Denthor wrote on Jan 13, 2013, 17:52:
Julio wrote on Jan 13, 2013, 16:14:
I completely agree that content owners seem to want to make it difficult for people to be legit, and buy that content outside of the US...but
Why not just import it from another country and use a region free player?
But that is entirely the point he's trying to make. Why does the customer have to jump through all these hoops to try and do the right thing. They're making it very difficult to pay for stuff and obtain it in a timely fashion.
When it's easier to make purchases at a reasonable price piracy will drop off as proven with netflix (see http://tinyurl.com/ahg7ed6 ).
HBO isn't in the content business, they're in the subscriber business. Their content exists to drive subscriptions.
If they went to Netflix, or something like it, people would have less of a reason to subscribe. They'd lose more subscribers than they currently do to piracy. Yeah, they'd get some money back, but their entire business is designed around subscriptions. Losing that would be very, very, very painful.
They won't detatch any time soon. It would require a drastic internal shift, one companies rarely make willingly. One that their owner won't let them do.