There’s a lot of competition for the “Not Getting It” Award (known among the cognoscenti as the venerable Noggie), but no ranked list would be complete without inclusion of my favorite stuck-in-the-20th-century industry: movie studios. They just manage to eek out the lead from their close cousins in the music industry.
Witness their new attempt at entering the online world. This New York Times article lays out the scoop on the retooling of the Movielink service to provide downloadable copies of films, instead of the previous failed method utilizing streaming. And what does your money buy you at this emporium of entertainment? Well, as NYT points out, you can shell out $20 for a download of King Kong with no special features, and the ability to play it on three computers (but not DVD players), or you can buy the DVD from Amazon for around $15, with all the extras included. Listen to this smart man:
“They are giving the consumer less and charging more for it,” said Warren N. Lieberfarb, the former president of Warner Home Video and now an entertainment technology consultant. “To me this really stacks the deck against mass consumer adoption.”And adding insult to, well, insult, when I popped over to check out the Movielink site this morning, I was greeted by the following message plastered lovingly over the top of the site in bright red text:
Sorry, but as of May 2, 2005, Movielink no longer supports Windows 98 and ME operating systems.So, in other words: congratulations, movie industry, for creating a pretty useless service. Keep up the good work.
Movielink also does not support Mac or Linux.
In order to enjoy the Movielink service, you must use Windows 2000 or XP,
which support certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies.
See also: Downloadable movies done wrong by Christopher Breen.
