Are the streamers runnign out of st(r)eam?

[Bobby Henderson]

Software is going in this direction, too, with the consumer and business software giants discouraging (or, in the case of Adobe Creative Suite, no longer selling, period) outright license sales and replacing them with a subscription model. This even extends to some software features in cars: apparently Tesla charges three figures a month for its near-autonomous self driving features.

Lots of newer vehicles have all sorts of subscription packages. When I bought my 2018 Chevy Silverado it had Sirius|XM and the OnStar/MyChevy service loaded. The OnStar/MyChevy stuff is $40 per month! Most people I know get rid of that pretty quickly. While there might be some anti-theft benefits and the cool factor of being able to remotely start your vehicle using your phone is it really worth $480 per year? Plus my insurance company (USAA) didn't give me squat for discounts for having the service. So why keep it? Waste of damned money. Sirius|XM is a little more useful (it works outside of the vehicle). But there are less expensive music services one can use on a portable device.

Adobe opened a Pandora's box of sorts with Creative Cloud. Many people were skeptical Adobe would have any success. But their gamble paid off big time. I wish I had bought a bunch of stock in Adobe back then. Adobe had a lot of leverage over the print graphics market because Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat are very much industry standards. We have 3 licenses of Creative Cloud at my workplace. Plus I have a subscription of Astute Graphics' suite of Adobe Illustrator plug-ins. A lot of the branding assets we receive are generated using Adobe software, particularly Illustrator. There is a lot of features and effects within Illustrator that do not translate at all to rival graphics applications. It ends up being cheaper for us to just use Adobe's software than waste a shit-ton of time trying to fix client artwork when it fails to import accurately into a non-native Adobe application.

Other companies saw Adobe's success and intended to copy it. Much of Autodesk's software is all sold via subscription now (AutoCAD, Maya, etc). I've used another vector drawing program, CorelDRAW, for over 30 years. They now sell it either as a subscription or a version with a one time purchase of $549, but the license cannot be upgraded at all. I think Corel is struggling. They don't have the kind of leverage titans like Adobe and Autodesk wield. CorelDRAW has had squat in terms of worthwhile upgrades and the application gets hardly any bug fixes at all. That's despite the fact a number of bugs have existed in CorelDRAW going back 3 or more version cycles. Meanwhile Adobe issues updates frequently to Illustrator, both in terms of adding new features or improving existing ones and issuing lots of bug fix updates. Adobe is seen by many as a bad guy. But they're actually pretty responsive to user feedback and requests. I've managed to get a couple new features incorporated into Illustrator myself.

The only thing blunting any of this software-as-a-service stuff in the graphics industry is lower priced or free applications. I have the desktop and iPad version of Affinity Designer, the iPad version of Vectornator and the desktop version of Inkscape. They're interesting applications, but have too many serious drawbacks or missing features to be productive in an actual graphics production environment.

DaVinci Resolve Studio is, I think, the only low cost video production application suite that works very well in a professional environment. But one could argue Blackmagic Design sells the studio suite for only $295 (and offers Resolve 18 for free) as a loss leader to entice users into buying its professional video production hardware.

Having to deal with software subscriptions for work is one thing. It's an easy tax write-off, btw. It turns into something that is a cost of doing business. Subscription-based entertainment at home is far more of an optional luxury. Subscription-based entertainment, I think, is poised to go through a serious down-turn. The rampant inflation on basics like food, rent, etc will force a lot of people to hack away a bunch of those services. I think satellite TV companies (Dish, DirecTV) are quickly becoming irrelevant. Streaming services like Hulu Live and YouTube TV cost considerably less. But even those services are questionable considering how so many cable TV networks are wastelands of reality TV content and other garbage. The "news" channels are in the business of sowing discord in the American public, jerking off their rage boners with anger pornography. Live sports is the only thing worth a damn, and even that isn't so great these days. All in all it seems like a better idea to get outdoors or at least go to the gym.

[Frank Cox]

Subscriptions exist even for candy, believe it or not.

For the past few months I haven't been able to find Skittles at the places where I usually buy my candy. Since they sell rather well, my wife did some web browsing to see if she could find some at a reasonable price that she could just order online.

She found some, but to get the price you had to subscribe to receive X boxes per month indefinitely. And if they didn't have what you were actually subscribed to get, "we reserve the right to substitute another item that we are sure will meet your expectations as well."

So it's a license to ship you anything that they happen to have laying around in their warehouse and bill you for it automatically.

No thanks.

[Steve Guttag]

It really brings up the question of ownership of something. This is not limited to just software, as manufacturers have ceased to provide schematics, make available repair parts and even serialize things so you can't, necessarily, repair your own stuff, even if you had the proper part.

I, personally, would be in favor of legislation that would compel manufacturers, including software developers that must offer a purchase version of their software that may not exceed the cost of say 3-5 years of a subscription version. Likewise, I would be in favor of legislation that would stipulate that when one purchases a product, it is theirs, in its entirety. How they use it is their business and how they choose to repair it is their business. This wouldn't violate any copyrights as nobody would be compelled to provide source code but the use of that code would be owned by whom purchases the product that uses it.

As the various firms have been consolidated and acquired, the notion of a completely free-market has vanished as one does not have choices and it only takes a handful of companies to set the standard of things like the subscription model.

Now, if you own your software (well, the use of your software), you wouldn't be entitled to any new features...just patches to repair anything that is defective in what you purchased. Much the same that if you buy a 2020 vehicle, you don't get the new features of a 2021, just the warranty repairs to any defects in the 2020.

There are some types of softwares that lend themselves to subscription models anyway. Accounting software comes to mind where tax and other things associated with accounting change on a regular basis such that running old versions may open one up to not properly following current regulations. Things involving money always tend to need to keep up. But, if I don't want to update my word processor, why should I need a subscription? Furthermore, I shouldn't be compelled to have Microsoft always feel that it HAS to update my OS if I don't want it to.

[Leo Enticknap]

Software is going in this direction, too, with the consumer and business software giants discouraging (or, in the case of Adobe Creative Suite, no longer selling, period) outright license sales and replacing them with a subscription model. This even extends to some software features in cars: apparently Tesla charges three figures a month for its near-autonomous self driving features.

[Randy Stankey]

I hate the subscription model! I absolutely, freakin' HATE it!

All it does is give somebody else permission to take money out of your bank account, whenever they want, without asking. Of course, the claim is that you gave them permission when you agreed to their terms but that's just bullshit. If there is less money in your account and you didn't specifically approve the transaction, they TOOK your money!

I think there should be a law to the effect that all electronic transactions or purchases, via the internet, have to be approved by the card owner on a PER-TRANSACTION basis.

[Marcel Birgelen]

They just want people to sit at home, type their credit card number into their website then stare at their television for two hours then repeat the same thing, all over again, the next day.

Well, it's worse than that... they just want you to it once and then charge you automatically every next month and rake in the cash. That's what the "subscription model" is all about... getting cash cash from your "primary revenue stream" with minimal fuss and by doing the utmost minimal to keep them hooked up to your services.

Paying per view isn't a-la-mode anymore, it's the all-you-can-watch buffet, as long as it lasts. Maybe it will last until the majority of the people start realizing they're paying to be fed the same low-quality, re-heated shit every single day, but maybe that's exactly what many people want.

I guess the latest Netflix price-hikes has pushed many people over-the-edge though: You can see it in their subscriber numbers and the fact that they started to back-track on their price increases in some markets.

[Randy Stankey]

The bean counters at movie studios and parent media companies have sped up the total life cycle of a movie as a means of playing some kind of cash flow game, one that doesn't make any sense to me. The movies aren't even the point anymore. It seems to be more about positioning a company to buy other companies or be sold to another company.

Remember how I keep bitching about people referring to movies as "product?"
I hate it when people think of customers as a "revenue stream."

They just want people to sit at home, type their credit card number into their website then stare at their television for two hours then repeat the same thing, all over again, the next day.

It's this kind of thinking that is killing the movie industry.

People are no longer customers to be served. They are just ripple in a revenue stream.

[Mike Blakesley]

I will say that the studios really did seem to come to the realization that a movie really does need a theatrical release with a window to bust out of the crowd and be noticed. That was strongly evidenced at CinemaCon this year, and noted in a couple dozen articles about it that I have read since. So maybe we can quit being the Rodney Dangerfields of the movie industry.

[Bobby Henderson]

Obviously, if cinema chains made more money and then devoted some of that money to improving their presentations, presentations would improve. The ideas I was looking for are related to: what possible incentive could lead to that happening?

The incentive is the movie distributors (as well as the theaters) could end up making significantly more money on each movie if they invested properly to make the movie-going experience as good as it can be (at least in realistic terms) at every cinema location. That means investing in both people and equipment.

For decades the distributors have been marginalizing the theatrical platform in order to chase after money that just isn't there on the home viewing side. There is no way they can be making nearly as much money on a per title basis with streaming as they were with retail DVDs 20 years ago. Today a new movie can go from the cinema screen to streaming app to completely forgotten inside one calendar year. I don't see any legit reason at all to speed up that process faster.

The bean counters at movie studios and parent media companies have sped up the total life cycle of a movie as a means of playing some kind of cash flow game, one that doesn't make any sense to me. The movies aren't even the point anymore. It seems to be more about positioning a company to buy other companies or be sold to another company.

[Mike Blakesley]

• Bright green light shining across the screen
• One half of the screen is noticeably darker than the other
• Missing audio channels
• Audio channels coming from the wrong direction
• Audio channels coming from the wrong goddamn movie

Well your posts imply that this kind of stuff is happening in every location everywhere all the time.

Of course those kind of problems should be addressed. I never said they shouldn't.

What could make the higher ups in theater chain management be willing to invest in maintaining high (or even adequate) standards of show quality?

I think the answer is "people." As in, people who care about presentation. As is is now, a chain theater probably has its showtimes and all the projector settings done remotely, so the movies run with no local involvement. To the guy in an office somewhere looking at his computer, the show in Theater X might be going off nicely; but he can't tell that there's a speaker blown, or the screen has a rip in it, or the bass is too boomy, or the words are unintelligible. That takes a human being standing in the room looking and listening. But the chains are either too cheap or can't afford to pay for that.

I think a general manager should get in the habit of visiting each and every auditorium at least once per show just to look and listen, and report every problem every single day. The next step would be to enable someone on site to fix problems, rather than putting them on some "to-do list" in some office somewhere, which is a place where tasks go to die.

[Geoff Jones]

Sorry. I guess I still wasn't being clear. Obviously, if cinema chains made more money and then devoted some of that money to improving their presentations, presentations would improve. The ideas I was looking for are related to: what possible incentive could lead to that happening? What could make the higher ups in theater chain management be willing to invest in maintaining high (or even adequate) standards of show quality? To me, that's the crux of the problem.

There are no legal barriers to prevent movie distributors from taking a more hands-on approach with cinemas. I think the distributors should sink a good bit of money into theater projection and sound as well as better new venues. They should do that as a way a better showcasing their product. Leaving up to the theater chains to foot all of the bill isn't working.

Now that is an intriguing possibility. I would love to distributors or even the filmmakers get involved. I wonder what it would take to see it happen?

[Bobby Henderson]

I wasn't ignoring your point. I attempted to acknowledge it it with the comment "there are plenty of services and activities with smaller customer bases that still find a way to be profitable."

A small coalition of live stage play theaters could operate at a profit. Commercial cinemas, whose very operations depend on the mass production of some very expensive yet industry-specific equipment, cannot do the same. D-cinema projectors, the various computer chips and IC boards inside of them and even the lamps all must be manufactured at a certain scale. They cannot be produced at one or a few units at a time. Otherwise the costs per unit would spike to astonishing levels.

You may be right that theaters wouldn't survive if the release window came to an end, but you aren't suggesting any other ideas about improving the industry.

I did suggest ideas to improve the industry earlier in this thread. None of those ideas are easy or free of cost to implement. The two most basic things are: 1.: movie distributors must be willing to support the theatrical release window and even lengthen the window significantly and 2.: commercial cinemas must attract better/more-skilled people to their work force. I'm not asking for union projectionists, but I think cinemas need at least one or more staff members present on site at all times who can monitor show quality and be able to do at least some basic trouble-shooting when problems occur. The higher ups in theater chain management must be willing to invest in maintaining high standards of show quality, not to mention fixing shit that gets broken or vandalized in the theaters.

Theaters with crappy presentation quality are not a new thing at all. There were lots of film-based theaters that were absolutely terrible. The difficult thing for commercial cinemas today is audio/video standards for home viewing have improved enormously. HD is now standard definition in the home. That has raised the floor of what is passable for minimum quality standards in commercial theaters.

The movie distributors have cannibalized various parts of the home movie sales market via this broad shift to streaming apps. To me it looks like the theatrical release platform is the only area where there is money left on the table to be made. There are no legal barriers to prevent movie distributors from taking a more hands-on approach with cinemas. I think the distributors should sink a good bit of money into theater projection and sound as well as better new venues. They should do that as a way a better showcasing their product. Leaving up to the theater chains to foot all of the bill isn't working.

[Geoff Jones]

• Bright green light shining across the screen
• One half of the screen is noticeably darker than the other
• Missing audio channels
• Audio channels coming from the wrong direction
• Audio channels coming from the wrong goddamn movie

I've always thought highly of the operation you run based on your posts here, but if being dismayed by these sorts of things is "lofty standards," then maybe I was mistaken.

If you polled random moviegoers about the moviegoing experience, I doubt you'd find many complaints, because most of those who care about presentation have given up on commercial cinemas.

In this discussion I've actually been trying to find ways to help improve an industry I love. My thought was that if all the crappy theaters shut down, the ones run be people who cared about presentation would actually make more money. I'm rooting for those sorts of operations. But whatever. You be you.

[Mike Blakesley]

If the moviegoing experience continues to be the shit-show that you and I and so many others keep describing, what difference does it make if the industry continues or not?

The moviegoing experience is only a shit-show in some places, not ALL places. Almost every time my wife and I go on a trip, we wind up going to at least one movie, and I can't remember the last time we had a sub-par experience.

I would bet that if you polled random moviegoers (not Film-Techers, who are notoriously picky and rightly so), you'd probably find the level of complaints is no higher than it might be for any other service industry, restaurants or concerts for example. It is impossible to please 100% of the people all of the time, it just can't be done. So you do the best you can with the resources you have. It's not like our industry is the only one where there are issues now and then.

So quit being so high-and-mighty about how you think an entire industry deserves to be flushed, just because it doesn't always meet your lofty standards. I'm not making excuses for the chains and their cheapo policies, and I can't speak for the other theater owners in the country, but I'm doing the best I can, and I expect many others are as well.

[Geoff Jones]

I wasn't ignoring your point. I attempted to acknowledge it it with the comment "there are plenty of services and activities with smaller customer bases that still find a way to be profitable."

You may be right that theaters wouldn't survive if the release window came to an end, but you aren't suggesting any other ideas about improving the industry.

If the moviegoing experience continues to be the shit-show that you and I and so many others keep describing, what difference does it make if the industry continues or not?