How much do you pay for the cinema? How much do you buy your DVD’s / mp3’s / CD’s for?
According to the MPAA and RIAA, we are not paying enough for products.
They feel that piracy itself is a barrier to raising prices. Personally, I feel a steep hike in prices for movies / audio will drive sales down, but won’t increase piracy.
The MPAA want us to pay more for films. DVD enabled people to rip digital content and place it online, however, it was a boom for the movie industry, making them a shit load of cash. That is the major drive behind newer formats, we went for so long without a digital format, and they were so blind, that when they realized how much money could be made from selling DVD’s, they decided to do it all over again, and get displays in the act. LCD, plasma. 780p, 1080i, 1080p. Widescreen, 16:9, HD. HD-DVD, Bluray. Does anyone see a pattern here?
Despite the relative ease of obtaining pirate DVD’s, the shipping and manufacturing costs being so low, and the quality identical, suckers bought them by the handful. To increase prices, which is the goal, they want to increase DVD prices, they have to place harder controls, and fight off HD digital transmission, again, higher quality, easier to copy and share.
What can we, as consumers do? Well, we can ween ourselves off the product. We don’t need to buy that whole series. We can wait and watch it, schedule it on our PVR perhaps. People are hitting netflicks guilt, keeping films out because they can watch them any time they want.
The biggest defense against HD-DVD is:
Don’t bloody buy a HD-DVD player. Don’t buy one. Don’t buy HD-DVD films. Will your life be that much worse without one? Can you really think of any film that would be worthwhile watching in HD-DVD? You have to establish that HD is OPTIONAL. You don’t need one. Keep you HD-DVD player money, you DVD / HD-DVD money, your 42″ screen money, your never ended spend on media, upgrade your connection, grab joost / youTube, watch streaming news, use democracy, play on digg. Don’t give in to the studios.
Go to the cinema, watch the film on the last week it is showing, not the first, your local cinema gets more money then.
Don’t complain about HD-DVD, then buy a bloody player, discs, a new screen, a multitude of fixes and boxes just to enable you to play the damn content that you bought.
Make a decision today, say it with me:
I will not buy into the HD world, I am happy where I am, I do not need a HD-DVD player. I am putting money into an obsolete technology, let me watch some more talking heads on youTube.
There, don’t you feel better?
