Guba draws 1000% Increase with lower download prices
Posted by John Campeaon 12. 09. 2006in News Chat
Among the list of sites prepared for the next generation of entertainment delivery, I had never heard of Guba. However, it looks like they are setting some precidents that might change the price of legitimate online movie downloads.
For the last 30 days, Guba has offered new release movies priced at $9.99, catalog titles at $4.99 and TV episodes for 49 cents, though the offerings cannot be burned to a DVD. These prices are at a substantial discount to the current pricing structure at Amazon’s Unbox service ($14.99 and up for new releases, $9.99 and up for catalog titles) and the forthcoming Apple download store, which is likely to bow new release movie downloads at around $15 dollars.
As a collector of movies, I myself have absolutely NO use for “pay for download” services. Guba might have some mighty impressive prices, but you cannot burn these to DVD, so they cannot be added to your collection anyways.
And what about when they do allow these DRM (Digital Rights Management) movies are given the permission to write to DVD, then you end up with a ripped copy with no lable, and no cover art for your dollar store purchased DVD case.
I just dont like the idea of offering movies for download. I know it falls in the “if you can’t beat them, join them” philosophy inspired by the pay legalization of music downloads, but I just dont see any good coming of this at all.
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John Campea who has written 6783 posts on The Movie Blog
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That good that’ll come from it, I think, is that five or ten years down the line you’ll have every film you could ever want to see at the click of a mouse (or maybe some sort of laser pointy finger doohickey they’re likely to have invented by then).
It’ll take some adjustment (people do like their solid objects on shelves), but just think – you’ll never have to dust a shelf-load of plastic boxes again!
This is definitely just the beginning. At some point we’re going to be downloading all this stuff like literature, music, films, maybe even underpants.
P.S. I feel like I’m browsing in a shop that’s being refurbished. ‘Still open for business’. I like it.
Once we have completly digital players there will be no need for physical media anyways. This online movie thing might take another year or two to really get going, but its the way of the future.
Wow. That price is enough to get me curious. I have yet to experiment with video download but I’ve started to watch a lot more videos on my laptop and if the price is $4.99, I’m much more likely to download it rather than rent it. I agree that I’m still more inclined to buy the movie if I liked it enough to see it again but if the price is comparable to a rental service, I’d rather just click a button than drive down the road to the local Blockbuster.
Not everyone has a fucking terrabyte harddrive, how the fuck do they expect to get away with charging $15 for something you can’t even burn to disc, therefore can’t remove from your HDD without losing $15 of your cash.
HALF THE PRICE. ALLOW DVD-WRITES.
Then maybe I’ll think about it. Even then I’d probably only use it for the odd guilty pleasure purchase, not a proper disc I’d rather pay $15 to own on disc, in a box with art etc.