Slashdot Mirror
(Almost) Free Movies On-Line... Sorta
Snaller writes "See the latest movies on the net? Its possible - apparently the law in Taiwan says that for a movie to be protected by copyright law one has to apply for such protection within a month after the opening in the theaters. This rarely happens and as a consequence movie88 has opened a virtual movieplex: See any of their films for 1 dollar. The movie is streamed in a format that doesn't allow you to save it on the harddrive, but for that 1 dollar you can view it anytime and as much as you like for 3 days. The selection includes movies like "Shrek", "Legally Blonde","American Pie 2","Gone with the wind", James Bond and Batman." Yeah this'll last.
Right. But it really demonstrates what TV will be like in the future
when you have access to thousands of movies. And the buck a film
rate strikes me as awesome. I'd watch a lot more movies if they were
only a buck.
hm,, shrek but no pr0n....decision.... no good
With such a large amount of movies available for streaming, the amount of people involved in transferring and encoding must be staggering. I'd like to know what sort of source they used to get all of these movies on disk.
I can't imagine that this will stay around for long, as the content producers will go nuts when they hear about it. It would seem that they took all this time to do this in futility.
The movie is streamed in a format that doesn't allow you to save it on the harddrive
...and runs on an OS that doesn't have protected memory.
Estimated time before <weirdformat>2mpeg.exe?
27 minutes.
I guess this is fine - yes - but what about the quality? I work in a company doing video-on-demand (VoD), and VoD in less quality than 2Mbps MPEG-4 isn't a good thing.
... I'll love to see this 'hacker-proof' format of theirs. I bet a hundered dollars it's already creacked :-)
And
roy
Computers are like air conditioners.
- They stop working when you open Windows.
I wonder how much sway MPAA has in Taiwan. Certainly in the US this little "problem" would be fixed quickly...
Better mark Taiwan up on the Axis of Evil list too..
with such a large library of movies and if this ever really gets off the ground will there ever be a future problem of full faith and credit and copyright laws between nations...such as say it is legal in tawian and aloud to be on their server but the process of me d/ling it to ohio where say perhaps it would be illegal to posses how would it all be werked out...virtual tribunal?
Somethings that are free are not worth the price.
On the other hand, a dollar, euro, etc, is probably the minimum that most people would pay, since much less is possible too much of a hassle. dollar stores, dollar menus are popular because people think these provide good value, even if it is not true.
and think: when was the last time you changed a candy bar to a credit card? by itself? there is a point when paying by electronic means is perceived to be too much of a hassle.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"Sorry !!
The RealPlayer video plugin was not detected !!!
You need to Download RealPlayer Basic
to watch our movie
Thank you. "
I'd rather not watch than have to watch it in Real.
I'd watch a lot more movies if they were only a buck.
Watch TV then, they're all free (with adverts).
Personally I dont have time, in between a degree, running a tv station, a social life and sex.
So now, for a dollar, I can not only make a 20 minute phone call with 10-10-220, but now I can watch Shrek on my 'puter.
Heh. Eat that, Terry Bradshaw.
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
Seeing the MPAA react to their "business". It will yield 2 results. Improve the MPAA's copyright restrictions WorldWide, allowing the recording industry to follow suite, or create very bad blood between tiwan and the US, resulting in less exporting of movies, which affect DVD sales internationally, and things like movie paraphanalia. Betcha the Tiwan government will close them down before the US does.
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
OK. If the data is sent to you and you can use that data to watch a movie how do you prevent that data from being stored somewhere?
It seems to me the content producers are trying to do the impossible. In this case and in other cases where they try to do copy protection.
Copy protection is the attempt to create something that will send a good signal to a display device but a bad signal to a recording device. Every implementation I have seen to date sends a less than perfect signal to the display device resulting in unwatchability at times.
When it comes right down to it, all you need to do to copy the signal is create a recording device that emulates a display device well enough.
I have 1 DVD that will not play with my current DVD player. My other DVD player had trouble with 2 different DVDs. Macrovision resulted in a distorted picture with the combination of hardware I was using to view VHS.
Is it too much to ask that I be able to view the content I've paid for?
Coding Blog
Can somebody point me to the governing body that issues the legal release date? Or better yet, where do I have to apply to have my home videos protected from the Tawainese laws?
/., but they need a way to make a return on their investments just like you and me.
Although it's nice that someone sticks it to the MPAA, how many channels would they need to go through to protect their wares. I don't like their bully tactics anymore than the rest of
I really hate Dan Patrick.
A buck a movie may sound good, but what I'd really be interested in, being a suit by profession, is how the revenue model looks. You can still pay one dollar for something and get ripped off. Look at it this way; there's a lot of costs avoided in this manner, not least of all the cost of the physical theatre, equipment, logistics of wordwide distribution, etc. I'm sure you're beginning to get the picture.
Anyone got some background here?
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
You get a movie for free and a five dollar (5 movie credit) just for signing up. You can watch - dont pontification and see it go down or get slashdotted -- regardless of whether you feel it should stay up.
Even thought it is real streamed at 300k bps, you'll get an idea of what the future could look like if we really could get our film libraries live.
Remember that many US concepts of copyright, fair use, etc don't translate into equivalent laws in other countries. This may be legal now and forever for agreements executed under the laws of Taiwan (this site). Note that some countries consider region coding to be unlawful (NZ?.
Note that the fair use concept in the US is stronger than in many others.
US owned a lot of IP and is considered to be unfair in its licensing practices in other countries -- they don't like embargoes on content, restrictive format licensing on contects, copy protection, delayed release dates in other countries and other US centric concepts.
They got plenty of movies, $1 is pretty cheap. I can use my Video/Audio Out from my computer to my VCR and record all those movies. So I couldn't care less about the 3 day rule.
(That was of course a rhetorical question). Just a few hours ago, there was a /. article on Square Pictures closing its studios in Hawaii. The film revenue did not cover its production costs. Maybe, just maybe, if all the people that used services like this one had gone out and paid to see the movie like they should have, Square could be lining up another great movie.
And $1 for a streaming film is theft. No argument can be made to the contrary. This website is using Taiwanese legal loopholes to make foreign produced movies available. You can be damn sure the film studios are seeing none of that $1 fee.
You could argue the movie companies have enough money already. ooooh, bad film executives. Evil MPAA. But, at the end of the day, when cuts need to be made, it's never the senior management that go. It's the little guy cleaning the hallway or the young girl desperately making tea for everybody in a bid to break into the industry.
MP3 trading is theft. DivX movie swapping is theft. Streaming movies against the license holders wishes is theft. Do not try and hide it under the "information wants to be free" flag - It is stealing, plain and simple. And even though you are still paying to see the film, it is no more legal than knowlingly purchasing a stolen car or computer from some dodgy looking chap in the back of a lorry.
TV is not free in England. You pay a tax on it.
When just about anyone can already install a file sharing software, download all the latest films to their hard drive, SVHS to their TV and watch it as many times as they want, for free?
With cable/DSL connections, 100 Gig HD becoming dirt cheap and DVD-Rs just around the corner, I know many people are using eDonkey, Morpheus and co to do just that...
Wake up: video on demand is already here. And it's not controlled by the megacorps...
When I first acquired broadband (a landmark event in my life). I figured it would be the nice thing to share out all the movies that I had downloaded for myself. All the movies I had downloaded were fresh releases, sometimes I had prerelease copies that weren't even in the theateres. I offered them in a format that could be saved to your hard disk... for free!
but the MPAA managed to hunt me down and send me and my ISP really naughty obscene letters. they quoted obscene literature such as "Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3" and "we hereby state, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 512" Eventually the letters started to get to offensive so I decisted all activity. But man, if I only had a team of lawyers at the time....
Somethings that are free are not worth the price.
Amen to that. I've downloaded several divx movies and after the nuisance of finding it in the first place, followed by a couple of weeks of broken and resumed downloads (and thats with a reasonably friendly file-sharing utility), using the better part of a Gig of bandwidth, and having other miscreants weezing stuff off my hard-drive, I'd rather go out and spend 20 bucks on a DVD. It's a better picture and sometimes they even throw in some other goodies (though I thought the tone poems on the Episode 1 DVD kinda sucked). I really wish someone would clue in the MPAA to this: That downloading movies is a pain in the ass and though I can't speak for everyone else's preferences, I really don't think that movie attendance or DVD sales is going to be threatened by it in any perceivable way. Please leave off the copy-protection shit and the regional encoding...you don't really need it.
You're using her as bait, Master!
One dollar is a lot for 80% of the world, about right for a lot of the far east, and "too cheap" in the US. This would be the same even if it is DVD quality.
The nice thing about buying items from the rest of the world is that it is often at a much lower price point overseas. Importing IP into the US is far easier than buying other IP such as drugs in Mexico.
I wonder if the US government is going to threaten a trade embargo with Taiwan until its government passes a DMCA-like law. But then again, could the US really afford such a trade ban with Taiwan? Almost everything is made there!
Maybe it's just my connection, but I can't seem to get to this site very well. If it can't suvive the /. effect, exactly how are they going to succesfully stream video ?
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
That reminded me off a special type of video cassete on which you bought a recent movie for half price. A special mechanism would trigger after the first viewing and at the second viewing the tape would be erased gradually while watching it.
So you could only see the movie twice and then have a blank tape which acted as any other tape. Everybody tought it was great !!!
After two days the net was full of articles about howto hack the tapes, you could just remove the 'erase head' (magnet) in under 15 minutes with some practice.
Oddly the tapes have never been heared of since...
These guys definitely have gonads. Not only are they throwing a big "up yours" to the MPAA. but they are also charging for access to hit TV shows like "Friends."
Some of their pricing decisions seem a bit arbitrary, however. For example, you can view the 3h17m movie Magnolia for the price of a single download, but the similarly long Schindler's list is broken up into three streams that must be viewed separately.
I give them five days before the US government threatens to give China the green light to annex unless the Taiwanese government cracks down on this site.
Those damn 10-10-220 commercials keep running through my head.
Now instead of those guys talking about 10-10-220, I can hear them saying, "A dollar buys you a lot at movie88. At movie88, you can watch any movie you want for just a buck!"
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
You can already watch a movie for a buck at a dollar theater, and on a big screen too. The only problem is that a bag of popcorn and a coke still cost $9.
However, you can circumvent that problem with a low-tech method: have your girlfriend bring a big purse stuffed with goodies.
They must have one hell-of-a server farm. Just went there and started streaming a movie. Figured by now they would have ben /.ed. Sunday may be a slow day for the effect ;-). Still, when I looked into doing this a couple of years ago, it was going to take some heavy iron to get the response times I was getting.
Three things are certain: Death, taxes, and lost data. Guess which has occurred.
Yeah this'll last. Right.
Taco once again proves his prophetic powers... the site's already MIA. Granted, that's just 'cause it's been slashdotted to the Seventh Circle of Hell, but hey...
--=Major
One useless man is called a disgrace; two are called a law firm; and three or more become a Congress. -John Adams, 1776
This is just as legal as the copy of Visual Studio Enterprise I bought in Taipei for $1
Now that this is happening to commercial films, I bet Taiwanese politician Chu Mei-Feng wants to file for copyright herself...
Yeah, like I did with that Kylie Minogue commercial ;)
:)
Not sure of the URL, but if you type streambox into google it should come up with the goods. I think its windows only, though.
I'm going to go and save a load of films to my hard disk now.
Yup, is a disgusting tax that you have to pay regardless of wheter your watch BBC or not, and regardless of whether you earn £5000 a year or £500,000.
However life sucks. And BBC doesnt get adverts.
I had an old leather jacket just for this purpose. I could hide a 12 inch sub and a six pack in the liner.
These guys will find a way to make this work (I hope.)
Has anyone been able to actually test this service?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And the buck a film rate strikes me as awesome. I'd watch a lot more movies if they were only a buck.
Yes, and I'd buy a lot more cars if they were only a buck. What's your point?
Importing IP into the US is far easier than buying other IP such as drugs in Mexico.
Interesting that you consider drugs to be intellectual property. Care to expand?
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
one of the really cool features back in the day of the bbs was a program that would detect when you were downloading an image and display it as it came in. This worked totally seperate from the terminal program.
Wouldn't it be cool if you would put a machine on the network that watched every packet going by and detected when you were receiving a stream of data and would write that stream of data to the drive and then convert it to DivX? Then it could have streaming software and a web server to show you everything that is available and to present it to anyone in the house.
-- Never make a general statement.
It can't even keep track of my username. "Welcome VISITOR" after it tells me 'signin successful'.
It's a big endless loop of 'sign in', choose a movie, 'sign in', etc.
Already slowed to the point that it's worthless...
Also, no 'Clerks' or 'Chasing Amy'. Or the search function just doesn't work...
sigh.
Wow, "James Bond and Batman" ?
I'd pay full price to see THAT movie!
Heck, I'd pay DOUBLE if Batman was played by Adam West.
The number one reason why this can't survive is bandwith. At $1 a movie, there is no way that a company can manage to pay its employees, maintain its servers, pay for the bandwith required to deliver streamed full-length movies, and pay the legal expenses that are sure to cost more than the three other previously mentioned expenses.
Are you new to Linux?
I'm in the movie business, specifically visual effects, and I strongly feel that we are on the precipice of a cliff in film budgets. CmdrTaco opines that he'd 'see a lot more movies if they were only a buck', and that would no doubt be true, but there is no way that anyone will ever be able to finance film extravaganzas like Pearl Harbor or, more to the point for this group, The Lord of The Rings for a dollar a ticket. Of course, in this Taiwanese case, the studios are probably getting $0.00 for each ticket, so it's even harder to break even.
The only way to finance a movie in this new world is to sell the eyeballs that are watching the movie for other purposes. Already theaters make about half of their money on concessions, for example. The two other obvious ways of making money on the film is ancillary merchandise (toys, etc.) and product placement (advertising) within the film.
Future films will have smaller budgets, as these ancillary sources of revenues probably cannot replace the big ticket prices being charged today. One can make exciting movies for less money, of course. We worked on The Fast and The Furious last year, which was a low-budget (by today's standards) movie that was designed to get the most bangs for the very limited visual effects bucks that were available. We've been fortunate enough to be named to the "Bake-Off" for visual effects this Wednesday night, where they will choose the Oscar nominees -- which demonstrates that you can do competitive visual effects-laden movies on very limited budgets.
This may not sit well with the ILM's of the world -- but it is also inevitable. While with music there were huge profit margins that gave the record companies some slack with the advent of song sharing over the 'net, the movie studios don't have that kind of margin anymore. Once movie sharing becomes ubiquitous, they just will not be able to make $100M blockbusters.
Enjoy them while you can.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Yeah, wonderful, find a site that's (practically) giving movies away, then post it to Slashdot.
Anyone else think the poster works for the RIAA? Jeez, I think that sound was some poor server in Taiwan melting.
Moderators - It's Funny. Laugh.
I have both windows and linux boxes to play around with this on. I do not believe the site itself is 'slashdotted' but aparently someone providing bandwidth between here and taiwan has a congested link. The site was very slow earlier, so I did a traceroute from my site (eastern US) and a site we help manage in Moscow. The Moscow traceroute was through a completely different link, and the site was up even though I could not get to it from my Windows box. Testing the site in lynx, from moscow, was much more responsive, as well. From the US site, it looks like hinet.net was the bandwidth bottle neck for US users, though aparently, they got it fixed because I'm watching a movie. I'm 22 hops away in the eastern US, and 14 hops in eastern Europe.
As far as accounts go, they seem to have some problem with Netscape for linux. Mozilla seems to work ok, though they seem to rely on some scripting features not used by Mozilla to manage user logins once you decide on what movie you want to watch. It might be a cookie thing, too. It seems to work well in IE 5.5 and IE6 for Windows.
I have been watching Frankenstein Goes to College for the past 45 minutes or so -- no skips, data loss, fragmentation, or other oddities.
Wendell
Everytime i try and watch a movie about 30 minutes into it. It cuts me off saying someone has logged in with my password and I must exit now.
The picture quality is good, but its a very small window. I had to zoom down to 800x600 just to see anything. Its not Resizable either.
I created an account and begain to watch "Eyes Wide Shut" but after about 30 seconds it was inturrupted saying that someone else had logged into my account, which I doubt.
This site is such a joke. Do you think I can just send them $5 and have them stream the pirated DVD via the international postal service.
Well, it's good for a laugh.
The *buffering buffering buffering buffering 3%*
Da *buffering*
mn *buffer--*
movi *buffering*
e got sla *buffering buffering buffering buffering 3 hours remaining*
shdot *buffering*
ted! *buffering*
--joshua
A new development - the site was slashdotted - it's extremely slow and video downloads do not work!
I can almost hear the engineer in the background... " She canna take much moore of it, keptin! "...
I'd suspect that even if they have access to the fattest pipes in Taiwan, the international feed to Taiwan would be saturated with
Here's to their good luck!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
How do you understand this section:
7. INDEMNITY
You agree to indemnify and hold us, and our subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, co-branders or other partners, and employees, harmless from any claim, demand,loss and damage whatsoever including reasonable attorneys' fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your use of the Product, your connection to the Product, your breach/violation of the TOS, or your breach/violation of any rights of another or any existing laws (local, state, national and/or international) whatsoever.
If they get sued by the big movie companies... who's gonna pay...?
Tonight.. on FOX!
I'm wondering how long Taiwan is going to remain free now. Certainly, the MPAA (And supporting RIAA) will send a large strike force to aid China in eradicating Taiwan! Forsooth! Those not with the Holy Union of the RIAA and MPAA, are against them!
Eh, more seriously, this won't help Taiwan out any. The RIAA and MPAA *do* have large amounts of sway with our friendly neighborhood politicians. Stuff like this will come up when they're deciding whether or not to turn a blind eye to China wiping them off the face of the Earth someday.
Hah! They don't even control the client hardware.
Site is ok, they are using RealPlayer format (YUCK) but they managed to pull it off better than most. Problems I had were for some reason I kept getting kicked out of the movie because it said I logged in from another location, which was not true and couldn't be since I just created the account 10 minutes before I got the first error message. Also when I log in to continue the movie it can take up to 200-300 seconds to rebuffer after finding the part of the movie I left off at.
Overall a cool idea but if I have to stop watching my movie all the time because of some flaw in their website, it will just end up making me mad.
Virtually all of the cost of new drugs is in finding or creating the one out of 1000s that has significant beneficial effects vs damage and then going through exhaustive trials to make sure you didn't miss something.
... The IP of knowing how to make it is only value due to IP protection.
Actually manufacturing the resulting drugs is sometimes expensive depending on the process, but it usually nearly free. In third world countries there are often identical drugs that are 1/10 or 1/100 the blockbuster price in the US. And generics are often drastically cheaper even in the US.
The raw materials are often virtually free, aspirin, codeine etc in bulk powder form went for at most a dollar or two per KG, when I last checked about ten years ago.
Not unlike the cost of your homemade copy of windows on a CD vs from the manufacturer or the cost of the truly high quality plug and play fully functional "Rolex" knockoff vs the one that the Rolex company makes, or YSL dress or Gucci bag
They've got some pre-1923 movies, that are out of copyright now. Look in the classics section. Imagine a service like this, if copyright only lasted 20 years...
I got the same thing other posters had about someone else is using your username. Hmm. Sounds a bit odd that so many people ran into the same problem.
.ra capture tool that does seem to work. How fun, now if they'd just let us download them as divx or asf it would be like p2p, but more organized.
I did find a windows
For a funny take on this topic, visit http://www.engrish.com/. It's hilarious. This particular site is about funny English-Japanese translations, but the effect is the same.
And it's not TOO bad. It's worth a buck to see a movie that I wasn't sure I wanted to see, if they fix the damn bugs... it's not worth a buck if I really wanna see the movie.
I created an account and started watching "American Pie 2". The first three things I noticed out the gate... the sound SUCKS, the picture at 300K is very small, and the subtitles (which you can't turn off) are almost always completely wrong. On the up side, there was NO slowdown or stutter in the video or audio over the course of the entire hour I was able to watch the movie.
After about an hour, the stream suddenly stopped, giving, instead, an error message that someone had just logged in as my user name, so I was being logged out. The message further indicated that it was likely my fault for handing out my login information.
I then spent over a half hour trying to log back in to no avail. It is apparently impossible to log in... period. Ultimately, I created a new account again, ran the free movie (Frankenstein in College), and was confronted with the same problems again... to include my "stolen account". I find the odds of that happening, TWICE, staggering...
At any rate, it could be a decent service if they offer a larger screen version, fix their sound, fix/remove the captions, and repair their screwy login system.
Well, my $0.02, and that's probably overrated...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Linux is for GAY HOMOSEXUAL NEWBIES who can't figure out how to use Windows. And Slashdot is perfect for all you GAY HOMOSEXUAL NEWBIES to discuss it and bash a real OS that you're all too incompetent to figure out.
GAY HOMOSEXUAL NEWBIES. All of you.
STOP ME BEFORE I POST AGAIN!
Well, damn it. Looks like the site is effectively slashdotted, and I'm not going to get to see their free preview of "Frankenstein: The College Years". Man, I was really looking forward to seeing that, too. =)
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Why do Chinese people have so much trouble making plurals?
Probably because marking number on nouns is optional in Chinese. Chinese has a noun for "one or more men" or "one or more" of anything else, and you can add adjectives that translate as "one" or "many" to make the noun specifically singular or plural.
Just add an 's' and be done with it!
That doesn't work on all nouns. Child does not become *childs, and sheep does not become *sheeps.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This was a program that very briefly let people download streaming RealMedia files to their hard drives to watch later, or even convert them to open formats like MPEG.
Does anyone still have a copy of this program? Can you try it on this site to see if it still works? I know after Real got the company shut down they changed their format around to break a lot of Streambox's functionality.
Every day I still curse Streambox for bending over and let Real have their way with them. If only this site were using Windows Media! ASFRecorder is still working flawlessly even on the latest WM8 files.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
I can't believe the reaction this is getting on Slashdot. This is basically giving the MPAA all the ammunition it needs to get their increasingly restrictive controls approved.
I am completely against all the extreme restrictions that things like the DMCA can put upon us. But, I am completely for the protection of intellectual properties for their creators. If the movie houses don't make money off of their movies, you can expect the quantity and quality to go way down.
im glad i got my video out card :)
Its ironic that these pirates are very vulnerable to being ripped off in turn. Their protection of their own income stream is pretty weak. It is possible to use some very basic software, locate the URL, and download the films (complete) or link to them directly (imagine all the warez sites that are going to abuse this) or just swap the URLs with friends without them having to pay.
I just went to movie88.com and signed up for an account, and noticed $5.00 of complimentary credit... that's pretty cool. I choose to watch Casablanca for my first movie, and clicked on a wrong link (apparently), when I get the following error:
     "You already having this movie!"
Hillarious!
Had trouble getting the site to load, as some others have said.
However, I'm streaming a movie at the 350 Kbps rate and have been for over 20 minutes and have had no trouble with it at all. No lag, no stutter, no rebuffer. Pretty impressive.
I'm on a T1, but still...
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
2002-01-31 10:37:04 Free streaming movies? (articles,news) (rejected)
Bah
English is not my first language, so cut me some slack -: Om du kan lasa det har sa kan du Svenska
I haven't looked it up, but from what I understand it's perfectly okay to sell a region-specific DVD player. On the other hand, there's nothing the big publishers can do to prevent you from taking your DVD player to the shop downtown and having it de-regionised to play DVD's for other regions, I've definitely seen shops and electrical technicians advertising that particular service in the past. Region encoding was in some way ruled as an anticompetitive practice, I think, but I don't have it as firsthand information.
I'm guessing but it probably came in about the same time that all the parallel importing restrictions were lifted a decade or so ago. They were temporarily put back for movie material a few weeks ago by the Labour government on the grounds of "protecting local cinema" from all of the currently released movies coming in on parallel-imported DVD's at the same time. That said, I'm not sure whether that actually involves de-regionising of DVD players or if it's actually just importing the videos and DVD's to New Zealand in the first place. I suspect it's only the latter.
I noticed the other week that Wellington library even advises on the shelves that some marked DVD's they loan might not play in region 4 players, so if it's not legal (but I think it is) then I guess there's some significant civil disobedience coming from local government employees.
Can anyone with a better understanding expand on this?
This sounds handy but its still a hassle, and if you're like most people you gotta watch the movie on your clear but small monitor.
At my local library I can rent new movies on VHS and DVD for anywhere from free to 2 bucks.. It may not be hip to get your rentals at the library but some of them (like mine) have a suprisingly good collection.
Up until 5 years ago, I was a HUGE movie buff. I would go to see 1-2 movies at the theaters. When I went to school, I stopped watching movies much, because I wasn't watching television. Without TV, no commercials, no connection to pop culture... It was quite strange. I'd still see the occaisional movie, but I didn't hear about many.
Now, I'm over a year away from school and have a home entertainment system. Until I got the system, I was watching movies and television again. Now with a ReplayTV, I don't see commercials. The cost of movie tickets is $9.50, so for the cost of the two movie tickets, I can buy a DVD and watch it at home in surround sound on a HDTV. If I want to watch the movie later, I can. I don't really rent movies because of the hassle of returning them.
I never thought that I would stop going to see movies, but I mostly have.
I'll still see an eye candy movie, but the rest? I'll watch at home. There is no reason to go see a movie that isn't for the eye candy. I have a better sound system than most of the theaters, so I'd have to go to the good one 30 minutes away.
I dunno, I seem to enjoy having people to my place and watching a movie much more than going out.
Now, if you don't really like to watch TV and Movies, the $5k startup costs for a decent system (what my "midrange" system cost) is rediculous. However, if you don't really care, you can do a passable job for $1500 and still enjoy the experience.
Summer action blockbusters won't go, as those are more fun in the theatre. However, I no longer see them 2-3 times there. I see them once then buy the DVD when it comes out.
I doubt that the blockbuster will go away, but the theater as a way of distributing artsy films may go away. That's okay though, digital cable and better encoding algorithms should open up plenty of channels for them, and artsy films need to make less to do well.
The $100m film won't look good on your computer screen compared to a real theater, and when shit blows up I want to be screaming and yelling with the audience. However, $20 for two people to see a silly comedy is a bit much.
Alex
If the movie houses don't make money off of their movies, you can expect the quantity and quality to go way down.
...and don't even get me started about appointed presidents and the poor quality of government. Will Rogers must be chuckling somewhere.
They seem to be making plenty of money, the quantity is up, and the quality is crap for 95% of the offerings. Hmmm... how can it get much worse?
Will Rogers said, "People get the government they deserve." I guess the same goes for entertainment. If we keep paying them to go see crap, they will produce more crap.
"Go on, take the money Enron."
-- Steve Miller Band (with a little help from current events.)
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
"And BBC doesnt get adverts."
On so many levels, this makes sense:
1) BBC TV sucks. It just does.
2) UK TV sucks. I don't know how you can stand it.
3) USA TV sucks. But a lot less than UK TV. I can barely watch it.
4) The BBC doesn't get adverts. Bully for them.
5) Nobody would put commercials on BBC (see point #1 above) anyway.
6) The solution to bad rating is to force your viewers (at the point of a gun) to pay for the BBC.
7) And you're bragging about it.
P.S. Wasn't it so cute to watch Angelie Jolie do a bad english accent?
The site is awfully slow now and I think that the wise thing to do is to bookmark the page and try to visit it sometime next week.
Also, I would like to note that this will surely not last, as the long arm of MPAA will reach them, sooner rather than later.
Anyway, this is a great idea, but we all know what happens to great ideas if the BIG companies don't approve them...
Why use Real? Isn't the Full-screen Video on Demand over 28.8 ready yet? Don't tell me this wasn't true?
Bummer.
nonsig. unsig. desig.
What's the User Agent string to fake a connection by realplayer?
Thanks.
The culmination of millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of human civilization...
"Frankenstein: The College Years".
Terrorists are now the least of my worries.
A choice of masters is not freedom
They are so clearly insulated from the end result that anything shipped is simply gone. It's sort of like the classic used auto dealer "taillight guarantee".
"Once the tail lights can't be seen, they guarantee is over".
Caveat emptor,
Here is what you agree to (among other things) in the Terms of Service:
"You agree to indemnify and hold us. . . harmless from any claim, demand,loss and damage whatsoever including reasonable attorneys' fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your use of the Product, your connection to the Product, your breach/violation of the TOS, or your breach/violation of any rights of another or any existing laws (local, state, national and/or international) whatsoever."
(abridged, emphasis added)
In other words: you could get busted for this, and that's your problem. In fact, if someone (MPAA, government) sues us because you have been using this service, you get to pay our attorney's fees.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Here in the US, filing for a copyright within the first month isn't required in order for [item x] to be copyrighted. Just sticking a "Copyright (C) [year] [copyright holder]" is enough. However, if you want the right to sue, you've got to file within the first 3 months.
404 Not Found, dammit.
There is no such thing as a streamed format that cannot be saved to disk, only clients that don't have a save option.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
For just $2.99 + tax, I can go down to the local Blockbuster (And guess what, it's NOT Slashdotted!), rent a DVD and rip it to DivX ;) at great two-disc quality. To me, that's worth the extra $2.00 and change.
Canonical site here, lots of rippers, Streambox, URLSniffer, etc.
Da Blog
I believe that the tcpdump requires root privileges.
Here's how to use it:
1. load up movie88 on your Linux machine (with properly configured RealPlayer) or another machine on the same hub - Windoze works fine for this.
2. 'order' a movie. It should show you a list of all movies that you've ordered, with a button for 300Kb/s.
3. run this script on your Linux machine.
4. Click the 300Kb/s link in your browser.
tcpdump will intercept the RealPlayer's request and pass it along to wget.
Voila!
http://www.geocities.com/q3world2000/movie88/movie 88.zip
0 0. rm
and a test movie download url
http://210.59.224.71/~movie1~/wWvk319p5s1Rqh5d3
Why should I pay a buck for a crappy Real stream when I can go to one of a hundred IRC channels and grab a VBR PDVD Divx that looks like a DVD...for free?
The Lord of the Rings SVCD circulating everywhere is a perfect example. Why pay a buck when its all there for free?
Perhaps if the MPAA and RIAA had reacted in 1997 with new business models instead of their knee-jerk, ever-thickening layers of litigation and calls for Draconian and even illegal (i.e. protected CDs) protection schemes, we wouldn't be posting to this thread.
this is the most reliable and lag-free video stream i've ever seen! I used to think sputnik7 was smooth, but it still hiccupped at times and took 10-20 seconds to buffer.
Of course, I'm watching Frankenstein: the College Years. A bad movie over a smooth video stream is still a bad movie =).
What they are doing is legal in Taiwan. Now if you live in the States and use this service....
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
You are allowed to apply different rules to your own citizens and their works. For example, the United States does have registration requirements that must be met if you want to sue for certain kinds of damages. If a US author doesn't register, their remedies are limited. If a foreign author doesn't register, they aren't limited. Yup...US law actually treats foreign authors better than US authors (and if you are going to pirate...pirate domestically!).
What's probably happening, assuming that there is a grain of truth to this story, is that Taiwan is doing what the US does, and subjecting their own people to extra requirements. So, it is believable that a movie made in Taiwan that is shown and not registered does not get copyright, but it is certainly not true for foreign (to Taiwan) movies.
The DMCA have just anounced that they have adquired Slashdot.org from the OSDN network, in a press release they quote "the slashdot effect" as an effective tool to prevent pirated material from reaching the USA, in much the same way as the 1000 monkeys scripting endless pop up windows and "vote for me" sites, make it easier to legally buy stuff than download warez & co.
-I can only program my video,ahh, I am not a gook, but a joook -The World is a theatre of the absurd
For what it's worth, one of the sole benefits of living on the Chinese mainland is DVD's for 7 Chinese yuan (US$0.84)! Sold at foreigner-friendly restaurants - you get to flick through a huge selection of DVDs (little prOn though) and settle the bill for food and movies together. New releases are available about 2-3 weeks before debut screening in the US.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
Jerking it doesn't count as sex.
Any reason why Trancers and Trancers 4 are available but not Trancers 2 & 3 & 5?
I want my Tim Thomerson Trancers marathon for $5 damnit!
------------- I didn't know she was your sister I swear!
Some are focussing on issues with the MPAA in this article but I've found little on usability.
I managed to sign up for one of their accounts in about 10 seconds but am having trouble actually watching a movie. It has to imbed the viewer in my browser to watch and my understanding is that only the windows version of realplayer will do that. I'm currently running mozilla under mac osx and am wondering what I should do to be able to watch one of these. Does mozilla even have a realplayer plugin? Should I try a different browser? Should I try compiling the "community" version of realplayer under the my xserver instead of using the mac version?
I'd appreaciate advice from anyone who has gotten movie88 to work under any non-windows platform *cough* linux *cough*.
Also, I know this sounds crazy but I'm trying to do all of this under a dailup connection *sigh*, does anyone know if realplayer will automatically try to send me a more heavily compressed stream or just try to smash the 100kbs version down my pipe. If this is the case, is there any way around their system that keeps me from downloading the file? I'd be totally willing to let it download overnight.
The only reason I'm interested in this is because of their sizable anime selection. I've found that the only way to get the anime I want is to order it online, which is kind of expensive. I doubt any of the other movies in that service will catch on, as going to a movie theater or renting isn't all that expensive. But anime *is* all that expensive and at 50 cents (for example) for battle angle its worth my looking into, even on a 56k connection with the crappy realplayer format.
"Streambox VCR turn on!"
(SHOWGIRLS begins streaming)
"Someone set us up the bomb!"
(movies88) "You are already having this movie!"
"What you say!"
(Movies88) "All your Hollywood IP are belong to us!"
And so on and so forth.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Through Time Warner, I've got HBO OnDemand and iControl. Both let me watch movies/shows at exceptional quality. The cost: $3-6 / movie and ten dollars a month for HBO OnDemand.
Worth it all the way. HBO can be thin at times, but iControl even let me watch Half Baked... pause, rewind and all. Only $3.95 for all day pass.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Any revenue from this could be funding terrorist activity! Forget the MPAA/RIAA let's just bring in the Daisy Cutters to solve the problem.
Hiel Bush
... and as such is signed up to TRIPS which requires adherence to the Berne Convention.
...
In fact, I believe the change in copyright law came a couple of years ago in preparation for their accession to the World Trade Org. - so the copyright law mentioned is seriously out of date.
Certainly, the Taiwanese government was making an effort (without much effect) last year to stamp down on piracy etc. to convince the rest of the WTO that they'd be 'good neighbours' - but now they're in (as of January 1st) they might not care as much
Took about an hour of some basic Java programming and a little packet sniffing to be able to save an arbitrary movie to my disk. I have yet to see if I can get around the 5 movies free limit, but that's a different problem.
It's obviously probably not legal to do this, but it's an interesting demo of how "content management" just isn't effective.
First, identification info that is sent to the server:
.cfg file:
e d"
.rm)
When you watch a movie, the server is sent a string that includes your operating system, country, language, processor class, and maybe some other things. Your ZIP code is sent. A GUID is also sent. My GUID was all 0s but this might vary, perhaps if a different operating system or proccessor is used. Or maybe this will be implemented in the future.
How to capture the videos locally:
1. Get The Proxomitron
2. Get Streambox VCR (This program is no longer published, most likely for legal reasons. Search google for it, and make sure you get a version that has the Real Media capability, not all versions do.)
3. Get Project URL Snooper, CommView, or any other packet sniffing program.
4. Copy the following text into a text editor and save it as a
----cute here----
##
## Proxomitron Config File
##
[Global]
Enable = TRUE
FreezeGIF = FALSE
FilterHTML = FALSE
FilterHeadersOut = TRUE
FilterHeadersIn = FALSE
EnableProxy = FALSE
EnableAutoRun = FALSE
ForceTextures = FALSE
NoTextures = FALSE
SysTray = TRUE
Port = 8080
[HTTP headers]
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "Accept-Encoding:"
Replace = "gzip"
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "Accept-Language:"
Replace = "en-US, en, *"
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "Accept:"
Replace = "*/*"
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "Bandwith:"
Replace = "1544000"
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "ClientID:"
Replace = "Win98_4.90_6.0.9.584_play32_AOL8_en-US_586_axemb
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "Connection:"
Replace = "Keep-Alive"
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "GUID:"
Replace = "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "Host:"
Replace = "210.59.224.69"
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "Icy-MetaData:"
Replace = "1"
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "Language:"
Replace = "en-US, en, *"
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "RegionData:"
Replace = "06555"
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "SupportsMaximumASMBandwidth:"
Replace = "1"
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "User-Agent:"
Replace = "RMA/1.0 (compatible; RealMedia)"
[Patterns]
Name = "Unnamed HTML Filter"
Active = FALSE
Limit = 256
Match = "Free Movies"
[Proxies]
----cut here----
5. Start Proxomitron and load the config file you just created.
6. Use the packet capture software to find the URL of the movie and copy it to the clipboard. (It consists of letters and numbers, followed by 100 or 300 for the quality, and ends in
7. Start Streambox and goto Edit, then Paste Link.
8. Make sure the URL is correct, then click the Proxy tab.
9. Click Use HTTP Proxy. For host enter "localhost" and for port enter "8080"
10. Click OK and let the movie download. (Each 300k movie I have downloaded so far is between 250-300 megs.)
11. Enjoy
Notes: I have read that it is possible to capture the movies without using Proxomitron by hexing Streambox, but this method is less permanent and I know it works. Proxomitron has many other great uses and you should explore its features. Finally, my config file is from version 3(b) but hopefully it works with newer versions, or else you can always enter the above data manually. It may not be neccesary to use all the HTTP headers above to trick the server, but theres nothing wrong with being thorough.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
So they are using real's streaming technology.. let me guess what the first movie you get is "Buffering" and if you like that one, the sequal also referred to as "Buffering" can be had for only $1 more.
Yesterday. I do this sort of thing regularly. I invented a machine to reorganize the molecules in a candy bar into a plastic card with a magnetic strip. I haven't been able to buy anything with the results, yet, but work is progressing..
The amount of beauty required to launch 1 ship: 1 Millihelen