[Infowarrior] - Entertainment industry fails to grasp downloaders' needs

[Richard Forno]

Entertainment industry fails to grasp downloaders' needs

Analysis Prefers to milk the diminishing masses instead
By Lawrence Latif
Mon May 31 2010, 02:05

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/1651123/entertainment-industry-fails-grasp-downloaders
                 
THE MEDIA MAFIAA has seemingly missed the boat with its latest attempt to curb distribution of TV shows across the Internet.

According to Torrentfreak, the finale of Lost broke previous Bittorrent download records despite being available in 59 countries within 48 hours of initial airplay. This lays to waste one of the points put forward by downloaders to justify hitting  alternative sources to acquire television shows.

Assuming the site, which failed to disclose how it reached the figure of 900,000 downloads over a 20 hour period, is not embellishing its figures, it paints an impressive account of Bittorrent as a content distribution network. It also shows that the media firms should reconsider what it is that leads users to spend time and money to download content.

However the figures could merely serve to affirm the blinkered view of media executives who think of downloaders as punks and nothing more. They don't consider that those who download shows go to far greater trouble than those who prefer to slump in front of the telly and channel surf once the adverts are on. Downloaders are people who go out of their way to watch shows, that is, to get what the media cartels want to sell and who, in any other industry would be treated as the most loyal customers. Think about it.

So if it isn't the lag in global transmission of TV shows that motivates downloaders, what causes people to hit Bittorrent and Usenet servers to acquire the shows? Simply, downloading TV shows offers a better playback experience, and it isn't just due to the lack of advertising breaks.

Having adverts in a show isn't the problem. When tastefully done, such as on Hulu, the majority of viewers are perfectly willing to have a couple of minutes per half hour devoted to adverts, particularly if they are entertaining. No, the problem is something far more fundamental - sound and picture quality.

With high definition televisions almost reaching ubiquity, having to pay a considerable extra fee just to see a high quality version of a show is not on. At this stage of maturity, the term 'high definition' should be resigned to the dustbin, with the resolutions of 720p and 1080p deemed as standard. But of course that won't allow Sky and Virgin to milk consumers for every last penny.

Blaming show producers and channels isn't completely fair either. One doubts that a TV producer who actually cares about the viewers' experience can bear to stand for the levels of stream compression that television channels are forced to use. Compression occurs because existing delivery systems such as Sky charge channels on the amount of bandwidth a stream consumes, much like how Internet service providers charge for bandwidth to servers. For that reason channels have to compress video and audio in order to keep costs manageable.

To that end, the file sharing community is far more discerning when it comes to quality, whether it be in video or music sharing. The infamous British music site Oink wasn't, as the ill-informed media reported at the time, all about bringing down the music labels, but rather it was a collection of music lovers who used the site not only to share music from little known artists but also to share high quality recordings. The attention to detail when it came to faithfully producing encoded copies of CDs would have put many commercial sound engineers to shame.

Given the popularity of Itunes, its clear that there is more than enough money to be made by selling DRM-free tracks at reasonable prices over the Internet. But what will it take to get those discerning Oink users to come up with their cash? A wide choice of artists, not just from popular genres, and above all high quality, lossless recordings in open formats such as Flac will be necessary.

Instead, studios try to peddle substandard quality video and audio in closed formats and expect users to put up with it. Sure enough, the ignorant majority might do just that, but as the figures reported show, there are significant numbers of those who simply want a high quality experience and are being forced to turn to alternative means to get it.

Contrary to popular belief among media executives, downloaders are paying for content thanks to the imposition of bandwidth quotas on broadband connections. Lest we forget, downloaders also incur other expenses such as electricity usage and above all, time, which after all is money according to media types.

One could even argue that the adverts displayed on tracker sites can be a source of income generation not only for the site owners but also for media companies, if they embrace the millions who clearly are willing to pay money to acquire their content.

If the entertainment industry decides to ditch its established greedy principles and grasping tactics then maybe it will realise that its supposed enemies in its so called 'war' on downloaders can actually be its allies. µ