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Rent A Downloadable Movie
Syn Ack writes: "The New York Times is reporting (free account, blah blah blah) that five (5) major Hollywood studios (MGM, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers and Universal Pictures) are going to begin offering downloadable time restricted movies. The video will remain watchable for 30 days but will become unplayable 24 hours after it has been viewed at all. Sounds like if you start the movie at all, the clock starts ticking so no peaking until you're ready to watch it ALL. Downloads are expected to be in the 500MB range. However downloads will only be available well after the DVD release of the same movie so as to not cut into DVD sales. Expect to see something late this year or early next. Perhaps the Music People can get some tips from the movie people?" What a bargain.
Yay, we can watch it go under a SECOND time! :=) Just like Hollywood tradition to produce bad sequels...
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Please don't forget to put your name on top of the sheet.
Next week, we'll discuss the ROT-13 encryption used in some EBooks. Class dismissed.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Meep. Wrong answer. The copyright holder can rip whatever the fuck they want.
Just like Linus Torvalds can sell you a binary-only Linux version or Hans Reiser can do commercial versions of reiserfs.
...Except they'll release 10 movies, which will promptly be cracked, up for download on whatever filesharing software is in at the time, they'll pull the plug, and we'll be reading about the arrests on slashdot within a month of the release.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Very cool, I'll be glad to be a customer.
Maybe they can still work the Time Limit thingie... I'd like to buy a movie online, not rent it. People really don't like if stuff bought and in their hands suddenly stops working... look at divx (the buy-then-throw-away dvd, not the codec!)
I guess they won't have an open file format for it, which would probably only will make it playable on win.
Hmmm, spend 7 hours downloading the movie which I then have to finish watching within 24 hours of starting it, or drive to the video store 2 minutes away, rent it, watch it at my convienice and as much as I want over the next 5 days.
Factor in, sitting at the computer to watch it, or putting the dvd on the 61" tv with the full surround system.
<sarcasm>Hmmm that's a tough one.</sarcasm>
This sounds like it would be cool, but I don't think your average dial-up user is going to wait to download 500mb.
Besides, 250 of the 500mb are previews..
why would I do this when for like $20 a month i can rent as many movies from netflix as i want, and keep them for as long as i want and, here's the kicker, WATCH THEM as often as i want!
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Possibly something crappy like Real.
Although, it would be quite ironic if they were to adopt DiVX as a codec!
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
... once it's cracked of course...
That's my guess. Of course, if they preview the format and ask for comment like SDMI I give it 3 months from the preview.
If there is a hardware component involved, I'll give it another..oh, say 3 more months.
Thats my guess.
Still, I think this is a good thing, as the MPAA basically has no choice about whether the stuff goes online or not. They may as well offer it online themselves, and if they make it reasonable I bet the majority of the public will pay to use it, DMCA or no DMCA.
Of course, if it's successful, the MPAA will give credit to the DMCA for stopping piracy, and if it's not a hit the MPAA will blame pirates. I have a feeling though the success or failure will more have to do with the number of people with broadband and their willingess to watch movies on their computers.
Oh, and if Passport is required to use it, I'll be pissed.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It will probably be saved on your drive in an encrypted form..keeps track of your system clock or downloads a key from the host site, or they keep track of your net address or multiple keys throughout the movie tied to the date.
I dunno, but;
1. they're not stupid
2. This is probably a beta test for their encryption scheme.
3. if it gets hacked, then don't expect alot of future movies...
..........FULL STOP.
this is from last week and is so old, that I can smell mildew...
Even in our news-site (located 12,5h away from US - www.minut.ee) has a story about it.
Come on girl's - don't stop surprising me!
"The average feature film is about 500 megabytes in digitized form and will take 20 minutes to 40 minutes to download"
... FAST !
...
500 Mo. 20 to 40 minutes...
=> 500Mo in 30 min is
In fact, faster than my 512Kb DSL line...
Way faster.
So. What are you announcing ? 1.5 Mb/s DSL for Everybody ? At Bargain Price ? Vapourware ?
Or will you have to be at the office to be able to d/l this film ? 8)
+
at this rate (1.5Mb/s) , I can without problem sustain a 8x or 10x Burnproof CD
Will my CD Selfdestruct ? in 30 days ?
8)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Great, now we'll have a bunch of movies with the pay-per-view nonsense of DiVX and the low video quality of DiVX ;-). Anyone want to start a peer-to-peer file-sharing service called DiVX :-P so we can add slow, unreliable downloads to the mix?
by "I bet the majority of the public will pay to use it" I mean the majority of the public THAT USES IT will pay for it, not the majority of the public at large, because I mean, only a tiny percentage are going to have the bandwidth and want to wait hours and hours for it to download.
;)
Plus people with shared bandwidth are gonna piss off their neighbors
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Perhaps this is too obvious, but this seems to have a few fatal flaws. If the article resolves them somehow, I'd be happy to hear, but I don't have a NY Times account and don't really want one.
First, people don't watch movies on their computer. I spend about 15x more time on my computers than in front of a TV, but I still watch all of my movies on TV (mostly for the screen size, my chair and sound are superior on my computers). For most people they have larger screens, better sound, more comfortable seating for a group, etc.
Perhaps the most obvious is the 500 mb download. I rarely make such large downloads with my cable connection at home and network connection at work (1/2 T1 now, soon to be full T1). In fact, the only downloads I can think of that large are Linux distribution CDs, of which I have several. Why spend 30 minutes or much, much longer when I can make it to the video store, rent, and travel time both ways in about 20 minutes? We don't really need internet bandwidth sucked so much by having movies sent around - I'd rather see more streaming sources personally.
So of all internet users, only those with high bandwidth connections can use the service. There goes a good deal of potential customers. I don't think there is much of a market left. I actually think that DivX (the rentable DvDs that diabled themselves) had more chance of succeeding than this ill-fated concept.
Of course, since these are so obvious I hope the article dealt with them.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
kinda old news right? Maybe they don't have 1000's of people sending them news anymore. lol
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so.. why would someone PAY? i mean if oyu can find it (thi sis assuming you could find the divx version) why would you pay? mabey someone will do this but it sounds like it would take forever to download anyway even on a (a)dsl. this is almost as stupid as the .nap thing.
If i was you, you'd be me and we wouldn't be having this conversation
Didn't we just go through this with the e-book story?
There's no such thing as the "rental" of electronic information!
If you can view it on your screen, through a machine you own, you can make a digital duplicate of it! That's all there is to it, no matter how long the big companies try to struggle to come up with the next best way to cripple/encrypt the content that you have paid for.
And as soon as someone cracks whatever scheme they plan to use to "time-limit" the movies, we'll be seeing the lawsuits flying. As usual.
Until the media megacorporations realize and accept this (I'm not holding my breath waiting for that), we're just going to see the Skylarov incident and the DMCA invoked to hurt innocent people over and over and over again.
User: slash2001
Pass: slash2001
Enjoy.
Scarce, scared, scarred, sacred... -Col. Bruce Hampton
video player -> TV output -> VCR
VCR -> video input -> Divx 4.0
Or is there some kind of copy protection that I'm not aware of?
In principle, it could be much more convenient than existing PPV services from a cable provider, but the single-play thing isn't going to fly. If I rent a DVD at blockbuster, I might play it once alone, then show it to a friend, etc.
What the MPAA needs to understand, is that in this day and age the way to make money selling content online is to be the most *convenient* source for the content, not the most *restrictive* source.
Hell, why do people subscribe to porn sites, when they have a newsfeed? Because the material available in alt.binaries.nekkid.women is sporadic, and flooded with spam.
Maybe someday they'll figure it out, but I'm not holding my breath.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
A film will remain on a computer's hard drive for 30 days but will erase itself 24 hours after it is first run.
Obviously they're going to develop a proprietry software package used to play the movies and control the copyright. It'll also have to be memory resident (or possibly run on boot) if they want to delete the film after 30 days.
To be really honest it sounds just like a dot-bomb venture:
The studios that will be partners in the service are MGM, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers and Universal Pictures. Noticeably absent were Disney and 20th Century Fox, although sources close to Disney said that it intended to announce its own video-on-demand service within 10 days. Fox issued a statement late this afternoon saying that it, too, would announce plans soon for such a service.
...
The real question, though, is how many people really want to download movies onto their personal computers.
"To be really honest, we have no idea," Mr. Waterman said.
To be read: "Oh wow! We're going to put a product on to the internet which'll be really cool and people can buy said product anytime they want. And here's the cool thing! We don't even know if said product is useful!"
Other manufacturers: "Oh I'm going to do that too!"
More manufacturers: "Me three! Me three! Let's sink money into technology just because it's technology and forget all about wether or not we will make money."
Yes I am a cynic.
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
Just a quick FYI. Slash headers now contain funny quotes from Futurama. A different one each request. Makes wgetting stories down fun.
Here are a couple I have seen:
X-Fry: I don't regret this, but I both rue and lament it.
X-Fry: I refuse to testify on the grounds that my organs will be chopped up in to a patty.
X-Bender: Bender's a genius!
X-Fry: There's a lot about my face you don't know.
X-Fry: Nowadays people aren't interested in art that's not tattooed on fat guys.
Nice idea from their perspective.
Its not like the encryption they use will be worth cracking. As soon as it is cracked they can change it and at best users can get a few copies of movies they didn't pay for... but that won't be so much of an issue at all if they change it regularly.
What I would be interested in is how they plan to make it work. If each movie is 500 MB and all this is official... (assuming official == more users) they're going to need LOTS of bandwidth.
I wonder whether this will be cost effective? Perhaps it is merely an attempt to reduce piracy of movies rather than actually making profit.
Or will AOL Time Warner be large enough to make sure that most of the bandwidth is free?
Downloadable movies? Haha, who are they kidding? Ok, let's go over the math again.
First, 90% of American households with internet access STILL USE DIAL-UP. Like people want to sit there and download a 500 meg file to watch it ONCE.
Secondly, those with broadband already have easy sources for movies currently in theaters or just released on DVD. Kazaa, Gnutella, Hotline, FTP, IRC, etc...
Thirdly, why would anyone want to wait to rent movies that are available as DVDs? If you have US Postal Service, you can sign up for NetFlix and rent DVDs thru the mail. It's $19.95 a month and you get to check out three DVDs at a time. They have new releases and foreign films. There aren't any late fees and to return DVDs, just drop them in the return envelope they provide. Mad easy! (Only problem with NetFlix is that since I'm located in NJ, it takes a while for them to ship and receive the DVDs I rent.)
w00t!
Rangers Lead the Way!
Bearshare, Limewire, Gnotella are going to push the bandwidth capacity of consumer networks up a notch. Someone should have told the studio marketing departments that 500MB can't hold a movie. A good DVD rip takes at least 700MB.
because the size is roughly that which DiVX rips use, and DiVX is just a hack of Microsoft's "MPEG-4"; and because Windows Media already has time-limiting features. Plus, despite the name, it's available for the Mac.
Anyway, this is lame, but I look forward to seeing it cracked, and maybe seeing the equivalent of some high-quality rips posted in the brief interval before the studios realize their mistake.
First of all, I think we all agree that someone's going to crack the time-limited format, so that's not going to stop anything.
...
Secondly, 500MB is only an option for people with a FAST internet connection, and these people can already download the film once someone has made a DIVX of the DVD version
I don't know about anyone else but I treat downloadable movies (ie cam rips) as previews, mainly because I'm in Australia and we get movies some times months after the US. I download the first half and watch it while the second half is downloading. If the movie is bad I'll cancel the second half. If it is an ok movie I'll watch all of it. If it is really good I'll actually pay to go and watch it when it comes out. They are not good enough quality to replace the real thing and no substitute for the big screen.
Other than this the only indicator of whether or not you are going to like a movie is the trailer, an advertisement designed to make you want to go and see it, not to help you make an informed choice.
Most games you can get a demo of, books you can read a bit of in the store or at a library, a car you can take for a test run but movies you have to just fork out the cash and hope that its good. In my mind that just isn't good enough - if the movie is worth it I will pay to see it - otherwise I'll save my money.
'Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson...'
It seems like there's something very wrong with that idea of movies that "erase themselves off your hard drive" after 24 hours...Why does this sort of thing just give me the creeps? Is that just me?
It seems to be part of a bigger picture: The industies in control are literally trying to change the entire way of the Internet right now, to make it fit a more "profitable" model without them trying to change their existing business models.It seems a strange idea to me that anything or anyone but me should control what happens on my hard drive, but that's exactly what we are seeing...software that takes control of your personal computer and works it into a business model contrary to natural structure of the decentralized Internet we use today.
This little thing is not that scary...But behind the guise of lots of these little things lurks the ominous monster of a global information infrastructure controlled by corporations, not by individuals. We need to take this seriously...
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
all the ppl paying will only get 24 hrs to watch the film but all those clever crackers will get hours of enjoyment cracking the thing.
also why release the dvd before the download? lets face it if you download it cheaply, watch it and if you really like it you buy the dvd.
but uf you do it the other way; you buy the dvd and then decide to download it. WHY? becoz u cant be bothered to open the dvd case ?!? surely is a better option?
Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You - ONLY HARDER!
DeCSS was created, and quickly became widespread, because it was the only way to play DVDs under Linux. If the studios have learned their lesson (and I bet they have), they'll release players for as many operating systems as they can think of. This might not slow down the development of a crack, but the crack would not become as widespread, and the media would be less favorable toward it than it was toward DeCSS.
The shareholder is always right.
Registration Free Link
If, on the other hand, they follow the example of DirecTV pay-per-view, with a higher price point than most video stores, or if the video quality is no better than a typical 1-CD DiVX rip, it probably won't do so well.
The key difference between this and DiVX, in my mind, is the 30-day hard expiration date. That makes this proposition seem a lot less slimy and risky to me. With a DiVX disc, the theory was you'd be able to buy the disc and wait a year before activating it, which obviously was no good when DiVX Inc. went out of business in the meantime. But in this case, from what I can tell from the article, it's more like a one-day rental from a video store; you go into it expecting to not have the movie any more after a particular time. If they fold, it has no impact on movies you downloaded more than a month prior.
I imagine there'll be people who find this new proposal distasteful but aren't bothered by one-day videotape rentals (which similarly limit you to a 24-hour viewing window, unless you want to rack up late fees). I'll be curious to hear what makes one business model more acceptable than the other, if anyone wants to take that question up.
On another note, I wonder what the legal issues would be if you rented a movie and dumped it to videotape using your computer's TV output, then erased the tape within the 30-day rental window. Would that be considered the same thing as taping a TV show (protected by the Supreme Court) or would it be like renting a video, copying it, and returning the original? It might not be a DMCA issue in this case, since you wouldn't be using a protection-circumvention technology.
Although, it would be quite ironic if they were to adopt DiVX as a codec!
Adopt DiVX, FOR GREAT JUSTICE!
(okay, depends on whose side you are on for the definition of justice...)
What bothers me most about this isn't so much that they're considering it, it's actually logical and it may even have a market. What bothers me is that they'll likely charge an insane amount for it.
$5-10 per view (I can easily see that) or $20-$30 for the DVD? Take your pick. I'm sure their marketing department could justify full DVD price.
This would really fly if they did it on a monthly subscription, allowing several movies per month for a very reasonbly low price.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
.. so they will most likely end up using a hacked-up version of the Windows Media format. I mean, who knows how many different back doors and tracking devices Microsoft has implemented.
Yay, we can watch it go under a SECOND time! :=) Just like Hollywood tradition to produce bad sequels...
Well, the article says it will be priced similarly to pay-per-view movies. Also, it will be functionally better than pay-per-view movies (which don't give you the ability to pause, rewind, etc.), except that you have to use your computer to view it. People buy pay-per-view movies now. Therefore, the only factor that its success hinges upon is whether people who buy pay-per-view moves are able to use this, and don't mind watching on a monitor (unless they have TV output). The time expiration in and of itself can't cause it to fail, because pay-per-view movies sell. Also, they might later decide to lower the price to make up for the inconvenience of watching on a computer.
Actually, I don't think this will go over all that well, but that's because I suspect that the intersection of the set of people who buy pay-per-view movies and the set of people who want to watch movies using their computers is small. My main point is that people already buy time-limited movies for the price they will be charging.
If they would allow me to view movies in the timeframe that they are in the theater, or just before DVD rentals, this would provide value to me. Charge me as much as a seat in a movie theater, but keep the revenue all to yourself.
But delaying until after DVD rentals are available? Forget it. The service isn't bound to go anywhere.
The movie industry is stuck in the same paradigm. They want to figure out where internet technology can be used to ADD to their current offerings. (Purely chasing up the revenue tree.) What they should be doing is asking, "What do our customers want?" But, there is that paradigm again. We're not customers anymore. We're faceless consumers who will take what they are given.
See how the whole mindset feeds on itself?
this thing could be hated by the cable modem users. why? well, from what i understand, cable modems are grouped in pools, and there is X amount of bandwith available for the given pool. unlike adsl/dsl/modem/etc, you are on the mercy of the other people in your neighbourhood to share the bandwith. even with the streaming video clips, leeching occasional mp3s, average porn collection, etc - you're still ok in most cases. now imagine a friday night, in winter, when familes decide to spend some time watching a movie. bzzzzzzzzzz. no more bandwith. of course, one may argue that you should download the movie in advance, but what would be the selling point then? i'm not sure, i need more sleep, and my comment suddenly started making less sense
--- d'oh
.. proprietary movie format that will have to stand the "test of time" (ups, i hope sid maier and microprose won't sue me for this). i think that this idea is quite a drunk idea, now we don't have to rip the DVD's now we only convert the ripped movie :)
".Sig Stealer" was here
Because some of us actually think that thieves are scumbags? I pity you if you feel financially burdened by the price of a movie rental.
OK, for now there's not going to be a huge amount of people who want this, but as it becomes more popular I can see that the mainstream will pick it up much more willingly. There'll always be people with cracked movies just like there's still people who sell pirate videos, but if this service is simple enough then people will use it. People use Pay-Per-View when they could go and buy a priate copy of a movie for less money, so why shouldn't this work.
Additionally, they could eventually extend this to their whole movie library. Want to see some obscure flick from the 50's that never made it onto VHS? Well all you'll need to do is swing by IMDB, click on a link, and you'll be able to download it. This is a good idea (definitely better than just ignoring the problem and letting other people distribute your movies for free), and once they work out this niggles and broadband becomes more widespread I can see the service becoming incredibly popular.
The list of dumb ideas from dumb people hall of fame:
-CSS (if i can see it i can copy it)
-SDMI (they should have learnt from css)
-CPRM (the hard drive protection)
-That thing to disable electronics with GPS
-DMCA (not such a dumb idea as an evil one)
-SafeAudio (cut off your nose to spite your face but didn't work)
-WMA (we want to wean people off mp3 and onto superior digital rights management)
-DivX (the company)
-eBook (rot-13)
-Renting films (you cant rent data. period.)
Anything More?
Most companies have some sort of technical advisor/analyst/window-cleaner who can tell them if an idea is dumb or not. Obviously these studios don't. This is _very_ serious, these people along with those responsible for the list above, are making business decisions everyday. Its plainly obvious to see that something is very wrong here so i have come up with some possible explanations:
1. They are on crack or some other expensive narcotic and need money to keep the habit growing.
2. They have been abducted and replaced by aliens who have no business experience.
3. They never went to harverd etc.. and just lied their ways into high positions and now they don't know what to do.
4. They are just really really really dumb.
5. They actually have a plan and all these seamingly dumb ideas somehow fit together to produce something big that we couldn't possibly figure out.
-tfga
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/08/17/technology/ 17STUD.html
As always.
Hmm...
Lets see. A standard 56k dial-up connection gets about 5.25 KB/s with a *good* server and ISP. The movie is 500 MB. That's about 1,625 minutes, or around 27 hours to download, +/- a few hours.
On a 750 Kb/s cable or DSL line it would take between 1-170 minutes to download, streaming if the movie is at least that long.
Anyhow, for most people they're saying that after you wait over a day to download it, that you won't be able to play it possibily and if you do it will be but once?
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Let me guess -- you're Asian, aren't you? I'm thinking South Korean, specifically.
"Didn't you say the neighbors had a copy of this on DVD?"
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
As we have Streamgate here, this is somehow pretty much what those hollywood-companies try to do. You will get a DSL (with 1024kbit/s download and 128kbit/s upload) and you could watch movies which will be "streamed" to you and could be watched for 24hrs.
I like to snap in a clerks face whenever they don't have the movie I want. How are you gonna do that online ? ;-) ;-) ? ;-)
Your spicey flame will be modded down in minutes by the big bosses themselves
And what about browsing porn and deciding you don't need any because you've got a broadband internet connection or a feisty dad with a huge collection
Talk about a existential paradox, hey ?
Al that pleasure at you local video rental facility
blaah !
http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/08/17/technology/1 7STUD.html
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Differences are ;)'s aren't going to pay anyway.
a: most people have 15in screens
b: 500mb? I'm not seeing DVD quality in that somehow.
c: Most people who watch pirate DIVX
Who will pay pay slightly less and $500 for a TV out card to get a shithouse quality movie(paticualry after going though a consumer level TVOUT card) on your 4foot plasma?
$1-2 difference (pay per view is around $4 right?) is not going to be enough, to cover bandwidth costs i doubt they can go much lower. Stupid attempt to stop the unstoppable.
Somehow it didn't copy right; I'll post a working version.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/08/17/technology/1 7STUD.html
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Lets look at the good news. Even though the idea is dumb, it creates a legitimate demand for consumer bandwidth. Remember when WIN95 needed 32MB of RAM to run properly and RAM was $40/megabyte.
PS I have never needed the power and bandwidth available to me. But now that I am now a small movie editing house I do. Thanks to the divx files collecting on my hard drive, my PIII 1Ghz is very busy processing downloaded films. With apologies, I like to watch them backwards--it's harder to figure the endings that way.
> Just like Linus Torvalds can sell you a binary-only Linux version
except that it's not true
(hint, he's not the only copyright holder on linux)
The copyright on the Linux kernel is jointly held by a large number of hackers, many of whom zealously defend users' freedom and would refuse to sell out even if Linus did--which is just the sort of result we ought to expect from Free Software. If you delete everything Linus didn't personally write, what remains would almost certainly do nothing useful on modern hardware.
How many people are going to bet that at least one of the following will occur?
1) the movie will be in a proprietary format that may only be viewed with a certain, specific player
2) that player will only be available under Windows
3) any attempts to create a player for another platform will be in violation of the DMCA
I'm willing to bet all three. And I definitely don't see a bargain here.
C'mon! You're going to tell me that added laughter and the occasional silhouette appearing at the bottom of the screen don't add extra value for you?
Sorry about my English, I am not a native English speaker but I'm a little disturbed by worsening quality of grammar of Slashdot posts in the last months. Peaking != peeking, then != than, etc, etc...
--- Frantisek Fuka (Yes, that's my real name and you have no idea how it's pronounced)
Time limited demos and such have always been defeated by the simplest hack possible: turning the clock back in time.
... what will prevent those movies from permanently living in the same day?
I wrote a little program back in the days, to cheat one such program without actually messing up the clock on a Mac.
Soooo
What would prevent me from just copying the file over and over to be able to watch it again? I guess the answer is that hardware copy protection Intel is preparing (what's its name again?)
Also, it will be functionally better than pay-per-view movies (which don't give you the ability to pause, rewind, etc.)
You don't have a TiVo, do you?
What if the p1r@t3D DVD rips came out earlier and looked better?
Oh.
Wait.
The rips will be out earlier..
Now. About the 500mb file / encoding / view part.
I've put divx (700mb encoded rips, not the failed divx, btw, did this in canada, where it is still legal) movies (via TV out) on a 54" TV and could not tell the difference between that and a DVD (I have a cheap sound system, i.e. 2 speakers).
In any case, it'd be interesting to see how they shave 200mb off the file. I'm sure people will, um. adapt it.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
That's quite an interresting thought... when you come to the video shop.. of course you can run out through the door without paying for the casette. Do you do that ?
People tend to be willing to pay for things they like, but also because they dont want to be criminals. They dont like paying overprices, and they dont like paying to small either (thats only annoying). But a dollar or three to be able to leave the evil polluting car in the garage and sit back and relax to a good video.
And.. ofcourse DVD is a lot better, but compared to VHS, a 500MB divx (or other high compression format) is a fair competitor. I cant count the nr of times I rent a VHS with annoyingly bad quality, flickering picture etc...
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
of the movie studio's
/.'s Squadron of Attack Elephants?
... lets run down the options:
i mean, seriously, do they employ
ok
Movie Studio's Official Format:
Lifetime of file: 30 days
Watching period: 24 hours
File size: 500 MB
Encoding: Proprietary (in all likelyhood)
Interface: Most likely pretty useless and annoying
Availability: Some time after DVD release
Cost: Something
DivX:
Lifetime of file: Unlimited
Watching period: Unlimited
File size: 600MB-1200MB depending on quality desired
Encoding: DivX (mpeg-4)
Interface: Anything you want
Availability: At or Pre-DVD release
Cost: Nothing
Yeah, sure the new format is gonna be successful
(opinion brought to you in part by Scarcasm(tm))
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
buying these should be shot. Go to a fucking theater it wont kill you, loser!
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
How about all those only entitled to 1GB/month or whatever before they get billed for excess bandwidth?
Who is seriously going to pay $15 to rent a movie?
http://www.themeparks.ie
The highest throughput I know of for an FTP server is Walnut Creek's record of 1.39TB over the course of a day, that's about 115 movies per hour or so. Let's say you can provide this sort of throughput to several servers all the time. How much bandwidth is required for this system to make any money at all? It's pretty fantastic, especially when you figure in the cost of maintaining the hardware which has to store all these movies. To figure if this will make any money at all, decide how many potential viewers you're going to have. How many people have the bandwidth necessary to download these movies that don't have DirecTV/Dish Network (who can pay a couple bucks for an all day movie pass on a PPV movie channel) and aren't so fucking lazy that can't drive their secretary asses down to the video store. This isn't really anything I couldn't do with DirecTV and a TiVo.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
From the NYTimes article:
The service, which will be available only to those with high-speed Internet connections, is an attempt to get ahead of piracy problems that have plagued the music industry through services like Napster and which were beginning to be felt in the film industry with newer file-swapping services.
So, which of the big five owns the NYT? Or are they just naturally biased and/or stupid, like the BBC here in Britain?
Interesting that they say "plagued" the music industry. I assume that by plagued they mean a 1pc drop in single sales accompanied by a 13pc (or so) rise in album sales?
And please, don't pretend that a few hundred ppl using winmx, etc, to download a couple of movies a month is going to affect the movie industry!
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
I usually by a DVD of a movie if I like it, or if I'm
even vaguely interested. I would much rather
download a tv show. I would even pay a small fee to keep a copy (no strings) of a tv show.
What happens when they actually toss this out on the web for everyone to download, and the next skilled programmer writes a crack for the Internetted-DIVX player/movies - the next Skylarov fiasco.
Will this bring attention back to the Skylarov case when this crack happens, or will deter others from practicing free speech (along the software front?).
The way things are going now-a-days, I fear the money-driven-politics involving MPAA, etc. will drive our rights right out of the country (and others! see: http://slashdot.org/yro/01/08/20/0210248.shtml ).
pzugnoni@pellam.ucr.edu
and they think I know what I'm doing....
With usenet/irc prices. Everything must go!
Go to http://www.filmspeed.com/ and click DownPlay to try it.
Now, I'm pretty sure this is FOR WINDOWS ONLY, but I suspect that'll probably be the case for the test case mentioned in the article too.
Still, it's interesting to see that this stuff does indeed work even if the convenient streaming video is limited to those of us with very fast connections. Those less fortunate will have to settle for downloading it or to abstain from watching mindless B-movie violence altogether. But that's not really an option is it?
>>Also, it will be functionally better than pay-per-view movies (which don't give you the ability to pause, rewind, etc.), except that you have to use your computer to view it.
;)
I don't know, but ExpressVu (a Satellite provider) is introducing a PVR this fall with HDD and all. Yes, they might have disabled the recording feature for PPV in the Box right now, but I wonder how long it'll take someone to actually hack the box to record.
BTW, the system they use is the same as the Echostar one in the US, so if anybody there gets into it, everybody can work with it
Michael
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Also, it will be functionally better than pay-per-view movies (which don't give you the ability to pause, rewind, etc.), except that you have to use your computer to view it.
Actually, on my cable system (Time Warner/AOL/ICQ/CNN...) here in Austin called icontrol (fairly content-sparse link) that has an excellent selection of movies, and it allows you to pause, rewind, suspend, etc until your 'rental period' is up. The rental periods are anywhere from 12-24 hours, iirc. I've used the system for pay-per-view before, and it works as advertised, at the same cost as a regular PPV movie.
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
You're analogy is flawed. When you go to the video store, is there an identical one next door giving away free films? If so, which would you go in? I agree with the original poster, theres no point in paying for downloads when i get them free from the donkey.
"I think the majority of consumers believe that copyright has value and that if they have a pay vehicle to watch movies on the Internet, they will pay for it," said Yair Landau, president of Sony (news/quote) Pictures Digital Entertainment. "We want to give honest people an honest alternative."
LOL...honest people? The majority of people are completely immoral and as dishonest as you ALLOW them to be...
"To be really honest, we have no idea," Mr. Waterman said.
No idea is right...although I think the movie industry has always been a bit more "honest" than the consumers...if you catch my drift <;)
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"
"the clock starts ticking so no peaking until you're ready to watch it ALL"
Sorry - couldn't resist.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
1. Order movies for later viewing, it downloads to your TIVO or similar device.
2. Movies NEVER to be on DVD, or old TV shows of the same. (now that I might pay for, if the movie was like 2 dollars or something, tv show 2 to 3 dollars per 5 episodes.
For existing content, they can forget it. If I can get it on DVD the charge for the movie that I HAVE to download would have to be in the 2 dollar range to make it even worth my time.
(still downloading to a computer is useless overall to me, I have a big TV just for watching movies, and my computer is NOWHERE near my entertainment system)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It would seem they would want to release this before DVD, so as to not cut into the sales of the online movie.
Better yet, before any release what so ever, so as not to cut into the sales of the downloadable format.
Isn't 500MB only around 0.5-0.6Mb a second? Jeez, digital satellite is up in the 4-6Mb range, and that can be pretty poor at times!
Not really going to look good on those 40-50 inch tellies is it?
OK, I have now collected a few more of them. Assuming that they are chosen at random, with the number of duplicates I have seen, the total number of quotes can't be that high. Anyone interested in collecting the whole set? Is it easily downloadable from slashcode?
... you're the first.
Anyway, here are the ones I have so far:
X-Fry: I don't regret this, but I both rue and lament it.
X-Fry: I refuse to testify on the grounds that my organs will be chopped up in to a patty.
X-Bender: Bender's a genius!
X-Fry: There's a lot about my face you don't know.
X-Fry: Nowadays people aren't interested in art that's not tattooed on fat guys.
X-Fry: I learned how to handle delicate social situations from a little show called 'Three's Company.'
X-Bender: Fry, of all the friends I've had
X-Bender: The laws of science be a harsh mistress.
X-Bender: Care to contribute to the Anti-Mugging-You Fund?
X-Fry: I heard one time you single-handedly defeated a hoard of rampaging somethings in the something something system.
X-Bender: In the event of an emergency, my ass can be used as a flotation device.
X-Bender: Oh no! Not the magnet!
X-Bender: There's nothing wrong with murder, just as long as you let Bender whet his beak.
X-Bender: Honey, I wouldn't talk about taste if I was wearing a lime green tank top.
X-Bender: Want me to smack the corpse around a little?
X-Bender: Like most of life's problems, this one can be solved with bending.
X-Bender: Oh, so, just 'cause a robot wants to kill humans that makes him a radical?
X-Bender: A woman like that you gotta romance first!
X-Bender: Hey Fry, I'm steering with my ass!
X-Bender: My full name is Bender Bending Rodriguez.
X-Bender: Oh, no room for Bender, huh? Fine. I'll go build my own lunar lander. With blackjack. And hookers. In fact, forget the lunar lander and the blackjack! Ah, screw the whole thing.
If you got a high speed connection, download direct connect and get access to a bunch of DVD rips. When are they going to try to produce something competitive? When are they going to start to _SELL_ instead of try to stop people without much funds anyway for "stealing".
Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that this is going to be limited to Windows? It will, unfortunately, limit their audience as I would have thought that Mac's would be good for this kind of thing. Oh, well...
I've downloaded more than 20 movies*, about a dozen full length (2 hour) episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000+, and a smattering of Red Dwarf and Anime episodes from eDonkey. Crappy name, but it is the most effective movie-downloading tool I've used. In fact, it's so good at downloading movies that it sucks at downloading MP3s and anything smaller than a few hundred megabytes.
* They are:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
There's Something About Mary
American Pie
Road Trip
The Cell
Memento
Pi The Movie
2001: A Space Odyssey
Snatch
Unbreakable
Traffic
Being John Malkovich
Office Space
Monty Python and the Life of Brian
Hackers 2: Operation Takedown
Mylene Farmer - Live a Bercy (Concert video)
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
La Verite Si Je Mens
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Planet of the Apes (the original)
+ These are:
804 - The Deadly Mantis
410 - Hercules Against the Moon Men
913 - Quest of the Delta Knights
K20 - The Last Chase
103 - Mad Monster
307 - Daddy-O
903 - Puma Man
321 - Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
K14 - Mighty Jack
1010 - It Lives By Night
409 - The Indestructable Man
510 - The Painted Hills
It was certainly easier than going to the theater or even to a rental place. Hardly a Sisyphean task and certainly available to anyone with some computer knowledge and a little bandwidth. (I did this all on 1.5Mbps ADSL.)
-z129
You don't have a TiVo, do you?
Or even a VCR. Tape a PPV movie in the middle in the night and watch it at your leisure (for those of us who haven't jumped on the TiVo bandwagon, yet).
Yet Another Web Site
A half-gig download - Obsiously this is for broadband subcribers only. With cable companies selling both Internet bandwidth and TV services, including Pay Per View.
It won't take the cable companies long to figure out that they would be loosing valuable Pay Per View money when the movies is delivered via IP. What would the cable comanies next move be? Daily download limitations? Then sell a new package with Unlimited bandwidth?
If you take business away from the cable companies using their own pipe, it will piss them off. Their revenge will be at their subcriber's expense.
As far as law and content are both concerned, the music people (noted as RIAA) might as well just be the movie people (noted as MPAA). Also bothering me is the fact that the movie *companies* (Sony, Universal, etc.), are very well different divisions apart from the music people (Sony, Universal, etc.) This leads me to believe that these companies are too big to learn from themselves. Shame on them.
I'm not here. This isn't happening.
Keep in mind that even with TV Out, I'm almost certain that these companies would love to use MS Media Player as a safe "transport" for their bad idea. Media Player (as far as 7 is concerned) does not like multiple monitors at all, as it will only display a black screen when I plug my Inspiron (w/ Mobility M1, S-Video out) into my A/V switch. Drats.
I'm not here. This isn't happening.
It takes alot less time to go buy/rent the DVD, much better quality, sound, couch - than download a movie online. And lets not remember, with 500MB/1 hour downloads: All your bandwith are belong...ah whatever....
Legal: Yes
DiVX
Legal: No
That right there is enough to make most people avoid DiVX. Most people don't want to be criminals, even if they know they won't get caught.
So, what do they think people will pay for this service? I would pay a buck or two, not much more. It would be so much faster to drive to the video store, so unless this service is a whole lot cheaper than rental, I doubt many people will bother. Many internet services have gone under with the assumption that people will pay more because it is on the internet.
500MB for a full length movie? I kind of doubt it. Also, who can possible download 500MB in 20-40 minutes? I have never gotten download speeds in that range.
Typical stuff, the studios are more worried about security deleting the movie off of your hard drive after a day than they are about actually creating a service that people want.
"Sounds like if you start the movie at all, the clock starts ticking so no peaking until you're ready to watch it ALL. "
Saaaaay...what kinda movies are you watching anyway, perverts? Oh wait, you meant 'peeking'...
________________
Private Essayist
I'm not looking forward to this garbage clogging up the net just yet. Now it's still easier to rent a VHS copy on the way home from the grocery store. There are some people it will be good for, who live way out there where there's only one video shop censored by the local prudes. For the rest of us, the 9 Gig downloads of common movies will be a drag. Expect a novelty peak of joe AOL's next year downloading "I love Lucy" to make "I love you" look small.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I've run into the same problem with Media Player, as well as RealPlayer, and a few others. The workaround I've found is to designate the screen you want to display the video on as the "Primary display" in the Desktop Properties control panel. Then you can watch videos on that display. It's a little annoying if you don't really want it as your "primary" display, but it'lll let you watch the videos okay, while continuing to work on your other monitor.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
- You can watch the movies on your big TV while sitting on your couch (not on your computer screen while sitting in your office).
- The movies can be accessed from a typical stereo component.
- This component could plug right into your LAN or cable modem.
This is what might make it popular for the typical consumer, I mean.I don't know about you, but I don't average between 200 and 400 KB/sec. I have used a number of different broadband commections (cable, dsl, t1, t3) and never downloaded anything at more than 150 KB/sec. Usually, if the servers are decent, I can still only get 50 KB/sec. Assuming the my connection can actually handle that much, there has to be sifficient bandwith between them and me. If they are relying 20 minute downloads for this to be appealing, I think they should think again...
Maximum theoretical bandwith != actual bandwith
Ibag
Who will pay pay slightly less and $500 for a TV out card to get a shithouse quality movie(paticualry after going though a consumer level TVOUT card) on your 4foot plasma?
You're targetting the wrong demographic.
Think any TV-out card (nVidia, ATI, etc.) going to a standard TV. The type of people who buy a $500 TV-out card and have a plasma television are also the type of people who use component video and $500+ DVD players.
I think the type of people to download a 500M movie are the same type of people who download DivX movies from eDonkey and burn them to CD anyway... quality should be about the same and if you have a ballsy-enough computer to do all the postprocessing it looks like a good VHS tape on a normal TV. Hell it looks like a DVD to me on my 17" monitor but I end up dropping frames since my computer isn't ballsy enough. :-(
Movie's as a medium will never die becasue people enjoy going to a big building and watching a film with a bunch of stranger's. When you rent a movie it's normally some sort of "pizza" movie, ie some sort of romantic comady with one of the cast members of friends
For this to be a success the majority of the movies would need to be underground-hard-too-find stuff like that knock of clerks with storm troopers or something. But we all know its gonna end up being porn.
However this is ignoring the obvious technological problems that have already been pointed out.
I Personally think that this is a ploy too kill Divx;-)
Can't you just keep setting the time on your computer back? that should keep the expiration date at bay.
All you've gotta do, is adjust the clock (hardware and system) before you watch the movie. Well - I haven't tried it, but I'm almost willing to bet that will do the trick. I mean - what other reliable options do they have? They just can't be foolish enough to require the user to be connected to the internet for the player to connect to the time server.
Oh. And I'm based in Norway. Does the DCMA work here? I know the kid that made DeCSS got into trouble, but going to jail for adjusting the clock just sounds ridiculous!
Stop the brainwash
Prediction (every one of you is going to owe me a coke in about 6 months): the service will debut to lackluster response, next thing you know files will start showing up stripped of identifying information and copyright protection, and they'll pull the plug.
Someday the content giants are going to figure out that you can't have strong encryption when your consumer be both a friend (able to view) and an enemy (unable to maintain, adapt or copy).
Actually, this is more convenient than going to the video store. Yeah sure, the download will be 1/2 hour, but you won't be forced to sit in traffic, find parking in the blockbuster lot, and argue with your sig. other over what movie to get.
You can do something else while it downloads! And, you don't have to watch it on "their" schedule like regular pay-per-view. sounds good to me!
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
If " A film will remain on a computer's hard drive for 30 days but will erase itself 24 hours after it is first run" is all, then burn a copy onto a CD so that it won't be able to erase itself.
:)
of course the old changing the clock in the BIOS trick might work too
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
BE VERY CAREFUL-- movies downloaded off the net may contain digital fingerprints. That is, each copy may be *slightly* different. It won't be noticable to a viewer. But if you crack the movie protection and put it on the net, the studios and law enforcement can use use these differences to find out that YOU DID IT and SCREW YOU FOR LIFE.
Putting fingerprints on DVDs isn't feasible because of the manufacturing process. And there's no way to keep track of which customer bought which copy anyway. In contrast, if you download a movie, they know your IP address and billing information and sticking in secret bits is easy.
The basic digital fingerprinting scheme is due to Boneh and Shaw. Their method provably defeats attacks based on getting several copies of the film and diff-ing them. The method isn't that great-- it requires around c^4 secret bits to defeat c colluders. But movies are huge, so c can be pretty big here. It is entirely possible that the Boneh scheme can and will be improved substantially in coming years.
Digital fingerprinting is THE biggest technological threat to file sharing. If you're the type to rip and share downloaded media, you've got to be aware of this threat. By distributing media with digital fingerprints, you may think you're uncatchable but may be actually waving a flag saying "ME, ME! I DID IT!"
I'm the original slow AC, and I see it now. Just stand back from your monitor a bit, and let the image sort of blur together into shape. eg, about 3m from my monitor is optimal for me.
BTW, I don't seem to be the only one that is slow. WTF is up with slashdot?? Maybe it is all the porn I am concurrently downloading that is the problem?
at least they're actually trying to embrace the tech instead of burying their heads in the sand
They are hardly embracing downloadable movies. Just like when DVDs were young, they "embraced" that format by developing DIVX (not the format, the pay-per-view disks and players). You could only watch the movie a few times, then had to pay more. They were even partnered up with large distribution chains such as Nobody Beats the Wiz. Everyone saw through the scam. Only when nobody bought the players or the disks did they even start looking at DVD.
This downloading scam isnt going to work either. Other posts have written that the average user is the one targetted by this service, not the geeks with the toys that hang out here. They can pretty much forget about average users using this system. On my dialup home connection, a 500M download would probably take more than 50 hours, and my connection ALWAYS crashes before then. The simple fact is, even with broadband, 500M is huge. The so-called "average user" is going to say "f it" and drive to Blockbuster.
You are right, however, that this is a first step. However, just like now, they will have to be dragged kicking and screaming for each successive step along the way, just like in the DVD/DIVX "battle".
When will these geniuses realize that it is better to have 20 people buy something for $10 than have 1 buy it for $100?
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
I'm curious... do you play your console games on a computer monitor then? (Based on sig. versus your posting.)
Under those conditions it may be a service I might use.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Whore
Can you say REDUNDANT? 32 posts before this one: The same thing was posted
...so no peaking until you're ready to watch it ALL.
That sounds strangely sexual..
The article says:
"However downloads will only be available well after the DVD release of the same movie so as to not cut into DVD sales."
Will the downloadable version have all the "special" stuff that the DVD includes? I doubt it. The main reason I rent or purchase a DVD is for the special features. Without these special features, there is no incentive for me to download the movie.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Yup. And I watch my movies on the same computer monitor. Linux is pretty good for video capture stuff, if you buy the right hardware.
If Landau actually beleived what he was saying, then he would use a standardized and non-copy-protected format instead Yet Another abomination. Software developers have understood the uselessness of copy protection for many years.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Another major problem with this scheme is that the video quality is going to be awful. 500Mb means it's going to be equivalent to VCD/MPEG1 which is about the same as a cheap VCR.
A DVD stream uses MPEG2 and gets up to 10 Mb/s. If you assume an average of 5Mb/s (which is low) and a 90 minute movie, that's 27GB.
They could be planning to use MPEG4 which is better quality, but even then they'll be compressing the hell out of it to get a film down to that size.
I'd rather drive to the video store or use NetFlix and watch a real DVD. Not to mention I can do that a lot sooner after the films release.
sic
... is the sound of the hysteric laughs of millions of modem users
Make It Secret . Free JavaScript implementation of AES for your browser
My 400 kb/s download speed is typical for a $39.95/mo DSL line. I'm not going to tie up my line to save the Hollywood guys $1 burning a CD.
DVDs are typically 5 gb. I'm not going to spend 30 hours downloading a DVD on my DSL line. They can send it back to re-write.
In my experience downloading... erm, "independant" films through gnutella, I've found that a 500mb DIVX file is simply not going to be very good quality. And I'm not talking about amazing sharpness or biting sounds. At 500mb, there are often annoying intruding audio artifacts. The video is a tenth of the resolution of DVD and it looks like a JPEG on the highest compression setting.
The gap between 500 and 800mb really seems to make all the difference in the world. At 800mb, the quality is just good enough that you can forget about the artifacts and get into the movie.
-Erik
P.S. I know the length of the movie changes the file size. I'm generalizing here.
Apparantly, you can replace the www in the URL with archive for any NYT story and it will Just Work.
These movies will cost money to download, and they will be something you will only get to see a couple times before it disables itself from being viewed again.
You will be placing a burden on your own resources (bandwidth) to get the movie, it will not be equal to VHS quality, and it will only be viable for twenty-four hours after you start watching it... sounds stupid to me. Very stupid. I think this'll crash faster than DIVX, assuming they're stupid enough to even push it out the door.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
I downloaded the movie. Then I set up my digital video camcorder in front of my digital TV, turned off the lights and watched and recorded the movie.
Please go to my website to download any movie you want--I compressed them all to 10 MB with lossless compression, BTW.
Site is www.them_movie_producer_folks_are_SO_STUPID.com
Please remember that this is a non profit site so pleeze click on some banners!
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
The movies won't "erase themselves," but they
/. market, where
will require a key, and they key will have
roughly the same characteristics as a video
rental from Blockbuster. Obviously, we're looking
at broadband distribution, and at typical
broadband speeds, it's about an hour to pull
down a movie (for instance, on my home DSL I
routinely get 140K/sec transfers, which would
require around 73 minutes to pull down a 600MB
movie).
I'd imagine students (many of whom don't have
televisions, but have computers and campus
Ethernet on T1-or-better circuits) and business
travellers will adopt. I recently took my VAIO on a trip, and watched two movies. Running DVDs, the battery
would have given out shortly after the first title. Playing Real Media from the hard drive,
and I was at 50% used at the end of the trip.
I think there's a market. So too does my employer =) Probably not a
MPEG4 ("DiVX") seems to run rampant. But...
Comments attributed to VPs within the company
indicate that Sony (who originated the MovieFly
concept; the other studios came on-board after
the fact) understands the risk of the DRM being
compromised...
geek. lawyer.
People are ripping movies more and more these days, just like CDs, and sharing them on P2P programs like Direct Connect, etc. Same story, different industry. Hollywood is going under...!
Remember children - there are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
DVD's are allready available online on various p2p systems(or should I say the raw mpegs from the dvd are allready available) for 0$.
I cannot speak for windows users or linux users that aren't a gplnut/freesoftwarefanatic(like me).. but I will say the *only* reasons I will take the free route vs. the proprietary_only_access pay route, is I don't have to forfit control, privacy, security or fair use rights under the free route, ie.. I don't need a proprietary access device to play the mpeg's ripped from the dvd.
The only reason I run linux is because i believe I have the right be in control, and that I have the right to privacy, security and fair use. I always pay for my offtheshelf linux distributions, so price is not the issue with me. If the IPDroids would *release* their works in an open format, i'd ditch p2p systems in a heart beat for 4$ mpeg's.
Heh, that's awesome. Great stuff -- keep it coming!
is worthy of being in a .sig somewhere.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't care so much about movies, since I don't imagine they'll be releasing anything for download that isn't already available on DVD. However, I'd love to see the TV networks pick this up! How many times have you said, "Doh! I missed The Simpsons again!" (Or, more likely, "Doh! Fox screwed around with its schedule again!") I'd pay money to be able to download a missed episode of my favorite shows. Make 'em available for download a week after the original air date, and I'll guarrantee they'll find an audience.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Don't you know you have to *pay* to get it up your arz(and click OK, I agree, stick it in hard)
I have a vga to tv converter so I could just watch it once, or I should say my VCR or PVR will only watch it once :) I can then watch the tape as many times as I want.
You download the movie, it saves the time somewhere on your machine. This gives you two options. First you find where the time is stored and hack it. Or you change your own time. Unless the movie checks time from external server (requires you to be only while watching) there is no way for a program to know if internal clock has been tampered with. You may even create a network booting OS that always looks the same after boot so you can download the movie from your own server multiple times (if the system uses some obscure file tranfer protocal then just log all traffic with your Linux box and replay the log to download the movie again)
- Raynet --> .
-- yes, the fact that I don't own a TV set *does* make me a better person.
l ev ision.html
http://www.theonion.com/onion3604/doesnt_own_te
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
No peaking? Typo makes it sound like you're downloading porn...
dinosaur comics
I'll bet not.
So now I won't have to download the movie of some guy holding his video camera up to the screen. This was I'll have a nice 500mb movie prepared just for me. This will make pirating movies so much easier now :)
PS> hopefully people still understand sarcasm
Because the resolution is going to be very bad. A DVD has a multi-GB capacity. 500MB is good for a choppy or poorly resolved 320x160 feature leangth movie.
This is not the kind of quality you invite pals to watch at your place.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
It is a preemptive measure. They want to get it into place before such trading systems get popular so that they can avoid the bad publicity the music industry is being hit with. They don't want congressmen asking them why they are stalling on electronic services (as has happened to the music industry.)
Six years ago, the idea of a downloadable music service would have seemed flawed as well (too slow at 14.4, not enough harddrive space on the average machine), but ask yourself this: if the music industry had a system for downloading music in 1995, would Napster have the millions of users it does now? Probably not.
The cake is a pie
Or even a VCR. Tape a PPV movie in the middle in the night
Most newer converter boxes (especially those for digital cable and satellite TV) will insert Macrovision brand copy protection into pay-per-view signals and (if you have a really possessive cable company) even plain old premium channels. Even though it's an analog technology, circumvention devices are still illegal, as Macrovision holds a patent on every straightforward method of removing the VBL burst and colorstripe distortion.
Will I retire or break 10K?
no offense to the poster
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Just a curious question as to how they would delete it from my system if the file is transferred to a READ Only Media like CD-R? I might just burn a CD so that I could watch it at anytime. Course, I am guessing they had not even thought of that yet....
You keep going until you die..."Me".
Anybody heard of WinMX or other deriviatives?
Why would up waste your time downloading a movie that's already in video stores, has a time limit on viewing and will eventually corrupt itself (hopefully just itself!) when you can download a movie that just been released to theaters and usually is less that 500Mb?
True the quality sometimes sucks but there are screener copies that float around (those are usually the first ones on the trading block)
I've had WinMx for about 3 weeks now. I have about 20 movies ranging from older ones like Men in Black (ripped from the DVD) up to Final Fantasy, Planet of the Apes & Osmosis Jones. The last three i got about 2 days after being released to theaters!
I know alot of people will say "WinMx will eventually go the way of Napster and either start charging or will be taken out entirely." I went from Napster to Imesh to BearShare to WinMx. Th last three handled all file types (music, movies, programs).
I've been a tech for 22+ years and it's the same thing over and over again: push down on one hacker/cracker/copywrite violator and 5 more pop up. I guess eventually the RIAA and movie industry will understand that they lost the war before they noticed they were in one.
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
distributed infrastructure (kinda like a P2P network ;)
Akamai. On steroids.
Having a broad catalog gives more choice
Not if the pirate's catalog is broader with respect to the narrow category of movies a fellow wants. For example, if I searched for "Pinocchio" I wouldn't get Di$ney's version (because Di$ney isn't participating) but instead two AOL(tw) releases: "The Adventures of Pinocchio" (1996; New Line) and "A.I." (2001; Warner) (that is, once it's released on PPV).
screwing up ... quality of catalog (post-DVD releases only)
Do you seriously believe that movies that have passed into the pay-per-view window are of lower quality than those still in theaters or being sold on DVD? Classic movies (top 10%[1] of black-and-white and early releases) are classics for a reason
[1] Sturgeon's Law: 90% of film is crap.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You could just use a specialized screen capture tool while playing the movie. It's virtually impossible for them to avoid that method of ripping it.
Repeal the DMCA!
The Liquid Audio software works a lot like the average MP3 player, except it uses their proprietary file format which lets them specify whether or not the file is "free". They can set up songs so you can download and play them as often as you like, until a date when it expires.
It doesn't go so far as to delete it off your hard drive, but attempts to play it past the expiration date fail with a descriptive error message.
If I was a business, I wouldn't release anything that threatens to delete itself on its own. Before you know it, some crackpot will sue for damages, claiming the program deleted all his business documents instead of just deleting the movie that he rented.
I just download the cam editions off of irc. Sure they suck, but at least I get to see the movie right off the bat. If I like the movie. I usually end up going to the theater anyways. Nothing really beats the theater experience. (Note: go in the afternoon on weekdays. That way you don't have to deal with the annoying brat teenagers.)
I don't like the idea of just watch once though. If I rent a movie I can watch it as many times as I want untill it's due. Why shouldn't the same apply for a downloaded edition. Maybe they could have like a 5 day window in which you could stop, play, rewind, fastforward, yada, yada, yada.
Cough %$Bullshit$% a DIVx rip from dvd under the mystical 700mb cd limit or thereabouts for a 2 hour flick has more artifacts than King Tut's Funeral Chamber.
Without postprocessing, you're 100% correct. I use mplayer with the opendivx libraries. On a dual celeron 466 and no postprocessing, it is what I would consider the digital equivalent to an EP recording of a copy. However with the postprocessing set to its highest level (4 for DIVx) it is wonderful. Of course, my system isn't good enough to handle this so the audio gets out of sync with the video very quickly. :-)
System: Abit BP6 (Dual Celeron 466), 256M RAM, GeForce2MX-400 (32M). Yes this is in fullscreen under X 4.0.3 with the latest nVidia drivers (1251 I believe). The movie: Varsity Blues. Filesize: 629441536.
I'd love to "rent" the few Simpsons episodes I still haven't seen, and if all of MST3K became available... slobber... why I'd do just about anything. I'd even install a Windows partition and get a passport account.
it will be soon cracked
the crack will be widely distributed
the cracked version will be not as widely distributed
people will actually justify (for themselves and to others) that this is ALL done for the 'protection and conservation of societal freedoms'.
People will confuse entertainment with a vital necessity of life (i.e. confuse WANT with NEED) It happens all the time.
Now what's needed it some way to send simple commands to your computer through your TV remote (like browsing and playing files). Once we have this, the computer-as-entertainment-hub idea will be unstoppable.
Ease of use - AOL Joe isn't l33t. No codes, no dongles, no Captain Crunch decoder wheels. Quick initial registration, download and double-click, get billed monthly.
:)
There's a better argument for the importance of ease of use than "AOL Joe isn't l33t". They'll be competing against P2P services like Audiogalaxy, which is extremely easy to use, as in you click buttons next to a few songs in a list on a web page, and your AG client downloads the songs as soon as it gets a chance with no additional user interaction.
Actually, now that I think about it, the movie and music industries might not be able to compete against Audiogalaxy in ease/efficiency of use because of Amazon's "one-click purchase" patent. This could be interesting
The shareholder is always right.
Excellent idea! I think I'll do this until they finally catch on.
DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.
Why spend 30 minutes or much, much longer when I can make it to the video store, rent, and travel time both ways in about 20 minutes?
Some people (myself included; I'm almost 21 years old) do not know how or do not have enough money to operate a motor vehicle and do not live in an area with decent public bus service. It takes me an hour to get to the video store and back, time I could spend watching movies. Flash movies. Movies provide more laughs per hour than anything Hollywood puts out because Flash movies don't try to pad it out to 110 minutes.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It is about time that the movie industry gives away their movies for free. :)
Thank You
The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they are when you kill them.
I have Metropolis on DVD right in front of me. I'd consider that old, especially considering it's not even a 'talkie'.
This could be just the thing we need to show that the DMCA is poorly written. The DMCA only prohibits devices designed to circumvent "works protected under [Title 17, U.S.C.]" which does NOT include works first published before January 1, 1923. (Note that this doesn't apply to Metropolis specifically, but that's Sonny Bono's fault.) If Hollywood ever releases a pre-1923 movie on DVD with CSS encryption, that could be used as the loophole for a DeCSS clone that "allows you to view public domain content on CSS-encrypted DVDs. This program is not prohibited under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it is NOT intended to be used to decrypt content still under content."
I am talking out of my ass.Will I retire or break 10K?
You rock! Hillarious! The funniest thing of all is that Valenti would really like it to be that way. What a douche bag that guy is.
For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the sheltered will never know.
I predict if you can fit a whole movie in 500mb, then we'll soon be seeing a way of decoding these movies and putting them on a CDR. Then people will be motivated to take advantage of this - and keep them forever.
There's a lot of people out there creating VCDs. It's getting pretty easy to put video on a VCD, and many dvd players will play it (even though some don't even mention that they will). Some dvd players will only play VCDs encoded on CDRW's since they're closer to the laser frequency of DVD's than CDR's.
The original format is VCD, which is 352x240 at 1150kbits/sec and will play on most dvd players. Then there's svcd, xvcd and xsvcd with higher bit rates and faster drive spin speeds.
a good info site is: http://www.vcdhelp.com
It's mostly PC-oriented. I'd like to hear about people who've created VCDs under linux. (most win98 users can't create video files greater than 2g)
>> DiVX Legal: No
> Based on? How is a format illegal?
With all this discussion about copyrights, we often miss patents. A format can be illegal because it uses patented methods or processes. MPEG-4 (the core technology of the DivX ;-) family of video codecs) uses numerous patents, such as MPEG audio layer 3 (Fraunhofer). License royalties ($4 per hardware or software encoder or decoder for even MPEG-2 and likely more for MPEG-4) are generally out of reach for developers of free software or free(beer) proprietary software.
Philips is offering a free MPEG-4 player.
Will I retire or break 10K?
wow...a media company is trying to compete with piracy instead of just trying to squish it like those no-brainers running the music industry?
I'm all for it...somebody finally realized that people WILL pay for things if they are actually BETTER...(eg. Limewire vs. buying a cd - now thats a joke)
Your signatures belong to me.
I pity you if you feel financially burdened by the price of a movie rental.
i'm not I BUY the dvd's and i don't even have a dsl or cable modem so i couldnt' download thouse if i wanted to i'm saying that there are LOT's of people who would rather download a SMALLER and FREE version that's out BEFORE the dvd.. i usualy go to the theatre anyway. i'm not a bum. geez..
If i was you, you'd be me and we wouldn't be having this conversation
Ok i see what you mean but
That's quite an interresting thought... when you come to the video shop.. of course you can run out through the door without paying for the casette. Do you do that ?
if i find a movie i havn't already seen in the theatre and i WANT to rent it then sure i do. but
usualy a friend of mine has the video or dvd and i'll just borrow it from him.. or if the video isn't out and i dont' wnat to go to the theatre becuase i don't like the MPAA's actions latly and don't want to support them i'll just go download it. (or at least i WOULD if i had a dsl or cable but i con't get eather out here. so =[ )
If i was you, you'd be me and we wouldn't be having this conversation
no. and if i was do you think i'd have such good english? and why would i have the name mr.squish and not like mreggroll or some korean thing. .. o well. your from utah. and a biggot? right oOOOOOOoooooooo i knew it... ;) your all the same (even if your not from utah your from somewhere i could have guessed if i wanted to waste my time.) i'm probobly more white then you btw.. since i don't go out shooting signs in the middle of the day hilk-hilk! (that's your noise ;)
leme guess about you though ok? no
If i was you, you'd be me and we wouldn't be having this conversation
(mis-named broadband).
Why do you say that's a misnomer? Broadband is technically defined as running different types of signal over one wire. (i.e. cable tv signal or voice signal + ip network signal) Sounds like a fine description of current high-speed internet services to me.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't downloading the movie straight to a CD-R (which holds more than 500 MBs) prevent the movie from being "locked?" Once the movie and the "wrapper" are on the CD, it can't be modified to prevent playback a second, third, or fiftieth time.
Congratulations, you just made several thousand curious geeks open their mouth as they look up. Why aren't we supposed to do that?
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
USA & Israel are the big bullies in the middle east. Stop listening to your biased internal news reporting!
Let's send terrorits to Damascus, Amman, and Cairo to blow up civilians and throw rocks at the police and see what happens there!
For as simple as this may sound I would think that the MPAA and the rest have thought about it and I do admit that I haven't read the full article, I will on the subway ride home.
:)
Given the simple view of "Why not just download the file to your hard drive and write it to a CD?" If for some reason you can't watch it straight from your CD-ROM, because it is write protected, just copy it to your hard drive. Remember the day that you downloaded it and then change your system clock to that time?
This would, I imagine, defeat the problem of it disappearing.
The only reason why I bring this up is because I think a poll actually said something along the lings that 60%+ of new computers have CD-Rs in them. Let alone the near 90% I would expect from the people here
For those of you arguing about this being stupid because of piracy... I mean, more power to you, but you are crazy.
The concept behind piracy is that its easier, cheaper to get a pirated copy than to get the original. This is a significant difference between movie files and music files. Yes, these copy schemes can be broken, but to what avail? Is everyone in the world going to start distributing movies now? Sharing their high bandwidth connections for gig after gig of pirated Adam Sandler? Yes, you'll save a few bucks in rental fees, but end up losing money on 1. HD space, 2. exceeding bandwidth limits, 3. time (it takes time to pirate stuff).
Note that DIVX and mpeg4 has been underground for some time now. Any thoughts on why this isn't taking off? You'll watch the movie once then forget about it.
Now, 80-90% of people will stop thinking.
Such a useless activity anyway, unless it's for profit.
I thought this service already existed!?! Called Kazaa? Was wondering why I havent been billed yet though....
This might not be such a bad thing, shoot, I got my 36 inch moniter off of Ebay ($400, w00ties!) and it absoluty r0x0rs for just three things:
:)
.) actualy watchs enough movies to support the industry???
Video watching (Anime, DVDs, etc)
FPSs (makes headshots SO easy
Emulation (NeoRageX Rocks!)
Oddly enough DVD on my computer is easier to get working then DVD on my stand alone player, less buttons need to be pushed on my computer to get the DVD movie playing, hehe.
Formost other people though, this is not an option, a 19 or even a 21 inch moniter is not enough to wach a movie on, on regular basis.
Isn't PPV dead anyways? Honestly, what type of people who are into computers enough to actualy be aware and capible of using this type of service (yah, streaming media just ALWAYS works so flawlessly. . .
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Oh great, fill my hard drive with 500 MBs of crap I can only view once! Then I will delete it, then I will defrag, rinse, repeat!
Having actually worked on this for Sony, I know what technologies they are using. First and foremost, they won't even let you attempt a download unless they can determine that you have a broadband connection (128kbs+). Everything else from that point is Windows Media movie files that are locked and unlocked using Windows Media Rights controls. You pay and the file is unlocked for 24hrs. It doesn't get automatically erased. Although, it is a very stupid time check, since if you change the time on your machine, you can watch the movie again after the key has expired. Last I heard, Sony was talking about charging $6.25US a movie. At least during the market trial last spring that's about what they charged.
So, there is nothing new here. No SDMI-esque technology. Just the same old crap that comes out of Redmond.
Oh, and Sony's site is www.moviefly.com.
They were supposed to roll this all out this past summer around July. At the rate things are going, it might not get deployed until next year.
--formerly employed subcontractor...
Which means it's good that our converter boxes haven't been changed in about 6 or 7 years.
But yeah, I wholly agree that at the moment most of the people who could use such a service are not the people who would use the service. But it's a step in the right direction and it could eventually lead to a worthwhile distribution model.
And do you really have a distribution chain called "Nobody Beats the Wiz"? :)
From what I understand peak is to apex and peek is to slyly look (or to look furtively.)
Most new computers come equipped with a RCA video output... connect your computer to your VCR and push record.
The point being, if you can watch it, you can copy it.
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
My sattelite receiver has the ability to insert copy protection junk in PPV signals, but I have yet to see it actually used on a PPV movie.
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