VUDU Surpasses 1,000 Custom Installer Milestone

[Nded]

Re: VUDU Surpasses 1,000 Custom Installer Milestone

I guess you haven't spent thousands of dollars on storage servers that some of us have. For storing it yourself you have to factor in how much space you would ultimately need to store an ever growing collection of movies. Plus, if you store it yourself, you have to deal with equipment failure and potentially lost data that way too. Sure, you can back it up, use RAID 5, etc., but that adds to cost and complexity......

Well, actually I have spent thousands of dollars on a multi-terabyte ReplayTV based DVR stoarge farm that I use daily. While I'm with you on the rental model, and will choose rental over purchase almost all the time, there are still many movies that are purchase only. Yeah, one could purchase and then erase to free up storage, but that doesn't sit well with most persons sense of fair economics. Given the ever lowering cost of storage (1 TB drives are now under $100 - http://www.unityelectronics.com/prod...p/WD10EACS-RCT ), I think many folks will want the option of expanding their Vudu vs. discarding purchased titles. Certainlly more hard drive space will not be for everyone, but it's a choice that will be popular with many.

[aaronwt]

Re: VUDU Surpasses 1,000 Custom Installer Milestone

Crap! I paid close to $300 for my first few 1TB drives last year.
Although I also paid close to that amount for around 12, 250GB drives earlier in the 2000s so I would have 3TB of storage for all my HD recordings. Prices have really come down fast. Even the 1.5TB drives are well under $200.

[HeadHodge]

Re: VUDU Surpasses 1,000 Custom Installer Milestone

I have an idea.....

Why doesn't someone come up with a way to share storage using some sort of peer-to-peer scheme??

If I could share Arronwt's and Brain's storage, I wouldn't need to grow a terra farm.

[redwein]

Re: VUDU Surpasses 1,000 Custom Installer Milestone

Well, actually I have spent thousands of dollars on a multi-terabyte ReplayTV based DVR stoarge farm that I use daily. While I'm with you on the rental model, and will choose rental over purchase almost all the time, there are still many movies that are purchase only. Yeah, one could purchase and then erase to free up storage, but that doesn't sit well with most persons sense of fair economics. Given the ever lowering cost of storage (1 TB drives are now under $100 - http://www.unityelectronics.com/prod...p/WD10EACS-RCT ), I think many folks will want the option of expanding their Vudu vs. discarding purchased titles. Certainlly more hard drive space will not be for everyone, but it's a choice that will be popular with many.

I agree with what you say. I think that having movies be 100% rentable is the real solution. I agree that, in the interim, some storage solution is required and each solution has its own benefits/drawbacks. People will choose what works best for them. Also, even though the cost of storage is going down, it is still a hassle as drives fill up and you need to add more and more boxes, or throw away old ones and consolidate as drive capacity increases. I was having "fun" doing it until I ended up with my 4th Terastation (3 X 1.6 TB and 1 X 2 TB). Now I just don't want any more, period. The space that I have allocated for them in our walk in closet is filled up and I have to keep the door to the closet opened or the closet feels like a sauna.

If the movies in my collection had been reliably available for renting with VOD, I would have never spent that money, time, space and hassle. That's why I'm such a VOD+rental "bigot".

[NA9D]

Re: VUDU Surpasses 1,000 Custom Installer Milestone

The facts of the matter are that you don't own the movie. You own a "license" to the movie, a license which is in many cases revokable (look at the people who have purchased content from Yahoo Movies, etc. where when the service was shut down, so were the DRM keys).

Now, storage in the "cloud" is the most efficient method of storing movies. It's already basically being done. So if I want to own, say, Titanic, I don't need it sitting on my box. It could be sitting anywhere there is a Vudu. And no one Vudu needs to be holding the entire movie. You could several boxes all holding parts of the movie. And since we are in the digital domain, you could have each box holding different bits to each frame of the movie. You therefore make any portion of any movie sitting on your box unwatchable. There would be absolutely ZERO way for anyone to hack the box and copy the movie files off it.

Right now though if say 50 people want to own Titanic, it sits on 50 boxes in its entirety rather than 1/50th of the movie on 50 boxes or some other fraction.

From a content owner point of view, this is the most secure. From the user point of view, storage is no longer an issue as the movie is always there to watch (you'd have enough "backup" peers for each segment). The only exception would be if you want to take the box with you some place where there is no network connection. But that could be accomplished by an archive mechanism where you could either stream the movie or download it locally and take with and then later "archive" it.

I just don't understand why this is not embraced....

As for Tom's point about never renting enough to make up for the purchase price - for most films that sure is true. However, for things like kids videos - heh, it's about the only thing we still buy DVDs for....

[HeadHodge]

Re: VUDU Surpasses 1,000 Custom Installer Milestone

Right now though if say 50 people want to own Titanic, it sits on 50 boxes in its entirety rather than 1/50th of the movie on 50 boxes or some other fraction.

From a content owner point of view, this is the most secure. From the user point of view, storage is no longer an issue as the movie is always there to watch (you'd have enough "backup" peers for each segment). The only exception would be if you want to take the box with you some place where there is no network connection. But that could be accomplished by an archive mechanism where you could either stream the movie or download it locally and take with and then later "archive" it.

I just don't understand why this is not embraced....

Isn't that what I just said??