Electric Shadow

WWE Creates a "New" Network

I'm surprised that World Wrestling Entertainment didn't move sooner in creating a streaming network. For $10 per month, users have access to tons of back catalogue content in addition to each of their monthly "Pay Per View" mega-events:

In addition to new shows, the app will also grant you access to more than 100,000 hours of video-on-demand content, including every previous pay-per-view event from WWE, WCW, and ECW. It will become available on desktops and laptops and through the WWE app for iOS and Android, and the Kindle Fire. Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and 4, and Roku will also be able to access the network. The network will be available in the United States to start, with additional countries coming later this year and early next year.

I find most notable in the above not the official omission of AppleTV (the most bizarrely impenetrable platform for major streaming brands, oddly), but that WWE Network is going global. Since WWE control their worldwide SVOD rights, they have no reason to use middlemen (like cable and satellite providers) to sub-distribute them.

They needed CES so little to make this a big deal to their very dedicated following. I'm surprised they didn't just make a standalone event of their own, or build it into their signature Monday Night RAW show. As a result, this is the biggest announcement to come out of CES in five years, maybe ten.

I think of the BBC and ITV in the UK, whose blockbuster series Doctor Who & Sherlock, as well as Downton Abbey respectively, have fanbases with money to spend who want to avoid time-displaced spoilers. They have respective business interests, like sub-licensing to PBS in the States and BBC's own America variant, but there are still cable providers in the year 2014 who don't offer BBCA in HD, for crying out loud.

UPDATE from Twitter reader Tim Cooke (note the "e"):

3D, Flattening

TheWrap reports some rather damning statistics from the opening weeks of Thor 2 in the US, and it's info that studios should use to honestly consider upcoming productions:

With around 80 percent of its 3,841 screens offering the format, roughly 39 percent of Disney’s Marvel superhero sequel’s $85.7 million opening weekend grosses came from 3D. That’s still about $33 million, but a solid majority of moviegoers opted to see it in 2D rather than put on the glasses.

If it always looked great, from production (or post-conversion) to in-theatre execution, the story might have been markedly different. Hollywood cannot offer its customers the promise of an unparalleled, high-end experience and deliver less-than-adequate results. You can only rip people off for so long.

GigaOm: Movie "Ownership" is "Over"

This piece from GigaOm is the most idiotic bit of writing from the tech sector about entertainment that I've seen in some time, and that's saying something.

The Digital Entertainment Group, a trade association that tracks revenue in this space, doesn’t differentiate between movie and TV shows when talking about digital sales, but an industry insider told me that between 80 and 90 percent of all digital movie revenue comes from rentals, not sales.

None of his cited data comparisons are compared equitably. He puts gross subscription service (Netflix) revenue, which did not exist a few years ago, against physical media sales. His analysis is anything but objective, and that he doesn't qualify the insight of his "industry insider" source makes them as authoritative as an intern in a mailroom discussing an entire studio's performance.

iTunes sales data has actually shown the opposite, as has physical media purchase data. This one guy's preferences, behavior, and experiences no more dictate the market than I do as an individual. The data contradicts him regarding media ownership, and that he plays so much into what many have said studios want us to do (prefer rental to "ownership") is further evidence of how weak and utterly facile his "analysis" is here.

What would interest me is a look at the conversion of rental revenue since the late 90's from retail into SVOD rentals and RedBox (which GigaOm never mentions…too bourgeois for them?).

Austin Might be Next for Google Fiber

If this ends up true as reported by Tom Cheredar for VentureBeat, it's a great sign for the future of broadband in the United States:

While city officials are staying quiet, multiple sources tell VentureBeat that the announcement could involve expanding Google’s gigabit broadband Internet service Google Fiber to Austin. Alternately, the city could announce plans for a new Austin-based Google campus, or even some partnership to involve the city with a new Google service. Obviously, we don’t know what the announcement will entail, but its safe to say that it’ll be of interest to a broad section of the local community.

As creepy as Google has gotten, I can't shake the hope this we end up nationally move toward making internet access a public utility.

The Emperor's Magic Box

There have been a number of developments of late that have started to finally awaken the vocal when it comes to the ridiculous state of digital movie and TV distribution in the U.S. There are various failings that all have to be remedied to keep the selling of movies and TV shows viable in all forms, including physical media. puzzlebox.jpg So many have tried to peg one brand on my generation, the one allegedly ruining the music and movie industries with their compulsive downloading. Since my childhood, I've repeatedly heard how spoiled my generation is, how we've never really had to suffer or go without, and I absolutely agree. We're a bunch of spoiled, uncultured jerks for the most part. Our "rebellion" has emulated that of previous generations, as has our choice in fashion. We're nothing if not derivative to a fault in our collective output and analysis of the world around us. Advances in technology and how we use it have highlighted us as a generation of Little Emperors, the Generation of Entitlement. Our tantrums and acting out have hastened the decline in profitability for media that we thrive on, as we want it now and the established infrastructure of delivery isn't fast enough to keep up. What many are ignoring is that it's not just the bad eggs who are the problem when it comes to media delivery. Everyone has become fed up with how hard it is to do something that seems so easy: giving people the content they want when they want it. The Fall of Brick & Mortar I recently had trouble finding a Best Picture winner (1951's An American In Paris) the day of release on Blu-ray at Best Buy. The closing of Circuit City has also been noted as another reason Best Buy remains comfortable only stocking catalogue releases online and not in-store. As noted in my piece linked above, this phenomenon is not limited to Best Buy, and the only place in Austin I've found these titles is Fry's Electronics, a filthy barn of a place. Jeff recently noted that for the life of him, he couldn't find a copy of the newly restored and remastered Nickelodeon from director Peter Bogdanovich. If you can't find it in New York City, there's something wrong. Why have physical media if you can't go and get it? The thrill of the hunt is a big part of the joy. The majority of my first date with my wife was comprised of scouring Tallahassee, Florida for one specific title on DVD. There used to be just a price premium in the way of getting something in person, but now you don't even have the option to get it, even if you pay more. With the Virgin Megastores closing, Richard Branson's own proclamation that the future isn't in brick & mortar outlets is coming true all around us. The Content Many blame the recession and the proliferation of illegal downloading as reasons you can't walk into stores and find any given new title anymore. That's part of it, but it's also because these stores were never focused on giving the customer the software they want. Instead, the software was the carrot to get you in the door and sell you cables and various other things they make their real money on. If they don't want me in there messing up their pretty store with my sophisticated taste, then fine, I'll shop from my couch. If I could push a button and rent the complete feature package available on the Gigi Blu-ray to watch it with my wife and mother-in-law tonight, I would. The same goes for hundreds, thousands of titles. I'd pay the same $5 I gave Blockbuster to rent Doubt last week if it meant I got access to all the stuff on the disc for around a week, with unlimited replay during that window. I would like this even more if it meant that I could then have some sort of incentive coupon toward buying the physical disc from whoever I streamed the "disc". This would also assuage my rage when I can't pick up a Blu-ray at a store during the week of release. I could then tolerate the wait for an online retailer to ship it. Just thinking about it makes my heart skip a beat. Criterion is experimenting with this through their streaming program, where you can watch the movie online for $5 and then for a year thereafter apply that $5 toward purchasing the disc from them. Juliet of the Spirits, Mon Oncle, and Cleo from 5 to 7 are among the 46 titles they have available. They do not as yet have special features-enabled pay-to-stream options, but I'll be first in line when they do. I just wish I could watch these on my TV. The content is and has been out there in some forms, but not wrapped in an end-to-end model that works for everyone. What we need is a real Swiss Army Knife approach to delivery of content. A box that is WiFi enabled and can sync media of any flavor from your computer or stream from various online outlets is what everyone would want in very general terms. The Magic Box There are tons of movies and TV shows from various studios on Netflix Watch Instantly, which you can watch on your computer, an Xbox 360, or the Roku set-top box (which also does Amazon HD). So far as I'm concerned, I'm not going to plug my computer into my TV, and my wife is never going to allow a new game system in the door, so the Roku box would be my option, right? Not a chance. Even at $100, I'm not going to buy what could become vaporware as standardization progresses. It's connected to only the Netflix W.I. service and Amazon, which while great at the moment, I can't be certain is worth the investment. No matter how good or great a company is that's behind a device, I can't ever bet on just one horse in this game. No matter how much anyone pushes any individual box to me, I am not buying in at a volatile point in the development of such a complex solution. What about if and when someone comes through with the Magic Box I want, which includes access to DVD-style special features? The bottleneck will still come, mark my words, in terms of studio support. All the majors are working on their own gate to the content they own, from Hulu to Crackle to others I can't pronounce. Unlike the HD-DVD/Blu-ray war, there's no physical media format involved here, eliminating a big chunk of user adoption pain. Everyone uses the same codecs for digital, they have since the introduction of DVD. However, what happens when Sony, NBCUni, Paramount, Warner Bros or someone else goes with their own competing service or box? Notice I don't use the word "if". What we really need is a couple companies that make clone boxes that have standard hardware, open-source OS software, and options for software customization. Who cares which service something comes from? I really like what the guys at Boxee have going, and in my opinion, they're the only ones on the right track. All anyone wants is the content and a clean interface. The day these guys get a solid manufacturer putting their OS on a box and selling them for $100 is the day digital downloads really take off. The Pipe None of the spitballing above means anything until broadband finally gets somewhat standardized across the country. What Koreans consider slow is three times the top speed available in major metro areas in the U.S. Ma and Pa in the hinterlands are still transitioning from dial-up, and when you add WiFi into the equation, they get even more confused. Time Warner Cable has decided to freeze their plans to move forward with ultra-high-speed expansion in areas they had earmarked for metered billing. As I've gone on about previously, before they delayed their plan to institute metered billing, TWC is very interested in taking us back to 1995 when it comes to how we access the internet, charging based on usage. Charging by the databyte is like charging a customer at retail for the standard disc price and then and additional arm and a leg for all the freight and storage costs tagged to that disc. Who would pay $45 to watch Twilight streamed over their internet connection to their TV? You should charge for how fast people get where they're going. Nothing else appeals to anyone but the megacorporations we're writing checks to each month. Now comes word that TWC is arbitrarily disconnecting "abusive" users. Whether the guy in question was torrenting 44GB of illegal media or not, that's not an unheard-of amount of data for someone who streams a lot, even YouTube at high quality or HD trailers on Apple's website. I'm all for the pipe-owners policing contraband going through, but assuming everyone's a criminal is irresponsible and will only turn subscribers away. As the conversation has escalated in targeted markets, so has the investigation into towns setting up their own public internet utilities, and some of them are looking pretty competitive. The most unexpected result of all the hubbub could be a major shift in how high speed internet access proliferates. Put new jobs into it and pull away the corporate veil, and it might finally spread like wildfire. The major conglomerates are just going to bury themselves, because they no longer have a President who will let them run free of regulation. He also happens to hold net neutrality as a top issue, and I have a feeling that he isn't interested in helping the conglom ISPs make publicly-owned ISPs illegal. The Bottom Line Digital downloads are coming on apace, but those who allege that people will get over physical media are dead wrong. Human beings will continue to be materialistic hoarders according to their nature (take a class in Anthro sometime). Beyond that, due to limits in the pace of broad adoption in hardware, software, and bandwidth, there will always be a healthy appetite for the highest quality available. As far as the disc media itself goes, all releases going forward should include a digital copy at no premium charge. If you buy it, you should be getting access to that without bothering your tech-head friend. People want this stuff on their portable media players and computers, so don't give them an excuse as to why they feel entitled to break your DRM. When people aren't given the appropriate options in terms of access and selection, they'll find a way. They'll download illegal files from the net, burn them to disc, or sync them to internet-connected home theater PCs. Bootleg DVD stands will pop up in larger numbers. It's up to Hollywood as to whether they want to make money on all the opportunity staring them in the face, but they're screwed if hardware and bandwidth providers let them down. We're on the brink of the most interdependent age in home media we've hit yet, and it'll be fascinating to see how it all unfolds, even if my Magic Box never happens.
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Love and Hate Blu

A couple days ago, Adam Jahnke (a columnist for The Digital Bits) wrote about what is really driving him nuts about Blu-ray, a format he feels like he should love but simply can't. I've recently touched on this during the Let the Right One In subtitle brouhaha, wondering aloud why people should have to acquire new physical software to change something so simple, technologically speaking, as new subtitles. I'd go a step further and say what a number of people already say amongst themselves: how many Blu-ray users have their players connected to the internet in the first place? Gamers with Playstation 3's certainly, and some home theater enthusiasts might, but isn't the rest of the population only just getting comfortable with the idea of WiFi? As it stands, with looming broadband access caps from at least Time Warner, is BD-Live already dead? There's yet to be a BD-Live killer app, and if it will now cost a premium to have the kind of pipe taken for granted by the format, there may never be. The real solution that consumers would be behind is some sort of Magic Box. It would allow them to rent and watch movies instantly, record live TV, access various streaming services (Hulu/YouTube/etc.) to catch up on shows, and finally, watch DVD-style supplemental features all in one place. You could always buy physical copies that are higher quality than you could ever download, but as for most sides of the TV-bound media-watching experience, consumers want some serious consolidation, and not for an insane premium. Frankly, many are already doing a lot of this with home theater-connected computers, but again, the bandwidth caps being put in place are bringing all this proliferation to a screeching halt. The conversation is less about whether physical or download media will win, but whether either will survive very well. I've run close to off-topic, but here's what I'm getting at: Blu-ray's calling card with BD-Live was that it was supposed to remove the need for hooking a computer up to the TV, and even though it's not living up to that promise (never could), there are no alternatives thanks to limitations being imposed elsewhere. In this era of endless digital possibility, nothing is yet living up. Don't get me started on Blu-ray releases lacking key things in first releases (supplements, lossless video or audio). I love Blu-ray but it drives me nuts almost as often.
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Keep FEARnet On

...and not because I'm a fan. It isn't that I hate it, I just can't honestly say I've watched it but once. On the VOD channel. I never watch Palladium or a bunch of other channels on my lineup, but I have to stand up for this as freedom of content choice. Time Warner Cable has bigger issues on their hands, but this is an indicator of the direction they're going. They want everything to go through the Road Runner Reich when it comes to programming. I like that I could on a whim watch Swamp Thing for free (ad supported) last year. So much of the cable landscape is so disgustingly generic, it's nice for there to be alternatives. So what gives, does TWC not get a big enough cut for their liking? How much more sense does this all make than the Great NBC-KXAN Blackout of 2008? Did those "How to Connect Your Computer to Your TV" videos backfire?
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Subtitle Subtleties

I reviewed Let the Right One In on Blu-ray over a week ago, and what has just come out is that Magnolia dropped a different subtitle track on us than was on the theatrical version. I only watched the film once before the DVD release, back at Fantastic Fest. I never had a screener that I re-watched multiple times. I just spent a lunch hour re-re-watching most of the film, and it is definitely a different interpretation of what I raved over in September. It's my bad for not catching this, but what bothers me the most is that when I went through watching the film for review, I didn't even pick up on the major changes. The distance of roughly five months did that for me. I did notice it was different, but this is nothing new on non-English films. Routinely, the home video translation is different (more often worse) than the theatrical edition. The original subtitle track is usually done in the country of origin, and just as most foreign education systems, their translators are better than ours in the U.S. Of course, when it comes time to pay people, things like subtitles and music and so on are licensed separately for home video than theatrical or broadcast. This is why you find the Married...With Children DVDs don't feature "Love And Marriage" like the syndicated re-runs do. This is also why imported east Asian releases generally feature better translations than the eventually-released U.S. discs. What I'm about to theorize is entirely anecdotal based on prior experience, and is not based on any sort of official confirmation. I don't think anyone's going to get anything but radio silence from asking Magnolia what's going on. Rather than pay residuals or a lump license fee to the original foreign studio, what Magnolia has done is business as usual. They paid a domestic (U.S.) vendor to re-do the translation on the cheap. Sony does this, WB does this, [insert studio here] does this. So that there is no challenge of plagiarism, the new translation has to be distinct from the original. If it's too close, then there's justification for a lawsuit. I don't defend this practice, I'm just saying it's how things are done. I've been screaming into the void about this for years on Spanish and Chinese movies that have horrible translations. The only way people will ever be at peace on the subtitle fidelity issue is if Blu-ray developers leverage BD-Live for something useful, instead of gimmicky features no one is using. You can currently record your own commentary track on BD-Live, why not allow people to put their own subs on whatever they want? Anime importers have done their own subtitles for a couple decades now, with much cruder tools. The tech is there, use it for a constructive purpose. Don't like the subtitle track that came with a disc? Download one. Make your own. Users could trade trivia tracks or swap ones that are badly translated on purpose. If the studios want people to buy their product, they need to think beyond the box, or U.S. region copies will sit on the shelves. The die-hards will spend more money and import exactly the product they want from overseas. Amazon, YesAsia, and so on will reap the hefty profits. This now has me wondering what might have been changed in the domestic release of Chocolate, also from Magnolia.
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CultureOfDemand: Shopaholicism

"Shop therapy" is something more Americans than not have become addicted to over the last few decades in particular. They engage in indulgent overspending to make themselves feel better in the face of all sorts of adversities. At the end of the day, they're more in debt and have more crap they don't need. They avoid hard work and skate by on credit. All of these values are spotlit by an upcoming film, but shown through a very troubling lens indeed. The most galling part of the trailer for Confessions of a Shopaholic is that it says it's ok to act like an idiot about debt and consumerism now more than ever; however, as much as I decry it, I've been as much part of the problem as everyone else. Tuesday used to be a weekly holiday for me called "DVD Tuesday" when I was in college. I had a gold Discount Card sold by the Lacrosse team that got you 10% off all purchases excluding TVs & computers at Best Buy. That coupled with the standard release week discounting made my bang-for-buck extremely high when it came to loading up on DVDs. This was great for my film education and in the same stroke, horrible for my credit rating. The lousy credit education I got in high school combined with the easy availability of Student Credit Cards and my lack of interest in learning about what I was getting myself into plunged me into debt I'm still getting rid of years later, no longer buffered by cheap student living and financial aid. Over the last three or four years, I've become a fervent anti-credit activist, with close friends and relatives sometimes yelling at me about how vehemently I pour hate on lending as a concept. Even at this point, people have such a lack of knowledgeability about credit debt, financing, and the US economy that they are dismissing the "cratering" world markets as something that doesn't and won't affect them. If you want a good look at predatory lending and financing practices that doesn't pull any punches, take a look at Maxed Out, a doc I covered from the 2006 South by Southwest Film Festival that Magnolia released on DVD a while back. Rent it via Amazon VOD here, buy the DVD from Amazon here, or Rent/Buy on iTunes. I've been shaking my head at what Shopaholic represents since I heard it was announced. Especially in this climate, where things are going to get worse before they get better due to the nature of our economy, I am now anticipating the release of Confessions of a Shopaholic for a couple reasons. I wonder if it will open-and-close thanks to a public who doesn't want to be reminded of the reason we've destroyed our economy, or will the B.H. Chihuahua crowd go in droves, still deluded that "Happy days are here again"? Culture of Demand is a recurring feature of Arthouse Cowboy focusing on the growing on-demand nature of how people think of and consume media from an anthropological perspective. If I miss a "digital" option of how to watch something, please let me know.
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CultureOfDemand: Che for kids

Re: Jeff's Che post about something Karina Longworth wrote about Che appeal to the 20something generation... As a member of the Generation of Doom, I'm an anomaly in my unrepentant eagerness to see Che for a couple reasons: I was reared on movies like Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia and not only tolerate but expect 3-hour plus running times and vague moral perspective from great films, and on top of that, my father's direct immersion (I'm gonna withhold using the word 'involvement') in the Cuban revolution of '59 makes me more interested in El Che than the average 25 year-old who thinks they know a lot about movies. When I worked on a campus programming board when I was an undergrad, there was always great resistance to anything that ran over TWO hours, let alone 3. Well, unless there were hobbits in it. The anecdote that a reader passed along a while back about some idiot in Best Buy not knowing what Citizen Kane was reminded me of these meetings where I would be alone in the room when I brought up Antonioni or Bresson, and any time I would mention Lawrence or Zhivago, one person or another would pipe in with "my dad likes it a lot, but isn't it, like, 60 years old or something?" At a certain point, it was like the High School Student Council was deciding that The Little Mermaid or Hackers made a better "Midnight Movie" than El Topo or Pink Flamingos. Culture of Demand is a recurring feature of Arthouse Cowboy focusing on the growing on-demand nature of how people think of and consume media from an anthropological perspective. If I miss a "digital" option of how to watch something, please let me know.
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