Snowpiercer – directed by Bong Joon-ho – is a 2013 South Korean science fiction art-house action film based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige. According to The Boston Globe, the film has made nearly $11 million on VOD, more than double its theatrical revenue. Garnering rave reviews, Snowpiercer ultimately became Radius TWC’s second-highest grossing picture.
Tom Quinn, co-president of distribution house RADiUS-TWC, confirmed that an early VOD release had always been part of the plan for Snowpiercer.
“We at RADiUS, decided early on, to do something completely different with this release,” Quinn explained in a statement obtained by Cinema Blend. “We’re embracing both the benefits of a platform theatrical, but also the merits of going SUPER WIDE by making it available on more ‘screens’ than any movie this [past] summer.”
Indeed, as Magnolia Pictures co-owner Mark Cuban recently opined, “getting people into a theater is hard and expensive, [although] getting people to hit a button on their remote is a lot easier.”
As Eliott Jones, VP of User Experience at Rambus, points out, that is precisely why viewers increasingly expect connected TVs and set-top boxes to offer streaming access to a plethora of premium 4K/UHD content, including early release films such as Snowpiercer.
“Today’s connected TV user experience has reached a stage that is defined by convenience, reliability and the delivery of high quality content. Streaming services such as iTunes, Google Play, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon all offer a UX that enables very low effort content access, or ‘snacking,’” said Jones.
“With top notch sound and 1080p or 4K displays, users today expect that cinema quality content on legitimate sites can be found easily, streamed (or downloaded) and watched without having to worry about poor-quality, badly transcoded video from questionable or less than reliable sources.”
As we’ve previously discussed on Rambus Press, access to an uninterrupted and high-quality viewing experience on set-top boxes and connected televisions is contingent upon a strong level of hardware-based security against unauthorized access. For example, MovieLabs recently published their Enhanced Content Protection specification for access to 4k/UHD content which specifically requires a hardware root-of-trust.
“It is in the content provider and distributor’s best interest to provide consumers with the highest quality programming,” added Cynthia Yu, a director at Rambus’ Cryptography Research division. “By having hardware security built into the consumer’s viewing device, you are future-proofing access to premium content for years to come.”
Interested in learning more? You can check out our CryptoFirewall™ product page here and read a number of related blog posts on the subject, including “204 million connected TV devices by 2017” here and “MSTAR Semiconductor and Rambus secure connected TVs” here.
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