I doubt there will be enough users who feel the same way to make this a reason why theaters remain. The same argument has been made about sound quality, and overwhelmingly now the sound quality in streaming services has improved, but is no where near perfect.
4k streaming will be more of a norm, and that will likely be enough for most users.
The issue here is not is the theater still relevant, but can the economics continue to support theaters.
If the trends in ticket sales continue, it seems like theaters by and large could be a thing of the past. It really is not about whether a large group see it as still relevant, its can the theater business maintain a profitable industry if it loses x% of its patrons.
If ticket sales decline, profits shrink or losses grow. Changing the model another way might increase revenues for theaters (say a all-you-care-to-watch pass, which would likely increase food sales), but only if Holywood changes its revenue model as well. If they continue to charge theaters the same rates, that model likely wouldn't work well. Further, if Holywood had to lose revenue, would it be more interested to work with other streaming services first, or create a competing service, versus go to the theaters?
To me the MoviePass subscription company is almost a Trojan Horse. While they continue to burn and lose money, and grow subscribers, they are making their subscribers see their experience as the new norm. If they go out of business, these subscribers now have to chose if they want to pay for each pass again individually (very expensive in comparison). Likewise, if theaters and Hollywood make a deal, it cuts their own revenue significantly. Its almost a lose/lose situation.
All this is just some of whats hurting Hollywood and the theaters. You also have personal politics growing sharper, a Millennial generation that doesn't value these experiences as highly, a fundamental change in how reviews are looked at, no longer being as easily controlled (RottenTomatoes), 3D movies not holding peoples interest, etc..
Its a bumpy road that doesn't seem to be getting much smoother.
This seems like a short-term problem. It would be like saying Netflix doesn't have content worth streaming, besides documentaries. A lot of people originally had this opinion of Netflix streaming services, and over time they fixed it.
Fixing movies is a bit more difficult. It requires in some cases larger and maintained budgets, and possibly even eventual increased subscriptions costs, or new revenue models to sustain it. However, all indications seem to indicate this is a path they are willing to go down.
In terms of quality material though, or gaining knowledge in how to improve it, or updating the interface to highlight bigger must watch films vs smaller films, I don't think this is an unsolvable problem for them.
The simple answer is realize your more nervous than the person or group interviewing you. You may not be completely yourself as your nervous, but they are being themselves.
If they act aggitated, aggressive, nervous, rushed, etc... Thats most likely either their true personality or a real problem of their workplace.
When you ask to meet your coworkers are they nervous or friendly. Does their boss say anything nice about them... Etc...
I hope this doesn't happen. With Google weakly policing illegal content, labels really do have a bad situation here.
They either take the deal Google has given them which is bad, or say no, and risk getting removed from YouTube and having their music uploaded by fans as lower quality streams. In other words, they take less money, or possibly lose everything while paying huge fees to send YouTube take down notices.
This is bad for the consumer in my opinion. I want indie musicians and labels to be able to make more money, not less. This further incentives musicians to look for another path of work.
Its disappointing that while technology is making it easier than ever to record and produce music, its becoming tougher and tougher to make a living off it.
Hi Yegg. Very interesting update. Two suggestions for places..
1) If I search "self storage columbia mo" I get place results but if I "search self storage 65203" I do not get place results. I noticed this does work for food using a more familiar zipcode like 90210.. but maybe still a little zip code work to be done.
2) What about when I search "thai" or "self storage" in general. DuckDuckGo is known for not tracking the user, but if I search something that with location information would most likely provide place results, shouldn't I be given some type of indicator that with just a zipcode or city name I could be given better results? That way you are educating new users while still providing them the results they need and the privacy DuckDuckGo is known for.
One business model has worked for a long time and the other has failed a lot. Haha, maybe that statement itself is not very correct though considering the car industries recent history.
I think you've started a very interesting discussion here with you're comment. The 10x cost reference was a good point, but computers not dropping value over time also seems more feasible.
This seems like a difficult business to execute on.
1) You need capital to buy the machines to give out and slowly collect $60 on. Once the capital runs out, more is needed, but without getting capital quick enough, new customers have to be turned down, growth slows, and capital becomes even more difficult to acquire.
2) Since the tech and product can be easily purchased by anyone, there is room for other businesses to enter the space quickly and drive a pricing war. If large chains got involved they could offer a lower price and push local same day service.
3) Machines break. Without a hassle-free return / warranty, customers will likely get frustrated, refuse to pay, and make collections very difficult.
Not to say it can't be done, the leasing industry is fairly large, but I'd thought I'd share my thoughts on the problems that might arise. Reminds me of when they did PCs for 19.95 a month plus internet for a contract term.
My startup is probably going to use Google storage at this point. We are hosting video that only gets accessed a couple times, but needs to be available for 1 year, so the reduced storage cost is going to be big for us.
I wish there was more information in the article about how it effected conversion rates.
They've created an interesting model here though.. Its basically free or one price, unless you're really big. If you're really big, they ask you to talk with a sales person, but clearly state a starting price (which I've seen few sites with a "contact us" do) to get the ball rolling.
I think the obvious answer here is there won't be a next-gen social network that is Facebook. Instead there will be several social networks that are laser focused on being the best for X.
Ala Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Vine, Pinterest, Path, OKCupid, Github, etc...
I like iOS 7, but I'm a little worried about how app designers will do with the new look.
When you compare the apps currently out that have been updated, you can see a lot of companies are struggling with flat design. Something that seems simple, is actually very complex to pull off, but when done right, can be fantastic.
I think it will be a while before the ecosystem fully recovers and most of the best apps around have figured out how to execute flat design well.
Not sure how you can make this assertion. You don't know how many employees she's let go, how many Jobs let go, and there is no evidence that the new hires Yahoo has made are not high quality employees.
1) Apple has more active credit cards than Amazon.
2) If someone were to purchase a book on an iOS device it is more likely they have an active credit card on their account than an Amazon account with an active credit card.
3) One payment system is easier for customers to understand and trust.
Steve's wording here may have indicated better technology in his mind, but I doubt that is true, given amazons incredible focus on taking credit card payments accurately and quickly. Reasonably though the reasons outlined above would be good reasons it was better overall, even if it really wasn't consumer friendly in the end because of the lock-in.
The original iOS YouTube app was done by Apple. Google also has a YouTube API with easy code examples and resources for iOS developers, today.
I have to agree with Microsoft here. It seems they are doing everything they can and getting no clear responses. It's funny because this is the same type of junk that happens to small dev companies submitting to app stores in general, however that doesn't make it right. And when you are talking YouTube, which pretty much has a monoppoly on many different types of video content online, it's quite ridiculous to say its ok for Google to do this in the long term.
4k streaming will be more of a norm, and that will likely be enough for most users.