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Domain: intertainer.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to intertainer.com.
Comments · 9
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Re:download movie services still lacking
Yes, but it's also 'on demand'. >24 hours makes more sense when you have store hours and your own schedule to worry about.
Actually I believe that Movie* are both purchase, download, watch. The only true 'on demand' online service is now defunct thanks to MovieLink and their backing studios. I will admit I have never seen the inside of MovieLink as I wont bother to fire up a windows box and go look.
If they're using WMP, it's possible that they only allow IE to access the video because MS says that's the way to do it. Otherwise, it's possible they're trying to cut down on people intercepting and re-broadcasting the movie.
Now I haven't touched WMP from a development perspective since Intertainer went away (2002), but I'll assume that things haven't changed. The WMP plugin sucks in everything but IE, the encryption never worked right in NS 4, and only recently became embedable on the Mac. I think the encryption is still for crap on the Mac.
I used another service that make the video full screen with controls right through the browser. Maybe they didn't feel comfortable enough making something like that work with all browsers.
Did that service happen to be the above mentioned service, Intertainer? That site was sweet, other than the shoddy video quality. But I am biased, I wrote 90%+ of the UI. ah, back when work was fun. -
Based on my experienceHaving worked for a failed "Brodband Entertainment Network" (their term not mine) in my opinion there are some hurdles to get over.
- A decent codec that provides both DVD quality video and 5.1 audio
- Enough bandwidth to support streaming, who wants to wait for it to download
- Easy integration to the TV
It sounds like they have taken care of #3. But if I have to wait longer than it will take me to go to Blockbuster (I didn't see a download time in the article) for something that is going to be less than VHS quality, they aren't going to get my money. -
intertainer suing MovieLink et al.
Apparently MovieLink wasn't first to the scene. intertainer had been doing something similar but felt they were being shut out by unfair competition -- Sony, AOL-Time-Warner apparently favored MovieLink.
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Intertainer.com WAS doing online films
I saw on The Screen Savers that Intertainer.com WAS doing online films. They had sample content, old TV shows and such, that ran pretty well over broadband.
They just closed shop and filed suit against the major US movie studios claiming that they couldn't get content at a reasonable price. It turns out that the movie studio "synergies" are set up to get any other source from being able to provide content.
So as we suspect, the MPAA isn't against movies being available on the net, they're just against the content coming from anywhere else than the big studios. -
Re:This is a change
Intertainer has much better quality of service these days. They lowered their streams from 700kb/s to 500kb/s with minimal quality loss with Windows Media... Plus they have had Harry Potter since August streaming to broadband customers.
I believe streaming movies will always trump downloadable, unless I can keep the d/l forever. -
Re:This is a change
Intertainer has much better quality of service these days. They lowered their streams from 700kb/s to 500kb/s with minimal quality loss with Windows Media... Plus they have had Harry Potter since August streaming to broadband customers.
I believe streaming movies will always trump downloadable, unless I can keep the d/l forever. -
Watch It
You can go to intertainer.com and watch Harry Potter as well as some of their other movies:
1. Harry Potter
2. A Beautiful Mind
3. Rollerball
4. Bandits
5. Spy Game
6. Best of Adam Sandler
7. Bugs Bunny Collection
8. Hard Rock Live
9. Sesame Street
10. The Bikini Open
Check out the previews for free... they look great and are near DVD quality.
Owen -
Re:How will this work?
Intertainer is streaming to my home at 580Kb/s, may not be DVD quality, but it's VHS quality. This throughput should allow 300+ users per server. With less than 10M people in the US able to sustain downloads at 50KB/s, how hard can it be?
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Gemstar - Patent Beast from Hell
Gemstar has been doing this kind of crap for years. They get the bulk of their revenue from patent licenses. Diva and other video on demand companies (like Intertainer) have been trying to dance around Gemstar by using circular, pie-shaped menus instead of grids (Gemstar's patents cover pretty much anything with time on one axis and channels on another).
Consumer electronics companies (like the one that I work for, at least for the next few days) have been trying to design around Gemstar for years as well, and so far have not been successful. Believe me, with how much Gemstar charges and how thin the margins are on VCRs, this means big money. CE manufacturers have spent lots of time and resources on this - even Diva and Intertainer and such, I think, are just on the hairy edge of Gemstar's domain.
Of course, Gemstar's patents are ridiculously broad, and no sane patent system would consider their patents to be something that "a competent practitioner would not find obvious". So what you have here is the classic legal situation of "How much will it cost to make this problem go away?" Will it cost more to pay the lawyers or to pay off the settlement, license fees, what have you.
Bleah.
"He tells me some worlds 'as gots rats as large as folks!" - Nell
"Yeah, they're called lawyers!" - Harry Fairfax.