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Legal DVD Burnable Downloads Launched
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Jul 19, 2006 04:11 PM
from the playing-catch-up dept.
from the playing-catch-up dept.
rogabean writes to tell us that Hollywood studios have taken a large step into the future by launching their new program with CinemaNow which allows users to legally download and burn DVDs. While the current of offerings seems to be just the dregs, studio execs hope to expand the list quickly and offer a new way to find niche or older films that are difficult to locate.
Related Stories
[+]
Movie Downloads to Coincide with DVD release 313 comments
gihan_ripper writes "The movie download firms Movielink and CinemaNow have made a deal with the big five studios to ensure that downloads will coincide with DVD releases at Blockbuster and WalMart. Unlike previous deals, these will be full purchase downloads, and not merely for a rental period. The move is aimed at stemming the rising tide of pirate downloads, and DRM will be in force to prevent copying the movies to DVD. The first batch of downloadable movies will include Brokeback Mountain, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and King Kong."
[+]
Warner Bros. to Sell Movies Over BitTorrent 319 comments
martinmarv writes "The BBC is reporting that Warner Bros. is to sell movies over BitTorrent. Disappointingly, the pricing is set to be about the same as the DVD, even though the download will only become available at the same time as the DVD release, and can only play on one machine. In distributing films via download, Warner will join the ranks of MovieLink and CinemaNow. Perhaps they should wait to see how their $1.50 experiment works out first?." From the article: "Other Hollywood studios are now likely to launch similar services. They believe movie fans will prefer to pay a reasonable price for a legal downloaded movie rather than risk illegally swapping a computer file that could contain viruses or be a poor quality copy of a film. "
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Legal DVD Burnable Downloads Launched
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well... (Score:1)
I can't wait!
So, according to TFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So, according to TFA... (Score:5, Funny)
(https://addons.mozil...&application=firefox)
Re:So, according to TFA... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://aliquis.homeunix.net:8080/blog/)
Re:So, according to TFA... (Score:5, Funny)
Site: Yes, you can download the movies and burn them to special dvds.
Customer: Thats cool, can I play them in my normal DVD player?
Site: Yeah sure.
Customer: How about at my friends house?
Site: Yup
Customer: But I can burn them with my own DVD writer?
Site: Yup
Customer: Can I make loads of copies of them?
Site: Nope, you can burn them once only.
Customer: Thats ok, it sounds good enough though how much are the disks?
Site: $49.99 each.
Customer: !!!! *sound of bittorrent kicking in*
No, according to Cinemanow.. (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Thursday November 11 2004, @12:40PM)
Re:So, according to TFA... (Score:4, Interesting)
In my opinion the problem with that approach is that you can use a DVD emulator. So, even though a normal recordable DVD can't record a serial number, the emulator can fake it. And in fact most of the pre-standard high-def dvds that use microsoft's WM9 (mostly a bunch of IMAX discs, although europe had some mainstream releases) can be copied and and their DRM completely circumvented with one of many such software emulators.
FWIW, with the advent of HD-DVD there are a bazillion typos that say "HV-DVD" when they meant "HD-DVD" so digging for a link to a page talking about actual HV-DVD media is like finding a needle in a haystack. I may be misremembering the name, it might have been H-DVD or HI-DVD. I am pretty sure it meant "high-video" whatever the exact acronym was.
PS, the only reason I ever heard of this format was I ran across an HV-DVD logo on a website with homebrew DVD-case covers for people burning actual HDTV transport streams to DVD. Someone had misused the logo for these covers and since it looked so professional I figured it must have come from somewhere. Back then BLU-RAY and HD-DVD were barely heard of so googling for it worked a lot better.
Re:So, according to TFA... (Score:4, Interesting)
Clueless as usual... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.xpriori.com/ | Last Journal: Friday June 18 2004, @04:18PM)
Re:Clueless as usual... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just be sure you don't burn a coaster on that first try...
Re:Clueless as usual... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Clueless as usual... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://kim.biyn.com/)
There are a LOT of old movies (and even freely-available stuff we're encouraged by the producers to bootleg, e.g., all the MST3K episodes) I'd buy from a service such as this. Lots of the old sci-fi movies from the '50s I've never seen, stuff that WLVI 56 in Boston used to air in their saturday "Creature double feature" run in the late 70s/early 80s (you know, stuff like Godzilla, Gamera, etc.), lots of dead TV shows that aren't in sydnication (I'd pay a few dollars for all the episodes of, say, Good Grief, Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Alf, Tracy Ullman, ALL the muppet show episodes, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, etc. - dig up a LOT of stuff that Generation X caught the tail end of or missed out completely on). If you want to plug commercials in to subsidize the "cost" of distribution (e.g., to offer it at such a cheap price) then go right ahead- it's a fair tradeoff and I'll sit through the commercials to get legal downloads of stuff which isn't "legally" otherwise available. In other words, make it cheap enough, I'll buy lots of shows that aren't worth paying full price on a DVD on, but would be fun to watch if for no other reason to figure out exactly why I liked the show when I was 10 yrs old to begin with.
Will this stuff get pirated? Inevitably, yes, however if you sell, say, 1,000 units of each season of, say, the Ed Sullivan show, and the content would otherwise be rotting away in a vault somewhere, what's the harm? Hell, you'll get a viral marketing effect. Today's Jr. High kids might download Ed Sullivan and rediscover the Beatles, the Doors, Elvis, and a bunch of other old acts that have a cult following but doesn't otherwise attract new customers. Heck, I'd pay $15 for the Top of the Pops episode where Pink Floyd made an appearance. You're a lot better off selling SOME content, even knowing it's going to be pirated, than to make zero sales on it.
In other words, it's a great idea and not only should you jump on it, but take the maximum advantage you can by not being so closed-fisted and short-sighted. You may be surprised at what opening up your vaults to what the customers want may lead to increased revenues, rather than being so closed-fisted that if you can't lock it down with DRM every step of the way, you kill off any customer interest. HD-DVD is stillborn, don't do the same with this idea.
Re:Clueless as usual... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's not a chance in hell I'm using my precious upstream bandwidth to help the MPAA member companies turn a profit. If they use a peer to peer distribution model, I better get compensation for my bandwidth in the form of cash, or credit for more movies. That credit better be linearly proportional to the amount of data I upload.
Re:Clueless as usual... (Score:4, Insightful)
"You don't like this sort of compromise WHY, exectly?"
I can't speak for the GP, but I've noticed that many Slashdotters appear to have a flow chart in their head that has a single terminator labelled "And so, I have no choice but to continue pirating!". It's a given, of course, that the content industries creep along at a speed slower than we'd like (you younger folks can ask your parents what it was like living in the time period between the launch of the first affordable CD players and when a decent amount of content was available), but whenever the content industry does advance toward that point that we'd like, or even do exactly what we've been asking them to, we simply add more boxes to that flow chart in our head so that "And so, I have no choice but to continue pirating!" is still the sole terminator.
One of these days I'm going to write a web-based excuse-o-meter that will give each user their own custom-tailored rationale for piracy. God forbid some people just admit that they're cheap.
Re:Clueless as usual... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://photo.net/photos/swillden | Last Journal: Wednesday July 19 2006, @01:42PM)
There's not a chance in hell I'm using my precious upstream bandwidth to help the MPAA member companies turn a profit.
That's fine for you, but for good-quality, DRM-free downloads at a reasonable price, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
I'd expect the distributor to run several seeds on fat pipes, so that my incoming bandwidth would be maxed out even if I was the only one downloading, and so that the distributor was providing the bulk of the bandwidth, but I can see using bittorrent to make sure that the download rate stays high during surges of interest in a title.
Re:Clueless as usual... (Score:4, Informative)
(http://photo.net/photos/swillden | Last Journal: Wednesday July 19 2006, @01:42PM)
So you've made the consession that you'll pay their distribution costs.
No, I haven't. I still expect them to provide the bulk of the bandwidth, but I don't see any reason at all not to use a little of mine to help make sure the downloads are as fast as possible. I also don't mind paying shipping costs when I order DVDs from on-line retailers, and I don't mind buying a car, fuel, etc. to drive to the store.
Now why shouldn't they try to get you to agree to serial copy management.
They can try, but what makes you think that I'd be willing to accept that? I insist on the freedom to do what I like with the movies that I buy, within the bounds of copyright law (and I reserve the right to ignore egregious and imbalanced copyright laws the media industry may buy).
Or maybe watermarking.
I don't care about watermarking as long as it's completely invisible/inaudible. If it degrades the quality in any way, I won't pay for it. If it's completely unnoticeable, doesn't affect durability, etc., why would I care?
Or a proprietary codec that plays an ad each time you load the driver?
I won't accept ads, which is one reason I play DVDs with open source DVD players, which allow me to skip whatever I want to skip. And proprietary codecs are unwelcome, and not only because they're unlikely to work on my machines.
And it'll just get worse from there...
Bah. I know what I care about and what I don't care about. What I care about is my Fair Use rights, quality, convenience and price. As long as they offer me convenient access, decent quality at a reasonable price and don't limit what I can do with the media I buy, I'll buy it. To the degree they fail in any of those categories, my interest decreases. Especially with fair use limitations, assuming I can't easily work around them.
BTW, you do know that the "slippery slope" is generally categorized as a logical fallacy, don't you? Invoking it weakens, not strengthens, your argument.
Re:Clueless as usual... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.xpriori.com/ | Last Journal: Friday June 18 2004, @04:18PM)
Just to pick an example from the article, Walmart's web site offers "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" for $5.50. Others will cost more obviously, but downloading this one yourself will be $9 minimum, plus the cost of the DVD.
niche or older films?! AWESOME! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://circletimessquare.com/)
or ooh! ooh! a hitchcock horror movie?!
maybe a john ford western!
this is so exciting!!!
scans article...
"Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Barbershop and Scent of a Woman"
vomit, puke... choke, cough... vomit, hurl
Not Interested (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd rather see the service go after recent 1st run movies at the same time the $1-$2 theaters get them. I'd pay $9 to download and burn a featureless DVD of a recent release(think X-Men 3) and still consider buying the commercial DVD is I liked the film enough. It would give the studios a revenue stream on a flick while they were working on the DVD title.
Because that technology is still being tested... (Score:1)
No resale value (Score:5, Interesting)
Now you did it (Score:5, Funny)
(http://xirtap.com/)
Viable? (Score:1, Offtopic)
(http://phroggy.com/)
Can someone define "viable" as it is used here?
As it is not linked in TFA or the summary... (Score:2, Informative)
101 titles, but I don't know how much they cost because... Well that's great. Guess we can rule out smart windows users and linux users. Apparently
$9 (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, it doesn't really look like a serious business strategy, so much as a pre-emptive strike by the studios against eventually being held over a barrel by Apple Computer the way the record labels are right now. They want the infrastructure for something like this in place early in the game, so they don't give up their power to make the rules.
the selection (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://www.heyheydudes.com/)
Please make MST3K: The movie available (Score:1)
(http://ted.cartsys.com/)
Hmmmm. (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Tuesday December 19 2006, @05:12PM)
Cost compared to buying it from the store: Same
Rights compared to buying it from the store: Less (Assuming DRM still works 5 minutes after they release it)
So, let me get this straight...I'm going to waste hours and dollars downloading a movie that (I assume) can only be ripped to DVD, which will be less functional than same dvd bought from the store, though just as pricey.
Tempting...If they include a free beating or tax audit, it'll be impossible to resist.
5hrs?! (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.darchorizons.com/)
5 hrs during/after the download... think I'll pass. O, that and I'm a Linux user : P
Microsoft Only? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://hybrid.tashcorp.net/)
- Tash
Yippie - hybrids! [tashcorp.net]
yeah, right... (Score:2)
(mailto:ltwally@softhome.net | Last Journal: Tuesday March 04 2003, @07:48PM)
If Hollywood actually wants this to catch on, they're going to need to set some realistic prices.
If, on the other hand, this is only there for Hollywood to point to and say, "look, there is an alternative to illegal movie downloads," well then, well done! You've gone and created something that no one but the courts will actually take seriously!
GNAA--Troll or Funny? (Score:1, Funny)
(http://www.khaaan.com/)
Paves the way for Apple to do the same? (Score:2)
This really seems to take the wind out of the rumors of online rentals through ITMS. Who wants to deal with all the hassle of online movie rentals and watching them on a computer when you can burn a real DVD that you can use in any number of ways?
I wonder if it would also include some extras, in other words be a true DVD image and not just a movie feed...
Snail pace downloads.... (Score:4, Informative)
Only if... (Score:2)
And that's just the movies. I doubt we'll ever see such TV series as TV 101 [imdb.com] or Whiz Kids [imdb.com] released either.
The "dregs" I want to see made downloadable are the ones that the studios don't feel would be profitable enough to sell on prepressed DVDs. Studios, put your whole catalog online and see what people are still interested in. Perhaps it may even convince you that there's a market for stinkers (Terminal Entry is pretty bad).
Dregs? (Score:2)
Two Words: Intentionally Broken (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.isecore.net/)
Hence, MPAA et al can claim that "our potential customers WANT to pirate movies, we tried but it didn't work, woe be us!" and the retarded justice system will let them continue their crusade against evolution, since the industry has "proven" that downloadable movies "don't work".
It was the same with the other sites that offered "downloadable" movies. The movies were heavily tied down with DRM (which prevented them from being burned to DVD or moved to another computer), customers were expected to provide the bandwidth for the other customers, and the movies were horribly expensive - usually twice the price of a dvd in the bargain bin, but without the flexibility of a DVD, without the extras, and with lesser audio/video quality.
*adjusts tinfoil-hat*
big assumption (Score:2)
(http://www.openspeech.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 29 2004, @02:30PM)
Where does this tidbit come from? Not the article. Nor has the behavior of studio execs in the past suggested any hurry to get their valuable IP onto the Net.
iTunes Movies (Score:1)
Their selection sucks! (Score:1, Insightful)
In regards to burning DVDs (Score:1)
Pretty much looks like the stuff you might be able to burn to a standard DVD is stuff you might not even care to watch once.
"Relatively new anti-piracy"? (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday October 30, @10:59AM)
There are three ways I know of making a normal audio CD impossible to pirate/play on a computer:
- Turning off autorun
- Ripping on anything that isn't a Windows OS
- Suing the shit out of Sony for abusing our computers
While the rootkit method will have the least false positives, it will also cause the most damage, and it's the easiest to circumvent.I suspect that any method which allows you to burn your own DVD, even if it'll let us use single-layer media, is going to use one of the above retarded methods for attempting to prevent copy protection. They could try using Blu-Ray, except that Blu-Ray media isn't cheap enough yet.
The real question is, will the downloads be full DVD quality, and if not, will they be DRM'd before they get to the DVD? In other words, could I download these using their software (undoubtably they'll require software), then copy them over the network and play them on my Linux box?
If not, then this will likely be used to say that people will always pirate, no matter how cheap/convenient they make it. They could take a hint from the pirates, though. You can't make it much more convenient than an un-DRM'd BitTorrent download, and it's certainly cheaper to publish that way.
Here's my conditions for using this service or a service like it:
I'd like high def with lots of extras, but that's not necessary. The above list is, though. Miss even one of those and I'll just rent them and rip them, the way I always do.
Does not play well with others (Score:2, Informative)
Free Movies (Score:3, Insightful)
"Bad beyond all infinte possible dimensions of badness"
Enough suck to pull small planets out of orbit.
Well, I thought it sounded promising, but... (Score:2)
Guess that means no download to DVD service for me... =\
UseLess (Score:1)
use their burning software? (Score:1)
(http://www.gamerslastwill.com/)
I'm interested to know what it does besides burn DVDs
You must use their software to burn the image (Score:5, Interesting)
So it is not just an easy distributable ISO that you download. I can see how they can prevent making more than one copy from the image file since you must use their own burning software but I fail to see what would stop a person from making a copy of the newly burned DVD. I also would be curious as to how they unforce the one copy limit, the only way that makes sense to me is to force the user to be online and do some type of validating with their servers, otherwise just making a copy of the file before burning it would be able to get around the one copy limit since they would have to edit the file in some way to recognize it as "used".
Either way, if the resulting disc is playable in a standalone DVD player then there is no way to prevent the movie from being lifted off the disc. This model might look good to a suit who doesn't know any better because they think, "This is great, even if the image file is shared over the internet it can only be used once!", and while that is true they will probably overlook the fact that people can still copy and create images of the burned disc just as easily as before.
Lets hope hollywood gets a clue... (Score:2)
1.Movies and TV not currently proffitable to offer on DVD (because not enough people would buy it to cover the production, marketing and distribution)
and 2.Movies and TV available on DVD but has such a limited distribution because no stores want to carry it.
In other news (Score:1, Offtopic)
(http://gnarlin.homeunix.org/ | Last Journal: Friday February 09 2007, @04:56PM)
Of course... (Score:2)
Even if I would remotely consider using Windows for anything, I wouldnt download executable.
Hint to people - 'downloading' something that would be considered data (which includes movies and music) should consist of downloading (gasp!) *data* (eg http://yoursite/whatever/something.mpg [yoursite] or something.iso or something.mp3) - NOT downloading exectuable code locked to one platform (eg something.exe)
You can rip the DVD with Tsunami (Score:1)
This won't work (Score:3, Insightful)
So why would the studios want paid downloads? They can distribute DVDs inexpensively and profitably to the video outlets that have proliferated widely in the US and developed world. And they generally get the cost of the film product covered through the initial theatre release (where 90% of the box office goes to the studio for the first few weeks of release and 50% of the viewers chose to see the new movie). What does the studio have to gain from paid downloads? Pratically nothing.
Paid downloads are good for films that don't get wide DVD or theatre release. Brilliant little foreign films, etc... But if noone knows about them, then there is no demand. No demand means no paid downloads. Eight dollars isn't cheap and three hours of download time is a high opportunity cost to pay for a bozo film. Three hours spend downloading a turkey is three hours spent that wasn't downloading a good film. It's so much easier just to go to the DVD store in the local supermarket and pick up a six month old title for much less cost in dollars and download time.
Nor could you convince foreign directors to release their films in the USA or other countries as downloads. These guys are very traditional and want their films to be seen in theaters; they don't even like DVDs. The more that the download entrepeneurs are able to pressure them to license their 'vanity' films for download, the less likelyhood that they will be pressed into DVDs. They will be limited to their local national market and whatever government subsidies that they can hussle from their local cultural ministers. Which means boring films, which means fewer people taking a chance on downloading them regardless of the reviews in specialized film magazines.
All in all this is a dumb idea. The only thing that will work is the only thing that is currently working. Which is people crafting their favorite new films into DIVx format 'illegally' and posting them for download on the P2P sites. Eventually the MPAA will have to come to terms with the P2P community, on the terms of the P2P community, and accept whatever residual fees that the P2P community considers it appropriate for the studios to have. In the same manner that the RIAA came to a partial truce with the P2P community with iTunes.
It will take a long time because these guys are exceptionally thick in the head department. Which means we have to wait for a lot of dumb zombie companies like this one to fail before any real progress gets made.
Was this invented by the same guy that thought up. (Score:1)
(http://pcbookreview.com/)
Divix anyone? (Score:2)
They won't ever use reasonable pricing (Score:1)
(http://stage6.divx.com/)
Movielink does same with Sonic (Score:2)
Given that pressed DVDs can't achieve this, and that CSS isn't possible on burned DVDs, I find this difficult to believe.
Xesdeeni
They've got Reboot! (Score:2)
(http://www.emenoh.com/ | Last Journal: Monday April 17 2006, @10:08PM)
Testing, testing (Score:2)
They're not testing demand here, they're testing their infrastructure. Does the download process work? Will the disks play in most DVD players? How quickly/thoroughly will the DRM be cracked?
Once they have a working platform, then they can drop prices and/or release the popular/valuable films any time they want.
The movie studios do NOT want to be beholden to Apple. They do NOT want flat pricing. And they do NOT want the films to get loose from their DRM easily. Today's news is nothing more than a beta test with dummy data.
Well, as long as they make ... (Score:2)
Re:yes... but... (Score:2)
(http://gmail.com/)
I suppose you, for one, will NOT be happily supporting them.
Re:Well... (Score:1)
(http://almonu.com/)
Does that happen? I know that I can go up to 170 (one hundred and seventy) gigabytes, on my best month - generally uploading to downloading at 2 to 1 so my bittorrent stats are nice and positively uneven - on my 512/512 connection and the ISP hasn't said jack shit.
I asked when I joined, and got it in writing, that there is no download limit imposed on my truely unlimited connection, and uploads are not metered other than for my own personal perusal.
Re:Well... (Score:1)
at least now my monthly bandwidth statistics will look a little more legit to my ISP.
Would that be like, bandwidth laundering? CinemaNow is your casino alibi.