Jay Samit Quotes

I sold Blockbuster because I saw what was coming: the satellite dish, technology that would make the business obsolete in a few years. Why would people go to a store for a video and then have to return it when they had a dish?

One of the things that's driving films in a particular direction is that the after market value of them is dropping really fast and in many segments of it, not just DVDs. Pay television is dropping.

At Current, television is all we do - that's our business. We don't have amusement parks I have to worry about, we don't have environmental cases against us, we don't have a series of outdoor-advertising companies.

Most of us can now record a whole series with the click of a button. We all have DVD players, and the rise of the DVD box-set means we watch this stuff in two, three-hour sessions. So there is this real appetite out there for lengthy, pretty intricate drama. All that is great news for writers.

HBO is the original subscription video-on-demand company. We were repurposing first-run movies, and then we added original programming.

Succeeding in network prime time has gotten tougher. Every day, several thousand homes are wired for cable, and more people are buying videodisks and video cassettes. That all represents competition.

I have no direct knowledge of this, but I suspect that Apple will launch a living room product that redefines people's expectations really strongly, and the notion of a separate console platform will disappear concurrent with Apple's announcement.

There has been a major shift in how we live in our homes. Everyone knows the kitchen is the soul of the house. It's more of an open-concept approach.

There was no DVR, no Netflix, and no binge-watching. We didn't even have a VCR till I was nearly out of high school.

People have more options to watch quality, professionally produced video than ever before, and they are using those options - whether it is DVR, Netflix or Hulu.

Our app for Xbox 360 brings Twitch video to the television and into the living room of millions of Xbox Live members for the first time. The app will let every Xbox Live gamer find and watch streams of their favorite games from their couch.

I remember when cable happened and everyone said broadcast was dead, and then satellite happened and everyone said cable was dead, and then DVDs happened and everyone said everything was over. Nothing was over. I'm very optimistic about the future.

Broadcast TV is like the landline of 20 years ago.

Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home.

I don't have a TV at my house. I literally do not. I have a television, but I don't have anything plugged into it, though. I watch DVDs.

I've been watching so many movies and they all have to do with the DVDs. It's just so much more convenient.

I like to stay home and watch television. The Game Show channel, mostly.

Nowadays, most educated people would just as soon stay home and watch 'Breaking Bad' as shell out a hundred bucks to see a Broadway play - assuming that there are any plays on Broadway worth seeing, which long ago ceased to be a safe bet.

I think people have a vague sense that the television system is changing.

The best businesses that all of us have in the entertainment business are cable content channels, which have a dual revenue stream.

Obviously with the onset of cable and satellite, there are more opportunities for programming and original programming, so it creates more opportunities for actors and producers and directors and everything.

The best theatre I've done, I've done right here in this living room.

I do not buy CDs any more; I usually stream Internet radio. For movies, I hardly every buy any DVDS. I have a DVR, so just record things off HBO, Showtime and so on.

Cable boxes are, almost without exception, awful. They're under-powered computers running very badly designed software. Their channel guides are slow, poorly laid out, and usually riddled with ads.

I do think that the days of gathering around a television set that functions merely as a television set, to receive a live broadcast of some networked programming, those days are probably numbered.