More Freedom for DVD Players? 404
weopenlatest writes "According to this Wired article, the House just passed a bill allowing DVD players to skip through programming. While the article stressed using this ability for parental controls, it would seem like it would also apply to annoying previews and ads that load automatically. Could this be a step in the right direction towards uncrippled DVD players?"
Classfication flags (Score:5, Interesting)
Parents may be more likely pay a bit more for these "pre-screened" DVDs than using ClearPlay's service - A bite-back from the movie industry?
Re:Classfication flags (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Classfication flags (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, strangely that was a big selling point for DVDs from the manufacturers and the studios. Also, why the FUCK can't I watch a DVD that has deleted scenes in it in place where they were deleted, I mean, it's a computer function at that point. That was another big selling point for DVDs early on.
Oh, well. At least the sound and picture is better.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Classfication flags (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Classfication flags (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Classfication flags (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Classfication flags (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would that bother them? It would (potentially) mean they can make their vision happen the way they like, and the user can automatically water it down to their tastes. Personally, I don't have a problem with this. If I made a movie that satisfied my vision, and some people wanted to view a worse version of it, fine with me. It beats having to shoe-horn it into a lower rating.
I'm thinking about Robocop right now. The original cut of it earned an X-Rating for violence. They had to cut scenes out to get it down to R. They made the X-Rated version available on DVD. I watched it, and I couldn't believe what altering it did to some of the scenes. In one case, it actually made a scene a lot scarier. Remember when ED-209 blew away an executive? In the theatrical version, it basically opened fire on him and stopped when he died. It looked very cold-blooded. In the original version, it opened fire and blew the guy onto a table. It then kept firing over and over and over and over again. Despite all the blood spraying into the air, it was actually kind of funny. Stupid thing just kept on firing even though dude was dead. But... the blood. That scene had to go. What was once a humurous scene showing an insanely bad bug (Microsoft, anyone?) turned into a depiction of an evil robot.
I would imagine that Paul Verhoeven would have much preferred to have been able to release one DVD with user controlled settings.
Re:Classfication flags (Score:3, Insightful)
I imagine their objection is because they want to slip in some nudity and violence here and there, in an otherwise PG movie, and make money off the teens convincing their parents to rent/buy it for them...
The argument they use is obviously complete BS anyhow... The movies we see aren't true to the director's vision, otherwise we wouldn't
Re:Classfication flags (Score:3, Insightful)
I strongly believe that it will be highly beneficial to society in the long-run if those industries who depend on the artificial monopoly of "intellectual property" to allow them to parasitically suck money out of the economy
Re:Classfication flags (Score:5, Funny)
skip[sex(male frontal nudity)], play[sex(female frontal nudity)], slow-mo[sex(girl-on-girl)]
I bet lots of people would pay more for those pre-screened DVDs.
Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
I could live with previews once. I like previews for the most part esp thoughtful ones that might be similar to or catch the interest of someone who bought a given DVD. But if I rewatch a DVD I bought I don't want to wait no 5min to play the bloody flick.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck, 1MB would probably be enough. How much does 1MB of flash memory cost these days? Probably not enough to significantly raise the cost of the DVD player.
Personally I'd go a more flexible route; use 4MB of flash memory, and a rudimentary file system. Then allow a flexible amount of information to be stored per record. This could be used in new and very interesting ways. You can store a LOT of settings in half a dozen bytes.
I've got a better solution: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been using Ogle for a number of years now. It's very nice to just ask for the movie and get it. The family was spoiled by that player and still bitches often when one of the consumer players, we purchased for around the house, does not obey their just play the movie directives.
Re:Makes sense (Score:2)
And even when they are interesting, why do they force me to watch the damn spoiling trailer?
Re:Makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)
A few weeks ago I rented a title that they must have been paranoid about getting copied: My normal DVD player couldn't read the disc. I had to make a copy (DVD-RW)to watch it.
Re:Makes sense (Score:3, Informative)
LK
Won't work that way (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think this law is going to help you much
The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 (HR357) also would permit technologies that allow users to skip objectionable content in movies viewed at home.
I believe this act will be used by studios to make PG versions of their R rated movies. It will take out nudity and explicit language. They will do to movies what happened to music in the 90's. You will have a PG Eazy-E and an explicit one. I just wonder how many people will accidently buy the PG version, open it, realise what they did, try and take it back and be told they are stuck with the bad purchase.
I HATE the previews on DVD's that can not be skipped over. I preffer previews to be on a DVD in a "bonus" section. If the preview is forced on me, I get very frustrated, I have zero interest in what I am watching. If the preview is a bonus, then when I finish the movie, if I want to, I'll look at the trailers to see what else is out there. I find that a pleasurable experiance.
The worst offenders are Universal, that has a montage of thier past movies that can't be skipped over. I don't want to see 5 seconds of Jurastic park followed by 5 seconds of Nutty Professor, and so on, and so on, and so on. I hate that!
But since when do entertainment studios care what customers think. I believe it will get MUCH, MUCH worse. I believe the studio's will add commercials to DVD's that can't be skipped, just like the commericals in movie theaters. If Ford offers a dime for evey DVD with their Pick-up Truck commercial, and a studio expects to sell 30 million DVD's, that is $3,000,000 the studio makes for that one commercial. How do we combat profit?
I hate to say it, but I feel like people will start buying DVD players from Hong Kong that are region free (and can be set to a region too), and movies from websites located outside of the USA. There will be a market.
I'll give one more example of how the USA is going to force people to buy elsewhere. I purchased a $2000 laptop with a DVD drive. I am studying a foriegn language, and purchased movies from amazon.fr to help learn listening to the language. If I set my DVD drive to region 2 to watch a French movie, then later back to region 1 to watch an USA movie, one I do that 5 times my DVD locks so I can't change the region on it. WHY? The movies I am buying from France are not even available in the USA.
Re:Won't work that way (Score:3, Insightful)
I find the previews and commercials to be objectionable, actually. I usually put the disc in and leave the TV off for the first 10 mins or so while I make popcorn or some other food. By the time I get back to sit down, the menu is up.
Yes, I am that stubborn. No, really.
Re:Won't work that way (Score:5, Informative)
Not that it's a solution to the underlying problem, but you should check out amazon.ca for French movies. They have a sizeable selection of French-only stuff, and Canadian DVDs are region-1, just like the US. They're also NTSC, so your TV and DVD player should handle them too.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Then it is likely that you live in the US, but most of us in the rest of the world cannot understand why we have to wait for an irrelevant piece of foreign infomation to finish. Even worse though is when they do the international bit and force us to watch 8 irrelevant bits of information and maybe get the right one for our country included. It is all rubbish, we know it, we have read it before and having to sit through it each time we watch a DVD does not make us know any more about it.
Re:Makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)
I could then make an informed decision not to purchase the advertising. If this was commonplace, companies would be able to do some split A/B testing and realise just how poorly this unskippa
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you really suggesting that some author has the "moral right" to force me to not use the fast forward button?
Now imagine that some web browser was programmed to leave out certain words in your site, changing the message you are delivering.
I can do that now with a printout and a Sharpie. The fact is, if someone is going to filter your content, there is nothing you can do about it, short of not putting it out there.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
No they do not. Such a position is utterly irreconcilable with the right of free speech, which has a more solid foundation. Moral rights are bullshit.
Imagine you had a political website. Now imagine that some web browser was programmed to leave out certain words in your site, changing the message you are delivering. Would you be happy with that situation? I don't think so. But suddenly it is okay if it's someone *else's* expression that is being misrepresented, just because it's more convenient for you?
Both are okay. Someone reading only every other word in something I say doesn't harm me. And since I may wish to do the same, I'm stuck having to let others do so too. It's kind of like how someone who truly believes in free speech will defend the right of others to say what they like, no matter how much they disagree with it. The people who only want non-objectionable things to be said are tyrants.
Plus, why do you think there is misrepresentation here? Generally, if you're looking at an edited version of something, it's not just obvious, but you've likely sought it out.
I for one can't wait for people to release EDLs that remove Jar-Jar from the Star Wars movies, or that skip the boring parts of action flicks so that they're all chase scenes, gunfights, and explosions.
Not intended like you suggest (Score:5, Informative)
Well, that's a nice sentiment, but the bill (the Family Movie Act of 2005) appears to mainly be aimed at allowing your DVD to skip past nude scenes and the like. A number of family and conservative groups supported this measure. Perhaps they're also annoyed at being forced to watch the previews that some DVDs force people to play through as well.
While I think it's a step in the right direction, Congress isn't going to do away with region coding, CSS, and the like. Look at the other bill in the link, the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, also noted in an earlier /. article [slashdot.org]. I suspect Orrin Hatch would support this bill, but I don't think he'll go for less copy protection. Does anyone know if he voted on this bill and how?
Re:Not intended like you suggest (Score:5, Insightful)
this is truly the best government that money can buy.
Re:Not intended like you suggest (Score:2)
Re:Not intended like you suggest (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not intended like you suggest (Score:2)
Kind of like the guy who put up NWA's Straight Outta Compton, but reduced to just the explicit content [ni9e.com]. (warning: flash content)
Why was it needed? (Score:4, Interesting)
Before the bill, what exactly was prohibiting DVD players from doing this?
Re:Why was it needed? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why was it needed? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why was it needed? (Score:2)
But in what way were they breaking copyright in the first place? It sounds to me like the accusation was groundless. The clearplay player and filter was not creating duplicates of the discs. Did they merely pass a law to clarify an existing law? I can see why it would piss off the MPAA and directors, but is there any way in which a claim of copyright infringement can be reasonably substantiated?
Re:Why was it needed? (Score:4, Informative)
No law was stopping players to ignore User Operation Prohibitions, but the DVDCA's licensing. You can't build a licensed DVD player that allows the user to skip over 'unskippable' content, turn off 'mandatory' subtitles or other annoyances, much in the same way region coding or macrovision copy protection on the analog signals for css encoded discs are required.
Re:Why was it needed? (Score:3)
Meanwhile, my illegal dvd linux box skips anything I want just fine. However, each time I watch a movie, I am adding a maximum of 20 years to my prison sentence.
Re:Why was it needed? (Score:2)
Well, if that's what it is, then the bill doesn't do anything. Just because the government says I can do something, it doesn't keep me from engaging in an agreement with someone in which I agree not to do that something.
Re:Why was it needed? (Score:2)
Re:Not intended like you suggest (Score:2)
Maybe not. But producers of DVD-players could still implement CSS and allow their custumers to skip ads, FBI warnings, etc.
I only view DVD's on my Linux computer with MPlayer, don't worry about region codes and skip whatever I want.
Re:Not intended like you suggest (Score:2)
Re:Not intended like you suggest (Score:2)
S. 167 passed the Senate by Unanimous Consent on February 1, 2005. Just needs the President's signature and its a law.
You mean like (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:You mean like (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You mean like (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You mean like (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Get a region free player. Many start under $50 in the US, other countries you can hardly buy a player that supports region restrictions.
2. Copy that disc. ANYdvd springs to mind.
3. Move to the region of your disc, or to a region that doesn't sell crippled players.
Region Codes serve no purpose but to restrict free trade. Many claim it's in violation of
Government. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Government. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Government. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Government. (Score:5, Informative)
The government has to get involved in permitting stuff like this because they previously MADE IT ILLEGAL with the DMCA. The market isn't likely to help with that.
Re:Government. (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that if this guys ideals were any kind of compass, the DCMA wouldn't have MADE ANYTHING ILLEGAL, because the government would stay the hell out of it.
Unless, of course, it was influenced by special interest groups...whoa!
Seems to me that this specific situation has no "Republican", "Democrat" or "Libertarian" fix. Forgive me for the gross use of those labels. I find it repulisive that people would so much as consider that the opinions of 300 Milli
Re:Government. (Score:2)
Re:Government. (Score:3, Insightful)
He's lambasting the fact that Government has gotten into arenas in which he believes it has no absolutely no business in--originally the DMCA and now this.
If you noted the spirit of the grandparent, market forces and corporate innovation should make both Acts completely unncessary.
Re:Government. (Score:2)
Because religious nuts started modding movies, the DGA and MPAA said you can't do it and they both ran crying to their pet lawmakers.
What I want to know is whether or not this can all be undone by a shrinkwrap license. If I were to make and distribute a movie do I have the right to explicitly forbid it from being viewed in any way other than the way I intend if that is so stated on the outside of t
Re:Government. (Score:3, Informative)
"ClearPlay and other similar services were sued by the movie studios, the Director's Guild of America and 13 individual directors for copyright violations and for altering their work. The technology companies filed a motion for summary judgment and were awaiting a ruling in the 10th District Court in Colorado."
Apparently, the government is already involved in this. Without the laws that Congress pushed in the first place, this wouldn't be an issue.
Because. (Score:5, Informative)
I'd like to think this is an instance of enlightenment in regard to our ridiculous copyright law, but I think it's just a coincidence that this is a reasonable provision. I wouldn't hold my breath expecting something like this for commercials. The culture war- specifically hatred of Hollywood- probably had more to do with this law. Color me cynical, but I suspect it may be a gift to ClearPlay as well, who will be especially well positioned after this. Once the bill is signed into law, the suit against them will be dismissed.
Because it takes a village? (Score:2)
Parent Is A Verb Too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Parent Is A Verb Too (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Parent Is A Verb Too (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter what, you just can't shield your kids in a bubble and think that's all there is to it. Teaching them right and wrong and (god forbid!) paying atention to their actions is what parenting's all about.
Re:Parent Is A Verb Too (Score:2)
Re:Parent Is A Verb Too (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Parent Is A Verb Too (Score:3, Insightful)
hawk
Re:Parent Is A Verb Too (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Parent Is A Verb Too (Score:2)
I guess when you were a kid you never woke up before your parents to watch something. Gawd I did... mostly cartoons that got moved to that odd hour but I can see how parents with a large library of porno would want their players to restrict access to it.
why the assumption of missing parents? (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless you've already watched the movie a few times, you'd be hard pressed to use your controls to skip the parts that you not only don't want your kids to see, but don't want to see yourself. ALso, you'll generally be limited to fast-forward in this regard, leaving the nudity, sex, and exploding bodies there to view.
My 14 year old enjoys the same kind of SF and fantasy movies that I do. Many, though, toss in th
technology (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be nice if they would apply a similar that would apply to music. Keep DRM and other restrictions out of movies and music!
This doesn't mean they can make the DVD players. (Score:5, Informative)
Under the new proposed HD DVD standard, any player manufacturer's key can be rescinded for future HD DVD releases, so DRM may prevent the ability to enable would-be bowdlerizers from implementing their schemes.
The ethics of ads-skipping (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, I use ad-blocking in browsers, if I had a TV (I don't :-), I would not feel bad about using Tivo. I wouldn't feel bad either to use this DVD feature the article is about.
I had an interesting discussion with a friend, he was telling me that by using ad-blocking on the web, I was treatening good wepages themselves by denying them their source of reven
Re:The ethics of ads-skipping (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a really BAAAAAD idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Dupe.. (Score:5, Informative)
The jail time was tacked onto the bill, and of course nobody's going to vote against parental control over DVDs, right?
Won't somebody think of the children!?!
The same tactic that got the bill through Congress got the story posted under a completely different subject on the front page.
Re:Dupe.. (Score:2)
To be fair, it does four separate things that all deal with how commercial copyrighted works are treated outside the marketplace. (I made a post pointing out the same thing before I saw yours, but I don't think the packaging of the bill is necessarily sinister.)
Maybe you should submit the other two?
Makes no sense (Score:2)
Re:Makes no sense (Score:2)
But can anyone tell me how this bill is related to punishing prerelease filesharers? I'm still too confused.
Re:Makes no sense (Score:2, Interesting)
Strangely enough, a single bill can change the copyright law in more than one way. For what it is worth, this bill also reauthorized funding for the National Film Preservation Foundation and made it legal for libraries to copy films, music, and images during the last 20 years of copyright protection (remember that the term was extended 20 years by the Sonny Bono Act) for archival purposes.
Of course, you could have just
Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck... (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine the pain when you have to watch a movie in two or three sittings (due to time constraints), and every time you start the movie back up you have to sit through the same goddamn 15 minutes of ads...
Anyone want to compose a list of new releases to avoid because of unskippable trailers. Here are the two that my family got burned with:
Stepford Wives (the new one)
Shrek II
Anyone have recommendations for new release rentals that *don't* have unskippable trailers? I kinda want to see Hero and House of Hidden Daggers. Anyone know if they have unskippable trailers?
Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck... (Score:3, Informative)
Thanks to a firmware hacking project for old Sampo players, I've been able to re-flash it to allow me simply to press Menu or Skip-> to go right from the warning at the top of the Parade of Annoyance to the DVD's main menu.
There really shouldn't be any reason this should not be allowed in all DVD players.
Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck... (Score:2)
Or, as someone else pointed out - I'll try it one day if I remember: Start the DVD, then press Menu, followed by Play. That just sounds too easy.
The way I usually do it: Give the DVD to my son and ask him to call me when the movie starts...
You realize you can fast forward, right? (Score:3, Informative)
I had the same problem with an unskippable ad on a DVD a few years ago and tried to FFWD through the FBI warning and the ad. Voila! A few seconds to the main menu.
Annoying? Absofuckinglutely, and I wish there was a law against ads on DVDs, but when there's a buck to be made...
Re:Unskippable Trailers and Ads suck... (Score:3, Informative)
For excellent DVD ripping use MacTheRipper [versiontracker.com].
For excellent ripping to divx, HandBrake [m0k.org].
It's a freakin' Mac, multimedia editing is its home territory.
It is a sad day.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It is a sad day.... (Score:2)
The US would likely need a total rewrite of the DMCA to allow that.
Re:It is a sad day.... (Score:2)
Re:It is a sad day.... (Score:2)
Nice Feature. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Nice Feature. (Score:2)
My VCR was able to FF and skip crap, what makes a DVD any different? Why do USAsians need a special law to 'allow' for a spinning silver disc, that which is perfectly OK for a brown tape, or a 16mm home movie (anyone remember those?).
Geez (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Geez (Score:2)
what is wrong with parents??? (Score:2)
Also, what if someone makes a movie to make a certain politic
The answer is... (Score:3, Informative)
I can jump straight to the menu when a DVD starts.
Combine that with automatic ad-skipping of TV programs (good but not quite perfect), and the magic fwd-30, back-5 buttons on the remote, my tv and video experience is very satisfying. Signal to noise ratio is approaching infinity :-)
We can sell supercomputers to China... (Score:2, Informative)
But this technology is so dangerous that it had to be banned from public possession??!! Hoarders and speculators unite! We must not allow this! What a sick bunch.
I have my own "freedom" with my DVD player (Score:2)
This SPECIFICALLY has to do with ClearPlay... (Score:5, Insightful)
ClearPlay has nothing to with DVD Consortium edicts, and has to do with the wishes of the creators of the copywritten material.
The no skip feature of the pre-menu stuff is a feature that makes a DVD player a DVD player. You cannot implement without it and have license from the DVD Consortium.
These are two entirely different things, and the law only deals with one of them.
The Killer App (Score:2, Funny)
*It could edit Jar Jar out of Star Wars*
Maybe version 2 will change walkie-talkies to guns...
Day late and a dollar short! (Score:3, Insightful)
I was very unhappy because I took great offense to some of the subject matter of the trailers.
It was offensive, annoying and forced upon me.
I was unable to skip the previews.
So, guess what I did? Yep...
I ripped the disc, stripped the BS out, including all the evil warnings and useless trailers and reburned it to a new DVD..
Now I have the movie the way *I* want to see it.
What's next, are they going to arrest people for showing up late, skipping the preview/trailers in the theater now?
Same Bill as Last YRO Story (Score:4, Informative)
No, Probably Not (Score:2, Informative)
I don't have this problem (Score:3, Informative)
I don't have this problem because I refused to buy a DVD player until I could find one that either lacked or could easily be modified to lack the "you can only do what I tell you" (AKA UOP (user operation prohibited [videohelp.com])) "feature". So I bought a Daewoo 5700 [nerd-out.com], burned a CD, and haven't had to worry about Macrovision or UOP or regions or any of that stuff.
See, the market can handle this. You just have to decide which is more important to you, your freedom, or instantaneous gratification. (It is a sad statement about our society that I have to make such a decision wrt a stupid DVD player though...)
ReplayTV's Comercial Advance... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The culture of "now now now" (Score:2)
GJC