by Zoë Pollock
That's Bill Wyman's concern about access to film and TV shows today. He fears Hollywood will make the same mistakes the music industry did 10 years ago:
If the studios were smart they'd go to the mat and create a massive one-stop shop for TV and movies, find a price point they can live with and then set programmers loose to make the thing as easy to use and ubiquitous as possible. Instead they've been wasting their time strong-arming the cable companies to help them on a new crusade against illegal downloaders—an unwieldy process that doesn't address the root problem and won't work. Where have we heard that before?
I agree with Wyman's larger point – that a better solution could help all parties involved. We stream Netflix on our TV with Roku (which sounds as cute as it is, even with the price hike). It's great for maximizing movies, but you can forget about watching anything from HBO or current seasons of shows. Which basically means, I'm only catching up now on cool shows from years ago (hi Party Down). But when there are so many great old movies to catch up on (Rock Hudson in All That Heaven Allows will make you weak in the knees), I'm ok with that.
The Dish 