Membership Site

[Bound2Burst]

I have set up a membership site for access to older movies, from the launch of B2B up to 2011. Because there is insufficient space on the B2B Dedicated Server, these titles have not been added and are therefore not available via Verotel, only via Clips4Sale which is pretty expensive. The idea is to make 40 movies available at all times, but to rotate these at a fairly high rate (4 titles per week or more than 200 per year). That way, you can have access to these older titles for the cost of monthly membership. Accessible from the welcome page is a page identical to what is in the members area but with links to teasers instead of the movies themselves, so that you can see exactly what you would be getting for your membership fee.

Verotel is handling payments and will be issuing the usernames and passwords when you sign up. This means you cannot pay for membership via any other method.

Because of changes to codecs over time, some older videos may not play on Windows Media Player. I recommend using VLC, a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. Versions are available for PC, Mac, Ubuntu and Fedora. I suggest downloading VLC from the Official VideoLAN website.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

Quite often, VLC scrambles the first few seconds of a video, then plays it just fine. This works right back to the oldest titles I have. It's a better solution that running all the videos through a digital converter and degrading the quality, something that would have to be repeated in the future if I went down this path because of Microsoft's habit of abandoning older codecs.

[pcwp]

So I really like this idea - mainly because I haven't got many videos pre 2011 (well compared to post 2011).

Few questions (obviously );

So 4 added, 4 removed - I take it this will be mostly random, enough that you couldn't say it will 40 new movies every 10 weeks? Or in other words, once 4 are added, they will be up for 10 weeks. I am guessing no as that would mean getting a membership every 10 weeks rather than every month would be optimal.

This leads me on to my other question :- do you or anybody else here know what Verotel is like when trying to cancel memberships? I have this feeling that it isn't quite as easy as clicking a cancel button? I.e have to phone support or something. If it is a hassle to cancel, maybe the extra $5 a month will be worth it.

Do you have a set day planned for when movies will be updated? Like every Monday? Just want to know when you will be removing 4 of what is already up there

[Anon_E._Mus]

I strongly recommend you download the VLC Video Player only from the official site, http://www.videolan.org/vlc/. If it is downloaded from other sites, you may find that it comes with attached leech and parasite software which you did not intend to install. In the extreme, the unintended software installs may compromise the security of your computer.

Nevertheless, I also strongly recommend the VLC Video Player. It's performance is technically equivalent or superior to other video players, and as pointed out, it handles even obsolete video formats relatively well.

[desp_1999]

[pcwp]

[Bound2Burst]

[Dan052]

my two cents.

I have nothing against recurring memberships;

That being said, $35 a month is a bit high for old content.

[Bound2Burst]

[Sphincter_movement+]

Hello Dave
Didnt think we were going down this road with Subscription site

SM

[Bound2Burst]

Someone kindly pointed out to me that customers who purchased non-recurring membership would, eventually, get movies more cheaply than those who opted for recurring membership. This is an absurd state of affairs! Some businessman I am! Since I can't really see a way to make the system work fairly with both options, I have decided to remove the non-recurring membership option.

[pcwp]

[Watcher]

As long as I can still purchase the edited movies on a 'pay as you go' basis, I have no problem with the subscription service, though I think it will not meet my requirements !

[Bound2Burst]

Thank you all for the feedback. I'm not going to get too bogged down in the details. I think that whatever model I select it will not suit everyone. I also feel the greatest interest in movies from earlier years will come from those who were not visiting the site back then and can now get what they would like for a reasonable price instead of being stung big time on Clips4Sale. I'm not bad-mouthing C4S really; it's just that they offer no way to discount older clips so one can't offer any inducement to purchase them. Nevertheless, some people still do buy them at those high prices, for which I am most grateful.

I'm going to operate the membership site as is for a time and see how things go. It's off to a good start, and I know there will be some cancelling and re-signing, but that's okay. The point of keeping the number of movies at 40 is to offset that a little. I also want to keep the high rate of turn-over since I have around 900 movies from the era 2007-2011, and even adding them at 16-18 per month, it will still take me 4 years to go through all of them. Before then, the HD movies will start to migrate over as disc space is required on the dedicated server. Even if membership only works moderately well, it's still better than having all those movies languish in obscurity forever more.

[LeoWetlook]

To me the early years were some of your best work, and I signed up the second I saw it a few days ago. The fact that there are a lot of videos that I've wanted but haven't been able to buy due to cost issues over the years, this is easily the best idea you've ever had! I love it already and am looking forward to being a member for a long time.