Licensing

Talk about music, movies, television, books, and other media. No religious or political discussion allowed.
User avatar
VideoGameCritic
Site Admin
Posts: 18102
Joined: April 1st, 2015, 7:23 pm

Licensing

Postby VideoGameCritic » July 14th, 2018, 11:45 am

I was reading an article about Blockbusters shutting down:
https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... one-in-us/

In one of the comments someone complained about the lack of movie selection on Netflix's online service. I have noticed this too. Apparently it comes down to licensing.

Then I realized this is a big issue with online games as well. People think they can always re-download a game they bought but often they can't due to licensing. For any game you download it's only a matter of time before it gets phased out. Yet another reason you can't beat physical ownership.

Thoughts?

User avatar
scotland
Posts: 2561
Joined: April 7th, 2015, 7:33 pm

Re: Licensing

Postby scotland » July 14th, 2018, 12:52 pm

With Blockbuster in the 90s, if you had content you needed to manufacture the DVD and put it at a Blockbuster. Netflix undercut Blockbuster with DVD by mail, and a huge selection and no late fees. Streaming has undercut that however - all sorts of content can skip the costs of making DVDs, and just one online service to run. We went from 1 brick and mortar to a wild west of streaming services and licenses.

Netflix lost content to other streamers, and has to make their own. Which means older content gets lost.

I tried to watch a Hunger Games movie recently, and not on any service I had - and now I have several like Netflix and Amazon and more. Bizarre.


Return to “Other Media”