How big is the market for DRM-Free?

boing
41

Again, sliding past the point, that we are specifically discussing your parents as an example which you chose to make.

They did choose their device because it circumvented the restriction. Therefore they do support the contention that there are people who will buy things that circumvent restrictions if they are on offer.

Does that validate or invalidate the study in the post? No.

If you haven’t already, I’d suggest reading the paper itself. That indicates that the researchers at least tried to take those features into account.

It is also (hardly surprisingly) less sensationalist in what it says their findings were or mean.

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All fascinating (and I agree with it all) but really not relevant to the one point that was being made.

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Which point was that? If you mean @Peter_Brulls then he is simply mistaken. If you mean @doctorow or the linked article in OP then thats more than mistaken.

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No. They continue to only buy regular DRMed media. They have not nor ever have been in the market for specifically drm free media which is the conclusion of the article and the paper. sliding right up to the point: whether or not my parents are an example for or against, people buy them accidentally, for other features like upscaling, mp3 playback, PAL/NTSC conversion, dual voltage, etc. Many people don’t even know if they have a region free or multi region or region locked player. There is no clear correlation from these purchases to a market demand for drm free media. Of course the conclusion of both the article and study are invalid because they didn’t prove a correlation between the purchase of dvd players with these features and a market demand for drm free media, no, rather they inferred the latter from the former which is flawed in so many multitude of ways i don’t know why anyone wouldn’t immediately conclude it to be invalid.

no they chose it because of the NTSC/PAL conversion and dual voltage, the fact that it could play both regions meant they could use one player instead of the two. and again the region changing is not circumventing drm or breaking drm law, so even if that was their reason it wouldn’t be an indicator of a market for drm free media.

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45

The point was that regardless of why the restriction exists or how many people want it not to, there was a restriction which @redesigned’s parents did not want to apply to them.

When given the opportunity to buy something that made that possible, they bought it.

That clearly indicates that there are people who are prepared to buy stuff to avoid restrictions which they don’t see the point of.

That is all.

You chose to post about why the restriction exists, why people in Japan bought region-free players and that there is a tiny market of expats.

None of which was relevant either to my post or the original post or the linked article. So I said so.

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46

I covered @redesigned’s point as well because I also fall into that small market segment.

I corrected a mistaken assumption by @Peter_Brulls because that is common amongst many people.

This is in fact entirely relevant to OP as per my first post in this thread where I pointed out that the authors failed to account for two major factors in their thesis.

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47

Ok.

Simply repeating what you said before is not going to make me or anyone else think you are more right this time round.

Whether other people buy devices for all sorts of reasons does not validate or invalidate the example you chose to give of your parents choosing a dvd player that lets them play multi-region DVDs.

You can be as pedantic as you like about whether that is DRM or not. It is still a restriction which your parents clearly chose to circumvent.

You say that they didn’t choose their player because it was multi-region but because of NTSC/PAL conversion and dual voltage. You then say that

which was therefore pretty clearly the defining feature since they could happily have carried on with two players (or in fact one) if all they wanted was the other features.

If you can’t see or accept that indications that consumers don’t like restrictions on what they can do with devices in one area might be indicative of disliking restrictions in another area, there is no point in discussing this further.

If you want to make pedantic technical points, please do. But I would urge you to read the actual paper.

The authors (as far as I can tell and I’m happy to be told I’m wrong) did at least try and filter for the effects of those other features you mention.

The result is that even taking those other features into account the players which had the DRM reducing features sold for more than those without. They also go into some interesting stuff about which kind of features have a better effect on price and speculate as to why.

If you don’t like the paper, you can of course do the research and prove them wrong. It’s just Amazon screen scraping. I suspect they might even give you access to their dataset if you asked.

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48

I need to explain a bit more, apparently. Older movies shot on 35mm film do not have much better resolution than what is on a DVD, especially in PAL regions (NTSC regions have markedly lower resolution) and in anamorphic. Sure, today’s 35mm film are better, but we are talking about the film stock, cameras and optics from another era. They were good, but not as good as today’s film, cameras and optics.

If you search a bit around the Internet, you will find studies about the subject and they mostly agree about the resolution of various filming processes.

49

Indeed, compression artefacts and poor mastering can ruin a DVD or a BlueRay. BlueRay has the potential for less compression artefacts, because of its higher data rate.

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50

Well… yes, but this is another reason for not reissuing these on a new format, actually. And the idea to “retouch” or “colorize” older movies is not common where I live. Is that common for US releases?

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51

You are very simply wrong. As evidenced by the existence of blu-ray editions of classic silent films like The General, and talkies from the 30’s Like Gone With the Wind. A cursory search of reviews of blu rays of films from that era finds people praising the high detail and low grain of the blu ray release.

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Not to speak for @AndreStmaur but the re-issues you speak of require extensive effort to seek out the best surviving film prints, usually a 4K or above scan of the print and then do hundreds of hours of digital restoration to make up for damage ad artifacts on the film print. This does not negate the point that these releases look great, just explaining why.

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Exactly. And if you actually compared the BlueRay and DVD versions, you would find out that the DVD has about the same level of actual details.

I never said that early movies were of poor quality, just that their actual resolution was not much better than PAL anamorphic DVDs.

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Cant assume that with these newer BluRay releases because even the same source film stock was used for a DVD release, the scanning and digital cleanup technology has advanced quite a bit.

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55

I still love those boxy, blurry Amiga-powered starships

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56

Probably by playing films in cinemas, like they always did. And then pretending they never made any money from them. Like they always did.

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57

Again, either you are very simply wrong, or thousands of classic movie fans have been fooling themselves for the past decade.

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58

No, but I can hope that my point will be addressed, instead of watching the strawmen get setup and knocked down.

I know, i’ve agreed and pointed out that, whether or not you agree with my parents as an example, it doesn’t change the fact that the original conclusions of the paper and article are flawed for multiple reasons. one can’t make that kind of inference. that is even worse then assuming correlation as far as logic is concerned. it is a basic logic 101 never do. you don’t need my parents as an example to get my only point, as i’ve pointed out 3 times, yet you keep circling back and fail to address my point.

agreed. but region locking isn’t DRM, and a dvd player isn’t DRMed media, and wanting either doesn’t infer a demand for DRM free media. Those would have to be true and proven for even the assumption the inferrance was made from to have any legs. but even that assumption is incorrect. and even if it wasn’t, one can’t simply make a blind inference without proving the correlation first, this is basic statistics and logic.

No, if you read my posts, i do accept that. My point is not what you keep circling back to, and i keep pointing out that it isn’t my point. i don’t know how much more clear i could be.

which DRM reducing feature? what is a DRM reducing feature? How does one reduce DRM? Either the DRM is in place and working or it has been cracked and circumvented. Region free players don’t break or circumvent DRM, they work with DRMed media exactly as intended. One doesn’t reduce or circumvent DRM to switch the region, period. Region locking is a licensing agreement with dvd player manufacturers, not DRM, period.

More importantly, region free players certainly unarguably do not increase the demand for DRM free media, having one doesn’t in any way indicate any demand for DRM free media.

I don’t have to. Anyone with any background in statistics would take one look at the blind correlation and laugh. it doesn’t take another “study” to realize that this isn’t a proper study in the slightest. This isn’t how proper research is done, period.

I’m fairly certain, you are going to reply about my parents, and miss my entire point yet again…you are correct, repeating my point doesn’t seem to help it be addressed.

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59

Your cited link only shows that the Blueray version has much better mastering than the DVD version, not what resolution the actual movie had. Besides, Gone with the wind used the 3 reel Technicolor process, which inherently increases resolution and allows impressive digital grain reduction. It is not a representative sample of 35mm films of the era.

Instead of looking for movies fan reviews, try looking for SMPTE papers, they will tell you a different story.

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But but they cited Cory himself as a source!!!

No seriously you are right, this paper was junk for several reasons. Bizarre test for the conclusion they wanted to reach, sloppy math, etc.

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