Wonder who got a phone call from Beijing yesterday?  Could it have been Cheng Yiu-Tong?  The SCMP summarizes thusly:

Cheng Yiu-tong’s comments

Wednesday morning, after a radio interview:

The status of the central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong is like an embassy of the Foreign Ministry. You clashed with the office in this manner. This was very shocking to Beijing.

Wednesday afternoon, at a press conference on constitutional reform:

I didn’t use the word “shocking”. What I meant was, Beijing would ask whether Hong Kong people had changed their way of expression.

Thursday afternoon, after a TV interview:

There were many questions posed to me at the press conference yesterday and at that time I thought I hadn’t used the word “shocking”. Later, I found it on the internet … I was shocked by my serious memory decay.

No further commentary on his assertion that Beijing would “send troops here” if protests continue.

Not much else attracting my attention this morning.  Today’s the day for the supposedly-massive anti-high speed rail protest, with up to 10,000 people expected outside of Legco today.

Those of you in the US who rent DVDs via Netflix may have already noted that Netflix has signed a “deal” with Warner Home Video to not rent WHV titles until 28 days after their street date.  It’s expected that they’ll sign similar agreements with other studios soon.  The reason for this?  Back in the day, initial releases of home videos were priced at $100 and sales were aimed at video rental shops and not consumers.  When the list price dropped to $20, studios tried to get a percentage of revenue from rental shops but mostly failed at that.  Over the past three years, DVD sales have been declining for a variety of reasons.   These reasons may include increased rentals and piracy but also include the fact that there are a lot of shitty movies lately that people may go to see in the theaters but have no interest in buying afterwards, not to forget increased competition for our leisure eyeballs thanks to online social media like Facebook and Twitter as well as video games.   2009 was the first year in many years that theatrical revenue was higher than DVD revenue.

Warner is making the classic mistake of attempting to protect an old market rather than adapt for the future.  History shows that all such attempts end in failure.  You can’t force people to buy something they don’t want to buy.  I suspect there will be some temporary increase in sales numbers but eventually consumer frustration at this sort of arrangement will benefit pirates more than it will benefit Warner.

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