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There was a whole industry for production of the cassettes, warehousing, distribution, retail space, service personnel which all cost a pretty packet. The cost now of putting the post-edit file on a server with a web payment has gotta be virtually zero. Any schmuck can serve a torrent to the world for the price of an internet connection -- sure, that's the baseline, and it relies on others paying the (small) real costs, but still.

Without the need for Blockbuster retail stores, that's got to cut the price in half. Being able to keep your whole back catalog in a computer rack instead of buying warehouse space in 50 different countries has to halve the costs again, surely. Account for actual material costs, factories to make the cassettes, write them, produce the cases. What are we down to now ...

$1 a month for buying 6 new movies sounds more like it.




CDN costs of serving HD movies at scale aren't trivial.


Well sending a small parcel in the post costs me >£3 GBP, what's the cost of 9GB of CDN. Bet it's trivial in comparison.

http://www.cdncalc.com/ says it's about 34p. Suggesting it's not trivial, but ~10% of the prior cost.

Not a solid analysis but indicative IMO. Bet someone else has done all the [other] costings and probably quite rigorously?


The cost of software (which is essentially just information) vs what people will pay for is fucking mindblowing.




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