I just read an article over at the NZ Herald website that caused me much concern, so much so that I felt I should express it here.
I basically have two main issues with this article: 1) It is NOT written in NZ, and it only credited as being written by ‘Reuters’
2) NONE of the information applies to NZ in any way; they haven’t even bothered to change the US prices to NZD!!! As far as I can tell there are no on-line download services in NZ offering movies, either for rent or purchase (ignoring Bittorrent and other methods such as having US iTunes accounts).
To the casual reader this article gives the impression that NZ is well served in alternatives to buying or renting DVDs, which is just totally wrong.
Is no-one at the Herald capable of even checking this information?
I mean, the Tivo is not even available here!!! Can you imagine Job Public going down to the local Harvey Norman/Dick Smith/etc and asking ‘… for a Tivo think like I read about in the Herald….’?
How would they react when they find out none of this is available here?
And even if it was, our infrastructure (still mostly ADSL1) would be stretched to support it. Can you imaging 10,000 people downloading full movies every day? (Just a guess as to the figures, 10,000 doesn’t sound too unreasonable considering we have reached > 50% broadband penetration).
Why is it that a company as large as the Herald cannot check basic facts?
Why can they no even get the pricing right! Are they doing this just to look like they have more content in each section?
ARRGGHH! Thank God we have sites such as geekzone that has well informed and intelligent people! There, I feel better now!