I had an interesting discussion with Carey tonight regarding the current state of media entertainment. We got into a discussion about buying the new Terminator:Salvation movie, and then I kind of started musing about the future of video entertainment. Taking a step back for a second, I have this personal stance these days regarding what I call the “Convenience Tax” when it comes to just about anything. You pay $10 to get your car washed instead of doing it yourself. You pay $8 for a roasted chicken instead of paying $5 and roasting it yourself. I’m constantly examining my spending habits based on how much of a “convenience tax” you pay for what what is essentially instant gratification.
Anyway, the way this works into entertainment is that, despite the fact that I have a decent current library of DVD’s, I have a hard time buying them anymore. For one, we can’t really watch about 90% of them while my daughter is awake because of violence, language, whatever. Second, there are really only a handful that I care to watch over again with any frequency. The rest, I feel could just be rentals.
I’m not even sure if I want to buy Blu-Ray discs, because I feel like even it is a transitional delivery format, but the biggest reason for not buying now is because the future of media, I believe, is digital content delivery. We’ve already seen Netflix on all kinds of devices, Blu-Ray players, PS3, and we ourselves have a Roku that we use with frequency. The Roku, and devices like it, are the future. The Roku has pretty much changed the way we view media. We have ditched cable TV completely. We have a slow and steady queue of stuff coming from Netflix, and we use the Netflix Instant Watch. Occasionally, we rent a movie or TV episode from Amazon Video On Demand. We listen to Pandora, we look at Facebook photos, I catch shows from Revision 3 and Blip.tv.
Back in September, Dreamworks Studio simultaneouly released “Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs” to theaters AND Sony Blu-Ray players testing out how viable that would be. Of course, it was $24.99 to rent it for 24 hours, and at that price point, you could almost buy the movie. BUT, it does indicate where things are going. I could see in the future, friends gathering in front of a nice home theater system, and renting a first run film, and splitting the cost with your buddies.
Hopefully in the future there will be a balance struck between the convenience and low cost of digital content delivery for the consumer, and a way for the industry to still make money and support the creation of great entertainment.
