Why would anyone pay 4.00 for a movie???

[jbriley3]

I can get a movie DVD down the street at Blockbuster for $0.99/day. At Red Box, for the same price. With unbox, I only have 24 hours to watch the movie - $4.00 gone! How will Tivo sell any? Too little, too late.

[djwilso]

I can get a movie DVD down the street at Blockbuster for $0.99/day. At Red Box, for the same price. With unbox, I only have 24 hours to watch the movie - $4.00 gone! How will Tivo sell any? Too little, too late.I've rented a number of movies from Amazon through the TiVo.

I've never had any problems watching the movie within their timing restrictions. I mean, it's only 2 hours, and the timer doesn't start until you start watching the movie.

I do think that they should provide more than 24 hours - something more like 72 hours would be better, but still, never had an issue.

My problem with Amazon is that they don't have HD and still have no plans for it. SD that is noticeably worse than DVD-quality for $4 just doesn't cut it.

Dennis

[bkdtv]

Cable companies sell most of their PPV/VOD movies for $3 to $4. Amazon Unbox is meant as an alternative to that.

TiVo recently announced its intention to support Netflix's streaming service. With Netflix and a TivoHD or Series3, you can get unlimited viewing of thousands of movies and series for a single $8.99/mo fee.

[FourFourSeven]

To answer your question:

It takes 5 minutes each way to drive to the video store. Add 5 minutes to get the movie and check out (these are best-case scenarios), and that's 15 minutes. Need to repeat the process to return the movie. That's 30 minutes.

In addition, I drive 4 miles roundtrip, twice which is about .5 gallon of gas - that's $1 at today's prices for each trip, (It was $2 with the higher prices of two months back). Let's ignore other car operating costs for now (though they are significant).

So total cost for Tivo movie: $4, and no time.

Total cost for Blockbuster and Red Box: $2 (assuming I remember to return on time) and 30 minutes.

Is saving 30 minutes worth $2? Uh, yeah. Especially since I was conservative on all these estimates.

[Dan203]

No offense but you do realize that the Unbox feature has been available for over a year now right? It's just that your "Too little, too late" comment seems like you're under the impression that this feature is new.

That being said, the quality of the movies is what deters me. I don't mind paying $3-$4 to rent a movie, but it needs to be at least DVD quality and have full 5.1 sound. As of right now Unbox videos have neither. Maybe once they make the switch over to using H.264 on the S3/HD units that will change and I'll rent more movies from Unbox, but for now I just have a 2 at a time Netflix account

Dan

[rainwater]

I use it a few times a month. They are almost always running specials for $.99. So when I see a good movie I rent it and watch it sometime on the weekend.

[scandia101]

I can get a movie DVD down the street at Blockbuster for $0.99/day. At Red Box, for the same price. With unbox, I only have 24 hours to watch the movie - $4.00 gone! How will Tivo sell any? Too little, too late.

I can get the $4 movies from Amazon; w/o having to put my pants on, w/o having to go out in the sticky hot weather or the frostbite cold weather, w/o having to worry if I've had too much to drink, w/o using any gasoline, and there's nothing to return or late fees.

[acvthree]

Also, I've gotten several movies recently that had a 7 day period to watch the movie. I don't know how prevalent that is, but it's not always 24 hours.

Al

[restart88]

I used to rent the unBox $.99 specials. And once or twice was willing to pay more. But at $5.99 & up I'll just head over to the Wally World discount bin and see what they have. :D

[wmcbrine]

Blockbuster charges $0.99 now?

[MichaelK]

Blockbuster charges $0.99 now?


that had my guessing too- it was 3 or 4 bucks last time I went (admittedly months and months ago) maybe a buck is their last dying gasp before this economy destroys them for good...

but back to the OP-
1) tivo isn't selling anything. Amazon is. Tivo likely has no say at all in pricing. Maybe amazon would allow tivo to give up the few pennies they probably get per transaction and lower the price, but is 3.85 (or whatever) really that big a difference to 4 bucks.

2)- it's PPV. PPV is a HUGE money maker for cable and sat. I dont recall exact things but years ago when i paid attention to directv's numbers there were clearly people that order close to a 1 PPV each and every day in order to make up for the people that hardly ever buy PPV. The numbers are amazing- if you care to learn do some googling- I'm sure you would be amazed. I know I sure was.

3) Not sure where you get too little from- tivo probably has (or is about to) have the largest selection of content providers of any hardware platform that isn't a PC. I wouldnt know how that translates to comparative number of titles available- but would guess that means tivo has the most or near the most titles (when netflix comes on line) of anyone avalilible to a tv connected box.

so while i wont rent tons of movies for 4 bucks myself, i dont think tivo is far behind anyone else. question is can anyone make it...

[ThAbtO]

I used to have the dvd rentals from walmart.com until they decided to quit that service. Now I have Netflix, 3 out at a time, and with no late fees, sometimes I leave a few dvds sitting without watching for over a month, and other times I watch and return within a few days. I can't wait for the Netflix streaming onto tivo.

[gastrof]

I can get a movie DVD down the street at Blockbuster for $0.99/day. At Red Box, for the same price. With unbox, I only have 24 hours to watch the movie - $4.00 gone! How will Tivo sell any? Too little, too late.

Why the abnormally large letters? We can read and understand posts made at normal size too.

[CharlesH]

I can see the value of not having to drive over to a Blockbuster store for a DVD, but I still don't see how $4.99 per selection for cable PPV or Unbox competes with $8.99/mo from Netflix for an unlimited number of downloads, both of which are available "on demand". I don't recall, do movies come out first on PPV, and then later to DVD? If this is the case, then one could justify the $4.99 as the premium for getting more recent releases, but only if these new releases are what you are interested in.

[moyekj]

I can see the value of not having to drive over to a Blockbuster store for a DVD, but I still don't see how $4.99 per selection for cable PPV or Unbox competes with $8.99/mo from Netflix for an unlimited number of downloads, both of which are available "on demand". I don't recall, do movies come out first on PPV, and then later to DVD? If this is the case, then one could justify the $4.99 as the premium for getting more recent releases, but only if these new releases are what you are interested in. Remember that the streaming selection on Netflix is currently very limited (only about 1/10 of DVDs available) so while on the surface unlimited streaming sounds good in practice the choice of what you can stream is very limited. I would hope that as the popularity grows and their servers can handle it, that number will go way up, but then I expect the price point to go up accordingly as well.

[jer295]

I can get a movie DVD down the street at Blockbuster for $0.99/day. At Red Box, for the same price. With unbox, I only have 24 hours to watch the movie - $4.00 gone! How will Tivo sell any? Too little, too late.
A rented a movie a few weeks ago at blockbuster and it was just a shade over $5 with tax...

[scandia101]

I can see the value of not having to drive over to a Blockbuster store for a DVD, but I still don't see how $4.99 per selection for cable PPV or Unbox competes with $8.99/mo from Netflix for an unlimited number of downloads, both of which are available "on demand". I don't recall, do movies come out first on PPV, and then later to DVD? If this is the case, then one could justify the $4.99 as the premium for getting more recent releases, but only if these new releases are what you are interested in.

In the last year I downloaded 2 movies from amazon for a total of about $7.
If I had subscribed to netflix for the last year at $8.99/mo and downloaded the same movies from them, I'd have paid $107.88 for the same two movies. Even if I had only subscribed to netflix for the months that I rented those two movies, it would have cost me nearly 3 times as much and even if I rented both in the same month, it would have cost more.

Renting movies from Amazon VOD is cheaper when you don't rent a lot of movies.

[MichaelK]

... I would hope that as the popularity grows and their servers can handle it, that number will go way up, but then I expect the price point to go up accordingly as well.

some interesting thoughts there.

my 2 cents-

i don't think the servers have anything to do with the current limits. I think it's all licensing issues. The content owners are still nervous about it for whatever reason so there's limits. But I dont know anything just a thought....


also- it will be interesting to see if the price does go up. Would bandwidth and servers cost more then disc warehousing, handling, and shipping? My thoughts is no it wouldn't- if so netflix's operating costs will probably go down. So the questions are: will people download much more then they will ask for in the mail? And second will the the licensing terms be different to netflix from the content owners?

[TiVoCrastinator]

I think the main reason I'm content with NetFlix or RedBox is that the DVD's have all the features that I enjoy- like the alternate endings, commentaries, outtakes, and closed captioning (for when I'm watching something with fast dialog or an unbalanced sound track). So, unless they start streaming all the extras, I like physically getting the DVDs to play.

[rainwater]

In the last year I downloaded 2 movies from amazon for a total of about $7.
If I had subscribed to netflix for the last year at $8.99/mo and downloaded the same movies from them, I'd have paid $107.88 for the same two movies.

This is true. However, if Netflix had even close to the selection that Amazon has with regards to mainstream movies, I doubt Netflix would be able to keep their low rates. Long term, there's no way Netflix continues to provide unlimited streaming free of charge for regular users. It will either be a streaming only price or a addon to the regular service.

[mr.unnatural]

Personally, I'd never pay for PPV movies or rental fees for new releases at a video store. I had NetFlix for a couple years and then switched to Blockbuster when they ran their deal for free in-store exchanges. Once they realized they were losing money that way they did a complete turnaround and reduced or eliminated the in-store freebies and then decided to carry only Blu-Ray discs at select stores (I know that's a moot point now but then it was a deal breaker). I was fortunate enough to find a local BB that carried both HD formats. When they changed their policy and raised their price for less service I dumped them and went back to NetFlix.

Online downloads never held any fascination for me for several reasons. They were usually overly compressed and had lower picture quality as a result. The audio was also limited to stereo and not Dolby Digital. HD downloads were non-existent. NetFlix offers me Blu-Ray rentals with full 1080p and HD audio for a fraction of what any other rental source provides. I rarely watch standard DVDs anymore, except when the title is not available in Blu-Ray.

PPV from DirecTV or cable is sometimes in 1080p but the audio quality is still trailing and is not HD audio. HD is all about quality of both picture and sound. Why compromise to save a few pennies? Besides, NetFlix rentals work out to less than any other rental source (I get about 20 or more rentals per month for less than $19). Obviously, Unbox, NetFlix downloads, Redbox, and Blockbuster $0.99 rentals appeal to many for the convenience they offer but NetFlix is by far the most convenient, cost-effective, and offers the highest quality of any rental sources. You never have to travel any further than your mailbox.

[Stu_Bee]

This is true. However, if Netflix had even close to the selection that Amazon has with regards to mainstream movies, I doubt Netflix would be able to keep their low rates. Long term, there's no way Netflix continues to provide unlimited streaming free of charge for regular users. It will either be a streaming only price or a addon to the regular service.

I agree. As you stated Netflix can offer $8/mnth by only offering a small subset of their rentals for InstantViewing. I've been doing the two week free test of the instant watching of NetFlix on my Xbox, and it works quite well. I can basically watch as many of their available "instant" movies in one week as I want. For $8/mnth pretty darn good. However, don't expect many new releases to be available, but there's still thousands of goodies out there.

I expect a InstantViewing for $4/each for new releases to appear shortly at netflix.

[ShoutingMan]

I can get a movie DVD down the street at Blockbuster for $0.99/day. At Red Box, for the same price. With unbox, I only have 24 hours to watch the movie - $4.00 gone! How will Tivo sell any? Too little, too late.
This question is like asking why people pay $20 to eat a restaurant when they can have the same meal for $5 at home.

In this case, $3 is inconsequential compared to the convenience of not having to make multiple round trips to Blockbuster to find and return a movie.

[samo]

This question is like asking why people pay $20 to eat a restaurant when they can have the same meal for $5 at home.

Or like asking why people pay for TiVo subscription and hardware when ... :)
I can't speak for Amazon, but it worth it to pay $4 for PPV for me if movie is any good (doesn't happen that often lately - most movies they released is past couple of years they have to pay me to watch).

[Dan203]

I paid $2 last night to get an episode of "Chuck" that I missed because my cable was out for about 20 minutes. I could have watched it on my PC for free, or found it on BitTorrent and uploaded it to my TiVo, but to me it was worth $2 to just buy it real quick and start watching it 10 minutes later.

Dan

[Lensman]

Any comment in this thread about the new Blockbuster streaming video offering? It's either $2 or $4 per rental - curiously about the same prices as Amazon. They're giving you the box free if you prepay $99 for 25 rentals.

To the OP: You now have the same option from Blockbuster. Is it just as crazy for Blockbuster to offer streaming rentals for $4 when you can rent at the store for $0.99? BTW, are all titles $0.99 a day? What if you don't watch it tonight and need to wait until tomorrow?

BTW, video rental outfits make more money on late fees than on rentals. This is probably why streaming video seems expensive by comparision - because they don't have the lucrative late-fee business to compensate for below-cost basic rental fees.

[ThAbtO]

Oh great, another box to add to the entertainment center.

[restart88]

I paid $2 last night to get an episode of "Chuck" that I missed because my cable was out for about 20 minutes. I could have watched it on my PC for free, or found it on BitTorrent and uploaded it to my TiVo, but to me it was worth $2 to just buy it real quick and start watching it 10 minutes later.

Dan

I would consider doing that. Plus, no commercials is nice.

[wmcbrine]

Oh great, another box to add to the entertainment center.Well, hopefully just another line in TiVo's VOD menu, soon. I seem to recall a Blockbuster logo in the mockup videos of the "new interface".

[Jstkiddn]

Blockbuster charges $0.99 now?

Our local Blockbuster went out years ago but we have several Movie Gallery stores and they all have HUGE "99 cent a night" rental signs on their windows. The trick is you *must* rent for 5 nights. So you never truly get to pay 99 cents like you do at Redbox.

[Joey Bagadonuts]

TiVo recently announced its intention to support Netflix's streaming service.

This again? I thought this deal fell through about 3 years ago.

[Dan203]

The original deal did fall through. However recently Netflix has been on a tear partnering with every company it could find that is willing to support it's streaming service. One of those companies is TiVo and they announced that sometime in December they will release an HME app that will allow you access Netflix's streaming service on Series3/TiVo HD units. (S2 units are not supported because they don't have the hardware necessary to decode the VC-1 codec Netflix uses for streaming)

Here is a link to the press release...

http://www.tivo.com/abouttivo/pressroom/pressreleases/2008/pr2008-10-30.html

Dan