Epix has upped its commitment to online content by promising 3,000 movies available to subscribers through its Epix Megaplex and EpixHD option. But while this is cause for celebration, is it enough to deter piracy?
Epix
When Epix was first announced back in June, I described it as a ‘Hulu for movies’ and an indication that Hollywood and the movie industry was finally waking up to the need for free or cheap, easily-accessible Web destinations to consume content legally.
After all, the music industry failed to do this for years and it lead to the situation we are in now where despite Apple iTunes and a wealth of other places to stream or buy music (my favorite being Spotify), piracy is still a huge problem.
Half-Baked
While piracy is also obviously also a problem for Hollywood, I don’t feel it’s too late for the movie studios to stop the rot. And ventures like EpixHD are the way to go about this.
However, a TechCrunch article by MG Siegler got me thinking. He argues that while EpixHD is looking great, it’s still just another half-baked service offering a small sampling of the thousands of movies available.
Integrated Online Movie Store
What Hollywood really needs is an integrated online movie store with content from all the major studios and a range of the smaller or independent ones.
Even if it cost slightly more to consume the content, a one-stop shop coupled with a user-friendly interface could make it a winning strategy.
Options Galore
As Siegler makes clear, most of us have at least one option for streaming movies already in our houses, be it a computer, a games console, or a set-top box such as Apple TV or Roku. But the problem is they all offer a segmented service, with some studios aligned to some, some aligned to others.
For as long as I can remember, we’ve been able to rent a new movie on the day of release from a Blockbuster or other video store. But online it’s a different story, with the movie studios putting restrictions in place to prevent that level of user-friendliness.
Promoting Piracy
Hollywood is scared of piracy and scared of a wholehearted move to the Internet for fear of curtailing its other revenue streams. But taking this path is only going to have one effect – make piracy the big winner. And with piracy, the studios don’t see a cent of revenue.
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