[Arm-netbook] HDMI Player Stick as DRM-free Merch Alternative

[Jean Flamelle]

On 7/22/18, Stephen Paul Weber <singpolyma at singpolyma.net> wrote:
> Blu-rays and DVDs are essentially dead tech

This depends highly on the region.

Most fictional media still grossly depends on the sale of DVDs and
Blu-rays, where-ever marketing for such merch turns out effective.
(i.e. Japan, major cities with relevant clubs, etc)

Consider how much film still doesn't exist on streaming services, and
only get royalties from broadcasts and DVD sales. Many truckers for
example most of whom stay many nights alone in motels between
drop-sights, feel perfectly obliged to surrender an hour's wage to a
convenience story in exchange for a promising unacclaimed feature film
to fall asleep to once or twice a week.

https://www.the-numbers.com/weekly-dvd-sales-chart

The monetary contribution per fan, can swing an absurdly wild standard
deviation.
The very concept of merchandise means subsidizing an art with the sale
of trinkets which creatively remind of that art. The cycle can be
self-perpetuating when other's who are reminded then go and feel they
need more reminders. This gets to be were collectable clocks, dolls,
posters, mugs, postcards, shirts, blankets, backpacks, etc, gets
wildly overdone.

At the end of the day, this is just a throwback and re-imagining of
the old DVD/VHS shelf. A physical location a person would go to see
their options of what to watch side-by-side, to pick them out, to look
at the cover and decide if the mood fits the situation.

Instead of a shelf, these sticks could go in a pot in on a coffee
table, in front of a couch, next to a bed, or, if someone was feeling
particularly disruptive and monetarily carefree, next to the front
door to give away or tossed to an audience at a convention, or perhaps
over or under the main counter at a library.

I just want to take a moment to appreciate how wasteful the
consumerism I just described is, from packaging to raw minerals to
predictable global drama maintaining game theory which enables
sourcing of these materials from "pre-warp civilizations".
I'm not condoning this type of economic behavior, however merely
commenting this is how global culture is and, if we want to minimize
that, we have to start "similar but different" and move gradually
where we would like to be from there.

The tricky part is that every attempt "similar but different" before
has been historically co-opted and lost its original sense of
direction. (which few people appreciate the risk of losing themselves
to the sheer complexity of the world, even when conclusions derived
from naivety ironically turn out more accurate to reality than
conclusions derived after having encountered many more parts of the
world already [ this can be since the more naive one more easily takes
the role of an isolated observer, than one who has talked personally
or had personal dealing with many different cultures. Much like the
blind leading the blind. ])