I "rent" 3-4 movies using Amazon Instant Video every month at ~$5 per pop. Every time I do, I think "do I really want to spend $5 on this?" and I'll often just go watch whatever is recommended on Netflix (or if it's just me, SportsCenter) instead. $2 is definitely the "instant rental" price point for me.
And please none of this "Rent for $3.99 or rent for $4.99 in HD". Just give me one price and the best quality version that you can.
(For reference, I use a Roku)
As perhaps a reason why they'd do this. Some of us are on bandwidth caps. Watching/downloading too many HD movies can put you over your monthly cap pretty easily.
I actually like that they give the user the choice.
The true answer lies in price discrimination.
Well twice the resolution in 2 axis is 4 times the pixels, which means higher costs. I think it's reasonable.
> The true answer lies in price discrimination.
Actually its a mix of both, price discrimination and costs. No need to be so negative.
It also feels... scammy. "For just 25% more, you can have the version that doesn't suck!" That kind of attitude does not make me want to do business with them. Of course, this is just as much the fault of the last five years of TV marketing talking about how awful anything SD is, when in practicality it's more than adequate unless you have an absurdly large screen.
Why not? Are you happier if they instead say "Rent for $4.99" and nothing else?
Most products come in multiple price points, do you also dislike the fact that there are cheap/expensive models of computers, cars, TVs...
This might sound like "white people problems" but it's annoying and hurts the experience.
So really your issue is with UI, maybe they could allow you to change which price point is shown to you? Because reducing down to a single price point, sure it might be good in that they're playing less mind games, but if you end up paying higher prices it surely isn't a good change.
But when you click into detail, it's actually: rent in SD for $2.99, rent in HD for $4.99, buy for $19.99.
I don't really care that much, but I can see how it comes off as scammy. If it wasn't Amazon doing it, I think a lot more people would have a problem with it.
more like "these shoes are overpriced so I'm going get the pattern and start making my own copies of them and share them with my friends". you aren't affecting someone else's possession of something when you pirate it, you are just not paying the owner for a copy.
the argument is around how many of those pirated copies actually represent lost sales (and most people who've looked at the issue and aren't in some way employed by the entertainment industry think it's probably a slim percentage)
as for supporting independents, while what you're saying is probably true for music, independent TV and film as a whole just haven't reached anywhere near the quality. the instances in those mediums of high quality content produced independently are still very much the exception. in music, independents have been producing as good or better than the major labels for a long time.
download illegaly === easy with next to 0 consequence , that's why people do it.
When you buy a soft or a song online you dont buy an object but a license that gives you the right to listen it, if you obtain the song or the soft illegally you are violating that license , and you dont get to chose what the terms of the license is. If you dont agree with the license dont download period.
Do i download things illegaly , yes, but i dont try to justify my behavior with stupid arguments to free my mind from any guilt like you do. It's illegal , be a grown up , at least acknowlegde that fact.
So what if it is illegal? It is the moral responsibility of a citizen to disobey laws they believe are unjust. If I have strong convictions that piracy laws are unjust, not only do I not care if they are illegal, but I will actively encourage other people to ignore these laws. This is just one way of achieving the goal of change.
Your other suggestion is completely right though, we should also be willing to support the artists whose values align with our own.
Oh, come on. We're not talking about summary execution of Muslims or cutting off a child's hand for stealing bread; we're talking about twenty bucks for a movie.
If it is illegal it is illegal , end of discussion , want to change the law ? vote for a change.
FYI illegal =/= immoral , the law has nothing to do with morality. The law is the law , if you want to live in a country driven by morality move to Saudi Arabia and watch the consequences of your stupid statement.
The other thing that bugs the shit out of me is they don't have an upgrade path from SD to HD or whatever's next.
That and for some reason the apple tv uses an independent wish list for some crazy reason. They make it easier to buy movies, then they make it stupid to find the movies you want.
It's just madness. I want to think about what film I want to watch, not about whether I'll spend the money.
The ironic thing is that my monthly spend would be somewhere around 40 or 50 Euro if the prices were at stupid-la-la-thinking-land levels. Somewhat of an improvement from the big, fat €0 as at present.
A certain amount of this is expected. The high fixed and low marginal costs of their product makes some price discrimination natural. The problem, as I see it, is that they're trying to hold onto the existing forms of discrimination rather than thinking through what makes sense from first principles now that digital distribution is an important part of the picture.
At 5 Euro, for me the price is an instant purchase, no thinking necessary. Not so at €12 or more.
I hope it's not the case, but I wonder whether there are so few people that pay for movies at any price that the studios have concluded it's just not worth it, and so keep the higher prices. Or, alternatively, there are enough people that do buy at the €12 point, again not making it worth the time to lower the price.
In conclusion: trying to work out pricing points hurts my head.