Superior product? People can still do stuff with it!
And now, a lesson on the boundless optimism of inventors. Variety tells us of a British inventor who has invented an alternative to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. This version, however, uses the existing DVD technology with better multi-layering to store more data, which means that the players would be significantly cheaper than the current Blu-Ray and HD-DVD entries, and apparently most computers will be able to play them with just a software update.
So far, our inventor has had difficulty selling American studios on the technology. But they have signed up EROS Entertainment, the premiere distributor for Bollywood films worldwide.
And now here comes the boundless optimism.
The company’s now eyeing March launches in India and China. Potter acknowledges the studios might take some convincing—especially after having invested in the other high-def formats—but believes they will come around to the affordable alternative.
“Hollywood will come,” Potter says. “They have to understand what we have will make them money.”
Hollywood isn’t cool with affordable. Hollywood, apparently, isn’t even cool with making money these days as they continue to pursue a failing business strategy. What they are interested in is keeping customers from doing anything with the movies they’ve purchased. Case in point: Hollywood says they don’t want to invest in the iTunes video store until Steve Jobs agrees that viewers have no rights whatsoever, instead of just limited rights.
“His user rules just scare the heck out of us,” claims one studio exec. The article claims that the studio views sharing a purchased film in this matter [on up to three iPods -G] is “just as bad” as someone using file sharing. While Jobs has been able to convince Disney to participate (in part due to his position on the board), the others are balking. Paramount did agree to let older movies be sold via iTunes, but nothing new or popular.