As I stated yesterday, I was admitted to the new video site Hulu, which is apparently the networks finally offering a legal way to access their stuff online. Unfortunately, it's a last ditch effort that, in my opinion, still doesn't hold a candle to the likes of the itunes video store... oh except the fact that some of the content can't be found on itunes anymore, but instead only on hulu. Great.

I'll start with this. Hulu is nothing more than a website with a library of television episodes and clips. The difference being the episodes are full episodes, and the clips are downright useless bits torn from tv shows. It presents a small flash player in the top middle of the screen, but allows fullscreen (however full-screen flash video tends to skip on my pc where regular mpegs and avis do just fine.)

A neat feature that I noticed right off is the ability to add videos to a playlist queue instead of just play each one right off. This allowed for setting up your own little tv station. Setting it, sitting back, and enjoying. All-in-all, pretty well pulled off, if you ask me.

But is it all bliss? Hulu does a good job being just as conservative as the rest of the industry by offering only select episodes from certain shows, making seasons with continuity completely useless unless you just happened to miss that particular one they have. There are no downloads available, and everything must be played through their player on their site, making everybody crowd around the pc once again, and showing innovation that it's no longer important in innovative technologies.

Media center integration? Nope. Network player playability? Nope. Mp3 player? Nope. Useful? Not really.

It was fun for an evening, but unfortunately it doesn't make me want to go back.

Which brings me to an obvious point. I am finally at that very breaking point where I want the studios to know that I've got a lot of money here that I wish I could spend that I just don't.

I see no reason to purchase a downloadable video on amazon's unbox for aproximately the same price as the disc format. The catch? It's filled tip top to the brim with DRM. Can I play it on my portable media device? Probably not- unless you have an approved player. Can I play it on my network player? Nope.. unless you want to buy our apple tv/tivo/insert $300-$500 product here.

If I ever felt like spending $300 on a player, maybe I'd be insane. Understandable that we should spend some money on the right equiptment to play the media, but $300? It's like an artist who sells paintings for $20, but you need to purchase a special $300 canvas to look at it. That doesn't make any sense. Now apply this miserable example to the digital world. You'll buy the $300 canvas, and 15 paintings which show up on the canvas. But bad news, the canvas is out of date and the company went under. Your paintings are useless to you now. Why would I spend $300 on a player to ensure that my proprietary videos that are locked to the device will play - when either one could crap out at any time?

If there's one thing obvious about DRM that the music industry has shown us, it's that eventually DRM will collapse. You can now buy MP3s from amazon. No protection. Nada.

So is it safe to buy into all this technology that ensures nothing but protection to the studios? Probably not. We are at mid-way camp, between the old way and the new way, and things will continue changing as they have been. All that money you'll spend on that content will ensure nothing other than the fact that you'll be stuck with that device to play that media- for a hefty price tag. Compared to a DVD and DVD player, which have been around for a good long time. They're tried and true. And best yet- for a much lower price tag- you have selection of players, movies, and less restrictions on using them (save the whole region thing, which violates fair use just as badly as DRM).

So what should we learn? I would gladly pay $2 and episode if it came in a video format that I could easily copy to my mp3 player, and play on my network player. Would that make it easier to pirate? Yes. Would it increase piracy? No. In fact, it would lower demand for piracy. I myself would gladly purchase a library of videos of similar high quality that I can expect than waste my precious time finding random torrents to fill in gaps in season 3, and then find a codec to play 0305.avi. (Don't get me started on how containers broke the extensions convention, with random codecs all stuck in AVIs.)

So what can we learn from Porn? Simple: Their stuff is pirated. Their stuff is avilable for free in samples provided by the very creators of the content. Yet the porn industry is doing great! And guess what- 99% of it has no DRM. I can download a porn flick, put it on my mp3 player, play it on the network player, play it in media center, and even use it on products that don't yet exist today.

The lesson? People want convenience. Anybody who's tried to collect a moderately good quality version of an entire tv season knows you can spend hours and waste time with piracy. It is at best a major inconvenience. But sadly, consumers find this major inconvenience more convenient than the legal system.

People will not purchase the same content more than once. If I'm going to have to buy additional items to get the same movie to play on my ipod vs my network player- be certain that I won't purchase your product.

DRM is driving MORE people to piracy. Making un-DRM'd content more easily and affordably available will drive the demand for piracy down, and people will stop bothering. I mean, people just want convenience. Heck- people 'round these parts pay $50 to spend 25% of each hour watching advertisements. Why? Cause it's convenient.

Stumble this article.

Riev_Mordred @ 12/14/07 "In all honesty, I download my TV shows specifically because I hate DVDs. I'm not saying they're bad, but I'd rather have a playlist that runs multiple episodes, than to stick in a new DVD every 3 episodes. Would it keep me from pirating? Likely not, but I'd sure feel worse about it." FredFredrickson @ 12/14/07 "See I'm getting sick of ripping DVDs, and pirating is a bitch" Riev_Mordred @ 12/14/07 "Pirating TV shows is easy enough for me, movies it is not. DVDs are incredibly annoying to navigate. For $20 (twice the cost of the movie in theaters) it should be easy enough to sit down and watch" Login to comment...

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