Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 12 March 2008 13:25
Opinion and Analysis
Page 3 of 4
AVRRA’s press release notes that: “Earlier this year Australia’s biggest move download player, ReelTime Media, collapsed – adding fuel to growing evidence that current movie download services are unviable.”
To back up this local example, AVRRA then notes US legal movie store download failures, saying that: “ReelTime’s failure followed in the wake of closures in the US, including Wal-Mart’s movie download service, Movie Gallery’s Moviebeam service, and a scaling down of Google Inc and AOL’s video download services.”
Those movie download store closures are accurate, but with Lionsgate joining Apple’s iTunes movie download store, those other legal download services are being overtaken by Apple’s superior legal service, for US users at least. Sony are also moving towards legal movie downloads through their PS3 games console.
AVRRA’s Walden concluded the press release saying that: “The struggle for movie download services to remain viable given the shortcomings of current delivery models and the lack of value for customers is unsurprising”.
What Walden says is true for the Australian market, but not necessarily true of the US market, and in both cases, it’s just a matter of time before the “shortcomings of current delivery models and the lack of value for consumers” are shortcomings no longer, with movie download services set to offer a galaxy of choice far beyond what any rental store could provide, at cheaper prices, with delivery in mere minutes over high-speed broadband networks.
The Diffusion Group Survey also makes no mention in their report précis of asking survey respondents about illegal movie downloads, but even if they have, why would consumers engaged in illegal downloading practices voluntarily admit to breaking the law?
We also found another
article at Home Media Magazine called “Study: Broadband Consumers Recognize Size Matters”.
Home Media Magazine’s (HMM) article notes that as broadband becomes ever more commonplace, rather than simply an ‘early adopter’ trend, “consumers have become cognizant of the limitations bandwidth imposed by some ISPs has on their multimedia”.
HMM notes that: “The greater the bandwidth, the faster users can access and download videos, movies and photos. Broadband access is considered key to the proliferation of Internet-enabled televisions, set-top boxes and digital distribution.”
So, how fast are US broadband download speeds on average, and why is illegal movie piracy bad, something many young people around the world don’t seem to care about anyway? Please read onto page 4.
