Well speaking of shelf space now, it's no longer needed!
Imagine walking into a brick and mortar, buying membership and being given a USB stick, small size, fits one film, maybe up to three and paying stick rental instead. Plug in to a computer, pay for films, download, watch, film deletes itself after a full viewing.
I'm sure a small proprietary bit of code could do that. Even more draw to it, if the player software is stored on the stick. Just plug it into a TV.
Edit: should mention, this is how rental stores should have behaved when netfkix/redbox peaked their noses out. Sure the back end would be a bit more intricate (server racks stored on site with films), but the far larger library they could hold and move to digital would have seen them compete longer atleast until digital bandwidth got larger for home downloads and then streaming as we have now. They could have been doing streaming long before netflix was dreaming of it
There were several attempts to do something similar to that over the years. There was a competing format to DVD very early on called DIVX (not to be confused with the video codec) that had the ability to restrict viewing to a certain number of times or a certain period of time. There was also some research into making DVDs with a coating over the reflective layer which would start to oxidize after being exposed to air so they wouldn't play after 72 hours or so. Neither amounted to anything.
I suspect the reason they didn't do something like what you suggest was more due to licensing than anything. "Digital distribution" of movies has different licensing terms than DVDs and VHS tapes. Any any attempt to do something like that would have been sued into oblivion.
Oh I am fully aware of the licensing issues, but we have those licensing issues resolved now for streaming, so all it took was a bit of negotiation work, likely not too dissimilar to what netflix did initially.
I occasionally wondered about the complete opposite, a streaming service that needs no licensing. There are special laws regarding lending physical media. My idea basically a giant Redbox but in a warehouse somewhere. You pay $.50 to rent a blu-ray player in the warehouse, which is legal. You pay $1.50 to rent a blu-ray, also legal. A robot arm places your rented blu-ray in your rented player which you control remotely.
There was a OTA TV company that tried this model called Aereo. Instead of cable retransmission fees or putting up your own antenna, you'd pay a monthly fee to rent an actual antenna and TV tuner in their array of antenna and tuners and stream it to you. They actually built an array of little microantennas so you were renting your own physical antenna and not sharing. It was super smart I thought, but they got sued by the media giants and lost.
Well speaking of shelf space now, it's no longer needed!
Imagine walking into a brick and mortar, buying membership and being given a USB stick, small size, fits one film, maybe up to three and paying stick rental instead. Plug in to a computer, pay for films, download, watch, film deletes itself after a full viewing.
I'm sure a small proprietary bit of code could do that. Even more draw to it, if the player software is stored on the stick. Just plug it into a TV.
Edit: should mention, this is how rental stores should have behaved when netfkix/redbox peaked their noses out. Sure the back end would be a bit more intricate (server racks stored on site with films), but the far larger library they could hold and move to digital would have seen them compete longer atleast until digital bandwidth got larger for home downloads and then streaming as we have now. They could have been doing streaming long before netflix was dreaming of it
There were several attempts to do something similar to that over the years. There was a competing format to DVD very early on called DIVX (not to be confused with the video codec) that had the ability to restrict viewing to a certain number of times or a certain period of time. There was also some research into making DVDs with a coating over the reflective layer which would start to oxidize after being exposed to air so they wouldn't play after 72 hours or so. Neither amounted to anything.
I suspect the reason they didn't do something like what you suggest was more due to licensing than anything. "Digital distribution" of movies has different licensing terms than DVDs and VHS tapes. Any any attempt to do something like that would have been sued into oblivion.
Oh I am fully aware of the licensing issues, but we have those licensing issues resolved now for streaming, so all it took was a bit of negotiation work, likely not too dissimilar to what netflix did initially.
I occasionally wondered about the complete opposite, a streaming service that needs no licensing. There are special laws regarding lending physical media. My idea basically a giant Redbox but in a warehouse somewhere. You pay $.50 to rent a blu-ray player in the warehouse, which is legal. You pay $1.50 to rent a blu-ray, also legal. A robot arm places your rented blu-ray in your rented player which you control remotely.
There was a OTA TV company that tried this model called Aereo. Instead of cable retransmission fees or putting up your own antenna, you'd pay a monthly fee to rent an actual antenna and TV tuner in their array of antenna and tuners and stream it to you. They actually built an array of little microantennas so you were renting your own physical antenna and not sharing. It was super smart I thought, but they got sued by the media giants and lost.