I've long complained about how the ways that streaming services (music, video, etc.) are bad for collectors, something I'm personally affected by. I won't spend anymore of this post talking about that, but instead a potential solution.
The idea is to build a streaming video network whose catalog is stocked from personal video collections. Everyone participating in the service owns a special player that is capable of playing back a stream that originates from another member's player.
For example, let's say you want to watch 28 Days Later. You log-on to the service's website and search for the title, find that it's available and click "borrow". I happen to have a copy of this film so I get a message that asks me to load the disc in my player. Once I do this, you get a message saying that the film is ready and you can watch it at your convenience. When you click "play", the disc begins playing in my device, streaming the video to yours, and you can watch the film. When you're done, I get a message indicating that I can put the disc back (this status is reflected on my player as well).
The primary downside to this system is what we'd call in technical terms latency: the time it takes between when you request the film and when you can actually start watching it. I have a few ideas about how to mitigate this, but even under ideal circumstances there will be more latency in this step than you're likely to see from "regular" streaming services.
So what are the upsides? The one most exciting to me is that this opens up the possibility of streaming a lot of films that are currently unavailable on any streaming service. While this doesn't solve all of the collectors problems, it's a significant improvement. Another upside is that the films are available in their original form and are, for the most part, immune to being changed or otherwise interfered with due to contractual or other reasons. A third (and to me the most exciting) benefit of this system is that it leverages the curation skills of individual collectors which can be a very powerful means of discovering new films you might like. As anyone who has spent hours scrolling through streaming service menus knows, finding something you're willing to invest a couple hours in just to find out you don't like it can be a daunting prospect and lead to wasting all the time you have to enjoy a movie just looking for one.
From the "implementation" perspective this design has numerous advantages as well. There's no up-front cost of licensing or purchasing and warehousing the media, no operational cost of paying for staff to operate the service and no utilities, insurance, etc. The system can be "bootstrapped" from a pair of players and two collectors with internet connections. The players will need to be developed and produced, but I'm comfortable with saying that I could design and build prototype players for such a network myself, and there's a number of ways to scale-up production of these devices when the time comes. Aside from that there would need to be a website that maintains the complete catalog, member accounts, etc. but hosting something like that is trivial as all of the media handling occurs directly between the player devices.
How do you sustain the network (what is the business model)? The obvious answers are a) profits from selling the players and b) reoccurring membership fees. I favor a combination approach that preserves the possibility of allowing for DIY players to participate in the network (there may be challenges to this depending on auditing requirements) but charging a membership fee to everyone enjoying the service. Given the low operational cost of running the service I think a fee competitive with other services could be sufficient if enough margin is built into the cost of the player hardware. In addition to personal collections it may be possible to involve existing rental retailers as well, which has the benefit of quickly building-out the library and providing another revenue source for the remaining (or new?) rental stores.
Yes but isn't this illegal? IANAL, but I don't think it has to be illegal if it's done correctly. It's not illegal to share a DVD with another person, and it's not illegal for that person to watch the DVD. The physical nature of the DVD ensures that it can only be played in one place at a time, so as long as the system ensured that there is a 1:1 ratio between disc and screen (and that sufficient logs are kept to prove this in the event of an questioning), I think it could be done within the limits of what is legally allowed. That said, having a lawyer (or two) go over any idea before getting too invested is always a good idea.
