movies Archives - Christian Rios' Blog

They’ve made it too hard to watch stuff

Viacom and DirectTV are currently fighting over money while DirectTV customers are left without a bunch of channels. Today, on Hulu while watching Jon Stewart, a commercial came out asking folks to drop DirectTV. They even have a website now. In my opinion, this is rather childish at best. What is even more puzzling is that these companies don’t realize they are shooting themselves in the foot. Television viewers are already migrating from overpriced cable channel bundles to popular online options like Hulu and NetFlix and even piracy. Cable companies are very comfortable charging up the wazoo for a hundred channels where there might only be a few that you enjoy. They have failed to provide a la carte options for people to save money and give customers more power as to what they like to watch. On-Demand attempts have left much to be desired and it is not a solution. If I want to watch HBO, I should not have to get 80 other channels I will watch once a year.

However, the solution to piracy and the fleeing customer base to online only is quite simple. Convenience! They simply made it too hard to watch stuff. Contrary to popular belief, piracy is more of a service issue than a price issue. Take a look at Steam, the online game store, for example. It provides everything a customer can hope for. It is open 24×7, great prices, fast downloads, automatic game patches, cloud saves, huge selection of games, and a community. All a user has to do is to login with his or her Steam Account on any PC or MAC and with a couple of click is able to buy, download, and play games. Simple and Convenient.

In the other hand, Continue reading “They’ve made it too hard to watch stuff”

Why don’t we get digital property?

When I was teenager, there was suddenly this huge boom of CD stores in my hometown. They were more than anything places to hang out with your friends and people who share your taste in music. You would come to the store, have a chat and whatnot. Even if you did not buy a CD that day, it was very likely you bought a soft drink, a poster, or a piece of gum. It was the social network of its day in a way.

Then, manufacturers just as they did with cassettes recorders on its day, started selling upgrades to the CD players called CD writers or recorders. Soon, the bootleggers started charging a fraction of the price of the original because they only had to cover the cost of the media they were selling illegally. At this moment in time, lust for the sheen of money made consumers buy these bootlegs without a hint of the ramifications of the laws they were breaking. This managed to cause most of the stores to shut down and those that did not had to severely down size.

This is the part I think people do not get about stealing digital property. It is not that Lady Gaga is not going to make as many millions or had to downgrade from her Jet 4 to a Jet 3, it is the fact that Jet 3 does not need as many engineers to maintain the Jet putting them out of a job. All of the stores in my hometown paid rent, employed clerks, cleaning crew, and people for repairs. People do not seem to get that stealing digital property not only affects the artist but it also affects the economy, which affects you.

When you buy a book on your Kindle, you are not paying for text that cost nothing to be copied. You are paying for the effort, the work of the author, the editors, and even the people that clean the place where the editors work. If we don’t get this, it will get to a point where nobody will have any incentive to create anything as it will not put food on the table.

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is 3D a gimmick or here to stay?

I would like to start by saying that what we call 3D is actually a technique called Stereoscopy. All this does is provide a higher illusion of depth by basically providing each eye with a different image. I don’t believe that this technique has ripened enough to be called 3D. Our vision already provides several ways to perceive depth such as position, perspective, size, etc. Filmmakers have already mastered these techniques and have done a wonderful job at it. There really isn’t any need for this stereoscopic technique to be added to film. When I think about what 3D images should look like, I think of holograms such as the one in Stars Wars or similar Sci-Fi movies. I definitely don’t think of the headache I got after watching Avatar, which has a horrible story by the way. Think Pocahontas here.

It is pretty obvious this better version of “3D” is thrown at us by manufacturers trying to sell the next big thing. There is a lot more money involved on it this time than when JAWS came out. We got more content this time around including sports, home made movies and photos, and several Pixar films and the like. Movie theaters are cashing in big time because tickets can be sold for higher prices as the consumer seems to believe it is worth it. Either that or they have 6 years old nagging to get into the 3D showing. However, I do not think 3D is all that bad. 3D actually requires you to have an HDTV and a Blu-ray player that are 3D capable. Several consumers do not see the difference between DVD vs Blu-ray or HD vs SD which blows my mind. But, 3D might provide that little nudge that make them jump into these newer technologies and abandon those old CRT sets.

3D sales seems to be improving at a steady gait but I still can not help but think that this is nothing but a gimmick that I hope eventually goes away.

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respective trademark and copyright holders.