It's about price discrimination. The first thing is finding out exactly how bad their customer wants the movie, so that's why there's availability windows, to see how a given customer's behavior changes based on availability of the product and substitutes. With that they can then maximize profit and charge $15, or $14, or $16, or whatever the exact maximum you're willing to pay for it is. And that's also why it's frustrating: your frustration is literally what they are trying to gage and measure and maximize.

> I really don't understand why everyone doesn't just offer all the movies all the time.

I don't have an expert answer, but I'll bet the answer has "copyright holders" in it somewhere.

Sure, but why wouldn't they get paid based on streams of their copyrighted materials, or some other payment scheme? I mean, hey, it was good enough for video stores in the 90's, right? The equivalent of* Wolf of Wall Street sat on the shelf in Blockbuster for 15 years after it came out. They didn't have to hide it in the back because of an availability window.

The "availability window" is manufactured scarcity. Those tapes were physical objects that they couldn't recall once they left the building, but with digital goods they can decide how much of which title to make available in order to manipulate the demand curve.

That's the logic for high-demand titles. The reasoning for not making all the junk available at a fixed cost is the flip side: if users had a giant library of good-but-not-hit content, they'd be less likely to chase around their HBO or Netflix or whatever licenses.

The copyright holder isn't trying to make it scarce. The studio/distributor would really love it if NetFlix extended the licensing contract window instead of letting it expire. But, NetFlix will only pay to extend its availability if the content is attracting people to its platform and that's becoming less likely and necessary as NetFlix builds its own content that will remain on the platform forever.

Basically, we're going to end up with a streaming platform from every studio/distributor where you'll pay them directly instead of paying the broadcaster since the internet has made it so easy for studios and distributors to become "broadcasters" too. What seemed like a good thing at first is actually going to be worse in the end for consumers. We're going to be paying the same as before for each movie purchase/rental and then even more than before to license each show we want to watch.

Or, if we're lucky, we wind up with a "Spotify for Movies" that pays rights holders based on how much/frequently their content is watched. I'm certain we'll get there eventually, but it may take another decade.

You don't want that. The end result is a system that looks a lot like youtube where bots rule the platform and the numbers are constantly gamed.

Well, part of that is that the price went down. When video stores were in their heyday, they often paid 5-6 times more for each tape in order to have public playback rights. The studios realized that they would make more money selling copies to individuals, but after that changed, the big rental chains changed to models where they paid the studios per-rental.

You don't need any special rights to rent out physical copies of movies. Video stores, Netflix, Redbox all could just buy disks and tapes from the local market and rent them out directly. Sure, they can make a business deal to get better pricing and cut out the middleman, but this effectively puts a cap on that negotiation because the local market is always a fallback. When streaming deals fail there is no fallback, see Netflix's depleting catalog.

The problem is that the experience of watching a movie at home only shifted a little bit during the transition from physical to streaming, while the legal and licensing framework between the two are so different they are hardly comparable. Copyright holders took great advantage of the change to a new format allowing them to redefine the meaning of licensing so that they have more control and can extract more value.

Here's a story about Redbox employees buying DVDs from Walmart to stock kiosks.

https://www.businessinsider.com/redbox-employee-buys-100-dvd...

It seems like a wink-wink, hush-hush deal struck between Redbox employees and certain Walmart brick and mortar employees. I would venture as far as assuming that the three-copy-per-person limit was am arbitrary decision by another brick and mortar employee -- policies like these usually come from subjective decisions by well-meaning but uninformed managers in the retail world.

There's a similar scenario where the last Blockbuster Video in Bend, Oregon restocks its DVDs by buying at Walmart, but it's detailed in one of the documentary videos about it that the manager of said Blcokbuster has a special off-the-record arrangement with Walmart management.

I only mentioned it as a signal that Redbox was apparently unable to get a better deal with whoever licenses/sells the DVDs wholesale than from Walmart, even if they got a special deal from those particular Walmart stores.

I don't know about the US, but here in France they do need special rights.

From what I understand, the first sale doctrine protects them in the US

That is true, and established now, but in the early days of VHS rental, it wasn't so clearly established, and the movie studios did issue high-cost tapes that came with public performance rights.

Even now, any film display outside of the home still requires a public performance license, the studios have just decided to put their efforts into enforcement on the location and business side, rather than the supply/sales side.

>...That is true, and established now, but in the early days of VHS rental, it wasn't so clearly established, and the movie studios did issue high-cost tapes that came with public performance rights.

I don't think that is right. The first sale right is a limitation of the copyright holder's distribution right. This right was first recognized by the Supreme Court in 1908 and was clearly established by the time of video rentals. Video tapes were initially priced very high as the studios were selling to the rental stores, but eventually the studios simply found they could make more money selling copies to individuals and the prices came down.

I did have an expert answer, and tried to find it in my comments history on my mobile. But couldn't... alas, the gist is yes. Copyright holders and television channels and networks.

There is absolutely no incentive for a copyright holder to release their material on a global scale on a single platform for a comission or similar where one can sell dozens, if not hundreds, of times same material (sell, not comission) for a period of time and renew the contract every three years or so. In order to do that, tv stations wont touch material that everyone has accesss to, because people will opt to watch maybe there and then because of that advertisers will then opt out... It's a complicated circle.

I think this comes from ossified committees making decisions. The concept of a world divided into "regions" is still strong in some people's minds, even though it stopped making any sense within the last two or three decades.

This idea of "regions" is infuriating if you happen to live in a non-first-class "region", meaning anything that is not the United States. Often you will be denied purchase, which is ridiculous in the context of discussions about "piracy".

Spotify has shown the right way to do it: just offer the stuff in a way that is convenient and let people pay for it. Their growth numbers speak for themselves.

> Spotify has shown the right way to do it: just offer the stuff in a way that is convenient and let people pay for it.

I don't think Spotify are a great example really. They're almost a 14 year old company, and last wuartet was the first time they were profitable. They've already stated they're expecting a loss this year. Is it sustainable?

I would also expect that we'll see a rift a la Netflix, over time we'll see different companies start to hold exclusives to their own streaming platform.

I'm not speaking of dvds specifically, but products in general including books, medicine, etc.

they still 'need' regions because they generally charge US customers more. more often then not, US has to pay cost + IP costs + margin, where as people in say India pay cost + margin.

I think this remains true for dvd/movies. Think about it, I heard the cost of a movie ticket for a hollywood movie is about 1$ in pakistan.

I'm in favor of getting rid of regions, and outlawing the practice of making mostly US consumers pay the bill for IP costs illegal, but until that happens they 'need' regions. how else are they going to charge people in china 2$ and people in the US 20$.

> "Seriously though. Almost every modern country outside the US is charged more for less."

so you mean only europe. but data disagrees with what you said: https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-netflix-is-m...

so unkindly, fuck off.

> This idea of "regions" is infuriating > Spotify has shown the right way to do it

Sorry but no. Spotify is not available anywhere but in a few selected regions.

Regions make complete sense if people in certain countries are making a few hundred dollars a month. Suddenly that $20 movie is over 5% of their monthly income.

And I can rent it (in SD) for $0.33 in India. Meanwhile, the only movie I have had a desire to watch in the last couple of months and I was willing to pay through the nose for, I couldn't, because its digital distribution was region locked.

Which movie? Just interested :)

I was really pissed off because I had forgotten what the movie even was. Luckily a reference to it popped up in my RSS feeds. I'm pretty sure it was https://www.hailsatanfilm.com/ this. Now it seems that Magnolia Pictures has picked it up and put it in theaters, but when I first heard of it there was no scheduled release.

Agreed. I would have no problem paying $100/month for a platform that let me stream any movie and tv show I wanted. Hell, give me packages instead (such as Disney content or Fox). The worst they can do is require 5 different accounts across 5 different services that all provide random content with overlap between services. Do you think folks would be fine with paying for 3 different cable boxes and subscriptions? No of course not, and the same applies here.

Yup. This balkanization of streaming is really dumb and I believe it will cause resurgency of piracy in the coming years. As a customer, I only want one thing: a hole I can drop money into at regular intervals, and get arbitrary movies and TV shows from it on demand. I don't care about brands, "originals", and other shenanigans - each of them is one more argument towards installing a torrent client again.

Copyright holders either get paid a few sheckles per view with an unknown number of viewers, or a big lump sum wad of cash for an exclusive unlimited contract.

Exclusivity contracts can benefit the copyright holder in the former model by locking customers into a higher sheckle perview deal, or in the later model it can be used by the provider to gain customers.

Really though, when the Grinch Cartoon is only available on Comcast during Christmas you just pirate it for the first time in 10 years.

Or worse, the only way to watch it _is with a cable subscription_. What??? Spiderman Homecoming on Amazon straight up cannot be rented without signing up for a Starz subscription.

It's completely baffling. Amazon really dropped their 'customer obsession' on the video side.

Do you really think they have permission to rent it and choose not to? Starz uses Amazon for their HBO Go/Now equivalent, it's probably the only way Amazon can offer it for rent at all.

Amazon didn’t decide not to rent it. It’s up to the rightsholder.

But it is crazy that it is available for rent on iTunes but not Prime.

Because they don't care about providing valuable services for the benefit of the customer. They're a monopoly that can easily get away with minimum effort and then price it as high as the market will bear.

From my perspective everyone, especially the service providers, are completely missing the problem. Its portability between platforms and user friction.

In the era of VHS-DVD-BluRay one could buy movies, and they play in any player. When I get a new player, it just works.

Now, we need to juggle accounts, billing, subscriptions, and player authorizations. Having a FireTV and Roku plugged into each TV is an absolute pain in the ass.

What needs to happen is the establishment of a standard protocol for providing content and authorization. Each layer of the problem needs to be abstracted and compartmentalized. The Apple App world destroyed the server-client relationship.

First there needs to be a standard protocol for a service provider to deliver content after receiving authorization.

Next there needs to be a standard aggregation protocol. This is the step everyone misses. The best analogy I can think of is the Google Reader to Feedly-Innoreader relationship. I could set up Google Reader with my config, and then sign into ANY other compatible front end that supported Google Reader and use their product without setting it up from scratch. I want a place that combines MoviesAnywhere with billing management. One place to go to subscribe and cancel subscriptions. This place might just be an API with no client front end, the actual interfacing with the service could be handed off to the clients. People might reply Roku or Apple, but they still miss the point that if I set up a Roku, my config isnt portable to Fire or Apple or Google. I can access my same Gmail and Amazon account from Firefox and Chrome without rebuilding my profiles and losing my config. HTTP/HTML is what makes the Web Server/Web Browser relationship so beautiful, anyone can implement it.

Finally there needs to be an open way for anyone to write a client that connects to the aggregation services. Consumers should be able to have a Roku in one room and a FireTV in another, and an LG in another.

As long as each client vendor tries to suck people into their ecosystem, and as long as each service provider wants to handle subscriptions and billing themselves (or the client apps trying to take it over so Amazon/Apple/Roku manage my billing) people will continue to find the friction and lack of portability to be too big a pain in the ass. It sucks to have to commit to being an Apple or Google or Amazon or Roku house. It sucks that each service provider has to write a client side app for Apple, Google, Amazon, and Roku and that upstart services sometimes can only support some of them.

As long as Layers 1-3 are combined into 2 frankenlayers, consumers will continue to grow more frustrated as more services pop up, and become more trapped in ecosystems.

Layer 1: Video Provider - CBS, Netflix, Disney

Layer 2: Subscription Manager - ???

Layer 3: Media Player - anything the consumer wants, never trapped

Piracy Solves this problem.

Layer 1: Video Provider - Usenet, Torrents

Layer 2: Subscription Manager - Plex, Emby, DLNA, media servers

Layer 3: Media Player - Kodi, or any competitor.

Just like how I can sign into the same gmail account from any client, I pray for the day I can walk up to a media center, sign in, and load my lifelong profile, without needing the media player to be proprietary-compatible with each and every service provider, and without needing to sign into 20 services to see what's playing. Going to a friend's house and only seeing what they are signed into is infinitely more inconvenient that carrying a DVD to their house. And these companies wonder why password sharing is such a problem? It's cuz if I want to watch my shows I have to sign into my account on their device under their Amazon or Roku profile, and now that login is cached. At least Cable/sattelite worked in every room of a house, you add an HBO subscription and boom every box is instantly updated.

That's the solution, but the problem is that video providers are too dumb[0] to agree on Layer 2. Each of them wants to own the subscription management platform[1] for themselves. So instead of one service that would divvy up your money between relevant parties and let you watch whatever you want, we get balkanization of streaming space, with payment management pushed onto users. You won't have a Layer 2 protocol in this mess simply because none of the players want it.

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[0] - Yes, I'm fully aware that they're following their economical incentives. But at some point we really should start calling out falling into short-term profit-maximizing traps like these as being dumb. And/or antisocial.

[1] - This is foretold by calling streaming services "platforms". As our industry proves time and again, whenever there's a need for a platform, everyone and their dog will develop one, hoping to become the winner that takes it all - in the process ruining the whole space for all users with their vendor lock-in bullshit.

Ideally yes. Practically I think consumers will be happy to choose between 1-3 providers. Think about it, up until now we were paying cable companies the price of all the 'all you can stream' services combined. Except in regions where selection is just not immediately available piracy will continue.

And now the cable companies own the content (Comcast/NBC Universal, ATT/DirecTV/WarnerTurnerHBO)

The cable companies are not an independent Layer 2 anymore.

There's always ebay or Netflix disc by mail.

If this is what you want just sign up for Netflix’s dvd service. Problem solved.