Hollywood Has A Great Online Distribution Model — If You Hate Selection
April 18, 2009 at 19:17 PM EDT
In a golf tournament, it can be advantageous to putt after another player because you learn the contours of the path to the hole. In a similar way, you'd think Hollywood would have learned from the rough path the music industry took in transitioning to the world of digital distribution over the web. Unfortunately, it looks to be on the verge of missing the putt as well. On the surface, it seems like Hollywood is doing a better job of getting consumers to use their approved methods for transferring content over the web -- but the reality is that it's a mess. And the only reason piracy isn't so rampant in the US is that our broadband speeds, for the most part, suck. Sure, there are a lot of channels to get films legally over the web. iTunes, Xbox Live, Amazon, Netflix and Hulu are all doing a fairly good job at making the content they're given, accessible. Unfortunately, it's the content that's the problem. If you go to any of those services looking for a specific movie, there's a very good chance that it won't be available. And that can be true even if it was available on the service in the past. It's a nightmare.