Posts tagged Hollywood
Hollywood Isn’t Ruining DVD Rentals On Its Own: Netflix is Happy to Help
Jan 31st
It’s easy to slam Hollywood for not understanding how technology works, or for putting its legacy business models ahead of user experience. Especially when big media companies do things like restrict digital access to movies and then cry about piracy.
But Hollywood isn’t always acting alone. Sometimes, the savviest Web companies around – Netflix, for instance – are playing along, with their own agendas.
The latest example: Not only must Netflix customers wait 56 days before renting Warner Bros. new release discs, but they can’t even add them to their rental queues until 28 days after they’ve been released. Sounds a little nuts, no?
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Hollywood’s goal with this wacky idea is to get you to buy those movies on DVD instead of renting them. Studios stand to make a lot more money by selling a DVD to each household instead of selling one copy to Netflix for a bunch of rentals. So now they’re in the business of messing with movie rentals using things like release delays and this new no-new-movies-in-your-queue policy.
Whether this plan sells more DVDs or not, it’s hard to escape the fact that Netflix’s user experience is suffering a bit because of it, and that seems like something Netflix should fight. But Netflix is actually on board!
Instead of telling Hollywood to get lost with silly ideas like this, Netflix is cooperating. It doesn’t have to buy DVDs directly from studios and play along with 28- or 56-day windows: Netflix can legally go out and buy DVDs anywhere – Walmart, Amazon, you name it – and rent them out as much as it wants. But it isn’t doing that. It’s playing along.
Why? A couple of reasons. To some extent, because it’s easier and more reliable for Netflix to buy discs directly from Warner Bros. instead of relying on third-party vendors. Netflix admits as much (PDF). But more importantly, because Netflix actually has the same goal that the studios do: To try to discourage you from renting DVDs.
The future of Netflix is 100% based on its ability to grow into the best streaming video entertainment service. Renting discs is very profitable for Netflix, but it’s the past. That’s why it went as far as to try separating its DVD business last year as “Qwikster,” and that’s why it’s letting studios make DVD rentals less attractive with windows and queue restrictions.
The sooner you get disgusted and cancel your DVD rental subscription, the stronger Netflix’s case to the studios becomes that they need streaming, or else.
So far, that isn’t really happening. An analysis by Tristan Louis shows that all of the top 100 movies from 2010 are available on DVD, but the vast majority aren’t available as streaming rentals. Netflix actually had the best streaming rental selection vs. iTunes, Amazon, or Vudu, according to Louis’s analysis, but it’s still only a small fraction of the top movies. Not yet good enough.
Netflix has been successful in its efforts to reduce its number of DVD subscribers, however, albeit with significant damage to its reputation.
At the end of 2011, Netflix had just 11 million DVD subscribers, down significantly from last year and well below its 22 million streaming subscribers. “We expect DVD subscribers to decline steadily every quarter forever,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said on the company’s Q4 earnings call last week (PDF transcript).
Assuming this trend continues, Netflix will be in a position to say to the studios: Look, the vast majority of our subscribers won’t be able to watch this movie unless you stream it. So stream it.
That might not work, anyway. There’s plenty of competition on the way for Netflix, ranging from Amazon, Apple and Google to the cable companies. And it will need to keep its edge using other techniques, too, such as obtaining exclusive and/or original programming. But this is the future Netflix is choosing, so it needs to try.
The takeaway: If you’re renting discs from Netflix now, expect more weirdness ahead.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Dexter Dings SEO: Why Do Hollywood Writers Keep Giving Search Engine Optimization A Bad Name?
Nov 22nd
Yesterday, I saw a few tweets go by noting that the popular show Dexter on Showtime mentioned SEO and said that “Google was so 5 minutes ago” while typing in the URL: eliotsearchengine.com* – which supposedly “uses an algorithm to aggregate content without getting tripped up…
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Why Do Hollywood Writers Keep Giving SEO A Bad Name? – Search Engine Land
Nov 22nd
 Search Engine Land |
Why Do Hollywood Writers Keep Giving SEO A Bad Name?
Search Engine Land Yesterday, I saw a few tweets go by noting that the popular show DEXTER on the Showtime network mentioned SEO and said that “Google was so 5 minutes ago” while typing in a fictitious URL: www.elliotsearchengine.com – which supposedly “uses an algorithm … |
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Hollywood and Congress Target Mozilla
Nov 14th
Another dangerous bill is winding its way through Congress, this time it’s the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) by Texas representative Lamar Smith. Smith’s bill would establish a system for taking down Web sites that the Justice Department “determines to be dedicated to copyright infringement.”
The bill is, by nearly any sane measure, overreaching and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says that the bill targets Mozilla specifically for refusing to comply with Homeland Security’s ICE unit.
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What’s Going On
Take the wayback machine to May, and what happened is that Mozilla didn’t immediately pull the MAFIAAFire Redirector plugin that redirects users to domains that have been taken down. Mozilla’s response from its general counsel and vice president of business affairs, Harvey Anderson, was that Mozilla complies with valid court orders. The ICE request was not such an order.
So the SOPA bill now includes language to let the attorney general go after, in the words of the EFF, “more or less anyone who provides or offers a product or service that could be used to get around DNS blacklisting orders.”
Viewed expansively, this could be a lot of providers and projects. It would almost certainly include The MAFIAAFire plugin, and Mozilla for distributing it. An extensive list of prominent engineers have signed on in opposition to the bill, including Paul Vixie (author of BIND), Jim Gettys (editor of HTTP 1.1 protocol standards)OpenDNS CEO David Ulevitch and security researcher Dan Kaminsky. (Updated to add OpenDNS CEO and proper attribution for Kaminsky.)
This is in addition to the existing SOPA provisions that the EFF says “authorizes the United Sates Attorney General to wreak havoc with the Domain Name System by ordering service providers to block U.S. citizens’ ability to access domain names, which will inevitably lead to competing Internet naming infrastructures and widespread security risks.”
As pointed out on OpenCongress, the bill as written allows sites to be taken down before a case is heard. It would allow the government or industry to take down a site while the case is wrangling its way through the courts. The damage to legitimate sites would be enormous, and there’s little that a defendant could do if slapped with SOPA wrongly. We all know that the entertainment industry has a history of shooting first and asking questions later.
If you’d like to stand up in opposition to the bill, the EFF has a draft letter you can send to your representative.
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Hollywood & YouTube, A Move to Stop The Pirates?
Apr 28th
In an exclusive announced on Tuesday, The Wrap reported that YouTube will be launching a movie on demand service for mainstream Hollywood movies. The move touted as a challenge to the iTunes service includes Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Brothers and Universal, but so far Paramount, Fox and Disney have declined to join.
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Could The US Demand That Google Boost Hollywood Sites To Fight Online Piracy?
Mar 15th
Should the US demand that Google, Bing and other search engines give preference to “authorized” sites offering television shows and movies? At least some members of the US House of Representatives pondered the idea yesterday, during a hearing on online piracy issues. The US House…
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SEO Consult and Marlows Certified Diamonds Celebrate 18 Months Together – Hollywood Industry
Feb 24th
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SEO Consult and Marlows Certified Diamonds Celebrate 18 Months Together
Hollywood Industry SEO Consult and Marlows Certified Diamonds are nearing 18 months since their business partnership began, in which time they have helped Marlows rank highly for targeted terms to attract more local and national visitors to their website. … |
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Report: Google’s YouTube To Offer Streaming Pay-Per-View Hollywood Rentals
Aug 30th
Google plans pay-per-view films from the Financial Times reports Google is in talks with several major Hollywood film companies to offer a pay-per-view service of their films.
Reports say that the streaming movie service from YouTube will bring these movies to online consumers at about $5 per movie. The movies would not download to [...]
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