The Release Windows Archaism | Hacker News Reader

The Release Windows Archaism

mondaynote.com

24 pointsphaet0n10 comments

The OP is begging the question. The Release Window never had anything to do with technology. Its has always been about money. Money is not an "analog era relic".

Obviously the content producers have considered doing away with release windows, and for now have chosen not to. Its safe to assume they've decided they'll make the most money this way. So why? That is a much more interesting question.

Some things to think about:

1) iTunes/Amazon/Google pay the content producer each time they sell something (basically consignment), instead of making a big purchase upfront and then reselling the product (like DVDs, or even Netflix). The DVD model seems much better for the content producer, as the DVD saler is taking some of the risk whereas iTunes/Amazon/etc assume none of the risk.

2) Cannibalization is a bigger issue than we might think. Streaming with no release delays is basically an a la carte model. Its likely this would reduce the content producer's total take.

Chris Dixon has a great article on why bundling can be a win for both sellers and buyers here: http://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-a...

3) The author is probably overestimating the increased sales generated by an earlier DVD/streaming release.

4) Not everyone is willing to pirate content, simply because it is illegal to do so. For some people, not being a thief is more important than seeing Homeland Season 2 right now. Thus the growth of piracy may be limited in a way the OP does not understand (not by viruses or technological hurdles, but just because some people don't want to be pirates).

Perhaps there's a model where simultaneous releases do make more sense for the sellers. I'd certainly welcome it. But its not obviously better for the sellers, and protecting your revenue stream is not equivalent to being stuck in a "wasteful rear-guard fight for the preservation of an analog era relic", as the OP claims.

Hold on a minute. The release window was originally an accident and very much dependent on technological limitations. Back in the 1980s, for example, it took time to produce a vhs version of a film movie, and that was a big factor in creating the "release window" in the first place. As technology changed and production has become all digital there has become less and less of a technological reason for the window, but it has persisted because publishers have decided they think it's a good idea, for monetary reasons.

Whether that's true or not is still an open question because nobody has actually had the guts to complete eliminate the window and see how it affects business.

Speaking of archaisms, especially in case of video/film content, there's also one other thing... exclusive licensing.

Seriously, exclusive licensing has absolutely no place whatsoever in the digital market. Yet they're still generally bundled with physical licenses like DVD rights and whatnot and then you end up with digital stores region locked to a single country because they haven't "licensed" it to stores operating in other countries or they have licensed it to some entity in said country that doesn't give the slightest toss about serving people in a nice digital manner.

Think about it: if exclusive licensing didn't exist for digital distribution, all TV shows and whatnot would be given out to any interested party. It could actually be feasible to have some real competition on what entity gives you the best service instead of what entity has the most content licensed. Sure, we have that now too, but I'm fairly certain that this would accelerate it quite dramatically.

And the biggest reason why digital exclusivity is completely dumb is because it isn't actually exclusive. If your content is popular, it's bound to get pirated, and they sure don't care who or what might happen to have an exclusive license for legitimately streaming or selling that particular show in whatever particular country an user might be downloading from. Keeping up this game of pretend about "exclusivity" does ultimately no good for anyone.

On the perpetually debated issue of technologizing old-media all I can say is this: the big players, the Googles, Facebooks, etc., simply need to stop playing the waiting game and fully commit to producing their own content. To do this they have to be savvy enough to hire the right visionary and give them enough leeway to scout talent, produce content, buy programming, invest in a studio, and whatnot to make the inevitable future happen.

The question I can't answer is if there is any advantage to being a first-mover? And that's perhaps why no large technology player is taking that first step.

Probably because its expensive and requires a lot of people and isn't amenable to automation even a cheap show is running at 1M per hour.

It will be interesting to see how BT Vision plays out in the UK.

The big technology players don't want to enter this game because it is too dangerous. Everyone knows that a movie big flop can complicate the whole quarter for a movie company. Why would Google and others expose themselves to this risk? Also, they would become much less credible as technology providers for other content companies, which by itself would reduce a lot of the profit they generate. In other words, I wouldn't expect this happening anytime soon.

Well, Amazon is signing up authors, and if their first foray is successful, I can see them expanding to music, but video is in a completely different level. While digital filming has reduced cost, it has also increased quality expectations, so the cost for one TV episode hasn't changed all that drastically in the last 20 years or so.

If we see tech companies creating their own content, those probably won't be the giants. I think Netflix or Hulu are much more likely to start experimenting in this direction, since it's much closer to their core business.

Some companies are doing it right: here in Australia Doctor Who was available on iView at the same time it was shown in the UK a week before being shown on TV here.

Only problem is iView quality is rather poor.

Looks like the author has never heard of usenet.

Neither have we.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com