Survey confirms broadband users aren’t stupid

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Wednesday, 12 March 2008

Page 2 of 4 AVRRA Executive Director Ross Walden said that: “The reality is that Internet technology is just not offering quality of movie content, let alone delivering movies to the TV – that’s why consumers remain indifferent and services are not making economic sense”. Of course, Walden fails to acknowledge that tech-savvy consumers have no difficulty in connecting their computers to their TVs, through wired or wireless means, especially to the now common ‘flat screen TVs’ which nowadays come with a VGA port as standard, or even simply burning illegally downloaded videos to DVD to watch ‘the old fashioned way’. That said, iTWire in no way condones illegal piracy of any form of digital content, be it movies, music or anything else, and we readily acknowledge that non tech-savvy users could certainly find a number of difficulties, and would undoubtedly prefer a simple, legal way to get downloaded content if it was available, and inexpensive, using a device such as an Apple TV or Xbox 360 that offers far more entertainment features than your standard set-top box.    Walden then says that “AVRRA’s own research into movie download services in Australia has identified several barriers to consumer take-up, including high costs, slow broadband speeds, poor movie quality and lack of access to the latest entertainment.”   In Australia, this is certainly true. A number of ISPs have badly priced services, overuse charges for going over download limits, uploads counted towards download limits, with limitations to legal download services such as that on Telstra’s BigPond which make it difficult to watch legally downloaded movies on a TV set, as well as limitations that mean rental stores get the latest movies long before legal download services or for broadcast on pay television, let alone free-to-air TV. Broadband users aren't stupid - if legal movie downloads are difficult because of high prices, expensive download plans and no easy way to get that movie onto a TV set, they will wait until downloading movies becomes simple, although illegal downloaders are doing it anyway. In addition, services such as Apple TV’s and the Xbox 360’s movie and TV show download services aren’t available in Australia, two platforms which would go an enormous way to making movie downloads to TVs a much simpler process, while also providing the needed competition to bring down the cost of online movie downloads. AVRRA notes that the cost of downloading a movie in Australia “is as high as $13.95 per movie when you combine the cost of bandwidth to download the data with the movie download cost”, and note that on 512kbps to 1.5Mbps Internet connection speeds, a movie download would take one to four hours to download. Of course many consumers are flocking to much faster ADSL2+ services, many of which at the higher end offer huge download limits each month, although that higher per month cost factors into the true cost of both legal and illegal movie downloads. AVRRA also states that “the quality of downloaded data – which is compressed – is far inferior to a DVD in both audio and video resolution.” AVRRA continues that: “Consumers also have to wait in line for at least six weeks and up to three months after new movies are available in video stores to access them via legitimate download services”, an observation that is certainly true, but presumably only because movie distributors have done this deal to protect the revenues of video rental stores. It also must be noted that Apple TV and Xbox 360 offer ‘HD’ quality downloads that, although compressed, still look better than standard definition DVD quality. So, what’s an Australian example from AVRRA  of the failed legal download market, what about those unasked and unanswered survey questions, and what’s another story in Home Media Magazine showing that consumers want more and faster bandwidth? Please read onto page 3. << First page <   1 2 3 4 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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