A solution for all to file sharing

M.J.M.C

I thought this might be an interesting debate.

We have seen various legitimate attempts to help reduce filesharing that have failed for whatever reason.
A lot of people who fileshare say that the entertainment industry "need to change their business model"

Here's my question - and I for one don't have a solution,just want to hear thoughts on the matter
To you, what do you think would be an ideal business model?
One that everyone can benefit from. Both the user and the artist or film maker.
Times have changed and a lot of people (myself included) want music and movies in digital format.

It would be interesting to read some ideas. (please lets not use this thread to slate certain online stores / isps etc)

Example:
A lot of people wouldn't download tv shows if they were broadcasted in their country the same week as in America / Canada

*move this thread if needed*

slave1

HD web players from TV channels.
YouTube have some official 720 HD trailers and they look fantastic on my screen, it's 2010, I'm in a mid-sized town yet unable to get TV transmissions over the air and I will not pay Sky for the privage of receiving the channels I subsidise with my TV licence so in some cases download to cover some programmes that are crap on the RTE Iplayer.
Try the RTE iplayer on a larger screen and you'll know what I'm talking about...

bobbytables

OP that is an excellent question and something that I have chatted about with mates in the past also.

On my HD TV, I have analogue UPC TV. Why?....because when I visit friends & relatives that have "uber telly packages" on either Sky or UPC I find them poor value for money and behind the times. I don't want to conform to a schedule, considering the majority of what is on TV is not live. Even if it is live and if I'm interested, I might not want to watch it when it's broadcast. If you take the content of every TV channel available on those packages, and all the shows show during each month (less repeats), you end up with a fixed amount of content. It's not that large, either, compared to what you can get your hands on via the Internet. So the level of "choice" is not that great.

Also I have various telecoms companies putting letters in my letterbox telling that I can "stop paying line rental". I never did!, ever. I have been using VOIP (not Skype) since broadband became available with local numbers dotted around the world where I need them and commissioned at a moments notice. I can manage these services myself, I do not need to be put on hold by (n)Level support & pay through the nose for the privilege.

All I need/want: Electricity, and a reliable & high speed broadband connection. Nothing more.

I use various HD capable media devices via my home network to my broadband, utilizing various online, community & commercially driven services whereby I can get stream fantastic HD content. On my analogue TV subscription I watched the Toy Show live, and apart from that I can't remember the last time I watched traditional TV.

We still download because (re)streaming is not always available or efficient in terms of network congestion, bandwidth, quality, etc. However this is likely to change over a short amount of time. Even Irish ISPs are offering faster speeds every year or so, but setting a cap on traffic that is out of sync with the targeted applications of such bandwidth.

I believe the future of accessing media will be open, on demand, and just because you want to access new stuff shouldn't cost you more. So that means if I want to listen to 1 album or 100 albums a day, I can. If I could sit in my living room and search for content through global directories and stream them down at high bit rates. Literally the only limitation being my own ability to "find" what I'm looking for. Blending social networking with media delivery networks. "Hey you're friend likes this TV show, check it out". Literally build my own catalog of references to content in the cloud. I would pay a low cost monthly subscription and be done with it. It will take this level of service to retire all the efforts people are willing to make to get content illegally, because they can.

What will most likely happen though, is we will have companies providing media devices/boxes, each able to access subsets of media services in the cloud and provide varied levels of user experiences. My personal preference is to open up the services. Do what you want with the hardware as long as people can point them towards as many services as they require. Take WD for example, they have a range of media devices, WDTV Live HD being one. That device could not that long ago access Youtube HD content. I watched it in my living room and it was great. Then Youtube/Google put a stop to that, not WD. So now with more recent firmware upgrades we can access MediaFly, etc, and once again stream HD content, etc. There is still a novelty associated with accessing HD content in the cloud and streaming it down to your living room, however it's high speed broadband we can thank for that technical wonder. The service providers are just laying applications on top of it. So it's the evolution of broadband networks that created and is creating these opportunities.

So what I see as an alternative to illegal file sharing is technically possible. However I believe the business world will most likely drag customers through several "Amazing Next Generation Technically Brilliant" stepping stones before we get there. In the mean time those that can, will, and nothing will change. Businesses have to realize that it's communities of people that are shaping the future, there will be more brilliant ideas available outside any one company than inside. This idea of consumers not realizing potential until companies slap them in the face is gone. All it takes is for the light to turn on in one person's head, somewhere at any time, and the rest of us will know about it and be evolving it even before the companies know.

Not a short answer, sorry, but society and technology, I find fascinating.

M.J.M.C

Excellent reply bobbytables - cheers

Keep'm coming.

jester77

People just want to be able to view content without jumping though hoops, simple as.

I live in Germany, have access to lots of content through different mediums but it is provided in a very poor manner, similar to Ireland.

2 Examples:
I have an Irish XBox Live account but I cannot view any content in Germany because it's not my region. A workaround is to setup an additional account in Germany but then content is not provided in its original language. I shouldn't even need a workaround.

iTunes: 90% of their content is not provided in its original language. You can read through nearly every movie review and people criticise this. I once tried to watch a movie through iTunes, got half way through and the movie just stopped for no reason. Tried everything I could to get it running again but nothing would work. Frustratingly ended up sourcing it though different means and it worked effortlessly.

Plus both of these services have limited TV and Movie content anyway. I don't want to have go through a list of providers to find what I want to view. You could blame licensing laws but I can go onto Amazon or into Movie store and 90% (not talking about unreleased stuff) of what I want is there with its original language included.

At the moment I have a simple but very elegant system setup that can auto locate my content and it is there waiting for me when I want to view it on my HTPC. I don't ever have to go looking for it. Turn it on and I have a list of my shows sitting there waiting to be viewed. I would gladly pay for a service that works like that, but there is nothing that comes remotely close to it.

bobbytables

jester77 wrote: »

People just want to be able to view content without jumping though hoops, simple as.

+

jester77 wrote: »

Turn it on and I have a list of my shows sitting there waiting to be viewed. I would gladly pay for a service that works like that, but there is nothing that comes remotely close to it.

= Nail on the head!

Consumers know what is technically attainable, the ball is in the service providers court. OP are you planning a business venture?, I smell some market research being done here? Either way I'm happy to contribute.

vibe666

i appreciate that content providers need to make money and i'd be happy to pay for it if they could provide it in a convenient way.

as for a business model, how about something like hulu or boxee where we can get access to whatever content is out there to stream in SD or HD or to download for offline viewing if needed and just pay a monthly subscription to get access to the content?

can't they just give you a few account options like mobile phone companies? say bronze, silver, gold & platinum with a set number of video & audio minutes per month to use watching whatever you like? you'd then be able to log in from any PC or compatible HDTV with internet access wherever you were and watch what you wanted, when you wanted and how you wanted.

you could watch 15 minutes of a movie and if it was crap, you just stop watching it and only lose 15 minutes. likewise, if you pause or stop watching something then your used minutes freeze until you re-start it again, or you can pick it up at another location if you want to.

M.J.M.C

Nice reply Vibe666

I can tell you for a fact, when lost was airing in Ireland it was in and around the same week that it could have been downloaded from america - it wasn't worth the bother of downloading it.

vibe666

it was if you had gotten used to watching it without adverts.

that's the other thing. i'd pay a premium to be able to skip ads or just not have them at all.

watty

Except on Sky's pay TV you get MORE adverts

PogMoThoin

watty wrote: »

Except on Sky's pay TV you get MORE adverts

This is why I download any shows I want to watch, someone will have gone to the trouble of cutting out the ads, I get them in HD too

Incidentally, I have bought a Boxee Box. There's limited web content at the moment, but its going to get much better. The market is about to explode with these type devices and with TV's shipping with GoogleTV
(My review of it is here)

watty

Compared with Broadcast, IP is not a sustainable method for the whole population to watch TV.

Especially in HD.

Only 10% doing it uses 90% of traffic capacity.

Wcool

It might be true that the current networks in Ireland mostly don't allow for IPTV but that it will be only a matter of time.
Broadcasting will go the same as the cassette tape in the audio world: some still use it but not many.
Broadcasting is oneway, sequential and cannot provide 'on demand'.

In my ideal world I would like to pay a basic fee for a BBC like service without advertising with a reasonable mix of news, documentary and maybe 1 or 2 drama's or soaps, but all the TV series, movies and sport I would like to pay for on demand.
The reason why I think 'basic' telly might still jave a reason to exist is the same as radio: often you want to 'discover' new stuff and be informed/entertained, same function as radio has these days, you still can't beat a bit of radio when you are in your car to work.
But I think the time of the big network premiere is over, already it is easier, quicker and advert free to get it from the net.

A big problem is the 'money' question, I don't think that this content on demand is going to happen soon as vested interest will hold back on this and content providers are still very afraid to sell to the consumer directly instead of to the ABC's NBC's RTE's etc.
As much as I like to pay for what I view, I am afraid the total charge will be too much at the end of the month, ie I am not prepared to pay > 70 euro per month as most people do that have all the Sky or NTL extra's.

So price has to come down as well

watty

watty wrote: »

Compared with Broadcast, IP is not a sustainable method for the whole population to watch TV.

Especially in HD.

Only 10% doing it uses 90% of traffic capacity.

Exactly. It makes no difference to a transmitter or satellite whether ten people or a million people are picking up its signal, whereas with IP it's a major issue.

M.J.M.C

Keeping on topic,

Looking for anyone with any decent / intuitive new solutions.

vibe666

i think it also needs to become a much more personalised service, i.e. your TV service knows what you like and what you regularly watch and uses that data to make other suggestions on what you might like based on what other people with similar interests also watch.

i imagine that if collated properly, this data would be of some significant value to advertisers and media content creators as well, much in the same way that the likes of google and facebook use their own user data.

more than anything else though, the big TV companies need to stop digging their heels in and figure out how to make online media distribution work FOR them in a way that consumers will still embrace instead of fighting the online revolution at every turn.

boxee, hulu & google tv might not be "the next big thing" that they each aim to be, but something soon will be and the only thing that is going to happen if they keep resisting the change is that they're going to lose big time.

you only have to look at what happened with the music industry when napster came along to see where this is going and how its going to end.

if the music industry had seen napster and embraced the ideas and technology behind it and made it work for them, then the whole music industry v's filesharing war might have played out VERY differently for them.

as it is, they're still limping along now almost 12 years later suing anyone they can get their hands on whilst apple and others clean up with itunes etc.

Cantona's Collars

Eircom are trying something-discussed here http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056114045

watty

10 T drive and record ALL the channels on Sat + Terr 24x7 that are of interest. Watch what you want when you want without having to schedule.

Beats even Tivo.

Low res real time streaming free instantly (with option for download) when you order a DVD or BD, at no extra cost.

vibe666

watty wrote: »

10 T drive and record ALL the channels on Sat + Terr 24x7 that are of interest. Watch what you want when you want without having to schedule.

Beats even Tivo.

Low res real time streaming free instantly (with option for download) when you order a DVD or BD, at no extra cost.

sounds good to me. linky?

watty

http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/cablevision-and-the-infinite-tivo

There are some specialist terrestrial PVRs that can record all channels.

For Satellite, you could use 4 x dual tuner cards per PC box and 7 x 2T SATA in RAID6 to have enough tuners*.

On Saorview you only need a Dual DTT stick and 2T drive even after 2nd Mux starts in Spring.

You then browse the last week's TV as well as now and "save" (simply doesn't get over written) anything you want to rewatch or watch after the x-Days recording buffer is full.

Combine with Sky Style background Push VOD and UPC on demand VOD... and DVD ordering service with instant down/load streaming.

UPC is launching their VOD "soon".

(* I did get 5 "single tuner" cards working in one PC).

bobbytables

vibe666 wrote: »

i think it also needs to become a much more personalised service, i.e. your TV service knows what you like and what you regularly watch and uses that data to make other suggestions on what you might like based on what other people with similar interests also watch.

+1, use collaborative filtering. In the article that watty linked to they repeatedly refer to the concept of "timeshifting", which doesn't sit well with me as it's more marketing than a technical concept. It's just content, every literal bit of digital content can be stored, archived, transmitted, duplicated and deleted. When someone wants to view E.g. a TV show they simply become an observer for a period of time of some desired instance of content. None of that has any relevancy to the time where it was first created.

Having grown up with computers, and with a background in technology, being able to "pause and rewinding live TV" never did anything for me and plenty others that have used or created better systems. However I must admit I don't watch sport (ever!), I'm just not interested, so there is very rarely content that I must observe at the point it is being created a.k.a. "Live". As for news, chances are someone somewhere will publish the news online long before the news is presented via more traditional means.

As Karsini said, TV over IP en-masse is not really technically viable right now, but I don't think it will be long before it will be. The greatest application of the Internet thus far IMO is that it allows the human race to collectively evolve through efficient collaborative platforms. The number of innovative ways we connect and the power to genuinely influence the world that has been bestowed upon each individual is what has changed. The Internet allowed us to connect. Broadband allowed us to layer the applications and along the way we all started to recognize the potential and contribute in our own unique ways. It's not the corporations it's the guy in his apartment in Galway or the girl on her smartphone or the teenagers during their lunch breaks at school daring to see things differently and then contributing to the collective via these platforms.

What annoys me about TV is that one or more companies will decide what movies you will get to see over the Christmas like you should be glad to see any. Why can't I decide what content/movies I get to watch. There are loads of great movies (great being a subjective term), why I can't I choose great movies?, because I don't like your "great" selection. It just doesn't sit well with me, it's backward and not reflective of what is technically possible or attainable via alternate means.

It wasn't a company that brought us these alternate means either, it was a guy with a net connection.

OP what's your 2c on all of this as a matter of interest.

Nollog

M.J.M.C wrote: »

Keeping on topic,

Looking for anyone with any decent / intuitive new solutions.

Steam for TV shows and movies.
Everything is available to you and from any computer.
All content is bound to your account.
It'd probably need a new container or player for offline to make sure people don't "fileshare" it after buying it once, and maybe a way to stop them re-encoding.

Also, license everything globally, not for just 1 or 2 regions.

vibe666

/\/ollog wrote: »

Steam for TV shows and movies.
Everything is available to you and from any computer.
All content is bound to your account.
It'd probably need a new container or player for offline to make sure people don't "fileshare" it after buying it once, and maybe a way to stop them re-encoding.

Also, license everything globally, not for just 1 or 2 regions.

you could probably do that by having that steam type client as a total playing/management app and keep ALL the offline content inside a single encrypted container file that can only be read or written to via the client which would enhance security greatly. maybe even have it so you could run the client of two different people on the same machine at the same time and drag & drop content between them so people can still share content. USB host mode on mobile devices would be perfect for this too and the cleint could still manage the 'minutes' of each users accounts as the transfers would always be done from the client itself so it would keep track of what has been transferred (for data analysis) and the minutes of actual offline usage which could be uploaded online whenever it is reconnected to the net.

that way you can take all or some of your stuff with you if you have the need, say on holidays or whatever. have a 'download all unwatched for offline viewing' option in the client and any of your regular shows (and ads if required) are sent to your usb or mobile device to be watched at your leisure without the need to suck any mobile or roaming bandwidth.

lots of phones now are coming with video out and plenty of storage so there's no reason not to create a client that works on iOS, Android, the various Nokia & other platforms as well as Windows, OSX & Linux.

if you've just got the 1080p special edition of LOTR with all the extras, its going to be a lot easier for a friend to get it off you if they'd also like it than to download it again. you could even as social media aspects to it so you could add 'friends' and let them know what you already have downloaded so you could arrange to share it offline instead of wasting download time. see a list of what they have and tick off what you'd like to get from them, they do the same and when you meet up, you just run one client in server mode and the other in client mode and link them via usb and hit the sync button, job done.

Nollog

vibe666 wrote: »

'minutes'

What's that about?

Kensington

An "all you can eat" service would shift a lot of people toward legitimate means of getting digital content I'd think. For example, I would quite happily pay €20+ per month if it meant I could gain unlimited access to any track available at any time via iTunes and download as many as could fit onto my iPod. As long as I continue to pay, I can continue to listen and erase/update/replace content. If I stop paying, the tracks delete themselves automatically. If I wanted to buy the tracks to keep permanently, I could do so at a discount rate, DRM free.

I think Apple's iTunes genius feature would tie in superbly here. Let it scan what you do have already in your library, tracks you listen to, tracks you always skip through and then download automatically any tracks it thinks you might like based on that information.

The same thing could go for movies. We're already seeing postal DVD services that offer tiered rental packages for a flat fee. I think it's only a matter of time before we begin to see this becoming widespread over the internet. In fact, LoveFilm and Netflix have recently begun doing exactly this on the PS3 and certain Sony home entertainment equipment, albeit with a selection of movies from their "physical" catalogue.

The movie industry seem to be finally harnessing the internet but the music industry seems to want to cling onto their old pricing structure and see the internet as a big evil thing. They consider every illegal download a lost sale which is far from the case - if someone can get something from free, they will, it doesn't mean they'd pay for it in different circumstances, they'd just go without. I think they could convert far more illegal downloaders via an all-you-can-eat service rather than a pay-per-bite one and yield more revenue for themselves in the long run.

vibe666

/\/ollog wrote: »

What's that about?

a continuation of one of my earlier posts.

vibe666 wrote: »

can't they just give you a few account options like mobile phone companies? say bronze, silver, gold & platinum with a set number of video & audio minutes per month to use watching whatever you like?

seems logical that not everyone would want to watch 6 hours of tv a day, but other would, so you'd have a tiered subscription model to allow for light, moderate & heavy usage.

Nollog

vibe666 wrote: »

you could watch 15 minutes of a movie and if it was crap, you just stop watching it and only lose 15 minutes. likewise, if you pause or stop watching something then your used minutes freeze until you re-start it again, or you can pick it up at another location if you want to.

That?
That's not really a bad idea, but would be a nightmare on their end.

"Oh, Inception is great you say, oh friend of mine?"
*click*
"Oh God... What is this ****?!"
*click*
-You just saved 19 euro!-

vibe666

better than everyone pirating it because there's no other convenient option that consumers would buy into.

not everyone is going to like every movie or tv show, but everyone likes *something*, you're just cutting down on having to pay for stuff you don't like and increasing the time spent on what you do like.

if you settled down to watch inception because of a recommendation from a friend and hated it 5 minutes in, you're not going to turn off the TV for the next 2 hours are you? you'll watch something else instead and there's your revenue stream flowing again.

Nollog

vibe666 wrote: »

better than everyone pirating it because there's no other convenient option that consumers would buy into.

It's the Music industry that thinks everyone pirates.
The Movie industry thinks it's a few bad eggs.

vibe666 wrote: »

if you settled down to watch inception because of a recommendation from a friend and hated it 5 minutes in, you're not going to turn off the TV for the next 2 hours are you? you'll watch something else instead and there's your revenue stream flowing again.

You might not watch something from the same studio.

vibe666

/\/ollog wrote: »

It's the Music industry that thinks everyone pirates.
The Movie industry thinks it's a few bad eggs.

trust me, the movie studios are under no illusions and know exactly where they stand and what they want to do about it.

/\/ollog wrote: »

You might not watch something from the same studio.

which is irrelevant since you're not going to be the only person using the service. for every person who who chooses to what X over Y there will be someone else watching Y instead of X. it all swings in roundabouts and at the end of the day its a choice of them either making money off legitimate movie & TV downloads or make nothing from the pirates and right now, they're losing billions and they need to do something to fix that.

the video rental industry has gone down the toilet in the last few years or so and cinema is bending over backwards to offer new incentives for people to get them to go out and pay money to watch movies on the big screen.

if they don't work out a solution where the consumer gets what they want, how they want it at a price they are willing to pay then they're just gonna keep losing more and more money.

Nollog

vibe666 wrote: »

if they don't work out a solution where the consumer gets what they want, how they want it at a price they are willing to pay then they're just gonna keep losing more and more money.

But they want all the power, not just most of the power.

I'm not disagreeing, I think most of the ideas in this thread so far are pretty good. But I'm cynical of companies.