“(in terms of mail time), they will ship you the next thing in your queue that’s available from the closest-to-you DC in addition to the more limited title. "
‘Short wait’, ‘long wait’, ‘very long wait’….
I was just recently dicking around with the maps app in my smartphone and accidentally ran into the city distribution center. Kinda wanna just show up.
—PolarisDiB
Raleigh’s only about a half-hour driving distance, so mail should only take one day. I would imagine that the Atlanta DC is significantly bigger than that one, though, just based on the size of the populations each is probably serving.
I think they have somewhere between 50 and 100 distribution centers total nationwide.
“Yeah, it’s already starting, but if I tune to NBC at 8PM, I still see a specific show they are broadcasting across the country at that exact time. I mean, when is that going to stop?”
Probably never. Why does one thing always have to replace another? Can’t the two co-exist? It seems to me there is still a huge demand for watching shows at a specific time. What’s the purpose of switching to On Demand only? So instead of waiting for AMC to broadcast the new episode of Man Men at 8pm, we’re waiting for them to put it on demand at 8pm. What the hell is the difference?
“So instead of waiting for AMC to broadcast the new episode of Man Men at 8pm, we’re waiting for them to put it on demand at 8pm. What the hell is the difference?”
That my work has me doing some after hours at 8pm and I don’t want to miss it, so I want to go home and request it playing as opposed to expending all the money and effort on a TiVo or similar recording hardware. Just ask the company to give it to me when I want it. They can do that, right?
—PolarisDiB
“Just ask the company to give it to me when I want it. They can do that, right?”
Exactly. And that’s why On Demand is popular. If you forget to set your DVR to record Too Big to Fail, it won’t matter because you know HBO will have the film available on demand. But again, this is an added feature. Why does it need to replace that already works?
Of course they can coexist, but only if both are profitable.
Right now, they are. But shows like Community that demographically skew to the young are already having a hard time in the ol’ Nielsens because they all watch on Hulu. Only a matter of time until everybody watches services like Netflix on Hulu in perfect 1080p on huge TV screens, and nobody can profit off broadcast television anymore.
I don’t know that that will ever happen. You saw the ratings for Hatfields and McCoys, right? I really can’t imagine a time when showing something at a specific time isn’t profitable.
“Only a matter of time until everybody watches services like Netflix on Hulu in perfect 1080p on huge TV screens, and nobody can profit off broadcast television anymore.”
Except that then the content producers have to find a viable alternative to all that advertising revenue, or they won’t be able to afford to producer content in the same way they do now. Netflix and Hulu certainly aren’t going to be in a financial position to finance 100% of their own content.
Streaming is out of the question if you live in a country like Australia. Slow internet, download quotas, poor distribution of good films. Apple TV works OK, but it’s mostly new blockbusters.
@Waving Surface
The same was true of the US ten years ago. Just wait a bit.
@Matt Parks
Sure. They’re already sticking a ton of advertising their website streaming. When cable came out it had no ads. Now all but premium channels have ads. Streaming services will end up having the same amount of ads as everything else. And they’ll start putting more product placement in their shows.
When it gets to the point where a majority of shows are available on streaming, and some are only available on TV broadcasts, people will stop watching shows on broadcast and just watch them on their own schedule.
Right, hypothetically, but I think (even if there were infrastructure to support the whole nation streaming all of their video content), that the slowness of advertising to “catch on” is going to be the biggest drag on this happening.
Oh, and also I don’t think one should underestimate the “eventness” of “live” viewing of not only tentpole shows like Madmen and Lost in their respective primes, but also obviously sporting events and and other such things. There’s a feeling of real-time connection to these things that I don’t think a lot of viewers are going to be so willing to surrender.
“Oh, and also I don’t think one should underestimate the “eventness” of “live” viewing of not only tentpole shows like Madmen and Lost in their respective primes, but also obviously sporting events and and other such things. There’s a feeling of real-time connection to these things that I don’t think a lot of viewers are going to be so willing to surrender.”
Precisely. Ironically, this seems to have only increased over the past ten years – the water cooler talk “did you see Mad Men/Game of Thrones/Curb Your Enthusiasm last night?” It seems the internet and social networking have only added to that, as you see people live tweeting or facebook updating during the show.
@Jirin
Somehow I don’t think I’ll be streaming Criterion releases in this country in the next ten years.
If a studio makes a quality HD copy of an old movie available to streaming, I no longer expect a follow-up Blu-ray release because nowadays that might be a lower priority for the studio.
“‘Short wait’, ‘long wait’, ‘very long wait’….”
That actually has more to do with how many copies total Netflix has vs. demand rather than how far way from you a particular disc happens to be sitting when you’re next in line . . . that is, how long a film will sit at the top of your queue before you become first in line to receive it.
Yeah, sometimes if it’s marked "long wait " it does mean there isn’t a copy available at your nearest shipping center, but those are the cases where Netflix ships me an extra film while I wait. But just by looking at the names of my Very Long Wait titles makes me think they probably only have a limited amount of copies in general.
Oh, and also I don’t think one should underestimate the “eventness” of “live” viewing of not only tentpole shows like Madmen and Lost in their respective primes, but also obviously sporting events and and other such things. There’s a feeling of real-time connection to these things that I don’t think a lot of viewers are going to be so willing to surrender.
People who are used to it, no. But young kids aren’t used to it, they’re going to get used to the thing that’s easier now. People don’t like missing episodes of their favorite show, and they despise having to schedule their life around television not to do so.
You know why the Thursday night comedy block on NBC gets such low-for-network ratings, even though that entire block is incredibly popular? Because they skew to a younger, more urban audience, and they’re the ones who don’t watch them on live broadcast, especially those of them in college.
Some of my buddies at work don’t even have any kind of broadcast cable service because they use streaming exclusively to follow TV series. Granted, they’re young and IT people so you’d expect them to be the first to make the switch. But if the younger generation are doing it now, everybody will be doing it within 10-20 years.
And of course there are live sports and live reality shows, that will last longer on broadcast TV than filmed series.
It won’t kill the water cooler talk either. It will just be ‘Available from’. So, it will first be available on this day at this time. Maybe they will have live comment streams for people watching it at first availability. People who are able to will watch it right when it first becomes available, the rest at their leisure.
Yeah the only way I have to watch TV at my house is through streaming – I’m not gonna pay for cable, and I just haven’t bothered to try to connect to get network.
I do miss the “eventness” of watching Lost on Wednesday nights though…
Drunken Father Figure of Old
Out of curiosity, Matt, how close is your distribution center to you? Mine’s pretty close to me, but I’m not sure if it’s just cause I’m in Atlanta and the center here serves a lot of the southeast or what.