NightRyder said:
While I realize this is Hollywood's wet dream, pay per play, they are going to have a very hard time trying to sell this to the American consumer as a take it or leave it proposition. A limited version of this has been tried already, remember the Divx DVD format? It deservedly crashed and burned and cost Circuit City hundreds of millions of dollars. As far as pirates go, they will always find a means and a market, human nature.
NightRyder
I agree about Divx but that was a bad idea from the get-go. People are funny about "control" issues. They'd rather rent a video they "have" to bring back than pay for something that someone else can cause to "self destruct" at some point down the road. I know that's not really how it worked but what I'm saying is it's a physcological thing and I know I'm not being very clear about it.
Anyway, IMHO, no VOD system is going to catch on if it's based on any type of "temporary" ownership of the movie. People want to like have this huge library of choices that they can pick from at any given time. How many of us surround ourselves with videos, most of which, at best, we may watch once every few years ? It's not totally rational but more of a mindset thing - that I can control what I watch at any time rather than pick from someone else's choices.
So if there comes along a system that can fill that gap by offering any choice at any time, I thing people will be attracted to it BUT.....only as long as they can control it. Meaning, they pay a fee and they've got that movie forever. It becomes part of their library and their library is liminted only by whatever amount of storage space they have.
