The term "Straight to video" may soon be as passé as the video cassette. Youtube could soon be the preffered choice of distribution for young filmmakers and c-movies starring Jean-claude Van damne if a big distribution cannot be secured. Recently the movie Princess of Nebraska premiered at Youtube. First weekend it scored a view count of 140 000. The plot: "Princess of Nebraska is about a young girl, under 20 and pregnant, who comes to the states with no background for the cultural revolution. She doesn’t know about Tiananmen Square, and really, ...Read More

Straight to Youtube

Warner Bros. is about to try a new distribution model in South Korea. They will start releasing movies online two weeks before they are even available on DVD. This is a trial but if it proves successful it might get exported to China (the worlds largest market for home entertainment) and other countries. The move shows that Warner is the bravest and smartest Studio today - they've previously narrowed the release windows on DVD and VOD and today most movies are released the same day. The other Studios haven't made that ...Read More

Warner releasing digitally before physical

Finally someone from the film industry admits there's something wrong with DRM. Sony Pictures Television president John McMahon said a couple of days ago: DRM is one of the main reasons why people turn to file-sharing networks, instead of legal alternatives Great insight! I wonder how many are pissed off on this guy right now? Didn't expect this statement from a Studio, especially not from a company like Sony (which has a tradition of doing things their way and enforcing DRM on eh..everything). It kinda swept away the arguments for DRM. How can ...Read More

Sony admits: DRM increase piracy

The current hype regarding online video is around streaming and streaming services. Hulu was amongst the first to offer a broad range of content in good quality when it came earlier this year and now claim to serve millions of streams every day. Numbers are starting to come in and so far it looks like they attract a lot of consumers though studios say they have difficulties to monetize the free viewings. So exactly how well do free perform versus transactional viewings? I recently got some numbers from one company who trials both ...Read More

Free vs paid video on demand

Since the start of online video services there's been a fear that online services will cannibalize packaged media (DVD and Blu-ray). This fear is one of the reasons studios have been restrictive with licensing content and also why some still have a release window between DVD, downloads and video on demand (VOD). Not licensing content is part of the plan "not making the same mistakes as the music industry". I like to bust myths. This day it's time to kill the online-video-will-cannibalize-the-DVD-myth. It's true that the music industry made mistakes and was ...Read More

Video on demand increases DVD sales