Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2000 2:16 AM
To: ‘stctech@pde.paramount.com’; ‘info@pde.paramount.com’; ‘television@pde.paramount.com’
Subject: demanding ST:on-demand
Open Letter to Paramount Pictures
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am a loyal Star Trek Fan since the original Series aired here in Austria, Europe. I continue to be one as Voyager nears its conclusion and I still live in Austria.
There’s one thing though that changed for my with the beginning of the 6th season of Voyager. I have a complete collection of all Star Trek video tapes (from CIC Video UK) and before the 6th season arrived I was anxiously awaiting every release of every tape. You ask “What changed?” and my answer is the i-word: The Internet made it possible for people like me (non-US resident) to get and watch Star Trek episodes that aired in the U.S. only a few days later with near-VHS quality. The technical ingredients that are required are: 1) internet connectivity that allows you to download approx. 200 MB per show, 2) DivX 😉 (see http://www.divx-digest.com/ or http://divx.ctw.cc/) codec and 3) a player (I use MS Media Player 7)
This proves that it is technically possible and feasible to digitally provide the latest shows to fans worldwide. Technically speaking there is not one obstacle left. Like me there are hundred of like-minded Star Trek fans who use the same shortcut to get to watch the latest shows. The quality by the way really is great, I can provide some samples if you doubt that. Obviously this is not great from your perspective… thus hear my plea.
My plea is this: I believe that you – StarTrek.com – should be the one making all those episodes available on-demand. (maybe 56kbit, 100kbit and 400kbit for streaming, 700kbit and 2Mbit for download) By doing so you will be able to control the quality and distribution and earn something of it. Pick a popular format, like Windows Media (has a great licensing scheme), encode all episodes and start earning. Certainly most online-Trekkers will pay $1-$5 per episode if it means that they can watch it when it airs not a year later when it finally debuts on video. Maybe $1 for viewing it twice and $5 to download and keep. Since licenses are bound to PCs people still can copy episodes but in order to view them they have to purchase new licenses for other PCs. So you will be able to face the Napster-revolution without having to become nervous.
VHS is obsolete. So will be DVD (the content scrambling system CSS has been outmaneuvered). In case you are not aware of this: DivX 😉 allows to compress the content of a DVD to be burned on a regular CD-ROM. You’re only chance will be to protect the digital content itself with a good format (I mentioned Windows Media which has a very strong security) and by making all episodes available online you will take 100% out of the momentum that the underground movement for on-demand episodes currently has. Said momentum is steadily building for maybe 3 years now and some voices already say that you have missed your chance. Not me. I still think that you can make it, if you start NOW.
I can vividly imagine tons of Latinum materializing in you pockets the instant you debut Star Trek: on-demand. And I see thousands of happy fans as a result. Please switch to world-wide media mode. If you like syndication, well, there’s lots of ways to do that on the Internet, too. But make it so!
Yours sincerely boldly goingly
Please dare go where no one has gone before
Oliver Drobnik