If you have a library of over a hundred DVDs\ Blu Ray \ 4k or CDs and if you don’t have the time to rip every thing to your media server so it can be watched on a plethora of devices (IPAD, TV, computer, Cell phone) what do you do? I know in the UK with its antiquated laws it still illegal to copy your own media to other devices, but people still do. For people at the apex of the tech adoption model it’s no problem. And for people who don’t have libraries the solutions are streaming services. For the rest of the population at the nexus old media and new buying the whole collection again as a digital download or converting to 4K. This is not an option (or an expensive option) or finding all your stuff on one provider platform is not viable.
There is an opportunity for the media companies to make some profit from the new media paradigm i.e. upgrading media and hardware and get ahead of the game.
The current paradigm:
The future paradigm
The agreed solution is to push consumers to subscribe to streaming services as the ultimate solution. This is apart from the consumer paying the cost of multiple streaming services for different categories and specialities (consumer taste). The differing content and the fragmentation of the media companies as they create their own platforms is going to take a while to settle. The current services for example, music: Spotify \ iTunes \ amazon music. Film: Netflix, amazon prime etc. will eventually lead to market saturation
when the market and providers are saturated there will be a competition on price but the solution is expanding your market mainly to third world or low band width counties.
The solution for people with Libraries and the third world
There are already existing services (possibly operating in a legal grey areas) in third world countries that help people copy their CD’s \ DVDs to iPods, media players \ external hard drives. because they don’t have high speed internet and the hardware (mobile devices etc) is expensive.
My suggestion for library and 3rd world consumers until the internet catches up:
The customer takes their DVD’s to the service provider who copies them to a media server or in the required format for a fee which is split between the media company and the service provider and possibly throw in some library software if needed.
The service provider etches the consumers DVD with a proprietary number (the software and etching hardware cost will have to be determined) provided by the media company to stop recopying of the DVD. Or alternatively destroys the DVD / Blu-ray etc. I know that the media companies will want every one to upgrade to Blu-ray\ 4k (but even when 4k movies becomes cheap people will still want their movies on a home server). Alternatively, they could do a Blu-ray \4k\DVD exchange i.e. get a discount to upgrade your DVDs to- Blu-ray\ 4k to- Digital format. This is a stop gap idea, but there might still some gold in there. They will be websites\ Apps that offer film downloads, in the process that will involve the customer selecting the material to upgrade- download the barcode- then the customer sends the disks to the media company or goes to a physical outlet. on receipt the provider will send a digital copy or customer present their hardware at a physical store for download. If the media companies get this right and give up some free software for the new and improved download world in might be a win- win the same works for people with Libraries.
The issues
- Copyright there might have to be a way of copyright protection.
- Cooperation of the Media companies
- The compatibility and format issues
- The longevity of the idea.
- Can the idea of cannibalising some of the potential revenue streams for some incremental profit make it worthwhile?
- The future is streaming \downloads but is this premature if you have media that cannot be found on streaming services e.g. vintage films or esoteric music.
- For speed of the service might be enhanced if the media companies provide watermarked digital copies for the service providers.
- Although this is focused on third world countries in the first world some of this idea can apply an example: music CD’s I have a library of 250 CDs which I have copied to my I pod but it might have been easier to give it to a service to do (especially to satisfy my need for instant gratification) this would have saved me a lot of time. For a fee I receive the digital copy in a format I desire e.g. high-resolution audio : FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF and DSD. There is the possibility that if the media companies change their approach the customers don’t want to break the law and are willing to pay reasonable prices for new media . There are countries where piracy is killing the industry and a new paradigm is needed for upgrading to new tech
- What happens when 8K become pervasive
- There is still an innate need to own stuff although it’s a shrinking market but worth exploring.
This idea might be worth exploring that’s why it’s a raw idea that should trigger a better solution, but I would prefer to jump a step and have all my media on my personal server or cloud or a single streaming service.
A simpler solution 3rd world might be creating lower quality media (questionable) or find a new compression format for 3rd world countries with minimal lost quality, that can be streamed or downloaded on lower bandwidth. The main focus should be mobile devices as it’s the people’s main access to the internet\ digital media.
Notes:
how to deal with how to deal with illegal downloads? [
[Hollywood Threatens To Stop Selling DVDs In Spain In A Push To Increase Unauthorized File Sharing: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100330/1518058792.shtml]
