It’s not every day that you go to Apple Trailers’ page, and spot a film promotion there on a Finnish film. Jalmari Helander‘s first feature film Rare Exports, that’s based on the Rare Exports shorts that have been circling around the Internet for quite some time already, just landed a new page for Apple Trailers, and for once I can be proud of how internationally a Finnish film has been promoted. Go see yourself, here’s Rare Exports’ page on Apple Trailers!
TechCrunch just wrote an article claiming today being officially the death of compact discs (basically in any format, be it CD, DVD or BluRay). Their reasoning was because the writer MG Siegler had realized he hadn’t used the DVD drive of his MacBook ever for anything. With computers, I’m quite confident that’s the future, and I couldn’t be more happier with it. But what about film industry? When do we get rid of the DVDs and BluRays, and do we even want to?
I’m all for digital distribution, all for the easiest flow of entertainment. But looking around my house right now, I’m unfortunately not seeing an easy way out when it comes to films. And again, unlike with those horrible computer program boxes filled with nothing but air, I do have a mental attachment to our DVD collection. It’s not huge, but it’s cute. In a bachelor nerd way. And compared to a collection of computer program boxes, that become historical relics after just one year when a new version of the program has replaced the earlier one, these are eternal. And by eternal I mean they last 15-20 years. But that’s ten-twenty times longer than a computer program. And even a computer game – watching a wall full of computer games, it’s not quite likely you find yourself in a sudden rush of nostalgia, pull out your old Amiga, set it up, install Monkey Island 2 and spend few hours playing it. It sounds great, but really for that to happen… I don’t think so.
There's a bunch of 'em. Not a huge collection, and a bit messy, but good stuff there is!
So DVDs and BluRays have more collecting value. But in addition to that, still looking around my house and the equipment I have, there’s absolutely no way a digital download of a film would be superior to a physical high quality BluRay, 1080p, 5.1 sound, the works. Connecting my computer through a display port to a HDMI adapter to my TV, then pulling out an optical cable and rigging it to my laptop, then downloading the 1080p file from a pirate site, watching it… It’s just too much hassle, a hassle which I can get around by just walking to Sokos next door, grabbing the desired BluRay, sticking it to my PS3 and kaboom, it’s on. It’s easily something I’m happy to pay 20-30 bucks, and then – I have the physical copy in my collection, available for watching quickly anytime I want. And more than that, just a glance on the wall of my room, and registering titles like Terminator 2, Citizen Kane, American Beauty, Big Fish – even unconsciously – makes me feel like I’m in a good place. Somehow, watching the same names typed on a computer screen with 10pt Tahoma don’t work the same way.
So, the reason BluRays (and DVDs) will live on for at least another 10 years are three:
1) As a physical item, they have a collecting and portability value.
2) As long as hooking your laptop to your home entertainment system requires even hooking one cord somewhere, it’s not working.
3) As long as there’s no reasonable online version that will provide the easiness, the enjoyment of collectibility and the quality of a BluRay.
The conclusion is: digital distribution is not killing the film business. It adds a new customer segment, that will merge *in the future* to the existing one, making it stronger. But as long as the digital pioneers are being punished for the mistakes the industry makes, there’s not enough synergy that this would happen. Hunting “pirates” should end, and we should come up together with the industry, the audience, the film buffs, the Internet and the filmmakers a distribution system that’s making sense so that the merging from physical units to digital distribution would be painless, productive, profitable and possible.
Ugh. Ramble off.
First, my apologies for late last part for those of you who were waiting for it early this week – had quite a hectic work week the both of us, and didn’t have time to finalize the text until now. But here we go! And to those new to what’s going on, this is the third part of the Video-On-Demand review – you can read the first part here, and the second part here.
If there’s one thing I learned from my last week’s Video-On-Demand test, it’s that the services available right now in Finland have high prices, limited selection and bad technology running them. Not a very good start for the big revolution – but you gotta start somewhere, right? As the last part of the research, we took a little look into the future to see, what’s out there for tomorrow, and how things should be working, in a perfect world.
Welcome to the last leg of the Voyage of Despair.
THE IDEAL SERVICE: INTRODUCING FILMIFY
The fictional service FILMIFY is a concept that’s been bouncing around my head for quite some time already. Basically, it’s a tar ball of frustration, where I stick all the things done wrong in current VOD markets, and try to make them right in my head. We even had an idea to set up a service like this some time ago, but backed out because we realized that the market is going to be flooded with very good competitors very soon, and we’re not enough startup maniacs to run through the hell to get it financed, armwrestle with the distributors and finally end up with a compromise of a service we’d not be happy with.
But here’s how I think the platform should work, and I’m sure one day a service will emerge that does everything exactly the right way. But until then, this is just a wet daydream.
THE WEBSITE
Filmify is simple. It brings together three main elements of film watching experience: wide variety of content, social experience and high quality. In short, it’s a combination between Internet Movie Database, YouTube and Spotify, connected tightly to Twitter and other social media services.
FINDING A FILM
Filmify offers the a vast chunk of data – often even meaningless to the everyday user – of every film, and makes it possible to search by every term the content. You can get a list of every film done by a specific cinematographer, or just go through the films that have won at Cannes Festivals. You can search films by keywords, by rating, or even by following individual user’s vote history. And if that’s not enough, it has a built-in suggest-a-film -system, where you need to type in an example film of the style you’re looking for, and it starts suggesting you films that are alike.
And just like with Spotify, Filmify has content. And it’s fresh, and the catalog is long. In the future, the distributors have abandoned the release restrictions because they’ve finally realized that they only fuel the piracy, so films are out simultaneously on all platforms and distribution options. So the films on Filmify are new, but the catalog goes long way back to the early years of filmmaking, making it a real goldmine for classic addicts. Thousands of titles are added on weekly basis.
PAYING FOR THE FILM
The business model is freemium: for free, you get to watch as much films as you like, but ever 20 minutes there’s a localized commercial break. “Hi, this is Jonathan from Filmify! I hope you’re enjoying the service as much as we do…” And with monthly fee of 19,99€, you get an unlimited access to all the goodies the service has to offer, free of ads of any type. Of course, if you would like to get a DVD with all the extras and shit, it’s possible – just right click, pay, and the film is on it’s way from Amazon.
All kind of transactions are made as easy as possible, and the service hosts payment options also for non-credit card holders.
WATCHING THE FILM
The quality is, of course, important. You are being served with the best possible quality available – HD by default, 5.1 sound, and a perfect streaming technology, just like with YouTube. And it’s damn easy to use, and you can even embed the films to your blog or your Facebook profile (the ad-ridden versions, of course).
THE SOCIAL SIDE OF THINGS
Filmify also realizes that film watching is getting more and more social experience. People like to rate films, talk about them online and let others know what they are watching. Hell, it even allows film viewers to throw online film watching party, with an intergrated simultaneous IRC-style channel-based chat, where you can watch all the Star Trek films for example, and comment them live to everyone. Included also is a tag mode, where you can tag stuff from the film, and a You Want To Know More -box – if activated – offering more information on things seen on screen – connected to an ever-growing Film Wiki full of trivia, info and tidbits.
SUMMARY
Filmify is a service every service should aim to become. Keep it simple, keep it social and keep it cheap enough, and the world is in the palm of your hand.
BUBBLING UNDER
But for now, Filmify doesn’t exist. Yet, there certainly is something happening. Zombie Room introduces two interesting services I’m going to be keeping a close eye on.
Voddler is – not surprisingly – from Sweden. They seem to have quite a good grasp in entertainment consuming, as proven by Pirate Bay and Spotify. Voddler wants to do what Spotify did for music – offer a “legal” solution for watching films online, that actually competes with the “illegal” ones.
Here’s their rap about the service:
“Voddler can provide unlimited video content distributed to any number of users by streaming. No limitation of content will enable you to have instant access to your old favorite movies as well as the newest blockbusters. But that is not enough for Voddler. Your entire movie experience is our main focus. Instant access, a user friendly video application and a complete network focused on film will make Voddler the obvious choice for a movie night. “
And here’s how it looks like:
The service is now in private beta, and invitations are highly valued. For the payment, Voddler has three alternative; one financed by advertising, one as a monthly subscription with unlimited access as well as a pay-per-view option.
I’m looking forward for Voddler. If someone has invites, and want to make a Zombie happy, all I can say is GIMME GIMME GIMME! My email is timo [at] ironsky [dot] net.
But in the meantime, there’s something quite interesting out there, too.
Imagine a service with the latest films and TV-serieses available for streaming in the best possible HD quality, with just one click – and for free. Too good to be true? Well, let me tell you about HDMT.NET.
I don’t know almost anything about HDMT. It’s a service that popped to my Facebook this morning, and after that I’ve been in awe of it. Simple in Google way, the service lists heaps of fresh films and TV-serieses right on it’s front page, viewable by just one click. To quote someone commenting the link I shared: “What the hell..?”
The service isn’t too talkative of it’s origins, either. Apparently, it’s based in Netherlands – only thing I was able to dig out of it is this:
HDMT.net offers best-rated movies and TV shows streaming with similar HD quality. Hosted on professional streaming servers, streaming from HDMT.net are reliable and authentic. You can never worry about broken links.
The service is obviously on the gray area, and doesn’t comment the legal issues – the only thing they talk about is offering streaming services:
HDMT.net offers streaming service for all movie and tv shows fans around the world. All videos on HDMT.net source from Internet. We respect copyrights of producers and advocate all friends here to budget legitimate DVDs to support your favorite movies and tv shows and persons who make efforts on these products.
I haven’t been able to test the service out yet, since it’s being hammered by quite massive traffic at the moment. The site isn’t too attractive, and searching options are very limited, but the quality and the freshness of the selection is indeed impressive. We’ll see how long it lasts online before the copyright hound dogs tear it to pieces – or, maybe they have something in mind! Who knows, maybe it’s there for good. Let’s hope for the best!
Thanks for following Zombie Room’s Voyage of Despair. It seems that although right now we are knee deep in gob, there is actually light at the end of the tunnel. Remains to be seen wether it’s an exit to a better world, or a big corporate train heading this way full steam.
This is the second part of the Zombie Room’s look into the world of Video-On-Demand. You can read the first part here.
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THE WEBSITE
CDON.Com is a web store that operates in the Nordic countries. It’s owned by Modern Times Group, a company that created the Metro Newspaper, and specializes in entertainment – music, movies and consumer electronics.
The site has tucked the Video-On-Demand -service in the lower parts and shadier corners of the huge site, that’s hoping to serve every customer’s needs. Once you realize where it is, the basic functionality is quite simple. The site looks as clear as a web supermarket can – which means loads of ads blinking everywhere, and very little useful information anywhere.
FINDING A FILM
CDON.Com has a variety of films categorized under top lists, most viewed and by genre. Scanning the site we very quickly noticed that their Finnish language is horrible. Finding a film to watch is equally painful: from their mediocre selection of few hundred film – that’s basically a smaller (and much worse quality) selection than any video rental joint – we ended up picking Choke, a crappy drama based on Chuck Palahniuk‘s quite awesome text.
In general, webstores do have a problem with shelf space – in any store you register at least on some level hundreds and hundreds of products, but on webstore you either have to have something in mind already, or you are relying on what other people are watching – unless they have a very advanced search and recommendation system.
CDON hasn’t made the film search too easy: apart from first ~20 films in every category, they just offer a plain list of titles, and even the mouseover that reveals a small picture of the cover works very randomly.
Some kind of a film suggestion system would be preferrable, but with a selection of few hundred titles, making it useful is impossible.
PAYING FOR THE FILM
Once you have something in mind, it’s relatively easy to pay and play. Registration isn’t necessary, and it takes about 10 minutes until the film is on. Payment options are either Visa or Mastercard – so eveyone with no credit cards; sorry, no service to you, sub-humans.
The prices are the best of the whole test – from 0,95€ to 3,95€, which is acceptable (I think 2 bucks a stream is what I’m willing to pay – in a perfect world), and they even have a “free film of the month”. After the purchase, you can either download the film or stream it. However, they’ve added some stupid download manager which, of course, destroys your digital copy after 24 hours.
WATCHING THE FILM
Quality is fuzzy DV, and there’s no subtitles. But the film starts right after you’ve paid it, and the player works perfectly.
SUMMARY
A service which offers the lowest prices, but stumbles with quite a bad selection of aging semi-blockbusters for general audience.
Zombie Room review: 2,5/5
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Movie-TV is the Internet-end of a small, Helsinki-based DVD-outlet called Keskus-Video, located at Eerikinkatu. The shop is a wonderful place, a small, labyrinth-like maze filled from wall to wall with DVDs – and the prices are very much right. It’s one of the places I avoid unless I have loads of money, since I end up spending a 50-100€ every time I just step on Eerikinkatu. Luckily, we live in Hakaniemi…
THE WEBSITE
Hats off to the developers of Movie-TV – they’ve boldly entered into a market that’s very soon going to be dominated by big-ass players, and only very few of the smaller ones will survive. I’m not sure what’s the business idea behind Movie-TV, but what I can gather from the site is that it’s basically a very comprehensive DVD shelf of a real movie nerd commune – it doesn’t have that many titles, but among them are some quite fascinating pearls: a wide collection of Haneke, loads of action films from the 80′s, nice amount of horror, and even kids’ animations and anime. Instead of trying to push aging, two-year-old semi-blockbusters, it’s selling me good films.
Technically, the site isn’t flawless – the design is a bit clunky and usability is lacking certain amount of intuition.
FINDING A FILM
At first, the site throws on my face a random collection of DVD covers. Too small to be of any use, but at least I get an idea of quite a colourful selection. The films are categorized under top lists and genres. We decided look scan around for a while, and ended up on I Heart Huckabees (no idea why, and I still regret the decision).
PAYING FOR THE FILM
Let’s start with the bad news – the pricing is absolutely mindless. They ask 6€/streaming, and there’s no possiblity for download – excuse me, what the hell? It took a while for us to convince that we’re willing to pay, but – reminding us of the test we were working on – we gave up and paid… But, really: please, think about it – what are you doing? You should be competing with Pirate Bay and Mininova, not with Sokos and Stockmann.
But then came the nice surprises: instead of the credit card requirements, you can decide to pay either with a card, directly from bank account, or even with an SMS or a phonecall. No registration is required, so they won’t be spamming me for the rest of my lifed just because I wanted to see a film.
WATCHING THE FILM
Once you’ve selected the film, it takes only 5 minutes before it’s is rolling – and there’s a possibility to choose whatever quality you like – even HD, if available. The film plays nicely and the quality is good – even subtitles are available.
SUMMARY
A small but devoted service with an interesting selection of ridiculously overpriced films.
Zombie Room Review: 3/5
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Red-themed Film2home -service is owned by Bonver Videodata, a company that claims to be the single biggest home entertainment distributor in the Nordic countries. The service is available in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
THE WEBSITE
Film2home is devoted to films and TV-serieses, and they begin serving you with two major disappointments: first, you need to use Internet Explorer for the service to work, and second – they have a whopping library of “almost 1000 films”. Now having 1000 films in your home shelf is quite a lot, but you’ve picked them yourself. For a service trying to serve thousands of customers on daily basis, 1000 titles is just not enough.
The site looks nice enough and it has big, clear and clickable buttons everywhere for the ease of use.
FINDING A FILM
The selection is limited, yet they’ve been able to drag some quite fresh films there, too. Well, fresh considering their DVD release schedule in Finland… The service is putting a lot of effort in offering enough interesting information about the titles, so you don’t have to go digging for IMDb – they even have a user rating system, which reminded me of how completely inexistent the social dimension in mostly all of the VOD services is.
The films have been categorised in quite an intuitive way – in addition to genres and top-lists, the titles can be searched by the name of actor and theme etc. This is important, and it’s completely unacceptable that services out there don’t put enough effort into good and clear categorizing and search methods – the only reason for that is that mostly they are lazy and don’t give a shit about the user experience.
PAYING FOR THE FILM
There are films you can only “rent”, and films you can “buy”, too – that means, of course, downloading. But basically, that’s what it does anyway, it’s just a minor difference in the tech on how it’s executed – but the pricing is just ridiculous. They expect me to pay 15-20 € for a digital download – it’s really one of the worst deals… I pay considerably less on mostly any DVD, and I get best quality, a physical copy, all the extras and so on…
Again, these services should be competing against Pirate Bay, not Stockmann.
Price range for download is around 4 euroes, you get something a bit cheaper and there’s even a free film for members (this month it’s Mission Impossible…). Payment methods include Visa and Mastercard.
WATCHING THE FILM
Now here comes the shit. First, we needed to change from Firefox to Internet Explorer, go through the painful setup process of a Microsoft products, before nd finally we were able to start viewing. Oh, no – we of course needed install Adobe Flash Player. That’s OK, only problem is that it refused to install – the reason was, eventually, because we were using 64bit Explorer, not the regular one. I almost gave up trying to figure this out, since there was no error messages or anything, it just didn’t work. It took almost 15 minutes from the moment we decided we wanted to see In the Electric Mist, before it was actually running.
Don’t know is this somehow Flash Player -related problem, or something to do with the service – but we weren’t able to pause the film without having to stop and start over again from the beginning (Buffering… attempting to reconnect… buffering… … …). Doesn’t sound a biggie, but remember that “pause” is the greatest feature of home cinema compared to theaters…
SUMMARY
A nice-looking service built on nearly unusable tech, with quite a small selection of films.
Zombie Room Review: 2/5
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Filmnet is a VOD service that operates in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. It’s “powered by Canal+”, which should promise plenty of interesting content available.
Well, not so much. They have exactly 133 titles in the library, which is basically not even a library – we have over 400 DVDs in our shelves. But there’s one we, the Zombies, like very much: they have Dead Snow!
THE WEBSITE
The site looks nice and sleazy in its glossy black suit, almost like an aging playboy in a bit shady nightclub, serving Mickeys for the girls.
FINDING THE FILM
The films are categorized clearly under normal genre categories, and as a nice plus, they have a “recently watched” films in the front page – almost like RedTube!
But here’s an interesting question – during the last 5 days I’ve visited there, the recently watched films –box’s content hasn’t changed a bit. Makes you wonder if it’s either broken, or they have no users.
The site has striking resemblances in general look and feel to the free porn sites on the net – and they even have a 18+ section which has almost as many films as the non-porn site has!
PAYING FOR THE FILM
Payment options are limited, and the system gives a strange errors, trying obviously to hint the user to use Internet Explorer. The price for the films is expensive – 4,25€/film, regardless of how old the film you are watching. You also need to register in order to be able to pay, which is kinda stupid.
WATCHING THE FILM
But the nice thing is that the service is quite straightforward, and it took us only 4 minutes until the film was up and running. The quality is OK, the connection works quite well – only kinda embarrassing thing we noticed was that their subtitles didn’t support the Nordic characters – the “䔑s and “ö”‘s.
SUMMARY
A service that’s clear, fast to use and straightforward, but looks more like a porn site, has terribly bad selection of films (ok, they have Dead Snow, which is a big plus) and the pricing and the subtitles suck ass.
Zombie Room review: 1,5/5
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My expectations for SFAnytime weren’t too high to start with, given the experiences of Jarmo Puskala from Energia. SFAnytime has been for quite a long time the biggest VOD-site in Finland, and they’ve been promoting heavily. And at the same time, it has been criticized the most.
THE WEBSITE
SFAnytime looks neat and clean, and you get very quickly a good idea on what the service is about. The impression of a professional VOD service crumbles quite fast though, when an unexplainable error message halts the process, and you are required to register – after which the service just crashes immediately.
FINDING THE FILM
The film catalogue is nice – not specifically new, but has some good films in it. We decided to pick Steve McQueen’s debut film Hunger, which turned out to be an excellent choise.
PAYING FOR THE FILM
Trying to pay for the film was, again, very cumbersome. The process begins with a strange DRM notice, after which you need to re-register. Visa and Mastercard are accepted as payment methods, and right after the payment, it comes apparent that Explorer is required as a browser. The price is 4€ – again, quite expensive, especially given the overall quality of the purchase process.
WATCHING THE FILM
The service gets stuck into “acquiring media usage rights” –message, and we’re able to continue watching after we had changed the browser. At this point, I’m almost willing to give up, but force myself to continue. The quality of the download needs to be chosen from a very complicated and badly advised menu. It takes total of 10 minutes to get the film rolling. Luckily, Hunger is the best film we’ve watched during the test, so my pain is alleviated.
SUMMARY
A service that has been around for quite some time, and just fails to fix its basic problems, but it still remains to be the first place to go because they’ve managed to establish themselves in Finland as the definitive VOD service, thanks to big promotion and marketing.
Zombie Room Review: 1,5/5
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We had already almost given up hope for a decent service by the time we finished watching the film from SFAnytime, but then our friend Eric Vogel tipped us about The Auteurs, a fresh VOD service we had never heard of.
THE WEBSITE
The Auteurs is a VOD service unlike anything we had encountered ever before. Right from the beginning, it’s apparent that this is something different: the website looks much more like a social network site than a VOD service, it’s clear, simple and focuses more on content than shiny skin – and it makes me feel like it’s made by people who actually have a respect for great films.
The experience starts with a beautifully simple Facebook Connect login. After that, you end up into a site that promotes loads of great films in very informative and detailed way, with big pictures and clear links.
The site makes watching films online a social experience, where you share your reviews, your wishlist and films you watch with other people – and it’s very tightly connected with Facebook and Twitter. You can create your own profile, they have a forum for discussions, and everything you do and see is easilly shareable.
FINDING THE FILM
Unlike most of the other services, The Auteurs has really done a great job in presenting, suggesting and categorising films. And what films they have! No bullshit, only good films by great filmmakers. Masters of cinema like Kubrick, Lynch, Fellini and Svankmajer populate the amazingly international and high-quality film listings.
The problem is that most of the films they have on the site are not available for viewing, at least not now. The site makes it clear that it’s still in Beta, so most of the issues are acceptable – they are working on it, and doing a great job. But you can very easilly just sort the films available for viewing in your area, and although the catalog is not huge yet, you get an impression that somebody has really been working on it.
And the categorization of films is highly advanced – the site has wonderful lists like Festivals, where they’ve listed all of the films in competition on every major festival, beginning from early 30′s.
Each title is described in great detail, and you can view what others have thought of it. For us, unlike in other services, it was a problem to decide which film to watch out of the great selection, and we settled down eventually with Primer.
PAYING FOR THE FILM
The first real issue is the price. At least that’s what I thought first, but then I realized that hell, it’s really not the price I’m paying, but the experience and the extra I get with it. Each feature film costs 5€, and short films 2€ – there’s even some free films available. And even better, you have a possibility for a monthly subscription – with 18€/month you get an unlimited access to the ever-growing selection of the site’s films, and with 10€ you get to watch 4 films/month.
This is almost too good to be true.
WATCHING THE FILM
And as I suspected, it is too good. With the following comments, please be aware that the site is still in beta, so there are problems and beta users need to bear with it. And I’m also not sure why watching the film sucked, and if it has anything to do with the site itself, but it did. And we tested it out with two different computers.
The film twitches a bit. It’s an amazingly annoying feature, and I’m not 100% sure if it’s a problem with every film (we, obviously, tested out just one), but watching Primer was really painful. Bad quality can be forgiven – and the quality at Auteurs is very good – but skipping and twitching can’t. The film was nearly unwatchable, and I felt very bad about it, even more since the site was tuned exactly the way I want a VOD site to be, and they’ve even say: “P.S.—By the way, we’ve worked hard on the quality of the streaming and we are very proud of it… just wanted to let you know…”
I don’t know what was wrong with it, but it sucked big time.
EDIT: As Eric wrote in comments: “Sad to hear about stuttering/streaming problems with The Auteurs. I’ve watched two films there with none of these issues.”
Another big, annoying minus for the viewing experience was the forced subtitles – in Swedish. Watching Primer, which is quite a mindfuck of a film in itself, that’s twitching every now and then, and subtitled in Swedish was well… not very pleasant. Not worth 5€.
Having said that, the great thing is that viewing is possible with every operating system and every browser out there, and it’s really fast and easy – took us about 3 minutes to get the film rolling, fastest of the whole test.
SUMMARY
A great service and social network that’s suffering from some beta problems, but still manages to rise above all the others. Give it another 6 months, and this thing is going to become the definitive VOD service for film geeks, serving films that won’t be available even on Torrent sites.
Zombie Room Review: 3,5/5 (Note: still in Beta!)
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That’s it for now. Come back tomorrow, when I try to sum up our experiences and introduce you my Ideal VOD Service – how it should be done.
Let’s state the obvious first:
The world is changing rapidly. Watching films online, or whatever you want to call it – VOD, legal downloading or online video rental – is going to be the main distribution method for films in the future. But this time the competition is not about shelf space, since a much bigger competitor has appeared to benchmark the results: Pirate Bay.
Pirate Bay is offering films for free, with the highest quality and with the best selection available. Its business is being labeled as being “illegal”, but really – it’s just the way things work today. If a video-on-demand service wishes to become the next Google – or YouTube, or Spotify – of film distribution, they need to start offering a better service than Pirate Bay, and adjust their business model to the world of today, not the one that existed in the 80s.
The Zombies wanted to take a look at what’s going on right now on that front – what are the services and what kind of competition they put up against Pirate Bay and other torrent sites? We did our best to dig out all of the publicly available VOD services in Finland, tried to watch a film via the platform, and scribed down the experiences.
Join the Zombies for the desperate voyage into the world of Video On Demand.
THE SERVICES
Googling and asking around the Twitter about VOD services, we came up with the following list. Note, that we ruled out all of the services that require you to be a customer of some specific third entity, like an operator (Elisa, Sonera, Welho etc.), because they are not even trying to do things right, and either die a slow and painful death, or become public eventually.
Here’s the list. Hope we aren’t missing anything:
DOING THE REVIEW
Here’s how I expect a good service to work:
Go in, pick a film, pay for it and watch.
There’s even a better way to do it:
Pay a monthly fee for a service, watch as much as you want from an ever-growing selection.
But that isn’t happening, at least not here in Finland, and not just yet. I heard Netflix is coming, and I’m really looking forward to it.
When working on the review, we tried to act as normal consumers – and that’s what we are. We don’t have any fancy equipment, and we suck at computers. Here’s our setup:
* An old-ass Philips TV-set, one of the big and clunky ones.
* A S-VHS-cable from my laptop to SCART (so the quality sucks, but it’s not the reason of the services, but we judge the quality by how it looks on our computer screens…)
* An HP laptop (Compaq nw8440) with Windows XP operating system.
* Firefox as our main browser, and Explorer if absolutely necessary.
* A decent sound setup (5.1 surround)
* 10mb Net connection.
So that’s how we roll. Come back tomorrow for the results, and day after that for some conclusions.
Yesterday we met with American film maker and actor Crispin Glover over lunch at a vegan restaurant Silvoplee. We ended up having a very interesting conversation about the future of collaborative film making, Internet distribution and of course Moon Nazis. The lunch was set to start at one, but after we passed the 45 minute mark and were still waiting in the restaurant, we started to get a bit worried. Was this going to be…
… The Invisible Crispin Glover Experience! 
Well no. True that mr. Glover was a bit late (because his last interview ran longer than expected), but I was more than happy to wait and at two o’clock he arrived. To those of you who don’t know, Crispin Glover is “touring” with his one man show “The Crispin Glover Experience” and he will be performing tonight 7:00 pm at Maxim movie theatre in Helsinki. The show contains a screening of his film It Is Fine. Everything Is Fine!, a slide show, a Q & A session and a book signing.
You can read my full article about The Crispin Glover Experience here.
After a more or less formal start to our conversation, we begun talking about the future of collaborative film making and Internet distribution. Since Glover doesn’t sell his movies for commercial distribution, the only way to see his work is by attending his shows. Glover has some issues with the corporations in charge of distribution, and who can blame him. The moment you give your movie away to a traditional distributor, you are more or less bound to do as they say. You also loose all freedom of doing things your way and of course money-wise the distributor takes a big cut of the gross. Back in the day there were no other option to the traditional distribution model, but nowadays the Internet provides a market bigger that any other. Also when done right, it doesn’t cost a cent.
We told mr. Glover a little about ourselves and it seemed that after hearing the story of how Star Wreck was made by collaborating with the community and how it was distributed for free on the Internet, he became more open to the idea of Internet distribution. What we also discovered is that Glover has been looking for a new way of distributing his films, but felt strongly about still keeping the distribution to himself. He seemed very interested in all new possibilities of how to use the Internet and we were more than happy to give some advise.
After lunch I did some digging around in the net and found that Glover has been using the Internet quite well. He has his own website, but also a Facebook and Twitter account to promote his tour. This is more than I can say for most film makers. My only suggestion to mr. Glover would be to take it one step further. It would be great if there was also a tour blog and/or twitpics on Twitter. For example the director of Juno, Jason Reitman, (@JasonReitman) does this very well.
Timo with Crispin Glover
I’m going to see the show tonight and will be posting about it tomorrow. So stay tuned.
For more info visit Crispin Glover’s official site http://www.crispinglover.com
The idea for this blog came to my head when I was reading an article in Geek Tyrant demanding James Huth’s Lucky Luke to be distributed theatrically in the United States. I also realized that Twitch, CHUD, and Cinematical were also supporting the same cause. I decided to join these guys and also demand Lucky Luke to America. But I won’t stop there; I also DEMAND it to Finland (where I live)! On top of this I would like to ask everyone who wants to see this film, to take a stand and demand it to your country, where ever you might live. You can do this by writing about it in your blog or by sharing the blog articles mentioned above. But what if there was another way to do it, an easier and more effective way?
This seemed like the perfect opportunity to talk about the DEMAND phenomenon. I have been following Paranormal Activity’s marketing campaign very closely and I’m really impressed on just how fresh and effective it has been. The marketing team has really taken advantage of the internet and asked people to take a stand and make themselves heard. This is something we here in Zombie Room believe in very strongly.
Here’s what they did. You go to the official site and the page looks like this.
In the right upper corner you can see this little button that says “Demand it!”.
You press that button and the site re-directs you to a site where you can DEMAND the movie to your city. I of course demanded to see the movie in Helsinki, but you can easily change the country and city to your liking (you can also see the number of people who are demanding to see the movie and where). Like so.
Also it is very clear that it works! People have been demanding and their demands are being heard!
After this you get a confirmation e-mail where you can easily share this information to your friends by using Facebook, Twitter etc.
It’s easy and effective! Now, what if you could do this with Lucky Luke? Or with every movie for that matter! There are a number of movies I would love to see in a theatre screen in Finland, Lucky Luke is just one of them. The great thing about this service is that one demand equals one to-be-bought movie ticket. The service gives power to the actual audience to make a difference, to give them what they want! Lucky Luke has gotten a lot of attention in the internet lately, and why not, it looks amazing! If the movie would have this service, I’m sure the demand-rate would be very high all over the world.
Here’s the trailer (thank you Twitch for sharing it).
If you liked what you saw, make yourself heard and DEMAND it!!!
I’m working for the film industry here in Finland. My salary comes from a company called Energia Productions, a company which gets money through government subsidies (like Finnish Film Foundation) and from the distribution of it’s films, either through distribution companies (they pay a certain % of each unit sold) or through our own resale. Anyway, I get my tummy full every day because people pay me to see or buy my films.
And still, I think the only good guy in the distribution industry is the ”pirate”. I’m talking about the forest fire that sweeps through the vast, old woodland, leaving only ashes behind. Ashes, from where even more healthier industry can be born from. A 15-year old nerd living in his/her’s mom’s apartment and renewing the 100-year old business in between wanking, IRCing and Facebookng. The only asshole not after my money in the industry.
I’m a pirate myself. I started out with music – downloading hudreds of gigs of music from all over the world, getting to know thousands of new bands along my active piracy years. But then, one day, I decided to trash all the illegal music from my harddrive and start buying the music I was in to. The reason wasn’t definitively the sudden strike of conscience, but the fact that I felt uninterested on the music because of the sheer mass of it now flowing slowly to my harddrive. I felt I needed to focus a bit, so I focused on music that I had paid for, and trashed everything else.
All went well, until I found myself in a situation that I didn’t have either enough money or time to worry about my music – I felt that if I wanted to listen to something, I should be able to do it without hesitation. And then, along came Spotify. A service where I just have to pay a yearly 100€ to keep me listening to all the music I could ever want to, and much, much more. So now I’m satisfied, a perfect balance has been found: I have all the music I want to, and somebody else is worrying about getting the stuff to me. I just open the tap, get what I want and as much as I want, and my money goes to the artist. Well, there’s of course the middlemen… But that’s, in the end, the industry’s problem, not mine.
How about movies? I’ve started downloading films via BitTorrent, through such places like Pirate Bay or Mininova actually quite recently. The reason was actually Essi: she re-ignited my interest towards film, flooding me with all the news on interesting productions popping out everywhere around the world and hyping about classics that I should’ve watched a long time ago. Nowadays, I rate my films in three categories:
These are the must-see-as-soon-as-possible-with-the-best-quality-available -films, with either a subject so important to me, or with special effects so special they rock the theater big time. Or films that are very strongly time-related, like the Oscar-nominated ones.
Usually these films are something everyone is hyping about all over the Internet, and waiting for them to land here in Finland is quite frustrating. So, in most cases, I don’t want to wait for them, and just end up downloading a screener, and never go to the theater, just because somebody wants to regulate the territorial rights.
So, because everyone is avoiding the day-and-date releases unless it’s the big-ass film of the year, as well as almost banning the multi-platform releases, film studios lose 80% of my money for not offering what I want, when I want in the format I’d prefer.
The second category of films are the ones that I don’t need or won’t have the time to go and see in theaters. There are two reasons I’d like to buy them on DVD – the quality and the box. In most cases, I want to watch the film in the best possible quality at home, and very often the BitTorrent version is of a little bit lower quality (and my TV set is so crappy that I can plug into it only through SCART, so at least there the quality is killed). In some cases, I also want to have the copy to my collections, so that I can watch it again at second’s notice. I’m not a big fan of the boxes itself, and more than that, I hate most of the extra material on a DVD, since they are, in most cases, just total, utter, viewer’s-intelligence-despising crap, but having the DVD in my collections – well, there’s some value to it.
But my dilemma is: why to pay 20e of the film, if I just want to watch it once and then forget it? It’s more than in theater, and I’m not fond of the less-than-respectable quality extras anyway. And as I’ve learned personally, the only films that deliver any kind of income to the filmmakers themselves are the full-priced ones, so buying a DVD with 5,99e just get my money to the store-owner, the one person having nothing to do with the film itself.
I don’t even want to go to the flaws of renting a film, but let me just say this: the most preferred way for me would be watch films online. I wouldn’t have to worry about anything – the availability, the heaps of boxes of films I’ll never watch again, the fact I’m paying money for the crappy extras I don’t even want to watch…
I did a little test the other day with Essi. We had a Male Superiority Sunday, when we watched films by Steven Seagal, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood – and suddenly, we ran out of films to watch. We wanted to see Commando, but didn’t have the copy. Renting was completely out of question – having to walk 3 miles to the nearest rental store wasn’t the thing I wanted to do. So we finally decided to try online rentals.
We are not complete idiots with computers, I’m a bit short-tempered with them, but I get along with different net services quite well, even if they are a bit lame. But we just couldn’t rent a film from any of the five services availble here in Finland we tried. It just was completely impossible.
So, again, money lost. We got frustrated, downloaded what we wanted and watched the film.
The films that I get via BitTorrent are, in addition to the expections from above, the films that will never travel to Finland, or are classics too hard to find from stores or rental stores… Just some strange, great films from all over the world that I want to see, but would never be able to get from anywhere. I could try Amazon or Play.com, but I’ve decided to boycott those – I just hate browsing for stuff, finding exactly what I want, and then finding out that ”this product can’t be delivered to your country”. Makes me feel like Finland is in some sort of a third-world commercial blockage…
So again, a lot of money lost, and now the so-called ”long tail” gets the hit. The smaller, international filmmakers, the ones that I’d loved to support if possible. And it’s not.
Given these facts, am I a criminal? I would’ve wanted to pay for the films I watch, but it just was completely impossible for me at the level of effort I was willing to put into it.
So it’s like I’m driving a car on a long and lonesome highway, about run out of fuel. I stop by at a gas station, fill the tank, and when going inside to pay, there’s completely nobody, doors are locked and the station is dead because the gas station owner just didn’t feel like coming to work today. I’m not going to just sit around and wait for the owner to show up. If my money is not good for the owner, then I’m off, fuck him.
I don’t believe that digital sharing and distribution of films is piracy, and criminal action as such. It’s just a byproduct of the corporate-controlled industry that’s too slow to adapt, and consumers – the people who LOVE the stuff the corporates are producing – shouldn’t be the ones that take the hit.
EDIT: I just received a funny email, which says:
helpcinema.eu invites you to participate in an online petition against illegal file sharing.
Helpcinema is an initiative taken by European film professionals to collect your reactions regarding the effects of illegal file sharing on the audio-visual industry. This input will be used to give European Members of Parliament a new perspective on the subject.
You can easily participate by answering our three-step questionnaire available here. Your e-mail address will be kept confidential.
If you love cinema and if you have an opinion to share, please show your support and send us your feedback.
So go over to helpcinema.eu and share your thoughts. Not surprisingly, I answered ‘no’ three times.
-Timo
I think it was Star Wreck that just happened to be the first feature film ever released for free on the Internet. After that, we’ve seen such masterpieces as We Are The Strange and Four-Eyed Monsters being released on the Internet, and now it’s time for a new film to emerge for free, torrent-based distribution: Blank.
I’m quoting TorrentFreak‘s blogger enigmax, under CC-By-Sa -license:
Times are certainly changing and slowly but surely people are beginning to realize that rather than trying to fight piracy and destroy file-sharing networks, the best approach is to embrace your one-time rivals and try and create something positive.
Established in 2000 by director Rick L. Winters, Annodam Productions is an independent film company. A forward looking outfit, Annodam will premiere its latest movie Blank, worldwide today.
Blank is the story of a Johnny, a young boy who witnesses the violent death of his parents and older sister. Roll on some 20 years later and Johnny becomes involved in crime with his adoptive father – who is also a crime boss. While watching a game of poker Johnny discovers who murdered his family and sets about planning his revenge. Johnny unwittingly becomes involved with a pair of serial killers and the whole movie climaxes with a bizarre and shocking end.
While the plot may seems standard Hollywood fare, the way this movie has been financed and is set to be distributed is not – Director Rick L.Winters explains, “The thing that makes this film unique is that it is a co-op based concept where the entire cast and crew worked on a deferred percentage of the film’s gross. In other words, the cast and crew own a percentage of the film’s gross, so the profits are not going to Hollywood executives but instead into the pockets of the filmmakers themselves.”
After receiving several distribution offers for Blank, Rick turned them all down.
“I have seen firsthand the greed that lurks in the Hollywood corporate circles,” he said while explaining that after he released his first film, the cast and crew couldn’t understand why a distribution company was making all the money. So instead, Rick decided to let the audience distribute Blank for him – via BitTorrent.
“This time around the fate of the cast and crew getting paid is in the hands of the audience who watch the film. No Hollywood bank accounts being filled to turn out more crappy remakes,” he said, while adding that the future of film is “in the home market, through peer to peer distribution.”
Today, Blank is released on DVD for $14.99, via online streaming and of course, for free on BitTorrent. “No one should have to pay for a film they did not like,” says Rick. “No one should be denied the right to enjoy the art of film.”
The idea is that if people like the movie after they have seen it, they should go to the Blank website and make a donation. People are asked to donate what they feel the movie is worth, and in return will be invited to follow the production of the next movie, which they will have helped finance through their donation.
Rick told TorrentFreak, “I am excited with the aspects of peer to peer distribution and the possibilities. Giving everyone the opportunity to see my film for free in hope of receiving donations is a little nerve wrecking – wondering if I will receive enough donations to make my next film. The concept is still scary for independent filmmakers who don’t have the big budgets like the big studios and most of the time drain their personal accounts and run up credit just to get their film made, in hopes of recouping the cost of making the film.”
Several large BitTorrent sites including Mininova will be offering Blank, but undoubtedly it will spread to many others too. Rick L. Winters is also writing a book which will document the whole process so that others can use the same methods to distribute their own movies.
“I can only hope for the success of this endeavor to show the world that the revolution of peer to peer distribution can no longer be ignored and the time is now,” Rick told TorrentFreak. “I decided to try the concept of a coop base film in hopes of encouraging other independent filmmakers to come together and create and share the art of film for EVERYONE to enjoy.”
Congratulations to Rick and the crew for effectively ending the piracy of their movies and we wish them the best of luck with ‘Blank’ and all future success.
You can grab the torrent for the movie from Mininova.
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This is also a nice lead into our next blogging spree, about to be released possibly during the next week on piracy and free distribution. I’m sad to say that the website of the Blank is quite unattractive and doesn’t really push you to put in the donation, but however the film will turn out (I’m downloading it now, a review is to follow inevitably), I will do my part in donations as well as hoping to get my hands on the DVD as well!
Also, the co-op -model in the production is definitively something independent filmmakers should look into.
All together, I’m happy and proud that these freaks are part of the movement leading us to the brighter future (can’t talk about free distribution without sounding an idealistic communist)! I sure hope the film is at least decent, and we’ll keep an eye on this one. Indeed, The Zombies Are Watching.
-Timo
This is actually not a film-related article, but something I’ve been quite concerned about lately, so I’ll write about it here.
Finland has been known for quite a long time as one of the most uncorrupted countries in the world. Yesterday, this was changed. A law dubbed as “Lex Nokia” was lobbied and steamrolled through in the Parliament of Finland. The law has received a lot of criticism from the law professors, general public and Internet actives because of it’s vague wording which, in the end, may give certain parties in Finland more power to watch over the Internet than for example police has nowadays. In addition to that, it has come clear that a lot of a bit strange lobbying and even threats have been attached to the preparation process of the law. It is said that Nokia has threatened to leave Finland and take the 16000 jobs with it, if the law doesn’t go through.
The law itself gives the right for the employers to monitor the emails of the employees, but the law extends also to other communities, like housing cooperatives, which makes it even more ambiguous and vague.
One of the saddest things was that some parties that I would’ve expected to vote against the law either staid out of the conversation, or changed their view in the end. The biggest disappointment was the Green Party (Vihreät), from where only Energia’s main favourite MP Jyrki Kasvi was doing the right thing and voting against it. Strangely enough, both Perussuomalaiset (far-right) and SDP & Vasemmisto (left-wing) both were collectively against the law, but all together almost 1/4 of the Parliament were not present at the voting, and it was smashed through with a clear majority voting for the law.
Here are the results of the vote.
Makes you think, makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
- Timo
