theaters and PPV outlets would never agree to that. It eats into the post-opening-week time where the theater gets the bulk of the ticket price.

Sell it the same day as release, as well as DVD and Blu-Ray copies. The home and theater versions then become effective cross-promotions for the other, plus you hit the market at the peak of your advertising campaign. Nobody's had the guts to try this sort of thing though.

720p or 480p would be more realistic; the bandwidth costs for serving 1080p would chew through that $5 pretty quickly. (Assuming reasonable video bitrates) Besides, a very large chunk of consumers own machines that cannot handle 1080p.

Before you scream bloody murder, remember DVDs are only 480p.

For 5~6€, Zune on XBox 360 streams movies at 1080p while iTunes/Apple TV streams 720p and soon 1080p (or is that the case already?).

CrunchyRoll offers unlimited 1080p streaming for a $7 monthly subscription.

Let's assume that a 1080p movie encoded for streaming using H.264 ends up at 8GB (a generous overestimate for most movies). At entry-level datacenter pricing of $0.10/GB, bandwidth costs will leave $4.20 for the rest of the supply chain.

$0.10/GB is way more than market rates for bandwidth. Dedicated server hosters such as 100TB.com charge about $200 for 100TB, ie. $2/TB or 0.2 cents /GB, resulting in a grand total of 1.6 cents for a 8GB movie stream.

I wonder what would have happened if it had been a leaked screener instead of a CAM recording. I'd never choose a CAM over going to the cinema, but a screener might change my choice.

Also for a movie like Avengers, which relies a lot on special visual and sound effects for its success, its easier to get such box office returns. But if same thing happens to a movie like Carnage[1], then it might be affect its returns drastically.

Carnage - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1692486/

From your train of thought (starting with cam quality) I suspect you had it in mind, but you forgot the biggest reason in your list:

> Piracy has far more effect on DVD sales. This is for 4 reasons. The price of DVD's, the inconvenience of going out and getting the DVD, the bullshit adverts and unskipable junk before the film and the menu which takes 20 seconds to display before you can press PLAY.

You forgot to mention your main point about quality! The moment the DVD is released, the DVD is available to pirates for their dvdrips.

whereas you don't get a copy of the theater reel to play with just by buying a theater ticket, leading to the cam-rips you referred to. so, purely for that reason given that pirates distribute high-quality rips once they're available, you would expect this effect on DVD-sales to figure prominently in your list. (I'm sure you had it in mind but just forgot).

"If you enjoy the cinema you are going to watch a film like this at the cinema"

If you enjoy 'cinema' you would probably rather pluck your eyes out than watch a film like this anywhere in anyway

To each their own. I enjoy a large assortment of films. The Avengers and Batman Begins - or 12 Monkeys and The Usual Suspects - or The Triplettes of Bellville and The Lives of Others - or 12 Angry Men and The Seventh Seal. Hardly fair to say that someone who would 'enjoy' 'cinema' would 'rather pluck their eyes out' than 'watch' a 'film' like this 'anywhere'.

Interestingly, you used the term 'Film' to describe The Avengers, which some people would jump down YOUR throat for - since this was an almost All-Digital release.

I think it's going to be a while until even the most pretentiousness arts majors talk about how "they just adore bytes"

Will movie directors shout "fclose()" at the end of scene I wonder?

Avengers was shot on Alexa at 2K resolution. It's digital through and through, though there's a few 35mm prints screening out there.

I saw some clamoring to see it on 35mm, which is a little ridiculous in this case.

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