Inter-Sex

Hi, would like to know what you guys think about it.

1. Offer a normal membership for full price,
costumer can see movies in the MemberArea + is able to download the movies to his
computer. (This how we have it now)

2. Offer a reduced membership (let's say, 30%/40% cheaper)
costumer can see movies in the MemberArea with SilverLight but isn't able to download
the movies to his/her computer.

Do you think there's any interrest from surfers perpective to have the option to choose between a full price membership and a membership without downloads ?

Would like to hear your minds about it.

I guess it will not be great for the retention.

~ Renaldo,

Adraco

So instead of "do you want fries with that" you're going to be asking, do you want downloads with that?

I think it could work, as long as you brand/name it correctly. PREMIUM membership and BUDGET membership, where the Budget membership maybe have to wait a day or two for the newest updates, and only view them online.

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Inter-Sex

Yeah that exactelly our mind, not everyone would like to get fries.

No we just want to give our potential custumers an extra option,
in case a "premium-membership" is too expensive for him/her.

Bhunter

option 2 does make sense.. give it an try

VGeorgie

While I like Silverlight as a development platform, and it has potential, consider the following:

* Most any decent Silverlight player will require version 3 of Silverlight, which is not supported on older Macs (G4 running Tiger, for example).

* You could settle for a Silverlight 2 version of your player, but then it may not have all the features you'd like.

* Absolutely no support for the most popular mobile devices. (Though supposedly MS is working on a Silverlight for Android-based phones, and there are rumors for the iPhone, but they're just rumors, and there's nothing out yet.)

* To get truly secure streaming you need very expensive server software. Last I checked it was something like $30K. That's for the SDK, and I'm not sure of the pricing for just a run-time of the server, if that's even available.

HomeFry

What's a costumer?

GrouchyAdmin

I've never seen a post by VGeorgie before, but everything he's said up to (but not excluding) the secure streaming is 100% accurate. Might as well decide to cut out all users who are not using IE 7+.

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harvey

not sure if I'm missing something, but you can do that without SilverLight, just stream and disallow downloads. we just did something very similar last week, with different options based on access level and time frames, so, in any case, you can test both options and see how it works

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VGeorgie

I assume you mean stream WMV to Windows Media Player. True enough, that would work (except for WM stream recorders, of which there are many), but it's only available on Windows. You'd have to back it up with RealPlayer or something to hit other platforms. Not sure of the control you have over streams when using the Flip4Mac Quicktime add-on.

There's Flash and it's not hard to obfuscate the URL for basic protection (don't name them .flv and it'll confuse apps like Ant Toolbar). Secure streaming is an option, and there are CDNs that offer Flash Media Server and bandwidth at fairly low prices.

A VOD like AEBN has streaming PPM for basic charge, and downloading for extra cost. Something like their model might work.

harvey

well, I was talking more on the marketing than the tech side. On the site we made, we use obfuscated flv that most FLV downloaders couldn't catch (in fact all of those we tried, but maybe there's something better). Then again, if it plays, you can rip it, no matter what you do.

And btw, the videos are stream-able, no additional server, but in this case I'm talking about a mainstream site that won't have millions of members, so yes, for adult there might be the need for an additional server, depending on bandwidth and traffic. Anything below 10000 members will work fine in a single server, though

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Inter-Sex

If we decide to work with SilverLight, it will be Version-3.
We thinking about it, to give this extra "Budget Option" to our potential members,
and ofcourse also to our webmasters.
A additional server will be ofcourse also not a big problem, in case it is really needed.

We hope just to get more members, if we offer this option.

Inter-Sex

Thank you for pointing out a gramatical error from me, much apreciated.
I hope you never make one "HomeFry",
but keep in mind...Enlish is not my native language.

Also, congratz, you have 1 more post.(Nice JOB)

MrWho

To let the user chose different mebership levels and fees is not bad in my opinion.
But I would never go for silverlight while there are several other solutions like flash or wmv streaming server.

seeandsee

silverflash

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Inter-Sex

MrWho,

So it is, ofcourse we let the webmaster also choose what to promote.
Do you think without SilverLight the system can be save ?
Save in terms of, not easy to download or to rip?

While i understand it is always posible to crack any security,
it doesnt must to be easy to do so, otherwise our "thoughts" wouldn't works.

Inter-Sex

This Toppic Needs A Bump.