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Hulu's management turmoil is already evident.

Regardless of whether current CEO Jason Kilar can make up his mind to leave, the Chinese executives in the entrepreneurial team have already made up their minds to leave.

This is really not Zhou Buqi's instigation. It seems that Comcast's chief human resources officer said some inappropriate words, saying that the promotion space for Chinese who have not settled in the United States should be restricted. They can't work hard to train them, and then they jump back to serve the motherland. The training was in vain.

This is also the underlying reason why Chinese and Indians are treated differently.

Once Indians are trained, their loyalty will be even higher. Almost no Indians who grew up in the United States would think of returning to India to serve the country.

The Chinese are different. More and more Chinese who have been trained by large American companies, after being promoted to a certain level, are called by domestic "talent introduction" and "talent recall" plans and return to China. .

Many large companies have experience and want to give opportunities to more loyal employees, lest they work hard to train them and become meat buns beating dogs.

This view makes sense, but is too politically incorrect.

Eric Feng, CTO of Hulu, and his direct descendants plan to resign collectively. There are as many as 11 people in the company, 7 of whom are Chinese and 4 are Americans.

Back then, Eric Feng started his own business after graduating from university in the United States and built a video content processing website. Hulu was established, and Hollywood hired Jason Kilar, an executive from Amazon, to become Hulu's CEO. His first thing was to acquire Eric Von's video processing website.

Then, the two parties joined hands to start Hulu.

It can be said that Eric Feng's team, the core backbone of Hulu, has almost hollowed out the technical department.

Jason Kilar's side seems undecided.

Zhou Buqi was not in a hurry. That morning, he called Shen Xiangyang and made an appointment with Eric Feng and his assistant Eugene Wei to go to Netflix together.

This is not a business event, but a technical discussion.

After Shen Xiangyang visited Ziweixing Global for two months and gained an in-depth understanding of the streaming media industry, he felt that high-end technology was needed to solve many pressing problems surrounding the movie and streaming media industries.

Ten years ago, almost all movies and TV series were shot on film.

One advantage of film is that its resolution is infinitely high.

There is also a disadvantage, that is, it is not easy to preserve.

From the earliest nitric acid base to the later acetate and polyester bases, there are serious storage problems. Even the humidity and temperature in the warehouse will have a great impact on the film.

Moreover, film can easily cause physical loss and damage during transportation, movement, and playback. Over time, film will also develop various problems such as dirt, fading, scratches, jitter, blur, flicker, and more.

So now there is a general trend in Hollywood, which is to replace film with digital.

Although digital information is not as sharp as film, it is easier and cheaper to preserve. Unlike before, many young people with movie dreams can't even afford film.

For streaming media platforms like Netflix and Hulu, they will face a common problem-converting film images into digital images.

On the way to Netflix in the car, Eric Feng briefly introduced the conversion process. Simply put, it is "telecine transfer", which uses professional equipment to convert the film into tape and then store it as a sequence frame file. Then it can be made into a digital image.

Shen Xiangyang said: "I went to Universal Pictures to see it. The conversion process is actually not difficult. But many films have many problems, which is very troublesome."

Zhou Buqi asked: "There should be a lot of film left, right?"

Shen Xiangyang smiled and said: "Where is it? There is no such big warehouse storage."

Eric Feng obviously also knew about it, and further explained: "Before the movie is released, the film distributor will transport the film to various cinemas. After the cinema shows it, the copies will be taken back by the distributor. The distributor selects a few films Copies with better quality will be saved, and other films will be destroyed centrally. As far as Hollywood is concerned, the storage system surrounding the film is very complete. Most films have 5-8 long-term backups. But the volume of Hollywood movies is too large When it comes to big things, there are always some unlucky films, and all the footage is destroyed.”

Zhou Buqi said: "The quantity is not large, just repair it manually."

Eric Feng shook his head, "It's easy to talk about physical restoration. The preservation in Hollywood is better, and there are many spares available for use. But there is a problem with the commonality of film after long-term storage. This is at the material level. How long can the film be preserved? Ten years later, there will be many problems such as color distortion, noise, loss of clarity, video and audio out of sync, jitter and scratches.”

Zhou Buqi knew that this was really a big problem.

In the past nearly a hundred years, all video works around the world were shot on film. Fortunately, Hollywood has a very complete industrial system and can scientifically preserve and store films.

But apart from Hollywood, there is no other place in the world that has such an industrial concept.

This means that "old images" around the world may need to be digitally processed and restored if they want to be broadcast on Internet streaming platforms.

In particular, many film copies are orphans without any backup, making the restoration work even more complicated.

Zhou Buqi suddenly thought of a question, "Are videotapes and DVDs all digital information?"

Eric Feng laughed: "Video tapes and magnetic tapes are analog information, DVDs and hard disks are digital information."

Zhou Buqi said: "DVDs have been sold for more than ten years. This is the digital version of the movie. The Hollywood giants have already done this job well."

Eric Feng shook his head, "I have read relevant survey reports. In fact, only one-third of the conversion work of Hollywood movies has been completed. There are even fewer TV programs, not even 5%. Many people are still As for renting video tapes, because some old movies don’t have DVD versions at all, and the distributors only release video tape versions, but they are not willing to spend any more money to convert them into digital information.”

Hollywood distribution companies are all profit-seeking. If some movies have a relatively small audience and may not be able to earn the cost of redistribution, they may not release videotapes and DVDs.

Including Disney in the 1980s.

At that time, Disney was so poor that it was almost bankrupt, so it hired Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg to save Disney.

At that time, Katzenberg's first suggestion was to convert all Disney cartoons into video tapes and sell them on the market!

In the past, Disney movies only had film versions.

This has the advantage that there is no piracy.

There is no piracy anywhere in the world.

The disadvantage is that movie fans who want to watch Disney cartoons can only watch them in movie theaters. Whether they are new or old movies, they can only watch them in movie theaters.

Eisner and Katzenberg initiated reforms under the pressure of the Disney family and converted all Disney movies into video tapes for sale. The sales went crazy. The black-and-white old film "Snow White" alone brought Disney more than $200 million in profits.

Then, Disney had the cash flow to start new cartoons, and the Disney entertainment empire began to get on track.

Zhou Buqi nodded, "In other words, if you want to develop deeply in the streaming media industry, you must have an exclusive set of high-performance film-to-digital technology."

"That's right."

"What about Hulu? How is it doing?"

"zero."

Eric Feng seems to be very resentful towards Hulu, with a somewhat sarcastic look flashing between his brows.

"Not at all?"

Zhou Buqi was a little surprised. It stands to reason that Hulu is a well-known star-level streaming media platform today, and image conversion is also a necessary business, but it has not been started?

Eric Feng curled his lips and said: "Those in Hollywood, including Comcast, do not understand the application value of technology in the technological era. Hulu's concept is too backward. Their positioning of Hulu is to supplement NBC TV stations. . Some people watch TV and watch NBC ads; some people watch online videos and watch Hulu ads. The content of NBC and Hulu is highly overlapping, which is actually a supplement to NBC’s advertising business. They lack ambition, even in my opinion. It seems that they don’t want the streaming media industry to develop at all, and their core positioning is still the television industry.”

Zhou Buqi said in a deep voice: "If they don't do it, we will do it!"

The main reason why streaming media platforms are more attractive than TV stations is that users can watch whatever they want on streaming media platforms, instead of watching whatever they play like TV stations.

The former has the right to choose, while the latter can only passively accept it.

Since you have the right to choose, of course the more content the better, and niche content is also content!

For TV stations, ratings are important. Therefore, some content that is too niche cannot be broadcast. Once it is broadcast, the ratings will drop significantly, which will affect the income. The same goes for the sales of videotapes and DVDs. You cannot sell niche content because there is a risk of losing money.

But streaming is different.

Especially membership-based streaming media like Netflix.

Niche content is also very valuable and very attractive to some niche users. The subscription system does not rely on clicks and advertising fees. As long as there is content, and as long as the content can attract users to sign up for membership, the content will have value.

Therefore, there is a lot of video content recorded on film in the past that has no significance for broadcasting on TV stations and has no value for sale in the video tape and DVD market, but it has the necessity to exist on streaming media platforms.

Over the years, Hollywood has converted popular film content into high-quality digital content, but there is still a large portion of old film content that is only recorded on film.

This is all history.

They all have the value of being displayed on the Internet platform and then studied and appreciated. This is a record of the development of literature and art in the past. From a macro perspective of all mankind, it is necessary to permanently preserve it on the Internet.