Sunday, June 14, 2015

The Netflixing of Everything

#drwho #bigfinish #scribd

It kind of amazes me that this is slipping in under the radar, none of the big fan sites or outlets for Doctor Who seem to have noticed that a lot of the Big Finish Audio adventure range is now available on Scribd.  They also seem to have most of the novels and all the new comic lines from Titan, making Scribd one stop shopping for everything Doctor Who except the episodes themselves.

To be fair neither Big Finish Productions nor Scribd seem to have rushed to announce their new partnership either, there seems to be almost a deliberate effort to have this happen on the down low.

In other words Doctor Who fans who have dipped into the full cast radio play style Doctor Who adventures featuring actors from the entire 50 years of the BBC series and those who may have never heard of them can now gorge on many hours of them with an $8.99 a month subscription.  Plus Scribd gives you access to thousands of books, audiobooks, magazines and comic books - all the major comic publishers except DC, Image and Dark Horse in fact.

I have drastically reduced the number of comics I buy while drastically increasing the number I read. I'm saving a hell of a lot of money and storage space and enjoying comics more.

Between my Marvel Unlimited and Scribd subscriptions the comics of virtually every comics publisher except DC, Image and Dark Horse are delivered right to my tablet with a combined cost of under $25 a month for the two subscriptions. Since Scribd also has a large Marvel catalogue you could scrimp and just get the Scribd, but I like the weekly dose of Marvel newish stuff in Marvel Unlimited, even though it is six months behind the comic shops. The Scribd subscription also gives me thousands of books, audio books and magazines.

I still love the medium of paper, I still buy comics and books in physical form and probably always will, but now my slightly OCD completist urge can be satisfied much more cheaply with much less use of storage space.

This is the model I respond to.  Whether its music, movies, tv or books the model that intuitively works best with the existing technology is the subscription streaming service.  DRM is still a concern but for price, ease of access and storage space the Netflix model will conquer all others because its how people want to get their media. 

THIS is the best way to combat illegal downloading.  Give people a simple, economical alternative and they will take it.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

New Force Awakens Trailer gives me hope.




I'm starting to get excited. The best of the original six movies was The Empire Strikes Back, which was also the Star Wars film with the least input of George Lucas as others took over both script and direction. I honestly think he's like Gene Roddenberry, stronger in conception than execution and I think Abrams will be more in sync with Lucas's universe than he was with Roddenberry's.

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