Heck yeah, you should put No Hero on Kindle and charge! Personally, I think you should price it higher than the $0.99 minimum. $1.99 or $2.99 seems about right.

Is there any way that you could make a “Kindle Edition” with a little note at the very beginning. For example, the current text is labelled as the “Smashwords Edition” and has your greeting at the top along with your instructions about freely sharing the book in its entirety. Would it be possible to put a note for Kindle readers to let them know that they CAN get the book for free from Smashwords?

If so, then it truly becomes voluntary. I’m a firm believer that you should always give people an option to pay or donate if they want to. I also fully support the idea of giving works away for free, but if people WANT to give some amount of compensation, there should be a way for them to do that too.

If there is some way of letting Kindle buyers know that there is a free option, then there should be zero guilt about having a price tag on the Kindle version.

MaxiVision48 will never, ever gain acceptance. The notion of going back to the limitations of physical film when digital photography is clearly the future is just the ranting of a man who came up with a very impressive technology, but missed the window when such technology would be relevant.

The idea that it will take digital cameras a long time and exponential cost in order to deliver the same quality is already plainly false! There are high speed 4K cameras already in use! Would a jump to 5K and an alteration of the base frame rate from 24 fps to 48 fps really cost as much as retrofitting every 35mm film camera and projector? Heck, 4K digital at 60 fps is a very real possibility TODAY! I don’t know what the MaxiVision48 creator is talking about when he says that digital cameras are years away from being able to offer the same quality.

But let’s forget all about the initial quality of the captured images for a moment. Just think about the rest of the production chain! Digital photography makes infinitely more sense since virtually every movie made these days uses some amount of computer editing or CGI. Even things like Period Pieces, Comedies, Dramas, low-budget movies, heck – even Documentaries use computer editing and CGI these days! Why add the extra step and the extra cost of converting 48 fps 35mm film to a digital intermediary when you can just capture in digital to begin with!

So fine, maybe the MaxiVision48 camera isn’t a big deal. Maybe it’s the final product that Roger Ebert likes so much. Maybe it’s the 5K resolution 48 fps display. If existing film projectors can really be converted to show the new MaxiVision48 format for a low cost, then maybe that would be more cost effective than buying all new 5K 48 fps digital projectors. Except that every 3D theater already has a 48 fps 4K projector in place! Is the jump to 5K really going to be worth the upgrade to ANYONE? The theater owners? The patrons? The studios?

I’ll give you a hint…the answer is “no”.

I’m all for quality. Blu-ray offers better visual and audio quality than a commercial movie theater. I agree that from a quality standpoint, movie theaters would have to seriously up their game in order for me to prefer the experience from a QUALITY standpoint over what I can get at home. But quality isn’t my primary reason for going to the theater. And I sure as heck wouldn’t pay extra just to watch a 5K 48 fps film projection when there are 4K 48 fps digital projectors in the theater right next to me!

The reason I don’t go to the theater isn’t because I find the quality unacceptable. It isn’t because I have no interest in going to the theater. It isn’t even the $12 ticket prices or the outrageous concession prices. The reason I don’t go to the theater is because of the other people!

Feet up on my seat back. Cell phones buzzing or screens on causing distractions, talking, rustling, reeking of pot or booze. It’s the people that make the theater-going experience unpleasant. That’s why, if I DO go to a movie, I go to the 11:30am showing!

Let’s not forget that Roger Ebert sees about 400 movies a year. Any bump in quality is a big deal to him because all he does is watch movies in theaters! For most people, they maybe go once or twice a month. It’s an outing. And frankly, they aren’t complaining about 2K resolution and 24 fps image quality. They complain about prices. They complain about sticky floors. The complain about how crappy most movies are (regardless of their image quality – things like plot, characters and writing are still more important – imagine that!). They complain about the cost of a popcorn and soda. And they complain about rude people (often whilst being rude themselves).

Sorry, Roger Ebert, but you’re off your rocker if you think 48 fps film is the answer. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love the bump up in quality too. But going back to 35mm film when digital photography and especially digital production and post production are already so far along and almost at the same level as MaxiVision48 already just doesn’t make ANY sense. The best thing about 3D is that we’re getting 48 fps 4K digital projectors into A LOT of theaters. All of my local Multi-plexes are now about half digital projection and half film projection with plans to keep moving towards all digital. About half of the digital projectors are 2K 24 fps and the other half are 48 fps 4K 3D units. It might be cheaper to retrofit all of the film projectors to MaxiVision48 than to replace them with 4K 48 fps 3D digital units, but that doesn’t take into account any part of the rest of the production chain! The editing and post production are all digital now. And being able to shoot on digital makes so much more sense! Longer takes, instant playback and no conversion to digital intermediaries.

Those Studio execs were right to toss those symbolic film reels and call film obsolete. The quality of digital projection isn’t the problem. Take all the money the theaters might have spent on MaxiVision and hire some damn ushers to show all the rude idiots the door!

What would make me never pirate a movie or TV show ever again?

$8.99

That’s what.

Movie Theater ticket price…$8.99? I’d go.

Movie I think I’d watch more than once…$8.99 (be that Blu-ray disc or Blu-ray quality download/streaming [which doesn’t really exist, but I hope will come some day]) – I’d expect to “own” for that price though.

TV shows…

1st) Seasons should all be standardized to 13 episodes. 13 episodes in the Fall. 13 episodes in the Spring. 13 episodes for a Summer series. No more of the 18, or 20, or 24, or 26 episode season crap. 13 episodes! That’s it. Works for cable. Works for EVERYTHING.

2nd) 13 episodes? $18. Yup. $8.99 x 2. That price just “works” for me. No more “Volumes”. Just 13 episode seasons and $18 per season – be that on Blu-ray or Blu-ray quality download/streaming.

3rd) Half-hour shows should also be 13 episode seasons and since they are only 30 minutes instead of half an hour, guess what? A season costs $8.99!

4th) All of a sudden it’s REALLY easy to decide whether to cut cable or not. I pay about $60/month for cable. That’s $720 per year. That’s 40 13-episode seasons.

So all I have to do is figure out if I watch 40 or more shows in a given year – plus factor in things like whether I watch live sports. I happen to watch a lot of TV – more than 40 shows in a year, so that $60/month cable bill is actually still a good value to me. But for a lot of people, they could easily cut cable and just purchase shows either in complete 13-episode Blu-ray season box sets or on demand via download/streaming – all for a standard price of $18 for hour-long shows and $8.99 for half-hour shows.

Finally, any rental should be no more than 1/3 the price. I favor $2.50, but $2.99 wouldn’t bother me.

And let me be clear, nothing below Blu-ray quality is acceptable!

If the movie studios and TV networks gave me that? I’d never pirate again. Unless, of course, they continue being stupid and continue to refuse to distribute certain movies and shows in certain regions. It isn’t usually a problem up here in Canada, but certain TV shows are delayed or just never show up on any Canadian Cable channels, so that’s the last piece of my puzzle – Global distribution!

Hey – that’s actually pretty simple, isn’t it?

😀