Star Wars Coming To Blu-ray In September 419
wiredog writes "A bundle of all six movies will sell for $139.99, while sets of the original three films, and the three prequels, will go for $69.99 apiece. Obsessive types can pre-order them on Amazon now. Han shot first!"
So This Will Be the ... (Score:5, Interesting)
If I'm going to respect copyright, tell me why I don't deserve to have these movies on my Nintendo DS, Netbook HDD, PS3, etc in whatever the latest resolution is. I've cumulatively shelled out hundreds of dollars (with inflation adjustments) for these three movies and yet I'm continually paying for them in the latest format. I bet if they figured out a way to approve lifetime licenses to this media, a lot more people would feel okay buying a copyright. Right now, I'm 28 years old and I've been nickel and dimed since age 12. Also, for those who didn't like the sequels, there appears to be a cheaper subset for $45 of the original three [amazon.com].
I'm sad that there isn't BD-Live for these in the Amazon description, I'd love to listen to fan commentary and possibly add my own. Has anyone had good/bad experiences with BD-Live commentaries? I was hoping that'd be used to do MST3K versions of popular movies or add insight to movies like Donnie Darko or Lost maybe. Unfortunately, having only received my PS3 this last holiday I've discovered that very very few movies are BD-Live.
Re:So This Will Be the ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Fifth time I've paid for a license to three of these movies.
If I'm going to respect copyright, tell me why I don't deserve to have these movies on my Nintendo DS, Netbook HDD, PS3, etc in whatever the latest resolution is. I've cumulatively shelled out hundreds of dollars (with inflation adjustments) for these three movies and yet I'm continually paying for them in the latest format.
You're not paying for the license 5 times. You're paying Lucas off to keep screwing with Star Wars, thus keeping him too busy to go and retroactively ruin "American Graffiti".
The Answer (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been saying for years that ultimately, the system I describe below is the most fair and equitable for both consumers and studios.
Someone--probably either the government or a government-regulated entity--should set up a "copyright clearinghouse" for media such as movies. If you want to buy a movie, you play a license fee plus a media fee. So say you went out and bought the original Star Wars movie (Episode IV) on DVD for $15. That $15 would technically be, say, $12 for the unlimited private viewing license, plus $3 for the cost of the box, media, distribution, etc. Inside the DVD case you would get a code that you register with the clearinghouse so that they now know that you own the rights to watch Episode IV.
Okay, now let's say that you want to be able to stream it online. Instead of paying another $15, you only pay $3, which covers the cost of hosting and bandwidth for whoever it is streaming it to you. Want to Blu-ray version? Okay, that will be an extra $5. $2 of that $5 is the cost of upgrading your license to the high-def remastered version, and $3 of it is for the cost again of the media and distribution. Oh, now you want the whole original trilogy? Well, normally it's $45, but since you already own a license for Episode IV, you get $8 shaved off the license cost and only pay $37.
Content providers could offer discounts on license fees for things like stores that buy the licenses in volume, or for customers who buy several licenses for different products (e.g. a Star Wars/Indiana Jones bundle) at once. Retailers like Amazon could pass those discounts on to customers, or have bundle discounts by applying some of their cut of the media fee to the license fee as a loss leader.
Content providers win because there would be a shitload more legal copies of the premium editions of their products sold. Retailers win because their profit comes from a cut of the media fee, not the license, and more sales--even for lower amounts--means more money. Consumers win because when you buy a movie on physical media x today, you don't get screwed from having to re-buy it on media y tomorrow or media z in five years.
Some of you may have had pause when I mentioned the government being involved. The reason why the government needs to be involved is twofold. First, for this idea to work, there needs to be one and only one clearinghouse. Because it would be a monopoly, it would need to be regulated as such. Second, if it's solely a private company endeavor, it would take exactly three nanoseconds for that company to say, "Hey, you know, with all of this data on what media people own, we could make a killing if we sold it to marketing companies," and it would take either direct government ownership or strict government regulation to ensure that privacy is upheld.
Re:Which Verson??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Which version of the original theater version? You do realize there were like 5 of them, right? Not to mention that the VHS and LD versions, usually touted also as being the "original" versions, also had discrepancies in things like the audio mix, etc.
You know, I don't care. So long as it's one of the versions that's not overloaded with tacked-on CG creatures and such, omits the superfluous Jabba scene and leaves the Greedo scene alone, I don't care if it says "Episode IV: A New Hope" or not.
But it sounds like they're not prepared to do a decent remastering of such a version any time soon. Oh, well. I'll just wait longer, then. There's other movies I can buy.