The Future of video rentals
Although the Internet has already provided a lot of possibilities to the video rental and pay-per-view industries: Electronic Program Guides (EPG), online movie catalogues and information services have helped movie watchers to enjoy more of their cinematic experiences.
Now, however, time being a very valuable resource – the tedious 30 minute movie selecting and driving to the rental store just to stand in line and notice that the movie you want is already rented out might not be a problem with the next generation of home cinema.
Currently the world is caught in a wind of change, making people more wary of new technologies and their spending habits. DVD has risen from the ashes of VHS to be the new victor, but Bluray and similar technologies are lurking behind the corner and a truly digital, unphysical medium solution is a near certainty in the future seen already in the appearance of hard disk recorders in our living rooms and the viral spreading of peer-to-peer exhange of (illegal) movie copies.
This next step in the digital evolution is already taken up by several traditional manufacturers, such as Philips’ Streamium and Microsoft’s Media Center products which have been hailed as something that might produce a working digital entertainment environment in normal houses. Having the services closer to the consumers we are able to see the subtle change of the consumer wave turning slowly towards a digital world.
This time is a promising era for introducing new services, such as our idea of a easy access, entry-level, low-cost digital video rental system that works through the broadband systems of our houses and delivers cinematic pleasure when demanded by the consumer. Since there already are a lot of video rental companies out there, such as Blockbuster – using the existing infrastructure and brand will help the penetration of a new service considerably.
The key issue is to return video rentals back to their position where they had a strong presence in the entertainment market before Internet and it’s piracy and fast moving sharing. Rental companies will have great benefits using their contacts to movie companies directly, being able to promise that their delivery channel is a legal one and through the co-operation with hardware manufacturers they are able to produce a hardcoded, working Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution that is both fast and easy to use for both the consumer and the movie encoder and secure enough to turn the movie executives heads from their Internet=Piracy point of view to a more open and developing direction.
On a strategic level, the effort must conquer the following aspects:
1. Movie encoding and quality issues
2. Co-operation with hardware manufacturers
3. Digital Rights Management
4. Very user-oriented User Interface
5. Co-operation with movie companies
6. Technical issues
Since DVD has taken over the market, video quality demand has risen to a new level and the consumers expect nothing less, the MPEG4 technology is a method to pack video to one tenth of the size with little loss in the quality. With specified hardware, this might be the optimal solution. Specific players having a decoding chip would offer system developers a platform to design and improve the output of the MPEG-technology.
The DRM is an issue that is standing in front of many doors: Investors are afraid to put their money to unsure ventures, movie companies dare not deliver their movies fearing that they will spill out of the box and be lost to the great void of the Internet, normal users don’t want to pay for something they think they might get for free etc. With a generally acknowledged DRM standard the market would be very approachable. Since networking equipment all have a specific MAC-address we will be able to decode user-specific systems, secure and flexible to both the intellectual property owner and the user.
Many people tell that setting the timer on the VCR is difficult, one might think that their fear is at least equal in speaking of digital movies downloaded to a small box under your television. The user interface (UI) is a key component in this venture, it has to be easily localised, very graphical and most important of all – logical. The systems of remote controls and our experience from web design research should be able to create a working system.
Having movie companies in the process is a very important, since that will give the marketing channels and resources available to the rental companies. The background structure of the service being similar to the idea of Apple’s iTunes music store. The largest problem with technical issues is the scalability, since users will require a fast service, we need to have enough resources to provide the rush of people all wanting to see Titanic 2 or some similar super-hype movie and the system cannot be too massive and expensive to maintain while a nice summer day when everybody is outside.
Profitability will come from the savings of physical locations: Renting premises, staff, physical media which we don’t have to think which will be a success and which not, since all products are available to everyone all the time. Also we can use advertising partners with the service and charge a premium from those who do not want to see any advertisement.
The competetive advantage on the service is it’s convenience and speed factors, plus having an online solution offers a virtually limitless selection available for the user. Another benefit for the users is to have access to a database such as offered by the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and similar cognitive solutions as used by the Amazon webstore which recognize the taste of the user and can offer a list of movies that is created from the previous selections and evaluation of the viewer.
The system can also be used in hotels, hospitals and other public places where the current systems can be replaced by a proxy server that replicates mainstream and popular movies to be available fast to the users. The whole system works as a streaming solution from a mosaic style network with local proxies available for larger communities or critical locations in urban areas.
As a project, the system design is mainly modular technically and network based with movie companies. The payment system can be done in several ways, credit cards, online bank systems, charging with the subscription and usage cards sold in retail chains which also work as great competition prizes adding more value for advertisers.
Now, however, time being a very valuable resource – the tedious 30 minute movie selecting and driving to the rental store just to stand in line and notice that the movie you want is already rented out might not be a problem with the next generation of home cinema.
Currently the world is caught in a wind of change, making people more wary of new technologies and their spending habits. DVD has risen from the ashes of VHS to be the new victor, but Bluray and similar technologies are lurking behind the corner and a truly digital, unphysical medium solution is a near certainty in the future seen already in the appearance of hard disk recorders in our living rooms and the viral spreading of peer-to-peer exhange of (illegal) movie copies.
This next step in the digital evolution is already taken up by several traditional manufacturers, such as Philips’ Streamium and Microsoft’s Media Center products which have been hailed as something that might produce a working digital entertainment environment in normal houses. Having the services closer to the consumers we are able to see the subtle change of the consumer wave turning slowly towards a digital world.
This time is a promising era for introducing new services, such as our idea of a easy access, entry-level, low-cost digital video rental system that works through the broadband systems of our houses and delivers cinematic pleasure when demanded by the consumer. Since there already are a lot of video rental companies out there, such as Blockbuster – using the existing infrastructure and brand will help the penetration of a new service considerably.
The key issue is to return video rentals back to their position where they had a strong presence in the entertainment market before Internet and it’s piracy and fast moving sharing. Rental companies will have great benefits using their contacts to movie companies directly, being able to promise that their delivery channel is a legal one and through the co-operation with hardware manufacturers they are able to produce a hardcoded, working Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution that is both fast and easy to use for both the consumer and the movie encoder and secure enough to turn the movie executives heads from their Internet=Piracy point of view to a more open and developing direction.
On a strategic level, the effort must conquer the following aspects:
1. Movie encoding and quality issues
2. Co-operation with hardware manufacturers
3. Digital Rights Management
4. Very user-oriented User Interface
5. Co-operation with movie companies
6. Technical issues
Since DVD has taken over the market, video quality demand has risen to a new level and the consumers expect nothing less, the MPEG4 technology is a method to pack video to one tenth of the size with little loss in the quality. With specified hardware, this might be the optimal solution. Specific players having a decoding chip would offer system developers a platform to design and improve the output of the MPEG-technology.
The DRM is an issue that is standing in front of many doors: Investors are afraid to put their money to unsure ventures, movie companies dare not deliver their movies fearing that they will spill out of the box and be lost to the great void of the Internet, normal users don’t want to pay for something they think they might get for free etc. With a generally acknowledged DRM standard the market would be very approachable. Since networking equipment all have a specific MAC-address we will be able to decode user-specific systems, secure and flexible to both the intellectual property owner and the user.
Many people tell that setting the timer on the VCR is difficult, one might think that their fear is at least equal in speaking of digital movies downloaded to a small box under your television. The user interface (UI) is a key component in this venture, it has to be easily localised, very graphical and most important of all – logical. The systems of remote controls and our experience from web design research should be able to create a working system.
Having movie companies in the process is a very important, since that will give the marketing channels and resources available to the rental companies. The background structure of the service being similar to the idea of Apple’s iTunes music store. The largest problem with technical issues is the scalability, since users will require a fast service, we need to have enough resources to provide the rush of people all wanting to see Titanic 2 or some similar super-hype movie and the system cannot be too massive and expensive to maintain while a nice summer day when everybody is outside.
Profitability will come from the savings of physical locations: Renting premises, staff, physical media which we don’t have to think which will be a success and which not, since all products are available to everyone all the time. Also we can use advertising partners with the service and charge a premium from those who do not want to see any advertisement.
The competetive advantage on the service is it’s convenience and speed factors, plus having an online solution offers a virtually limitless selection available for the user. Another benefit for the users is to have access to a database such as offered by the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and similar cognitive solutions as used by the Amazon webstore which recognize the taste of the user and can offer a list of movies that is created from the previous selections and evaluation of the viewer.
The system can also be used in hotels, hospitals and other public places where the current systems can be replaced by a proxy server that replicates mainstream and popular movies to be available fast to the users. The whole system works as a streaming solution from a mosaic style network with local proxies available for larger communities or critical locations in urban areas.
As a project, the system design is mainly modular technically and network based with movie companies. The payment system can be done in several ways, credit cards, online bank systems, charging with the subscription and usage cards sold in retail chains which also work as great competition prizes adding more value for advertisers.
posted by Unknown at 2:14 pm
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