jecasc - 2:17 pm on Jan 12, 2011 (gmt 0)

Plus I really wouldn't like to have my collection on a hard drive. If it were to break, get stolen or stop working I would freak out with a five mile blast radius.

Why would anybody want a collection at all? What I want is every movie and every piece of music ready for streaming at my request. Like my napster flatrate. I pay 9 EUR/month and can access millions of songs. If I spent 9 EUR / month buying music for 60 years I would only get a collection of about 7200 songs. And had to store and handle them myself, transfer them to a new harddisk or rent a garage for my CD collection.

Same goes for movies. I don't want to buy movies, I want to rent them. If it is Sunday 3 a.m. and I want to watch the 1930 version of "All Quiet on the Western Front" or Inception from 2010 I want to pay a reasonable price and be able to watch it. Immediately. Without buying a DVD and not a localized dubbed version.

The problem of the film industry is: The illegal platforms provide this variety and they provide a large collection. The film industry does not offer anything that comes close to this. If people where able to pay 2-4 Euro for watching a film when they want it - I don't think anybody would spend time watching movies filmed with a hand camera in a chinese movie theatre. At least not those who can afford it. And those who can't don't buy a DVD either.