I worked at BlockBuster back when Netflix came out. It was legit a great contender, and an awesome service. BB had their own mail service, but it was just seen as a copycat. Also the franchise had a LOT of bad blood, and sometimes rightfully so. Depended on local management how much leeway you could have. The most lax stores that were lenient did the best.

The reason it worked was because physical media is protected by the first sale doctrine. So if you could buy a disc, it could be under one roof as rentable inventory.

Streaming and licenses is what fragmented everything and greed gave the appropriate incentive.

It also somewhat killed direct competition. When everything was physical on a shelf in front of you, all for the same price, you had direct comparison and competition. You could have any show or movie from any studio all side by side. That $2-5 could get you anything, across the board.

I saw this all coming from miles away. I don’t blame anyone, every step sounded like a great deal. I see a lot of the same things with Gamepass. It’s a great deal, and I don’t blame anyone for using it… But I don’t see it as being a long term net positive for the industry.

Oh you want to talk directly to a person? You need to subscribe to 911+. For only $4.99 a month, you get the following perks…

Well, yeah- but what if they could sell the problem AND the solution?

Do I want my face in ads? No. Not at all.

Would I want this same tech used to character swap myself into movies, or just swap actors in whatever? …okay yeah that might be kinda fun novelty.

I’ve tried one that works surprisingly well. Each sentence had great pacing, cadence, and correct enunciation- even had tone right when someone was shouting or angry or sad.

I wouldn’t really recommend it, though. While I couldn’t pick any single thing out that was wrong, overall it just didn’t quite flow. It’s like watching someone try to act that is technically doing everything right, but it just isn’t good. It basically didn’t understand the greater context of the story and was saying lines.

It was uncanny valley, but exclusively with voice.