2. 外语
  3. DVD rental kiosks(售货亭)from Redbox and Blockbuster seem to be popping up on every corner these days, but home-video market analys

DVD rental kiosks(售货亭)from Redbox and Blockbuster seem to be popping up on every corner these days, but home-video market analys

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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?
What is the passage mainly talking about?
选项 A、The popularity of video-on-demand.
B、The competition between DVD kiosks and video-on-demand.
C、The fate of DVD kiosks.
D、The video-on-demand of Redbox and Blockbuster.
答案C
解析 主旨题。本文第一段主要讲述DVD租售亭目前非常流行，但其前景可能是被视频流和视频点播所取代；第二段到第六段主要谈论在DVD租售业衰败之前，Redbox和Blockbuster这些租售公司出台备用方案的必要性；第七、八段主要是关于DVD租售业的优点，这些优点使其不会那么快地走向衰败；第九段阐述DVD租售业目前的一些劣势，使其也许会走上与CD同样的衰败道路；最后一段再次提出了DVD租售业的前景问题。所以本文的主题应该是DVD租售业的前景，也就是[C]“DVD租售亭的命运”。[A]“视频点播的流行”、[B]“DVD租售业和视频点播之间的竞争”和[D]“Redbox和Blockbuster的视频点播”都只是本文所谈及的一个方面，不完整，故均可排除。
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