Video on demand or own collection? [Archive]

unmei

16th July 2004, 15:29

OK i voted i prefer my own collection. But maybe i should explain this a bit. I think VOD like online music stores are good ideas. For other people :p
My main reason for voting for my own collection is that i do not buy anything over the net. This paid services as well as ordering physical stuff over the net.
The only thing i could imagine in this direction is joining a service by my ISP allowing you to watch online for a fixed rate per month (my ISP is the swiss cable TV provider so this is not so unlikely in the future, actually they already offer online TV, but only limited channels and not with choice of what you watch). The idea here is that it were like a tuned internet service and i would not have to order it online.
But then again this would most likely have a rather limited choice of titles.

Now, in the current situation i don't i need anything like that even though it could be nice. I have my fansubs that keep my desire for non-animated movies relatively small. The bi-weekly to monthly normal movie i watch are most likely european or 'classic' movies. The 'classics' are almost all available at my videotheque and for the rest i buy them, which also gives me new fodder for encoding :)

You said "don't count illegal copies", so with only video on demand you would never again get to make an encode *shudder* :p

ppera2

16th July 2004, 15:39

Originally posted by unmei
You said "don't count illegal copies", so with only video on demand you would never again get to make an encode *shudder* :p

Explain that slang (?) 'shudder'. I make lot of encodes of amateur videos. I don't see that such material will ever vanish.

unmei

16th July 2004, 16:30

I tought it was approximately a synonym for 'to shiver', but english is not my native language :(

And yes you're right, of course you still had amateur video. I do not produce/encode these, or only that rarely that i did not think about it before.

Doom9

16th July 2004, 16:35

Making collection: you can't get all what you want, because choice is limited. Don't count here illegal copies.You have to be fair and admit that this will never happen with online distribution as well. Look at todays music stores.. it's not about how much storage space you require, it's also not so much about how much bandwidth it takes, it starts with the very basic problem of getting all the required licenses. For many movies it will be extremely hard if not impossible to get a license for streaming - or make a DVD for that matter. IF you can't have it on DVD, it is extremely likely that you won't have it via streaming either.

ppera2

16th July 2004, 17:25

Originally posted by Doom9
... IF you can't have it on DVD, it is extremely likely that you won't have it via streaming either.

Yes, it's absolutely true. But relations can change with new technologies. In any case copyright owner, who will not publish it in any way will loose potential money. And I believe that most of people like money :)

I just can put here on situation with old video games (for consoles, old 8-16 bit computers) - most of them is now PD, legally, with permission, because they know that no potential for some big sale now.

Some firms, like Ultimate don't allowed their Spectrum games to be awailable now on the Web. What they have from that? Only disdain, by me.
Situation with movies is not same, at least not by any 'normal' movie, made for wide audience. Number of potential viewers is enormous. If they will not publish it, it's same for me as bunkering of some movies in Soviet-lager in recent past.

Mug Funky

16th July 2004, 17:58

In any case copyright owner, who will not publish it in any way will loose potential money.

actually, this is very much not the case in niche markets. an example - disney own the rights to Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, but not enough americans like anime to make it worth disney's while to publish and distribute it. the larger the company, the more market interest needed to break even. this is why niche markets are filled better by smaller companies that have a smaller payroll and can get things done at far less of a cost.

in cases like these, a movie/series/whatever will only be released if the niche company can negotiate the rights from the big company, and the deal is such that the big company doesn't ask for more than the niche company's break-even requires for the rights.

rights negotiations are often quite tricky, but if the conditions are right these "limbo" films can be released. it doesn't happen enough unfortunately (although Princess Mononoke will shortly be coming out in Australia on DVD, i have it on good authority :):))

Doom9

16th July 2004, 19:07

Yes, it's absolutely true. But relations can change with new technologies. In any case copyright owner, who will not publish it in any way will loose potential money. And I believe that most of people like money Mugfunky had a good riposte for that. In fact, especially for older movies, the intial investment is considerable, first the license, then you have to prepare the material, regardless of the format you plan to release it in. You have to at least digitize and clean the source material. DVD authoring can be rather cheap if you go for a no frills disc (that's what you'd get with streaming as well). I presume that the larger part of the investment would be completely unrelated of the end format, so it doesn't matter if an old film were to be released on DVD, VHS or via VOD.

I just can put here on situation with old video games (for consoles, old 8-16 bit computers) - most of them is now PD,Are they? Copyright protection (at least in the US) has been extended to up to 80 years after the death of the creator.. so unless the copyright owner is forfeiting their legally granted rights, they will sit on their IP for a long time to come.

It is my sincerest believe that VOD services will be just as mainstream as DVD, if not more even (because it's a new business it's more risky, and as outlined in a previous discussion, streaming hardware is expensive, and so is the infrastructure - until we have Internet-wide QOS, high quality streaming will only be possible from an ISP datacenter to the end customer, not from one server to the whole wide world.. which seriously limits the attractiveness for smaller companies to get into this business, then being asked for refunds all the time because the movie is interrupted every now and then). The laws of economy apply to every market.. you see music studios sitting on their old records and not releasing them to online sales services like iTunes.. even though in that case, their cost for distribution would be minimal.. rip a CD, add it to the catalogue and you're all set. And even with those minimal costs.. the selection hasn't suddenly gotten larger.. you still get most mainstream. So if the music biz is any indication on how the movie biz will go, you know what you can expect.

wmansir

16th July 2004, 22:09

Originally posted by ppera2
Explain that slang (?) 'shudder'.

Not Slang

Shudder (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=shudder): intr.v. shud·dered, shud·der·ing, shud·ders

1. To shiver convulsively, as from fear or revulsion.

@all:
I think if VOD was reasonably priced ($2.50 or less for 24 viewing window) it would be something I would use, but it wouldn't replace a personal library for my most watched titles.

I was just at the video store today and noticed several stupid comedies that I might want to check out, but I would never blind buy. It could fill that niche for me.

EDIT: this assumes I can watch VOD on my home theater, not just my comptuer, and I don't have to invest in expensive hardware.

Joe Fenton

16th July 2004, 22:37

Although I voted for my own collection, I don't see why people think it's one or the other. It should and will be BOTH. People have this need to possess things - this pushes the collection market. It will never go away. However, there are times the VOD will be much better, especially for hard to find items. So it will also exist and do well. People who push only one (like VOD only) WILL go out of business. People like choices, and this is just another.

Neo Neko

17th July 2004, 04:31

Originally posted by ppera2
What you prefer - Video watching on demand, online, with big choice, pay per view or - building own movie collection?

Your poll is flawed. My answer to your question is yes. But there is no option for it. That which I would watch alot or love of course would be added to my collection. But there is alot out there that I would like to watch if only once for a reasonable fee. So a hybrid method is of course preffered.

Originally posted by ppera2
Need to add some notes: real VOD not exist yet, but some people expect it, with relative low prices.

Need to add some notes: real VOD does indeed exist today. Not only that but is highly viable and even dare I say it profitable. Internet VOD on the other hand is still fledgling at best suffering from lack of transport reliability and and bandwidth. Many major cable and satelite operators offer VOD services and have for some time now. And we are not talking "beta testing". We are talking full product rollout. I use Time Warners VOD service on average at least 10 times a week. Comcast offers similar services. They offer a nice balance of free services (decent if somewhat lackluster on video fidelity) and pay services. (understandibly better quality) I have never actually used the pay services myself. Though I saw it in action at my brother-in-laws house on his nice high def tv. The cost of $3.95 USD for 24 hours unlimited viewing is a bit prohibitive for me yet. But not totally disagreable. The price needs to go down or the time frame needs to go up before I commit to something like that. Since I can go out and rent a video for the same price for 5 days the current cost still outweighs the convinience.

VOD is the new paradigm in video rental. So it is absurd at this point that it costs more for less. Seeing as there is no overhead, utilities to pay, or risk of running out of coppies since they can whip new ones off at will. Unfortuantly this is due in part to the limited subscriber base. As it inevitably increases the consumer cost will decrease. I only await that day. Because VOD is here now.

Pyscrow

17th July 2004, 05:15

Nup never - When I pay for it, I want it for ever, not view once. The price will never be cheap enough for "view once".
I.E. My kids must of viewed their DVD's / Videos hundreds of times each, With an original DVD price of 20 dollars, that works out at less than a cent "per view". That will never be matched!

ppera2

17th July 2004, 14:53

When we say 'prefer' that doesn't exclude other option. Putting third choice in vote - 'I prefer both' would make it almost nonsense.
I'm sure that most of us is so: that some movies want to have in his collection. Maybe I should say 'building big collection'. And that's the point. Everybody complains about how wrong is to pay per view, but nobody talks how much costs buying thousand(s) of DVD's.

VOD - I should add Internet before VOD, to be more precise. Poll is for everybody, not for people which are connected to some limited network.

This poll is actually inspired with one discussion here, before year, or more, in hardware room, when someone talked about putting all of his DVD's (over 1000) to some hard disk cluster, to make watching easier. Imagine just costs and required work for that. Imagine how many times you can view all of that collection per year...
Some problems about required resources are discussed in thread 'Little futurology'.

Neo Neko

17th July 2004, 19:30

Originally posted by Pyscrow
Nup never - When I pay for it, I want it for ever, not view once. The price will never be cheap enough for "view once".
I.E. My kids must of viewed their DVD's / Videos hundreds of times each, With an original DVD price of 20 dollars, that works out at less than a cent "per view". That will never be matched!

You missunderstand. That would be a prime example of one you would buy to add to your collection. OTOH how many times would you watch C.H.O.M.P.S.? In all likely hood you have never watched it. And if you had chances are you would not watch it every day. It would be an example of something you might watch once just for the sake of having watched it. A better more timely and poniant example would be how many times would you want to watch buba-hotep? I watched it several but even though my man bruce campble is in it I don't think I will ever buy it. But I did want to watch it just the once.

Neo Neko

17th July 2004, 19:42

Originally posted by ppera2
When we say 'prefer' that doesn't exclude other option. Putting third choice in vote - 'I prefer both' would make it almost nonsense.

But not any more nonsense than it already is to me. That being one of my points. ;) Of course we would preffer to have access to everything. But there are some things we would preffer to own and others we would preffer not to and rent instead. So talking about what we would preffer in this instance with such generality to me seems senseless. I think we would all preffer both. :D

Originally posted by ppera2
Maybe I should say 'building big collection'. And that's the point.

But big is entirely relative. :p

Originally posted by ppera2
Everybody complains about how wrong is to pay per view, but nobody talks how much costs buying thousand(s) of DVD's.

Naaaaah. There is nothing wrong with pay per view. Just don't view the same thing a 100 times over before you come to your senses and buy it. :) Pay per view, Rental, VOD. Different terms for roughly the same thing. And all of us have rented at one time or another and not thought it was wrong.

Originally posted by ppera2
VOD - I should add Internet before VOD, to be more precise. Poll is for everybody, not for people which are connected to some limited network.

Yes specifics are best. Because when you over generalize you run into missuinderstandings. ;) But do we absolutely need internet VOD. Or would everyone be better off getting served by a local carrier for the most part? Geographically limited networks offer more reliability and stability than the internet will be able to offer. Not that we should not have VOD over the internet some day. But it should start with your local cable and satelite company. The internet is just not ready yet and will not be for some time yet.

ppera2

17th July 2004, 21:30

Originally posted by Neo Neko

...But do we absolutely need internet VOD... The internet is just not ready yet and will not be for some time yet.

Do we need... - it's my favored :) We need absolutely only air, water and food, plus some conditions to beeing live. All other is personal choice. So, better don't talk here what we need.
Much better is talk about what we can.
Of course that it's not ready, but I expect some progress in next 20 year, and maybe even later :D

techz

18th July 2004, 07:27

I would be so nice, if we could access our movie collection all over the world and anytime we want for a fixed fee, why not. U dont have to worry about spilling sauce on the dvd or lending it out to one of those friends who never give it back. We desperately need fast broadband and cheap rate to use it though. We pay US$ 110 per month for a no cap 256k connection.

Mug Funky

18th July 2004, 15:33

$110 per month!!??! even in australian dollars (~ $0.70 USD) that's a horrid deal!

change yer ISP man...

Neo Neko

18th July 2004, 17:22

OUCH! $110? Not USD I hope. We pay $40 a month for uncapped 3000/512 Cable DSL. I suppose if you did some bad math/accounting you could say we pay $80 a month when you throw in the other $40 for digital cable. But that is not correct.

techz

19th July 2004, 09:21

We have a monopoly here, the market has now opened up and we wont have to pay US $ 110 anymore.

dragongodz

19th July 2004, 13:22

this poll is majorly flawed IMO.

the concept that a VOD service would be worth replacing a video/dvd collection of films you will watch many times each is unrealistic. take just 1 of my sons movies, he has watched at least 30 times so far, the cost of VOD per view would have to be tiny for it to be anywhere near worth it.

now ppera2 mentioned (from memory) in another thread about VOD that he has dvds he wont watch 5 times in 20 years, or something to that effect. in that case then you have to ask why buy the dvd at all. thats what rental is for.

now rental versus VOD would be a more reasonable question. infact pay-tv here is aimed that way, the advertising pushes the fact of many many movies being shown all the time. so i also think that if VOD is to make any impact thats the market it will go after and not the buying market.

ProfDrMorph

19th July 2004, 14:28

I'm one of the 2 guys who voted for Internet VOD. Since I didn't see much discussion about why people made what choice when voting ( instead this thread's filled with discussion about whether the poll makes sense or not ... ) I thought I make a little different post here to get the thread back to what I think ppera2 wanted to know.

I voted for Internet VOD because if I think about the number of movies I just want to see once maybe twice ( to show it some friends ) far outweighs the number of movies I really want to see a couple of times. I also like the idea of not needing to leave home to rent a DVD or something. Image a situation like being with some friends everybody already drank some alcohol or smoked some ganja and suddenly you think "wouldn't it be nice to which this one movie we saw a few years ago again now?" or "do you know <insert movie title here>? I heard it's good maybe we should watch it". Ok, usually at least one person can still drive ( and don't want to imply that drunk/high every weekend either! :D ) to the store and rent a movie. But just turning on your home theather system, choose a movie, wait a few moments for buffering and the watch it would be SO much easier. :)

I like the possibility to be able to do much stuff from home in general. This way you don't have to go to different places to do your business. You don't lose time by going to different stores because when you want to get let's say a new music CD, maybe the latest Harry Potter book, some clothes, then rent a movie.

I hope I made any sense at all because I'm in a hurry. :D

dragongodz

19th July 2004, 14:59

ProfDrMorph - thank you. you just proved exactly what i said. you voted because of movies you want to watch few times and dont want to have to travel to rent. thats not what the poll asks as i said so again thanks. :D

oh and i thought i explained why i voted for my own collection of movies i watch many times against VOD where the end result would be me paying more for VOD(unless it was extremly cheap) than just buying it.

ppera2

19th July 2004, 16:05

Originally posted by dragongodz

the concept that a VOD service would be worth replacing a video/dvd collection of films you will watch many times each is unrealistic. take just 1 of my sons movies, he has watched at least 30 times so far, the cost of VOD per view would have to be tiny for it to be anywhere near worth it.

now ppera2 mentioned (from memory) in another thread about VOD that he has dvds he wont watch 5 times in 20 years, or something to that effect. in that case then you have to ask why buy the dvd at all. thats what rental is for.

now rental versus VOD would be a more reasonable question. infact pay-tv here is aimed that way, the advertising pushes the fact of many many movies being shown all the time. so i also think that if VOD is to make any impact thats the market it will go after and not the buying market.

This flawed thread is made for people with some imaginations, with some ability to have visions. But it looks that too much watching of same movie and visions can't go together :)
Whole point is that rental will be obsolete certainly, and making collections too, very likely. But if someone respects his (life)time so little that will watch same movie hounderts times I doubt that he has enough wide and opened views about life and this World.
There is so much good movie, book, that I will be happy if will consume just part of that, once per item :D . Sometimes I have luck to get some nice movie on TV, about which I never heard, but it's rare case.

I have ideas for some new threads at this moment:
1: Something about human nature - should we blame companies for current situation, or ourselves, our desire to hold things, many things?

2: Poll about count of watched movies, what prefer - watching same movies many times or always some new stuff. How make decision what to watch (if, or just follows stream) etc. Maybe couple polls...

dragongodz

19th July 2004, 16:44

There is so much good movie, book, that I will be happy if will consume just part of that, once per item
certainly there are many good films, books etc but there is far more dross than truly good. most dvds for example i rent because they are only worth seeing the once but some are IMO worth seeing more. again, your poll is about owning and not renting though. why buy a dvd at all if you are only going to watch it once ?

Whole point is that rental will be obsolete certainly, and making collections too, very likely.
well thats your opinion but that doesnt make it true. all anyone can do is wait and see but i have serious doubts.

This flawed thread is made for people with some imaginations, with some ability to have visions. But it looks that too much watching of same movie and visions can't go together
if someone respects his (life)time so little that will watch same movie hounderts times I doubt that he has enough wide and opened views about life and this World.
ahh so you resort to insults. well since you know nothing about me your words are ignorant of reality and meaningless.

i dont think i will bother posting in this thread again. ppera2 hasnt got the backing he wants to push his point of view and is now just denegrating the discussion.

ppera2

19th July 2004, 20:56

Originally posted by dragongodz

ahh so you resort to insults. well since you know nothing about me your words are ignorant of reality and meaningless.
i dont think i will bother posting in this thread again. ppera2 hasnt got the backing he wants to push his point of view and is now just denegrating the discussion.

I talked generally, not about you. But if you write so neglient like you do here, and make serious errors ('denegrating'), don't expect that I will think that you are well educated.

What sense has what you talked about watching some DVD's >30 times?
It looks that many people here doesn't understand what word collection means. It is something what people builds for long time, what has many items. It's physically impossible to watch regularry movies 30 times by decent collection. If you would think little more, you would see that making collection costs really much. And nobody prevents you to buy items what you want often to watch if you made stupidity, and voted for VOD :)

Rentals: comparing rentals with collection is also not good idea.
Rentals have not real good choice, they hold what makes traffic - new, commercial titles mostly. Espacially rentals in small cities can't have many titles.
How they work? Hold limited number, some even sales items which aren't rented often. It stays even for DVD's. Not to mention that every media come-down fast.
Rentals are simply to expensive, and they will disappear same as cigarette shops.

Finally: I didn't know that putting a poll means to push people in some direction...

Neo Neko

21st July 2004, 04:45

Originally posted by ppera2
This flawed thread is made for people with some imaginations, with some ability to have visions. But it looks that too much watching of same movie and visions can't go together :)

I think you make the missconception of accusing those with imagination yet differing visions as unimagniative. Which is clearly not the case.

Originally posted by ppera2
Whole point is that rental will be obsolete certainly,

VOD is rental and rental is VOD. How is one going to exclude the other when they are the same thing. Rental is generally viewed in real world non abstract terms. You demand to watch a video. You go to the store and select your video. You pay for the video. You watch it in your player. At the end of your period you return it. All VOD does is cut out the traditional specific physicall aspects of rental. You demand to watch a video. But instead of driving to a store you navagate to an interface from which to select the video. You pay for the video electronically with the funds being automatically debited from your account. You watch it in your player. And when your period is up you don't. They are perfectly analogus processes. Only one has a larger traditional physical aspect to it and the other a more etherial or abstract aspect to it. Face it. VOD is computerised rental. :p

Originally posted by ppera2
and making collections too, very likely.

Nothing is going to stop people from making collections in one form or another. People will still have collections. The question then becomes what form will it take?

Originally posted by ppera2
I have ideas for some new threads at this moment:
1: Something about human nature - should we blame companies for current situation, or ourselves, our desire to hold things, many things?

Easily done. We are all to blame. The companies for doing what they do. And the consumers for allowing them to do it. I think it safe to say though that failure to propperly police is a lesser crime than having lack of morals/scrouples/common sense/"insert favorite term here" in the first place. Consumers are always going to want to hold some things in one manner or another. Wether it is a commercial mass produced disk etc. Or your own produced compilation on a media of your choice owned and controlled by you. That need is not going away any time soon. Say perhaps 300 years from now and maybe the concept of media ownership will have been degraded enough to oblitterate the ammasing of collections.

Originally posted by ppera2
2: Poll about count of watched movies, what prefer - watching same movies many times or always some new stuff. How make decision what to watch (if, or just follows stream) etc. Maybe couple polls...

That is another relative discussion that is subjective to each person individually. Someone should buy a movie when they watch it alot. Alot being more than a little by a bunch. (TM) If you don't watch or plan to watch it alot then don't bother to buy and just rent or VOD it. Sorry to be doing redundant speak with rent and VOD meaning the same thing and all. To accuratly calculate this threshold we need to quantify some unquantifyable terms and construct a formula. Like your personal interest in watching movies/videos in the first place. Say on a scale of 1 to 10. But keep in mind your scale is different from everyone elses. This can then be used to compute how much of your disposable income will go into going to the movies, renting, and buying the media. But the equation is still incomplete at this point. And I have no desire or time to waste finishing it. :p

ppera2

21st July 2004, 11:26

Originally posted by Neo Neko
VOD is rental and rental is VOD....

I wrote there something about that rentals are too expensive... I'm not sure is word 'rentals' correct when we mean place where people hire DVD's or VHS, but it's used in this forum often.
Holding rental is simple to expensive - you need stuff, local etc.
It is like replacing cigarette stores with automates, what happened in West germany for example before some 25-30 years.
Comparing VOD over network with rentals is like comparing making cars with robots in big factory, in mass production with making cars in some workshop in small quantities.
Vision is when someone predict some changes, according to his experiences and ability to get conclusions, simple said. It's not insult when we say to someone that has not visions, because it's rare capability. You could say different visions - but for me is not vision when someone says 'it will not happen', 'it's unrealistic' and similar.

Making scale about someones interest in watching movies linear, one dimensional is not possible. There is too many factor involved. Plus, people have his periods of manical watching, then maybe will not watch anything for months etc. You can't simple predict what will someone want to watch in current moment.

Doom9

21st July 2004, 12:59

but for me is not vision when someone says 'it will not happen', 'it's unrealistic' and similar.a company ceo needs to have what you call unimaginative and having no vision, too. You can't have a bunch of idealistic ideas and go broke with them.. you need to make a product that sells.. and if your targeted audience isn't going to buy it, then you're loosing money developing and marketing it.

I've pretty much stopped renting years ago. At first it was because all movies were dubbed (in the VHS area), but prices are that high that a 2.5 time rental makes up for buying many DVDs (or VHS tapes initially) these days (especially the hot new stuff that is often sold way below the suggested retail price - many times a number 1 title is even cheaper than an audio CD), and last but not least we have the release schedules.. why rent something I could've bought from amazon.com half a year ago?

All that isn't going away. As outlined before, the intial cost for VOD is considerable. The network is highly insufficient and that for years to come (I work for a company that sells telephony systems, more and more VoIP and I know exactly what problems we're having so don't tell me network is no problem.. I know better), which means limited offers for a limited number of people that are all located in the same geographical area and connected to one single ISP network. If I changed DSL provider or went to cable, I could already get VOD, but neither price nor offering would really make it interesting. In fact, if you rent you get lower prices and better quality - that is also not going to change overnight. Right now renting a DVD is the better option, and the large majority of people agrees.. hence no VOD service has been successful so far. Why pay a premium for a lesser service? Why be artificially limited in your choice? I don't mind rentals, PPV, VOD, but I like to have a choice whether to pay for every access or pay a larger fee and be done for life. The rental market in the US has reduced since the introduction of DVD.. in fact DVD has made owning of movies more popular than ever, and at least in my country, rental has always been behind sales.

Nobody can predict technology, especially in such a fast moving market like the computer market, but if I had to take a guess, I'd say this poll will still look pretty much the same in 5 years. There you have it. Now we can pick it up here in 2009 and see where we are.

ppera2

21st July 2004, 14:51

Right, this poll is 'little' too early posted :)

Continuing rentals 'saga':

In my place with about 25000 people we had over 10 VHS rentals before 13 years, when video rental was at top. Now we have only 3, but only one has DVD's too, and only that one is major occupation of owner. Others are too small, with not big count of movies. That one bigger can exists only so, that he has another 3 rentals in near places.
Decrease of number of VHS rentals started much before DVD and DivX era. It started when number of TV programs increased, with Satellite channels and later with cable TV.
Yes, nothing changes overnight, but changes indeed. Too hold decent rental you must simple invest lot of money, so small places are in bed position. I don't know how big is choice in US metropols, maybe someone could post here something about it.
2000 VHS and 500 DVD is what I have at disposal here.

dragongodz

21st July 2004, 15:29

sorry couldnt resist, i have to make a couple of last comments.

comparing rentals with collection is also not good idea.
thats your opinion. that IS the the market i believe VOD will go after though and NOT they general buying market.

I talked generally, not about you. But if you write so neglient like you do here, and make serious errors ('denegrating'), don't expect that I will think that you are well educated.
well thats funny since you only quote me and they are errors by your opinion only and look you follow it up with another insult. you know nothing about my education so please refrain from such ignorant remarks or i will be forced to tell you exactly where you can go jump with your opinions.

What sense has what you talked about watching some DVD's >30 times?
potential comparitive cost of watching a movie you own multiple times to pay per view of same movie. if the watch count is more than a few then the option of owning, and paying once, can easily become the cheaper and more desirable option. as i already asked, why buy a movie to watch it once ?

It looks that many people here doesn't understand what word collection means. It is something what people builds for long time, what has many items. It's physically impossible to watch regularry movies 30 times by decent collection.
no it looks like you are so blinded by your own opinions and viewing habbits that anyone elses makes no sense to you. most of the movies i have bought i will watch more than 10 times in the next 5 years,a few gems even more. my son however will watch a particular movie many more times, kids are like that in case you didnt know. oh and physically impossible ? wrong.

Vision is when someone predict some changes, according to his experiences and ability to get conclusions, simple said. It's not insult when we say to someone that has not visions, because it's rare capability. You could say different visions - but for me is not vision when someone says 'it will not happen', 'it's unrealistic' and similar.
and thats the biggest pile of **** i have heard. so someone says they do not believe things will change the way you do and so they have no vision. if they agree then they have some rare capability called vision. so if i say theres a great chance a large meteor is going to hit the earth in our time and you say you seriously doubt it you show no vision and are poorly educated (thats just an example to show how ridiculous the statement is by the way) ? go back and read the parts i quoted, they ARE insults and you continued it with what i have quoted here.

ppera2

21st July 2004, 15:57

Originally posted by dragongodz
sorry couldnt resist, i have to make a couple of last comments...

well thats funny since you only quote me and they are errors by your opinion only and look you follow it up with another insult. you know nothing about my education so please refrain from such ignorant remarks or i will be forced to tell you exactly where you can go jump with your opinions....
go back and read the parts i quoted, they ARE insults and you continued it with what i have quoted here.

No need to go back, your every sentence talks for itself. When you will start to use commas and capitals maybe I will apologize to you.

I have my opinions, and I'm not afraid to post them here and to other places. For jump I use my legs :)
And now comes real insult: rest of your post doesn't deserves reply.

Mug Funky

22nd July 2004, 16:08

hmmm... i just had a bit of a thought while reading the bi-play between ppera2 and dragongodz.

it seems to me that the urge to collect is a major reason that us humans have things like culture and history. sure, it may not be all that practical to collect DVDs that you don't watch (if you ever met my mother, you'd think her insane. there's DVDs in her collection she's had for over a year that are still shrink-wrapped), but on the other hand, what would you call a library?

would you opt to have libraries phased out because of the simple fact that people use TV or the internet as their primary source of information, leaving libraries under-utilised?

here's a big difference between owning media and comsuming it on demand - one form is ephemeral, the other has some kind of permanence. there is a balance that must be struck between ephemeral and permanent forms of culture - too much time in the library and you become out of touch, introverted and probably quite weird as a person. but if all a person engages with are ephemeral media, they will have no sense of perspective, no landmark to judge their position from. when a society loses it's memory, terrible things can happen (and we're heading that way, compared to other cultures that might otherwise be called "primative"). there's the Orwell example for that (or Fahrenheit 451), where if history is controlled, people can be manipulated.

there's more to that, but that's heading way off topic and i wont go into it (although i want to :) i like to rant).

the point is that a collection may not seem efficient or even rational, but it represents a major factor in keeping culture alive.

PS, ppera2, it's totally not cool to pick at someone's punctuation rather than their argument - just ask if it's the medium or the message? hehe. consider punctuation the packaging of a DVD that you seek to eliminate with VOD... by your own admission it's not all that important.

ppera2

22nd July 2004, 20:39

Originally posted by Mug Funky
...
PS, ppera2, it's totally not cool to pick at someone's punctuation rather than their argument - just ask if it's the medium or the message? hehe. consider punctuation the packaging of a DVD that you seek to eliminate with VOD... by your own admission it's not all that important.

I like your post Mug. At least someone who involves into problem.
Just to say: I'm not against collections. Just think that it's not the rational way. My father had over 15000 books, but at this moment that collection worts only part of investment. Reason is fall of standard, that many book is now unatractive etc. And of course he never read 90% of all that.

Message of Dragongodz? I'm sorry, but I will not comment it here. I picked his orthography because it's something what is undoubtly bad.
If he doesn't care how readable are his posts I'm not care about that how cool is my pick.