On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 11:40 PM, Jonathan Duncan <jonat...@bluesunhosting.com> wrote: > > On 16 Sep 2012, at 23:33, Ryan Byrd wrote: > >>> Why would ANYONE in their right mind pay you to lower the quality of >>> entertainment and make it slower to access? >> >> Maybe the point is that people have hordes of DVDs and it's less convenient >> to fumble through stacks of them then it would be to pull up a flick on >> your PC? Maybe it would be nice to be able to access your DVDs from your >> laptop when you're on the road (assuming you're not a techie, of course, >> and could do this yourself)? Maybe his company allows streaming to mobile >> devices, so you could watch your DVD on your smartphone (probably not, but >> let's give him the benefit of the doubt.) >> > > In fact, this is what I have been hoping Netflix and other streaming media > services would become. When I do actually purchase physical media, it is > quickly ripped and then stored in the dungeon, never to be handled again. My > brother and I have looked for ways to share our movies with each other as > well as with family and friends. We have a fairly decent ad hoc media > sharing service, but just between family. I look forward to the day when all > media is readily accessible for a reasonable monthly service fee or a one > time fee per media title.
^^^ this. I have been thinking for years that it would be really nice to have a service that would cache EAC-flac-ripped CD content. Then when I go to rip a CD I can prove is in my physical possession (perhaps an MD5 challenge computed against a random set of sectors), instead I could skip ripping, encoding, and uploading, and just immediately have that content available to my account to download/stream/whatever, from wherever. This would be especially valuable if my CD has scratches--so long as I can pass the possession challenge I could get a good flac rip from someone else's unscathed CD rather than have to laboriously, repeatedly polish and then rip with EAC until I get all the bits off it. Furthermore, a recent startup attempted to create a flat-rate license model service, but ultimately failed. They had $100s of millions in funding, but ultimately could not get all the contracts from the major content producers. It was a *massive* legal undertaking (not to mention a large, but doable technical challenge). Their plan was to get into all the phones where they could simply roll the one-time fee into the service's amortized plan, and have a PC client w/a flat fee, both would provide access to the *entire* world's music catalog for the lifetime of the device. The numbers worked--it would have been profitable. It's really too bad it didn't work out. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
