DVD Rentals Online - Turning an idea into a licensed business..

Sounds

Hello,

Looking for some advice of turning this idea into a proper rental business.

I don't think i am business minded as such, but i have an idea that i've
worked on for about a year, so far i've only got to test the results privately.
I built a custom movie rental system, using PHP & a MySQL database etc.
Movies would be stored online on a secure server outside the www directory
That way the movies can't be viewed using your browser
If a user rents a movie, they are given an object/link, when they click the
object, the media is loaded into a media player and auto starts the movie.

So that's the general idea, it's an online rental system
The user rents using tokens, which they've allready purchased with real cash
The person renting the movie doesn't get the actual dvd, they get the watch the movie online

I'd like to know how to set this up so i can get some real work done.
Where would you purchase your movies and how to get a license etc.

The system itself is a great idea, it's simple but secure in the sence that
even if a user sees the movie url, they never see where the actual movie
is stored, plus the fact that the movie url is useless after the rental period.

If any professionals have any advice for me or need to see a working demo
I can arrange to have a working store demo

I really think this could work, it would be great fun to run and i allready have the tools,
i just don't know how to put it together legally, never run a legal business before.

GerardKeating

Sounds wrote: »

Hello,

Looking for some advice of turning this idea into a proper rental business.

I don't think i am business minded as such, but i have an idea that i've
worked on for about a year, so far i've only got to test the results privately.
I built a custom movie rental system, using PHP & a MySQL database etc.
Movies would be stored online on a secure server outside the www directory
That way the movies can't be viewed using your browser
If a user rents a movie, they are given an object/link, when they click the
object, the media is loaded into a media player and auto starts the movie.

So that's the general idea, it's an online rental system
The user rents using tokens, which they've allready purchased with real cash
The person renting the movie doesn't get the actual dvd, they get the watch the movie online

I'd like to know how to set this up so i can get some real work done.
Where would you purchase your movies and how to get a license etc.

The system itself is a great idea, it's simple but secure in the sence that
even if a user sees the movie url, they never see where the actual movie
is stored, plus the fact that the movie url is useless after the rental period.

If any professionals have any advice for me or need to see a working demo
I can arrange to have a working store demo

I really think this could work, it would be great fun to run and i allready have the tools,
i just don't know how to put it together legally, never run a legal business before.

I assume you have factored in the cost of the bandwidth, a site like this would require a lot...

Sounds

Hi,

Yes i have and from experience, it doesnt take as much bandwidth as some might think.
The files are in a smaller compressed format and still retain the origional dvd's quality.
A server with 5tb bandwidth per month would be more than enough to start with.
Bandwidth is not really conserning me, it's the setting up legally i need to know.
And where i should be purchasing the movies, i'd only need one copy of each.
I'm assuming i'd have to have some proof that i bought the origioonals from some legal source, distributor's?
Can get dule cores with all the media tools i'd need with unmetered bandwidth for aound $80 per month
When they say unmetered, you could use up about 15 to 20 tb per month.

I'm just trying to put this into perspective, because i think my project/product is ready for business

craiginireland

To get permission to use studio films you need to pay a licence fee and then a % of your sale price too.

I'd recommend you start small. Try independant films or the IFI / filmbase in temple bar for market research first so you can see a) if theire is a market and b) is it possible to do within budget before you approach the big guys

TheWaterboy

Id imagine that you could run into serious issues with copyright issues - will Irish people be the only one allow to view the films. Unfortunately I cannot be of any help regarding who to contact.

What price are you hoping to charge - Personally id have no interest in viewing a movie on the internet and then looking at it on a small laptop screen. I know some people watch movies this way but usually because the movies are free!

shakenbake

How would the price of a rental compare to say ..... torrent?

Fair play to you for desiging it but I'm not so sure there's any hope of making money off the model.

Anyone internet savy enough to think about purchasing a film to stream is probably already aware that they can download it for free via torrent.

glanman

Screenclick.ie do deliveries of DVDs as you probably know. They were talking about launching an online version, heard this in the last year but have not seen anything sense. I searched for an article but haven't found one.

bruce wayne

not to mention the serious competitor of Apple if they ever fully open the iTunes store in Ireland. That said anyone with a spare couple of minutes could set up a US account in iTunes and download any number of movies, from their prepaid credit.

Your idea is a good one, and is absolutly they way the movie rental market is going, but it is unfortunantly not unique

blorg

The issues you face are not technical but getting the movie studios to agree to let you distribute the films in this way- you can't legally just buy a DVD and then start streaming it to punters over the internet.

MagicMarker

Like someone else said, I can't see many people paying to watch a movie on their pc/laptop. Don't think there's much of a market for this type of thing at all.

blorg

There is certainly a market for online delivery, both Apple and Netflix are doing it already and it is certainly where the rental market is headed in the longer term. Problem is the movie studios are very particular about their content and who they will let do this sort of thing with it...

Sounds

Thanks all,

Let me say this much,
There are a number of communities online that have anything from
50,000 to 90,000 users logged in at any given time.
As most of you probably are not aware of, there's the www side of the web
and there's the virtual side of the web, people rent movies every day and
watch them on their 3d screens with their friends and loved ones,
Generallly they can't be with their friends, fmily or loved ones in real life.
So there is a big market of pirate movie providers in these communities.
Some of them claim to be doing this legally, i know this is not the case,
Simply because none of them advertise on the communitie's websites.
If they were legal then they would advertise their services everywhere.
My market would mostly be us residents i thinkg but generally world wide.

Now if i don't go ahead and turn this into a legal opperation, someone else will.

And the fact that i am a legal business, opens a few doors for advertising
I can advertise anywhere, be the first in these comminities to offer my
legal services on their web sites, forums etc, and most importantly
I could ask all the pirates to provide legal documentation to proove
that their dvd businesses are legal like mine, this would completely change
these communities in a way, because the companies that pown these
copmmunities would ahve to take action if all the pirates were listed on
their web sites, if media was completely gone from these communities
Then that';s a larger market for the legal ones to offer their services.

I'm talking about 10's of thousands of people here.

It's a new market for the right business, and i need to be part of it.
Weither it's not making me much money or whatever i have to do it.

So your answer is, it doesn't matter what the www side of the web do
i won't be marketing to them so the www side of the web won't know about it.

What should i do?contact Sony Studios with the idea or something?
Would they have any intrest in helping someone that's unemployed setup
such a business with a system that they built themselfs?

I don't know untill i can try it out.

MOH

You might want to check this out

NedTermo

You should look into merging the uses of a mobile phone with like a camera.

Your about 5 years too late with this one my friend.

DubTony

There's no doubt that this is the way film rental is heading. But it's fraught with legalities. Apple is leading the way in the USA, with films to rent from the iTunes store. Their massive advantage is that as they get rights for different countries, it's simply a matter of "opening" that country on the server side. The software is already complete and it's on almost every home computer out there.

As for viewing on a laptop of home computer. I have 2 computers in my home, and I'm sure there are many who do as well. Mine are both Macs and it's only when you consider the hardware that it becomes clear where Apple's direction is so well planned and formulated. To take the iMac from where it is to the bedroom to watch a film in bed simply means lifting it and moving it. The wireless network ensures my connection. There's no issue watching a movie on a 24" imac with a pretty good sound system. These things even come with a remote control. The Mac Mini is already in the living room and hooked up to the TV, so there's no issue there. For anyone who wants to have a designated player, Apple TV costs €269 and is designed specifically for downloading films and playing on TVs.

So that ship is sailing, but I wouldn't say it's too late to jump on. However, there are a lot of big players already looking at this market and well on the way to securing rights, and that's the biggest issue. OP, to look at offering film rental worldwide you'll need one hell of a legal (negotiating) team. Start small, build a rep here in Ireland, and then look to the world. I doubt the studios will offer exclusives to anyone. It's not their style. But security of copyright will be their highest priority. That's already in place on iTunes. If you do somehow manage to secure rights before a company like Apple or Blockbuster / XtraVision, prepare yourself for the fight of your life when they do enter the market very quickly behind you with their massive brands and massive budgets.

Sounds

Are you showing me ovguides to point out that sites are delivering streaming media allready?
I'm not intending on using a web site to advertise or distribute the streaming media.
Allthough the backend, databases would be, the custmers won't ever see that.
I'm not talking about being the first or second to do something that's allready being done online, by large companies.
I'm just thinking about the prospects of hitting a couple of online communities with thousands of users where a lot of them do watch movies quite a bit.
A lot of money is made from pirated media, if there's no pirated media any more, then where do all these users get their movies from.
The user doesn't want to downoad them off the net and convert them and put on their servers to be delivered to their media screens, that's why there's online media stores renting/streaming them, pay per view etc.. so the people can enjoy them the way they were meant to be displayed, the way they work, sit down, share a movie.
I wouldn't choose to watch a movie this way myself, not in the present quality that's available, but it can be delivered hd quality i know all costs money for bigger files etc, but is being done.
I think if someone does this one right, they can advertise in all the right places, unlike competitors, which is what they are really, unfortunately that's the truth, but nobody says nothing because we all just want to enjoy the movies etc.
Give them a legal source of movies in the format that they Have to use to view the movies and...

That's another thing i have discussed, if it was worth while, why don't the bigger fish come in and get down to business.
There's probably not a big enough market for them to bother, but for one smaller company, there's deffinetly money flowing into "this" rental market.
I think if anybody has sampled the goods, see how it's delivered, quality etc, how easy it is to use, functioning etc. they'd agree there's deffinetly an oppertunity for one serious business, or more.
I haven't really described how this all works, so you're probably thinking netflix or some other companies with pay per view setup on their site, i dunno, but you wouldn't find my stores by using your usual web browser.
But saying that, it's still an online movie streaming rental service i'm intrested in setting up.
Very intresting concept.

What do you think?
How do small ideas grow?

DubTony

Seems to me you've got the technical side down pat. Good job. Now, whether or not you're going to offer movies to an online community that watches a lot of films, or to a bunch of homeless people in a hostel, you'll need rights. As to how the content is delivered, what could be simpler for anyone than opening their iTunes (or similar) software and downloading a film and watching it. The big players are negotiating all over the world. So you'll need some seriously Unique Selling Point to compete. After all, the people in the online communities don't spend all their computer time on those sites.

Having said all that, I think you've lost me.

Sounds

Nope, not a good idea to spend all your time in one place,
Better the move around and get some excercise

How have i lost you, you ended at unique selling point

Well i'm allready aware from research that an average "Web store" could make
anything from 5000 usd to 10,000 usd annually, probably more depending on
their popularity and the amount of users in their trusted community, network.
If you can imagen a place where 99.9% of these stores are pirated content.
Someone is responsible for allowing all this activity, but nobody really says
anything, that's because everybody loves it, 99.9% of the community.
The community leaders only want content related to their community, yet
you won't find any of the media providers advertising their services to the community.
The reason for that is because none of them are legal, they can't advertise.
So how can that all be changed, it would probably take one serious media company.
The community can't stop them advertising their services because it's a legal business.
Eventually the legal company kicks up about all the illegal opperations and demands an investigation.
The community has to take action, either the community looses all their pirated media,
or someone comes in and provides the content legally to the community at a reasonable price.

Easily make a few thousand per month, and eventually everyone who joins the communiy
would know where to get their movies from, because you're advertised everywhere!

It's an idea that's been tested, that's all, an intresting business concept.