View from Digital Hollywood looks grim

2/4/2013 5:24 PM EST

Well, the movie theaters we frequent on most Saturday nights have recently converted to the Sony Cinema 4K standard. That's something. Must save the studios a ton of money, not to have to distribute those bulky movie platters (or whatever they're called), no?

I found the comment "TCP/IP is not well suited to truly popular audio-visual content, either" to be surprisingly wrong. It may not have been when few households had broadband access, and ISPs were still operating slow core networks. But those realities are quickly becoming yesterday's realities, certainly for the wired Internet. TCP/IP and UDP/IP also used to be poorly suited for voice telephony. But that too is ancient history. It's the same progression going on here.

Assuming we always need this "next big thing," it should be proper Internet distribution of TV and movies. With intelligently designed connected TVs out on store shelves. And by the way, we're essentially there already. Only no one seems to get this.

I was amazed, for example, to see someone on the cbs.com site ask whether CBS would re-air the episode of "Elementary" which followed the Superbowl yesterday, sometime during the week. Egad, people. CBS had that episode available online almost immediately, and I watched it comfortably on my TV set. So could even the tech-illiterates, if only the CE companies would sell intelligently designed connected TVs!

Make that this "next big thing," if you need one.

2/4/2013 7:33 PM EST

And I also disagree on the 4K TV point. Of course, it would also be "potentially a race to the bottom." I'd go so far as to take "potentially" out of that sentence. This is consumer electronics we're talking about. It's always a race to the bottom. All a manufacturer can hope for is to buy a few years of high profits, then very low profits but lots of volume.

For the consumer, though, it means constant and affordable improvements. Or we would still be watching black and white TVs on 16" screens with rounded sides, right? Or better yet, most of us would still be listening to radio dramas rather than own an expensive, high-profit TV.

When HDTV was being considered, I heard some of these same arguments. A standard question was, "What's in it for broadcasters?" The answer is, "survival." You either upgrade, or you watch your competition take away your loyal viewers. HDTV was ALWAYS intended to be a mass-market medium. So is UHDTV. The alternative is failure of the medium.

2/5/2013 12:39 PM EST

The problem with TV in my opinion is lack of decent things to watch and the content being dispersed across thousands of channels so it is taking lots of time to chase whatever is worthwhile to watch...more pixels is not going to fix that problem

2/5/2013 2:21 PM EST

"The trouble for Hollywood is that consumers seem content to stream movies and TV shows. They don’t want to shell out the money to buy them."

"Buying them" implies you'll want to watch the content *again*. How many movies and TV shows have you seen that weren't worth watching the first time?

Hollywood makes a huge noise about digital piracy, in the fond believe that if they could only stop people from pirating content, the Promised Land would be in sight, as all of those pirates would instead buy. They wouldn't. They would simply do without. The content is not valuable enough to those people to be worth paying for.

The market will pay for value. Hollywood and TV are still struggling with the issue of providing value, and understanding what the market *will* pay for.

2/5/2013 2:23 PM EST

"Assuming we always need this "next big thing," it should be proper Internet distribution of TV and movies. With intelligently designed connected TVs out on store shelves. And by the way, we're essentially there already.

***Only no one seems to get this."

Bert, I couldn't agree more. My entire viewing experience consists of an Over-The-Air antenna (the way TV was meant to be) and Netflix. I get all the networks and more live sports TV than my neighbors get with Cable.

Last year, my neighbor complained that the local cable service blacked out the World Series - unless you had the premium channels. Yet I was freely watching it in HD over the airways.

Regarding lack of stuff to watch, between over-the-air TV and my Netflix steaming and DVD account, I have probably 150,000 movies and shows to watch at any one time. And all this for only $16/mo.

To be totally honest, I'm never without anything good to watch. If I watched 2 movies a day, 7 days a week, it would take me over 200 years to see everything. I'm not complaining.

2/5/2013 2:25 PM EST

@Bert33506: "Well, the movie theaters we frequent on most Saturday nights have recently converted to the Sony Cinema 4K standard. That's something. Must save the studios a ton of money, not to have to distribute those bulky movie platters (or whatever they're called), no?"

Good for the studios, but bad for a lot of others. It's getting harder to find 35MM prints, and new films are increasingly released in digital only. Expect too see a lot of smaller theaters go out of business because they can't afford the $100K+ costs of upgrading to digital projectors to show the new content.

2/5/2013 2:27 PM EST

Forgot to mention Roku. There's got to be another 100,000 free channels on there also for a total of 250,000 sources of content.

And Roku makes it so easy to find what you want to watch.

2/5/2013 4:15 PM EST

From what I've read, the movie studios are subsidizing the shift to digital cinema. As they should, since it means huge savings to them primarily. I don't know whether this subsidy is for all theaters, or just the major chains, however.

About the comment on the "hassle" of finding decent TV content to watch over the Internet. Using any search engine, and I typically use Webcrawler (just to prove the point that Google isn't all there is on this planet), I can find any number of TV/movie content sites or portals. The portals are essentially search engines in their own right. Beyond the obvious Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu, that is. So pick one or more of these portals, and also use the TV networks' own web sites, and I honestly can't fathom what more TV anyone could possibly watch.

This is just to show that the well publicized "solutions," such as AppleTV, GoogleTV, Roku, et al., are HARDLY the answer to Internet TV. They are merely overly-restrictive solutions, and hardly essential. TV content on the Internet is no different from any other content on the Internet. Why assume that TV content must be different? Search it out the same as anything else, bookmark your favorite portals, and enjoy!

I use over the air TV (47 channels in my market), I use Internet TV, no cable, no Netflix, no Hulu Plus, and I still have way more content out there than I would ever be able to sit through.

To tie this back to the article, I guess I'm saying that if Hollywood doesn't "get" what digital is offering them, they need to wake up.

2/5/2013 6:36 PM EST

Most movies I have wasted time and money watching of late need neither 4K nor 3D, they need a script... The cinemas have sufficiently destroyed the movie going experience to send us home & the supply end have some how manged to attribute a fall decline in the market to piracy as opposed to a simple lack of quality product. Somehow the plethora of inbred two-heads chasing some form of wild critter or a house full of bitchy ditzes is seen a suitable substitute for entertainment. Should see a rise in book sales again soon...

2/5/2013 6:39 PM EST

In regards to the hassle, people who frequent EETimes aren't really the norm to judge complexity against. Internet TV will take off when it's about the same in complexity as a typical cable box to plug in, turn on and use.

Companies like Netflix, Blockbuster online and Hulu need to be accessible as easily as is a typical cable TV channel today.

When that's the case, potatoes can rule to couch again and TV makers will have their brief window of high margins followed by high volumes until the next big thing hits.

2/5/2013 9:03 PM EST

Guess I'm a TV Luddite. I confess I keep cable out of laziness since I use Comcast Internet service and like PBS, but watch much of my TV and movies from Amazon on my laptop.

2/6/2013 3:52 AM EST

Now whats wrong with 96" in your house? And why not in every room and on your kitchen table surface? And panels on your wall covered in pixels? If its cheap? And why necessarily use the full area for the content at all times? Where is the fantasy? Hollywood will only be a small portion of this content, but I can see they stuggle with gaming and other social internet interaction. Maybe hollywood should buy Facebook and some tech company that doesnt care about excess pixels and start developing a full everyday experience. This is probably something Apple could do in 10-20 years, if it got focus.

2/6/2013 8:45 AM EST

@rick
I think many people keep cable solely because they are afraid of missing something. My mother-in-law, who lived in Philadelphia, was always complaining about her $100 cable bill.

I notice her viewing habits were only the networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and PBS. I proposed she get a roof-top antenna installed and she could get all the channels she was now watching in HD - for free.

She refused. She somehow didn't think this was possible, because, if it was, why doesn't everyone do it?

So it appears, people are chained to their perceptions. She continued complaining about how expensive her cable bill was, but wasn't willing to do anything about it.

2/6/2013 4:26 PM EST

Since all the good movies and tv shows were made a long, long time ago, it doesn't make sense to buy an ultra HDTV to watch something that was recorded in black and white and have to stretch it out to make it fill the screen. If all a person cares about is special effects, oh yeah, buy the 3D and put on the glasses :)

2/6/2013 5:15 PM EST

There is a fascinating story about the digital restoration of "Gone With The Wind". The original film was shot in Technicolor with 3 cameras, one for each color.

The digital processing company was lucky and found a pristine version sealed in a can that was never used in a projector. When they took a close look at the original film, it was off by 5 pixels. So they digitally corrected it. The bottom line, the copy on Blue Ray is better than the original.

When I view it on an HDTV, I can see tiny decorative threads in Scarlet's dress that you would never see in the cinema. You can also see the tiny blood vessels in her eyes that you normally would never notice.

And this film was released in 1939!!!

If you are interested, the complete story comes with the DVD, in Special Features.

2/6/2013 6:15 PM EST

@Bert - Touché, but alas, I was careful to say "black and white":) Even B&W looks good on HDTV though but would not be worth upgrading to a UHDTV. Those old Star Trek movies do seem to show more detail than when viewed on analog sets(probably unintended).

2/7/2013 10:19 PM EST

Perhaps's Bert22306's original comment contains the solution: projection. Rather than pending a fortune on the display unit, make a good projector and enlarge the image as much as you wish.