krankshaft format solution found

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On 03 Apr 2011, at 19:20 , Jonathan Smith wrote:
> Original VCDs still sell in Asia but are not a big thing. Most files seem to
> sell in DVD format with a  few BDs around. People will buy them, despite
> pirating, if the price is low enough VCDs are so much worse to watch than
> DVDs that they are not of much interest-- they wouldn't sell them in Europe
> as they were so easily copied. (I still have a Hawkwind VCD of *Chronicle of
> the Black Sword*, not that its any use to me.


At least one of my former DVD players would play VCDs, but my only VCD was a fan bootleg of some 1970 vintage Jethro Tull footage that I downloaded and burned from the Internet back in the Napster era.  (Ironically, I did watch it principally on my computer because it was a while before I figured out that my then DVD player would play it!).


> Most people will be watching digital TV and movies from torrents now if they
> know how!


I would guess that in the developing world, most people are watching torrents or someone else's pirate copies (made or sold).  Legitimate shops are relatively few, concentrated in urban areas, and necessarily expensive (since you are paying first world prices plus a big import markup).  Markets with pirate vendors are larger and have much wider selections, but again or relatively few in number and found mostly in urban areas.  On the other hand, decent broadband is widely available and accessible.  "You," as they say, "do the math" ....

I would guess that most people in the video and game companies would be scrambling to get digital-only distribution going.  If you can sell directly to the consumer's TV or console, sure, people could and would still pirate it, but you would be able to control pricing much more finely, such that you found the pricing point where people stopped to bother pirating stuff because it was more convenient to cough up the local equivalent of a few pence to watch the real thing.

Basically, everyone would like to do what Apple is trying to do with iTunes -- only better.  It remains to be seen whether this turns out to be good for anyone.

Still ... I don't watch a lot of TV, but a few shows.  Broadcast is delayed locally, compared to the US or UK, but I can easily torrent digital HD widescreen 5.1 copies of shows soon after they are aired, which seems an improvement to me over waiting months for the analogue 4.3 stereo broadcast here.  But would I pay a few pennies to see the show at full quality without lifting a finger? Sure!  Of course, the service would have to be available (which it isn't), and it would have to cost less than the local rate for my lifting a finger or two to torrent and burn the show anyway (and it would remain to be seen whether the marketing geniuses get that equation right!).

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
http://www.carlaz.com/