I love Comic Con season. It’s that time of the year when you tend to see loads of awesome new trailers. I woke up to some awesome new trailers for Thor: Ragnarok, Justice League and Star Trek: Discovery.
I seem to be one of the few people who enjoyed Batman vs Superman (more the extended version). I’m excited about this first live action Justice League movie.
I wasn’t sure about the new series when it was first announced but after seeing a couple teasers and, now, the full trailer, I think this is going to be impressive.
My brother pointed this one out to me. It looks visually amazing. Still, when I watch this trailer I can’t help but think that my concern that my kids are spending way too much time in front of screens doesn’t even come close to this dystopian future world.
Kevin Spacey is one of my favourite actors and has been since The Usual Suspects. He spoke to the audience at the Edinburgh Television Festival about the overwhelming importance of creative professionals in the entertainment industry and about giving TV audiences what they want.
Give audiences what they want, how they want it
He highlighted a theme that has seemed so sensible to me for years and that seems to escape entertainment industry executives. This theme applies equally to music as it does to TV and movies:
The warp-speed of technological advancement – the Internet, streaming, multi-platforming – happens to have coincided with the recognition of TV as an art form. So you have this incredible confluence of a medium coming into its own JUST AS the technology for that medium is drastically shifting. Studios and networks who ignore either shift – whether the increasing sophistication of story telling, or the constantly shifting sands of technological advancement – will be left behind. And if they fail to hear these warnings, audiences will evolve faster than they will. They will seek the stories and content-providers who give them what they demand – complex, smart stories available whenever they want, on whatever device they want, wherever they want. Netflix and other similar services have succeeded because they have married good content with a forward-thinking approach to viewing habits and appetites.
While we are accustomed to distinctions between movies, TV and online video, these distinctions are largely irrelevant to younger generations. Our kids certainly don’t see much of a distinction between TV series they watch on Netflix and the channels they watch on YouTube.
Movies are distinctive primarily because watching big ticket items involves a trip to the local movie theatre and having that big screen experience. At the same time, we have a pretty decent HD TV and surround sound at home and we routinely watch movies on weekend afternoons with our kids there too.
The distinctions between formats and devices are blurring all the time:
If you are watching a film on your television, is it no longer a film because you’re not watching it in the theater? If you watch a TV show on your iPad is it no longer a TV show? The device and length are irrelevant. The labels are useless – except perhaps to agents and managers and lawyers who use these labels to conduct business deals. For kids growing up now there’s no difference watching Avatar on an iPad or watching YouTube on a TV and watching Game of Thrones on their computer. It’s all CONTENT. It’s all STORY.
While I understand that regional broadcasters have deals with studios and publishers that probably block global distribution of movies and TV series, this approach to distribution doesn’t serve audiences. It only benefits the broadcasters who lack the will and imagination they need to take advantage of new opportunities.
The sooner entertainment industry executives come to terms with the fact that audiences want those stories on their terms, the sooner the market as a whole will benefit. Again, as Spacey pointed out:
And the audience has spoken: they want stories. They’re dying for them. They are rooting for us to give them the right thing. And they will talk about it, binge on it, carry it with them on the bus and to the hairdresser, force it on their friends, tweet, blog, Facebook, make fan pages, silly Jifs (sic) and god knows what else about it, engage with it with a passion and an intimacy that a blockbuster movie could only dream of. All we have to do is give it to them. The prize fruit is right there. Shinier and juicier than it has ever been before. So it will be all the more shame on each and every one of us if we don’t reach out and seize it.
Netflix wants to take on movie distributors and theaters
Netflix’s Reed Hastings recently spoke at recode’s 2017 Code Conference.
One of the tidbits that emerged from his interview is the possibility that Netflix is doing to do for movies what it did for TV. What could well happen if Netflix’s approach gains traction is that those trips to a movie theatre to watch a new movie may become less prevalent.
There is still a lot to be said for the big screen experience, for sure. At the same time, that may be a generational thing and our home theatre experiences may be happy substitutes.
Losing battle
Whether it is TV, movies or music, industry executives are fighting losing battles. Audiences want this content on their terms and if the industry doesn’t come to the party, people will find ways around their limitations.
This may mean people downloading the stuff they want instead of paying for it or simply opting out of more mainstream content.
The industry isn’t going to shrivel up and die anytime soon but imagine what the industry could achieve if it thought differently?
My big excitement in the last two weeks was our HD TV purchase which brought my hope for an Apple TV a little closer.
We are like those families who hung on to cabled VHS machines when everyone had moved on to DVD players. This is our first step into the modern TV era. Having bought a really nice (dumb) LG HD TV, I finally had a screen I could connect my first generation Chromecast to and see what it could really do.
I almost immediately fell in love with my Chromecast. It updated itself and I set the background to switch between photos sourced from some beautiful online collections and a couple of my Google Photos albums.
We primarily watch YouTube and Netflix with our Chromecast. They are just about the only apps we have that support Chromecast on our iOS devices. We have been Netflix fans for a while so that mostly works out just fine for us.
Yes, I prefer to pay for our entertainment
I am a bit proponent of paying for my TV series and movies so I buy just about all our movies and TV series from the iTunes store. Unfortunately the Israeli iTunes store doesn’t have as much of a movie collection as the US store and doesn’t have any TV series. This means I’m not using the Israeli iTunes store which is problematic in itself.
I am also an Apple Music fan and have been a subscriber since the service launched.
Given how invested we are in Apple-supplied content, I have my eyes on an Apple TV for our home so I can access all our content in much the same way I do with our Chromecast. I can use my laptop to access our movies and TV series but my Chromecast has spoiled me with the ability to easily watch stuff on our TV without needing to plug my laptop in and mess with displays and stuff.
Compared to the Chromecast, the Apple TV is expensive and part of my justification to my wife for buying one is that we could also use it as a gaming console and save us the cost of an X-Box or Sony Playstation (my son wants an X-Box because he can play Minecraft – I told him Minecraft is coming to the Apple TV too). She may be convinced (decision pending).
Joseph Rosensteel published an article titled “Apple’s October TV Surprise” (I linked to it from Matt Mullenweg’s post titled “Apple TV’s Struggles“) which raises more than a few questions about whether the Apple TV is worth buying. It has certainly given me reason to thinking a little more about my planned purchase.
There is no way to justify spending $150 to enter Apple’s TV ecosystem in the fall of 2016 on hardware alone. When Google is making a streaming UHD HDR player that costs LESS than a replacement Siri Remote, there is a problem with the hardware Apple is selling.
But I don’t have many paid content options
I would be pretty comfortable switching our movies and TV series across to the Google Play Store and just using the Chromecast as our primary media streaming device. Unfortunately, movies and TV series are simply not available from the Google Play Store here in Israel. Even the iTunes store offers some movies and music here!
Albania, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Canada, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Fiji, France, Gabon, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Namibia, Netherlands, Nepal, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Norway, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Rwanda, Russia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe
TV shows
Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States
Another effect of limiting (or opening up) the availability of this sort of content is that it influences which device ecosystem you buy into and stick with. I’ve considered switching to Android on and off but remain with my iOS devices because I rely on certain iOS apps fairly heavily. I also have all of my music and, of course, my movies and TV series in Appleland too.
That largely locks me into the macOS/iOS ecosystem. Buying an Apple TV would only entrench me further in the ecosystem. Given that this is the best source of much of my entertainment and my apps, it is practically inevitable.
The absurd content availability model
This fragmented content availability confounds me. It is the 21st century. Israel has pretty good, cheap broadband and a population that is really tech savvy. Why can we not pay our hard earned Shekels for the content we want?
That is a rhetorical question. The answer is likely that the studios and publishers have deals with local distributors and those deals block availability of the content here.
What happens is that almost everyone I know simply torrents the stuff they want to watch. Our friends look at me like I am crazy when I tell them I prefer to buy our movies and TV series. They explain to me (slowly and loudly) that all I need is Kodi or some streamer and it’s all free!
Israel also has what seems to be a substantial Android user-base so extending Google’s content offerings to Israel would seem to make a lot of sense. Unfortunately the people who could change the current situation don’t seem to agree.
Opening the Google Play Store to more countries opens the door for more people also makes switching to the Google ecosystem feasible. Surely that is desirable to Google too?
So that leaves me with my current plan to invest in an Apple TV at some point in the near future. Hopefully it will be worth the cost but given where we have most of our content, it remains a compelling option. Still, it’s complicated and it needn’t be.
Ok, this is really cool. It is probably worth selling part of my digital soul for this sort of awesomeness. Already the auto-awesome photo effects are really enriching my experience. Can’t wait to see the video equivalents.
Our LG DVR is dying and we want to buy a DVD player so we can still play our DVDs in our existing collection. We really don’t want anything too fancy because my plan is to switch to digital content and not buy any more physical media. My Grand Plan involves something like a Mac mini or Apple TV and a new HD tv (we still have an old non-HD tv) down the line so this is sort of legacy support for our existing collection.
Any recommendations? My first thought is a Samsung player. LG isn’t an option for us. We have only had issues with LG players.
