Idea

[Susan]

Ok there's pay-per-view, where you get to choose from a list of current movies to watch. Why can there not be some database online or by the cable companies that stock every film ever made, or close enuff. All you do is browse or type in the movie you want to watch, pay the fee and turn it on. They can fly a man to the moon, can they not do this? It would save me alot of trouble actually in hunting down hard to find movies.

Btw for anyone interested I visited 3 libraries near me for dvd's. Sure enough they ahve them but not very many at all. One conveniently had them at the front door while another required me to walk down a dangerously curved carpeted staircase that went on for infinity before opening up into a super-delux silent media room. Whisper and prepare for 7 lashings. Ah the irony.

In fact when I went the only movies on the shelf were hardly recognizable, outdated documentaries or mexican films circa 1973
Maybe i'll try again in the middle of the week when less people are likely to check them out. O

[Deej]

Movieflix.com offers online movie, but not very many good ones. The bright side, we all like crap movies!! And alot of the crappier movies available at Movieflix are free! They also have some old tv stuff and some cool serials.

[The Burgomaster]

Susan:

I had a client a few years ago.  The company provided in-room movie services for hotel rooms.  They told me that an on demand library of nearly every movie ever made WILL be available during our lifetime.  In fact, probably within the next 5-10 years.

[JohnL]

>Why can there not be some database online or by the cable companies that
>stock every film ever made, or close enuff.

For the same reason you can't go to a single web site and find copies of all the songs you're looking for. Movies are all owned by various companies who can't agree on anything, much less making their entire catalogs of films available in one giant database.

>I had a client a few years ago. The company provided in-room movie services
>for hotel rooms. They told me that an on demand library of nearly every movie
>ever made WILL be available during our lifetime. In fact, probably within the next
>5-10 years.

No offense, but I'll believe it when I see it. They have the capability to do that now with music, but they haven't and probably never will. Many movies aren't even available on tape, I find it hard to believe that the studios will dig them out of the vault and convert them into a format that can be used with an on demand service, especially when most people will only order more recent stuff.

[Susan]

Deej wrote:

> Movieflix.com offers online movie, but not very many good ones.
> The bright side, we all like crap movies!!

Speaking of crap I have a dial-up connection.


>>For the same reason you can't go to a single web site and find copies of all the songs you're looking for. Movies are all owned by various companies who can't agree on anything, much less making their entire catalogs of films available in one giant database.<<<

Yeah but if you are paying to watch the money what's the issue, it's the same as renting it at the video store. in fact it might be better because movie that no longer exist in most video stores (particularly blockbuster/non mom and pop shops) will begin to earn money they might not have seen in years. i'd pay for them, it's just a pain in the ass when i want to watch something and cannot locate it anywhere, or maybe i'm too lazy to leave the house.


>>No offense, but I'll believe it when I see it. They have the capability to do that now with music, but they haven't and probably never will. <<

Most people won't pay to hear a song. People will pay to watch a movie, however.

[JohnL]

>Speaking of crap I have a dial-up connection.

I'll bet my crap dialup connection beats your crap dialup connection! :)

>Yeah but if you are paying to watch the money what's the issue, it's the same as
>renting it at the video store. in fact it might be better because movie that no
>longer exist in most video stores (particularly blockbuster/non mom and pop
>shops) will begin to earn money they might not have seen in years.

I'm still skeptical that they'd go to the trouble of digging all the old films, including those never even released on video, out of the vault, have them cleaned up and transferred to a digital format.

Plus, there's the question of storing several million terabytes of data and being able to deliver it to the user at an acceptable speed. The current size of a full Usenet feed including the binary groups is about a terabyte a day, and I don't know of any news provider that has more than 30-45 days of retention. That's only 30-50 terabytes. If they can do that cheaply enough to compete with video rentals, then I'l like to know why 500K broadband internet access still costs $50 or more per month.