[whazzmaster]

A couple of thoughts (including some commentary on the article itself- sorry I couldn't help it).

The central idea of this article, which is that slowing DVD sales due to the explosion of streaming options are slashing profit margins, is fascinating to me primarily due to the relative absence of blame-shifting onto 'piracy.' There was a mention of it, but it seems Hollywood has finally moved past the 'Piracy is causing all our woes, DMCADMCADMCA' delusions of the late 90s/early 2000s. As a Slashdotter from back in the day that saw such scolding played out on the front page I find it strange (yet optimistic) that they finally saw the real writing on the wall.

However, even though the central conceit of the article is interesting to me I find the language just goddamned terrible. I guess if you're looking for properly-flavored industry news then sentences like "[h]is first picture was the tentpole smash Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and he already had three television shows on the air" and "[m]ore recently, he released the smash Identity Thief, with Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman" are right up your alley. I'm suprised the author didn't describe some upcoming SMASH deal as BOFFO.

[michaelwww]

> I find the language just goddamned terrible

I agree but she interviews much better than she writes: http://www.salon.com/2013/06/14/hollywood_memoirist_lynda_ob...

It's funny that she was an editor for the New York Times. I'm guessing she decided to edit her own book, so she had no one to tell her that her breathless and gossipy over-wrought writing style would be laughable if it weren't so painful to read.

[john_b]

It's an excerpt, so the style might fit better in the book, where hopefully the reader isn't thrown right into it and bombarded with it constantly.

Even as an excerpted article, however, it needed to be edited much more. I skimmed the last half because I found the style unbearable. If you're going to explain why movies suck now, then start talking about facts, ideas, and their connections. Why bother with so much character development when those characters don't matter in such a short piece?

[nnethercote]

"It hit me like a rock in the face."

[michaelwww]

"I just went around saying, “The landlord has the blues,” and blithely fell into the future."

[nostromo]

You're so right, I've read this a few times and still have no idea what it means:

> New Abnormal producers like Peter were thriving, easily finding supersized tentpoles with the “preawareness” that was so craved by the New Abnormal

[Vivtek]

When will they admit that they killed DVDs themselves due to their fear of piracy? The more copy protection they put on them, the less likely any given DVD was likely to work. In the 90's we rented a lot of DVDs. By the time Netflix came along, we finally gave up even trying DVDs from the video store, instead watching whatever drivel was on Netflix only because we had a reasonable expectation that it would work all the way through without a microscratch triggering the anti-piracy circuitry.

[orbitur]

Huh? I bought in to DVDs very early and I've either owned or used many DVD players over the last decade, and I've never, not once, had an issue with DRM preventing me from using the disc in a dedicated player.

The only situation I can think of is that you bought or moved your DVDs from a different "region." And the number of people actually dealing with that is so small it's not even worth mentioning.

Perhaps you meant Blu-Ray? While issues are perhaps more common, they're not common enough to drive people away. BR's sales problems are due to high cost and poor timing to market.

[Vivtek]

No, DVDs. It got worse with every DVD player we bought, until we finally just gave up on DVDs entirely.

[tsotha]

>By the time Netflix came along, we finally gave up even trying DVDs from the video store...

I think this is a bigger deal than efforts to curtail piracy. If nothing else it's just more convenient to stream a video than to go to the store and buy/rent it.

In theory they could make up the difference by charging the streaming services enough to make up the difference, but I don't think the market supports a higher price.

[wmf]

YMMV. In my life I've had one DVD that failed to play due to scratching and I have no way of knowing whether CSS contributed to that or not.

[artsrc]

If you want to find some DVD's that won't play due to scratches then I recommend that you borrow some children's DVD's from your local library.

[kamakazizuru]

man that article was a pain to read for sure. One of those that couldve done with a TL;DR - "so this producer thinks that loss of DVDs killed hollywood" .. but still leaving a lot of questions for such a link-baity article completely unanswered.