I have to scream. WHEN WILL THE LAWYERS AND OTHER LUDDITES GET A BLOODY CLUE?!?!?!?!
THEY are the ones that cause all this timewasting with DRM arms-races. THEY are the ones who insist on exclusivity, market separation etc, that only CAUSES "piracy" to continue.
WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE WHAT CLIENT DEVICE IS USED TO VIEW THE MATERIAL???? If someone is streaming off a legit site, it SHOULDN'T MATTER AT ALL whether they're using a PC running whatever OS, a Smart TV, tablet, homebrew device...
I think back to Rev... original release date was slated for 6 months after the first series aired - Oct/Nov 2010. It was put back by a ****ing YEAR simply based on some dumb marketing decision. In the meantime, torrents were made available and the whole damn thing was put up on Youtube.. I'm sure part of the takeup of these alternative methods was out of sheer frustration as people reacted the same way I did when I got the "pushed back by 6 months" email 3 times from Amazon..
Christ, I even think back to ET! THAT was hyped beyond belief, and if global release had been the way they did things... (OK - so you had the whole having to shift reels of film thing - but bear with me) you wouldn't have had the same issues with knockoffs..
People WANT to buy content.. but the media middlemen seem to want it both ways. And it appears it's mostly the middlemen who are getting in the way.
Universal, Viacom, Paramount, EMI, the rest of you... LISTEN. Release globally, in open formats so your content is playable on anything, get a clue from the music industries and release withOUT DRM, at a sensible price point (say, 50% of the equivalent price on DVD as the infrastructure is there)... people will come flocking.
BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, other broadcasters... release open public specs of how clients can connect to your streaming services on a non-royalty bases (you know - like PAL and DVB-T is specified), allow independent development and release of user agents to connect to said services (you know - like "TV sets"), quit with the NDA bull, move the curation and presentation window logic back into the server-side code...
Make rapid release onto DVD the norm.. and if the rights issues re DVD sales are sticky - then organise for permanent availability through streaming archives (with open, public client specs as above)...
Make EVERYTHING available to ALL client types, as you can only maximise exposure - and BTW, if you have to charge, I'm sure more people will be willing to pay IF they can watch on any device, at any time.
In short, QUIT WITH TRYING TO CONTROL EVERY ASPECT OF THE "VIEWING EXPERIENCE". Do what you do best, and give your users a but of trust.
Long ago, I may have accepted the media industry;'s arguments regarding "piracy". But with language conflation, and Luddite tendencies, I'm sure a lot of it is just led by sheer anger now.
Think back to the DeCSS case. "Oooh - OK - I'll buy that. Is there a DVD player for Linux available?" "No." "OK, I'll write my own." "That's PIRACY!".
Back to MP3s... again - same argument.
Video streaming, digital forms. Same argument.
it's why VHS/Beta won over Cartrivision...
Someone compared the rants by one media industry lawyer to an equestrian supplies manufacturer kicking off when the car was invented...
OK - rant over...