Bill Watt’s Blog

I post relatively frequently about my love of digital downloads, the long tail, and how easy access + reasonable prices actually increase purchasing despite the music industry’s complaints that Apple has destroyed their market so I won’t rehash all that here with some long post. You can click here to see the previous posts.

All I want to say is this… I bought Scotty Doesn’t Know because it took one or two clicks and cost 99 cents. Would I have even thought about it in the old model? Nope. It is a funny song and I like being able to support the artists but it shouldn’t cause me pain to do so.

Well, I was sent this link to Sarah Silverman’s new video and my best friend said, “Did you immediately go and view the EuroTrip video? One lead me to the other.” Gotta love that Matt Damon being a good sport in both instances.

Fay- this and the EuroTrip video are not good for Chris or anyone under 18. That’s my disclaimer.

PS- YouTube rocks.

This post is a good read.

I always wonder why sales training isn’t mandatory after your last year in school (any level) because you learn so much by (1) having to serve people and (2) getting paid only when you serve people correctly. This is a classic case in point… who starts an email with an insult and expects the intended reader to continue?

I still love this video from EuroTrip. Poor Scotty.

God bless YouTube!

Well, I think Ryan’s post is the popular take away from folks watching the HD market… except for one camp of folks who think the following is likely true:

• There isn’t a compelling reason to upgrade at all because the technology is simply evolutionary and not a step function better
• The mass market is going to skip over this next generation DVD and move more quickly to downloading content

Don’t get me wrong, I own an HD-DVD drive along with my Xbox 360  and I have certainly thought about buying a PS3 to get access to Blu Ray content  too but in the end I’m pulling for downloads to end my need to drive to stores for a movie in the same way I always download music instead of buying CD’s. Also, letting people download an electronic version puts the content in a portable format and lets them move it to whatever device they want. Yes, I know the movie companies really really want us to buy a unique copy per format.

I think that this is the killer application that will be the next phase of the movie industry. I want to be able to watch it on my big screen tv, on my computer, on my various ipods, or show it on the DVD screen in my car when I’m driving folks around. The first one to make that happen with good content (I do not need all the crap movies they seem to put out before the good movies we really want) and at a good price will get all my business and I’ll gladly dump my physical media. In a related comment- I do not want to pay the same for a download as what other people pay for the physical media and miss out on extra content. I could care less about deleted scenes (Alice likes them though so having them would be nice) but I hate paying the same price for something that costs less and getting less content.

This idea has certainly been encouraged since Apple entered the movie download and rental space and while it is painful to download an HD title today my money is that that will be fixed relatively soon and this “battle” will have had less impact than the VHS vs Beta conflict.

I’m hanging out with my family in Ohio and have been working on some technology projects while I’m here. We made some upgrades to the different Internet connections and played with networking the Tivo’s. I’ve got a certain love of DVR’s and have played with ReplayTV, Tivo, Comcast and other DVR’s and am pretty impressed with how far Tivo has come.

I love the ability to sync from Tivo to computer and onto iPod especially since I have a day of flying to do on Monday and quite a few shows from the weekend I haven’t watched yet including 2 episodes of Lost from Thursday.