AV Rant #253: Clichés
A more reasonable lengthed podcast this week. Tom is nearing the end of writing the sequel to Bob Moore: No Hero so it comes up a few times in the podcast. Of course, Steve Jobs passing has to be mentioned. Love or hate him, you can’t deny the effect he’s had on all of our lives. This week in Netflix – flip-flopping. Tom thinks a management change is in order, Liz disagrees. Liz thinks that UltraViolet is a lame name for a cool service. Tom agrees. Wait, a movie studio exec actually makes sense? What’s the world coming to? Can sound quality be measured? What does Alan Parsons think. This week’s Soup-to-Nuts is courtesy of listener Renny. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to vote for us at Podcast Alley! To see our (mostly) complete collection of show videos, click here. Download Tom’s FREE ebook Bob Moore: No Hero which is pretty much available everywhere. Friend Tom and Liz on Google+ to join in on one of our hangouts.
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It’s not taxes that explain why you can’t stream Netflix in Australia: it’s property rights. A studio sells streaming rights by country. If Tom can stream Netflix in Australia, it makes the studios deal to sell their output to a streaming service in Australia less valuable. (Now it makes the deal to sell in the US more valuable, but the economics depends on a whole host of factors which a blog comment doesn’t have room for, unless you’re Rob.)
Oh, and Liz: it probably doesn’t behoove you to say in public that shipping clothing to New Jersey means you don’t owe sales tax if you live in New York. The sad fact is that you owe New York use tax on those goods, which happens to be exactly equal to the sales tax you would have paid. Now it’s true that there’s no enforcement mechanism for this, so it’s only prosecuted in the most egregious cases, but the laws are on the books about what you owe, irrespective of where it’s shipped. Even more interesting, of course, is that one technically owes use tax on stuff purchased from Amazon, which has gone to immense effort not to have to collect sales taxes from anybody but Washington State residents. Nobody declares these use taxes, but they’re supposed to be paid.
Y’know, jfalk, there’s no rule saying I’m the only one who can write a comment so long that no one will ever read it…
😀
On the UltraViolet tip: Liz was on the right track when she mentioned that we have Blu-ray and now UltraViolet. We went from CD with a red laser to DVD with a red-orange laser to Blu-ray with a blue-violet laser. UltraViolet is just following the next logical step in the spectrum!
UltraViolet (name aside) is a cool idea though. “Buy once, watch on any device”. That’s the basic premise. The catch is going to be support. Hopefully, the companies behind UltraViolet have figured out how to make it an app that can be easily added to existing devices.
Obviously, any quality snobs (like me) would only ever purchase Blu-ray. But it’s cool to think that I could buy a Blu-ray and then simply and easily watch that movie on my iPhone or iPad without having to rip, compress or transcode anything myself. The one hiccup is that buying something like an Amazon download obviously doesn’t give you the right to walk into a store and walk out with a Blu-ray free of charge. Now THAT would be something awesome :p