damien stolarz blog

I will present here a problem: MP4 should be far more harmful to video than MP3 was to audio. Then I will present some mitigating circumstances that could save offline video after all.

I have observed that people consume video in completely different ways than audio, not the least of which is that people WON’T use a jukebox app to keep “all their favorite movies” on an iVideoPod, or similar consumption.

People purchase CD’s to use them over and over. People purchase DVD’s to watch a couple of times (with the notable exception of movies for children e.g. Disney movies)

The RIAA’s concerns about cannibalized sales are arguably unsubstantiated, as we have seen both expansion and contraction of that market post-MP3. However, the MPAA may have a point- if I can insert my DVD, image it to my hard drive, and Joe can download it and burn an identical DVD, Joe will do this to satisfy his urge for the movie. He’s done as a customer in that scenario.

A stopgap measure is obviously to keep pushing the DVD format faster than the bandwidth or storage capacity of consumers. A list of approaches:

• delay pc and television convergence so that PC’s are still unwieldy as home entertainment centers
• push 9.8 Gig and higher DVD’s when consumers can only burn 4.3’s
• keep adding features to DVD’s so they have to buy the real thing
• Push the price of DVD’s down so that it’s still easier (time invested vs. cost) to buy it than download it.
• Provide some tangiblity unavailable in the ephemeral, online version of the content

Aren’t these just delays to the overpowering march of technology?

I see some bright sides. For one, culturally, I think people are less prone to aggregate bootlegged video than audio. For one thing, it isn’t as collectable- you want to store music on your hard drive because you might listen to it. However, once you have viewed a movie on your hard drive, you are much more likely to want to get that Gigabyte of data off your hard drive.

Netflix and other online DVD rentals have made it essentially painless to get any media desired overnight. That is currently how long it takes to do a quality RIP of video. So the potential to hoard all that video on your hard drive is there… and still a bit pointless.

The emerging opportunity for online video is UNAVAILABLE content… and this can be bootlegs of concerts, leaked indiscretions of celebrities, but more importantly, all the residual video that content owners never had enough of a market to sell.

Independent bands may never see their label asking them if they want to press a DVD. But online distribution… could make it viable. But what about the tangible element? Naturally, if one of the they-might-be-giants (financially successful indie band) fans purchases a digital video of priorly unreleased, high-quality video footage, one of two things will occur:

1. This fan will copy it to all their TMBG fan friends, obviating their need to purchase it, making the offering a financial loss
2. This fan will tell all his TMBG fan friends to get it on the tmbg website, making the video release a financial success

Which will it be? To some degree, it will have to do with the craft of the publisher in getting their consumers to buy it, independent of any awards, incentives, etc. But this is just too much of a risk for traditional content publishers.

A far brighter side exists as well: that march of technology that is making the cost of physical media disappear as well.

Because, as ephemeral online media threatens to destroy physical media, physical media costs will approach zero as well.

There may be a time soon when it is actualy cheaper to produce and send someone the DVD than to download it to them.

Think about this: mail is

Working for the merchants of offline video is people’s desire to objectify their ephemeral digital objects. Portable MP3 players allow people to carry tangible forms of their media. And once people are used to burning DVD’s of their own video and media, and turning out their own content of high production value (for instance, what if DVD burners had a dye sublimation labeling system built in?), they will tend to purchase the original DVD, if they wanted the tangible version.

Just-in-time pressing of disks can be the tangibility answer for this type of content. One thing that no one seems to be noticing is that once production costs for a one-off disk approach nothing, the distribution costs will go away FOR OFFLINE, PHSYICAL MEDIA AS WELL.

Already, radio stations are not purchasing CD’s. Oldies stations have no need- there is no ‘new’ music to get. Thus, all that is needed is a large industrial version of a digital jukebox, and some hefty license fees to a provider, and it’s poof, instant radio station.

Now bring this into the record store: continue to stock the indie stuff, but digitally stock all the major releases. You can already scan their UPC code and listen to them… why not press to copy? With the scanned tiffs of the cover art and everything. Only weird Pet Shop Boys CD’s with orange lego covers would need ’special handling’… but you could buy the cheaper pressed copy as well. Hell, mongram it (a la iPod) and buy a tacky digitally signed analog artist’s signature while you’re at it…

What about people stealing from the machine? No chance. IN-STORE COPY PROTECTION SYSTEMS WORK! They have already solved the problem of employee theft… for an example, note Kinko’s. Kinko’s pays Xerox, Canon, whoever they lease copiers from, for every copy. It’s digitally tracked. Has been for years. Copy guys come out and ‘read the meter’, just like the gas guys. the system works. Kids won’t make extra copies because managers can count blanks just like they count cups at 7-11, you know?

So while we think that everything is going ONLINE because of course it’s cheaper, that’s not how things work.

The cruelest joke will be when studios loss-lead a home-vending hardware solution to printing your own DVD’s. You want it? Go crazy. Print your own DVDs. Save us the distribution cost. Fill your house with them. Buy the blank CD’s from us online. Buy the cool black DVD cases, in bulk from us… or through costco. We don’t care. Pirate the content for all we care… we’ll make it back when you pay $0.40 for the PDF of the cover art.

When was the last time you spent $3.60 for an artfully branded, well serviced coffee beverage?

Oh, you’ll pay for your content somehow, someway. The media industry isn’t going anywhere. : )

PS: A Fedex truck full of DVDs delivers more bandwidth (Gigabytes/second) than your fiber-to-the-home ever will.

When will offline distribution become cheaper than online? Isn’t online distribution better for the environment?

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