Are you watching what’s happening over at Netflix? Because what’s happening is seismic in terms of how America and the world will be receiving their movie and television entertainment in the near future. For years I’d speculated that eventually home video would go digital, meaning that instead of purchasing DVDs (which I own too many of) or Blu-rays (which I refuse to invest in), instead,we would download our home video collections into our computers not unlike we do music now. The only stumbling block would be a small one, connecting our computers to our televisions. Some thought I was crazy, others thought I was plain wrong.
Well, I was wrong but only because I wasn’t crazy enough.
Netflix is going one better. For a mere $9.99 a month you can enjoy access to their entire collection of streaming films and television shows. With the right Blu-ray player, video game system or adapter, the home video provider connects right to your television and allows you to watch as much of their content as you can every month for less than ten bucks! Think about how incredible that is. No DVDs, no late fees, no waiting for the mail; just a click of your remote and whatever you want to watch is available whenever you want to watch it.
Right now the Netflix streaming catalog is limited, mainly because the big studios are a little freaked over this. Most of the streaming choices available now are older and have been out on DVD for quite a while. But just today Netflix announced that they’re negotiating with various television networks for the streaming rights to their shows during the same season they’re broadcast. Furthermore, Netflix also announced that they’re pushing for deals to stream films at the same time a pay subscriber like HBO would run them.
This is the future. Eventually the studios and networks are going to figure out that the public is no longer interested in appointment television or waiting for DVDs to show up in the mail (brick and mortar video stores are already all but dead). We the People want to watch what we want when we want, and therefore I also predict that eventually DVD and Blu-ray will go the way of the CD (still around for collectors but an afterthought to the rest of us) and absolutely everything will stream. There’s also a good possibility that eventually new films just out in theatres will be made available online not unlike big boxing matches are now, at premium prices. Theatre owners won’t be happy with this but those of us tired of cell phones, talkers, and six dollars for a bag popcorn certainly will be.
For struggling content providers unable to crack the Hollywood’s distribution system, this is the ultimate workaround allowing you to — for very little money — get your work in front of everyone. I know Amazon has a system like this now, but it’s only going to get bigger and more user-friendly. Yes, the power of the consumer is only getting stronger.
The benefit for the studios is pretty obvious. With streaming, there’s no costs involving the production of DVDs and better yet they can also do what some Internet video providers like NBC do now, make it impossible to fast-forward through a commercial or two. A premium commercial spot at the beginning of the streaming premiere of a wildly popular movie or zeitgeist television show could fetch a pretty penny. Not to mention the per episode fee a Netflix would pay for the streaming rights.
What I also see is a world in which absolutely EVERYTHING, every television show, movie, music video, what have you, is made available for mass consumption online. Because there’s no distribution costs beyond converting to the digital file necessary for streaming, we could see, for example, complete episodes of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show made available. To release 20 years of the Tonight Show on DVD is cost prohibitive for a number of reasons, but with the click of the remote anyone who wanted (and that would be me) could be transported back to a time when a class act like Mr. Carson saw you off to sleep each night. With very little upfront investment, anything and everything ever committed to film or video could find itself monetized again. And of course all of it would be available in the best sound and picture quality available.
And for the consumer? Well, that’s the best part. No more video collections clogging up the living room. For X-amount of dollars per month everything ever put on video will be one click away. For a monthly fee, sites like Netflix or Amazon will store your video collections for you.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not predicting the end of television networks and the likes of HBO. There’s way too much money involved in owning your own television outlet. But the streaming, even of their original programming, is the future and could eventually mean higher profits for these outlets because of the lower cost involved in getting the product to the masses. Convert to digital, collect the per-episode fee from Netflix, and there you go.
The world’s changing so fast I can hardly keep up. A mere fifteen years ago my dad started to convert his mammoth record collection to digital via computer. At the time his $3,000 computer didn’t have the space to hold more than an hour’s worth of music. So he would burn the DVD, erase the download and then start over. Today you can buy a computer capable of holding ten of his record collections for $500.
What’s happening in home electronics is what happens when the government gets out of the way and allows people to innovate in the hopes of becoming rich. In America, the poor own DVD players, televisions, and i-Pods because they’re so ridiculously cheap, and this elevates everyone’s quality of life.
Can you imagine what would happen if the government incentivized real achievement and similarly got out of the way of our health care and education systems?
I’m only 44, far from an old man, and yet I grew up with a black and white television that received five channels (six with some tinfoil around the rabbit ears and my shivering sister holding it over her head in the back yard).
What a time we live in.
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