(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.

Comments

O well

[Compunerd]

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.

And ... I'll love to see this 'hacker-proof' format of theirs. I bet a hundered dollars it's already creacked :-)

roy

Re:O well

[kimihia]

For those interested in the dirty details, may I recommend:

• wget
• asfrecorder
• Squid
• Ethereal (+ tcpdump)
• A plugin-equipped browser (eg, Mozilla)

With that combination (and sometimes "strings") I can download ANY Quicktime or Windows Media video that I want to - permissions be damned. Plus, get this: mplayer on Linux does a better job of playing Windows Media files than Windows Media Player on Windows! (And at a higher screen res too!)

BTW, the secret letter is 'm'. (This may become apparant if you have done the above.) I don't have time for a complete downloading HOWTO, but ... mov = wget, asf = wget, asx = asfrecorder, wmv = try asfrecorder then wget.

Cannot be saved?

[Grax]

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?

Legal Release Date

[satanami69]

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?

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 /., but they need a way to make a return on their investments just like you and me.

Re:Oh...I see.

[Ilgaz]

Um whats the reason to be that much anti-realplayer? Don't tell you are following Steve Gibson's fantastic ideas that Wmedia is good, Real is evil...

As I am on Slashdot,its even more interesting. They may have AOL in the back but Real isn't the only propetioary firm/codec giving you Linux/BSD client?

oh, I worked on AV business, let me say... Of course, Quicktime is the best one (if they can code a client that can do true fullscreen, argh) and Real is the second. Its my personal view. For me windowsmedia is the least suscessful project of Microsoft, forever.

If you want an open format? No, it won't happen, than people with T1/T3 whatever corparate lines will "leech" all movies from them.

slashdotted?

[mjh]

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 ?

Re:slashdotted?

[m_evanchik]

I have the same experience. The web site is slow but the streaming video is maxing out my broadband at 1050 Kbs.

This is pretty interesting. I guess they did a good job scaling their video servers but not a good job on the web server. Kudos to them for devoting the most resources to the most important application.

Balls

[corby]

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.

Save it with... streambox

[Anonymous Coward]

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. :)

Movie financing about to be turned on its head

[Thagg]

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

Re:Movie financing about to be turned on its head

[Turing Machine]

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

You may be right, but one could certainly argue otherwise. Producing movies is a lot like software in that almost all of the costs are upfront. Once the movie is made, or the distribution CDs are burned, the added cost to the production company of adding another viewing is minimal. Example:

Suppose I go to the movies about 4 times a year at the current $7.00 price (which is about right). Now suppose the price drops to a buck and I start going every week. In the first scenario I transfer $28.00/year to the theater (and indirectly to the studio). In the second one, I transfer $52.00/year to the theater. The added costs incurred by the theater are very small (in fact, they wind up making a lot more money on concessions). The added costs to the studio are minimal (they'd need to strike more prints, and they're expensive, but they'd be amortized across a larger number of viewings).

The point is that you can't automatically assume that "higher retail price" == "higher profit". Rolex watches cost a lot more than Timex ones. Which company makes more money? A meal at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant costs a lot more than one at McDonalds. Which company makes more money?

Another example: In the early days of VHS tapes they were selling them for $70-$100 each (in less-inflated dollars!). Now they're more like $20. Guess which price has proven to yield more money?

It MAY be that the current ticket prices maximize revenue. It may not. Expecting reasonable business practices from Hollywood is a little unrealistic, so I don't think we know for sure.

Of course, your point about no one producing a big-budget movie in an atmosphere of universal piracy is spot on. Lower prices can increase profits, but the price has to be greater than 0. :-)

Re:Imagine the time that went into this.

[Senor-D]

What about automated encoders? How hard could it be?

Well, it depends on the media used. If they are transferring from the 35mm reels, someone needs to splice them together, run the video transfer device, etc. Real hassle. If they are encoding from DVD's, you need someone to format the output for every movie. Without this, the encoder would waste space and time on the sharp edge between the picture itself and the black borders. Also a real hassle. It would definitely take a lot of time, or a lot of people, in either case.

I suppose they might be able to write a program to format the output of the DVD's automatically, but I've never seen this done myself.

Re:Same treatment as the Ukraine?

[Lemmy Caution]

The strategic importance of Taiwan right now is such that if the MPAA started complaining about Taiwanese copyright violations in Washington, they would be cheerfully told to go merrily and directly to hell.

Re:stream capturing

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude,

There is no shame in watching pr0n. Maybe to a few puritan and feminist nuts, but pr0n is now the NORM in the world today.

Movies for less than US$1

[grainofsand]

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.