Lovefilm Online Choice Is Far Too Limited
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The Lovefilm TV advert states we have thousands of film you can stream.Yes just over 5000 to be precise but it's a con since most people do not appreciate the online streaming choice is so much smaller than the offline choice available when renting a DVD.
It make you cry when you see most of the films listed.Really old stuff which most people would never watch and all of sudden lots of the various categories list the same films eg all of the episodes of Lost fill up a few screen pages just to fill out the numbers.
I can't beleive it is all down to the licencsing deals which make some films too expensive. LF are trying to get away with showing a lot of shelf filler.Shame on you.:
It make you cry when you see most of the films listed.Really old stuff which most people would never watch and all of sudden lots of the various categories list the same films eg all of the episodes of Lost fill up a few screen pages just to fill out the numbers.
I can't beleive it is all down to the licencsing deals which make some films too expensive. LF are trying to get away with showing a lot of shelf filler.Shame on you.:
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Exactly. I've come across a few films and documentaries I'd not heard of before. I watched a few of Nick Broomfield's documentaries from the '70s on there that aren't avaliable to rent and are pretty expensive to buy.
LF is still good for the discs, consider the streaming a benefit on top of that but not on its own.
its because you think to yourself that online is the new way to go and that as such it will be at least as good as renting by post otherwise what's the point. thn you see t he selection is crap and it makes you depressed. irrespective of its cost. that is why!
same goes to you
However they now face even tougher competition, first of course Netflix and soon Sky's NowTV which given their catalogue could be a winner depending on it's pricing.
Remind me - wasn;'t it a whole load of antitrust actions that split the studios from the cinemas initially?
Found it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc.
Agreed, I've been saying something similar for years in regards to the movie and music industry and their online products.
If you want to start your own physical bricks and mortar store you generally deal with, and buy your products from a wholesaler. This gives you access to pretty much all of the available CDs and DVD/BluRays in the market (or at least from the studios the wholesalers have deals with). You don't need to spend months in negotiations doing deals with individuals labels and studios and if there is something a customer wants that you don't carry you can normally order it for them. Of course the bigger stores can still do exclusive deals though, but normally it's just for extra features, a fancy slipcase etc. with the product itself still being available to everyone else.
But if you want to open an online store you have to deal directly with the big labels, negotiating individual deals with each one and the myriad of smaller studios too. If a label has an exclusive deal with another online retailer then you are out of luck.
We need a wholesale market for online products that works along similar lines to the physical market.
Out of interest - how long did it take for all this to shake through and end up in place during the formation of the home video market?