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  3. DVD rental kiosks(售货亭)from Redbox and Blockbuster seem to be popping up on e

DVD rental kiosks(售货亭)from Redbox and Blockbuster seem to be popping up on e

游客2024-09-22  26
问题     DVD rental kiosks(售货亭)from Redbox and Blockbuster seem to be popping up on every corner these days, but home-video market analysts are predicting that demand for the ultra-convenient kiosks could soon start cooling off as video streaming and video-on-demand gain in popularity.
    Mind you, analysts at J. P. Morgan aren’t sounding the death knell for DVD kiosks just yet, according to KioskMarketplace. com(via Home Media Magazine). Indeed, another analyst quoted in the KioskMarketplace story thinks it will take "several years" for J. P. Morgan’s "gloomy" scenario to play out.
    But the authors of the Morgan report do believe that the DVD kiosk business will peak in 2011 as competitors like Netflix, Apple, Amazon, and your friendly neighborhood cable carrier begin offering more and more streaming and video-on-demand options.
    As video-on-demand begins to rise, so must DVD kiosks begin to fall, say the analysts, who warn that home-video kiosk companies like Redbox better have a plan B up their sleeves before the market for DVDs-from-a-kiosk starts its slow, perhaps inevitable fade.
    While the struggling Blockbuster already has a plan B—Blockbuster OnDemand, although it’s not entirely clear whether there will still be a Blockbuster come 2012—the wildly popular Redbox still doesn’t have a streaming-video service...or not yet, anyway.
    Redbox execs have been mulling(思索)their on-demand options for months now, and it could have something to launch before the year is out, according to the latest chatter—indeed, one possibility is that it may partner up with Sonic Solutions, which already powers Blockbuster OnDemand.
    Keep in mind, though, that the J. P. Morgan report is aimed at investors looking at the long-term strategies of Redbox and Blockbuster. For the average couch potato—and no offense, by the way, given that I’m one of them—physical DVDs and Blu-rays, as well as DVD rental kiosks, will be around for years to come.
    After all, DVD and even Blu-ray rentals are still more affordable and convenient—there is no need for a broadband connection or a pricey cable subscription and DVD decks are dirt cheap, while kiosks abound in neighborhood grocery and drug stores. The selection of titles is unbeatable—the disc library at Netflix HQ, for example, still dwarfs that of its streaming database. And for my money, DVD and Blu-ray video quality beats on-demand, especially Netflix’s "Watch Instantly" titles, and particularly the bad, sometimes poorly framed SD ones, practically every time. On the flip side, have you seen "Avatar" on Blu-ray yet? If not, I urge you to check it out—even in 2D, it’s truly something to see.
    That said, as broadband gets faster and more dependable, streaming rental prices fall, and movie studios get more enthusiastic about on-demand in the face of dwindling DVD revenue, physical DVDs and Blu-rays(along with the kiosks that rent them)seem bound or doomed to go the way of the CD—still around, but fading in the shadow of their online counterparts.
    So, what do you think; Will streaming video eventually overtake the growth of DVD rental kiosks like Redbox? Or are the Wall Street analysts being a little too quick to sound the alarm? [br] According to the author, DVD has the following advantages EXCEPT______.
选项 A、low price
B、convenience
C、good quality
D、2D frame
答案 D
解析 细节题。本文第八段提到DVD有四个优点：廉价、方便、种类繁多以及画质清晰，[D]“2维画面”虽然在段尾有所提及，但作者意在强调画质清晰这个优点，所以[D]并非优点，故为正确答案。[A]“低廉的价格”、[B]“便利”和[C]“优质”均为DVD的优点，故均排除。
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