Limited-Use DVD Technology

ps_inkling writes: "Two companies are creating different techniques to make DVD discs unusable after a set period of time. SpectraDisc has a patent on a limited-play DVD technology; FlexPlay is currently developing limited play DVD technology. The SpectraDisc technique is to coat the DVD with a film, then wrap the DVD in an anaerobic package. The idea is to sell these 'play-once' DVD movies at a substantial discount to regular DVDs as a way to compete with pay-per-view or movie ticket outlets."

Comments

waste

[Krimsen]

"creating more waste faster than ever imagined"

I don't get it.

Re:waste

[Tom Davies]

From FlexPlay's FAQ:
It is interesting to note that a recent scientific study found that because Flexplay discs will eliminate unnecessary trips by car to video stores, they will actually result in a net benefit to the environment. The study, conducted by Jonathan Koomey, a noted environmental expert, concluded that if Flexplay discs constituted 10% of all rentals, the technology would save 50 million gallons of gasoline, eliminate 111,000 metric tons of carbon emissions, 700 tons of hydrocarbons, and 1,000 tons of nitrogen oxides every year. These emissions savings would be equivalent in their effects to removing 82,000 passenger car and light trucks from the road permanently.

Re:waste

[damiangerous]

Hence, I won't be compelled to rent another on impulse.

Of course you will. How did you get the first one? The idea is not to have specific stores for them anymore, but to make them ubiquitous. You'll see them every time you go grocery shopping, or to Wal-Mart, or even fill up your gas tank.

Re:waste

[cdrudge]

According to the Blockbuster web site, the rent on average 1700 videos an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They also have about 1/3 of their market. So, so total market size for video rentals is around 44.6 million videos a year.

This figure is for total number of rentals, and might also include video games and non-video rental items but just for the sake of showing how off these figures are, let's just assume that this is only DVD rentals.

So 10% of this figure would be about 4.4 million DVD rentals. That means that people use over 10 gallons of gas per video rental and 25 kg of carbon emissions! I think that 10 gals/video is quite funny since Blockbuster claims that there is a store within 10 miles of almost every metropolitan house.

I thought this had been done with DivX...

[WildBill1941]

And it failed miserably. My uncle's got a DivX player that's near-useless. He should've got one that also played regular DVDs - but hey, he was an early adopter. I don't think limited-use discs or other media makes sense. People want to *own* the movies and music they buy. Otherwise, everyone would listen to the radio all the time, or get pay-per-view movies on their cable or satellite. But hey - what do I know? I'm just an American Consumer - I vote with my dollar. And my dollar won't be buying a use-once disc. Unless you can rip it to DivX;-).

Re:I thought this had been done with DivX...

[Malcontent]

"I vote with my dollar. And my dollar won't be buying a use-once disc."

You seem to be under the mpression that this technology is aimed at consumers. It's not. It's aimed at publishers. You will not have a choice of paying one dollar for a one-use disc and 10 dollars for a unlimited use disc. You will only have the choice of paying 10 dollars for a one-use disc.

Re:I thought this had been done with DivX...

[cadallin451]

Exactly, one of the huge things that companies have been able to miss (although I have no idea how) is that most people are honest, but you can push them to far. If they feel they are being cheated, or otherwise screwed-over, they lose their moral hang-ups over breaking the law. The real answer to this is to create a few open, easily used formats. DVD is about right, although macrovision should be removed, since it's a pain. I'd also favor widespread use of a 3in DVD format like the Gamecube media, for the purposes CDs are currently used for.

Widespread paranoia over piracy is completely unfounded, the only example of an unprotected format, the CD, was wildly successful, while overly protected ones have failed miserably. I would even go so far as to attribute DVDs success to the cracking of its copy-protection.

The media industry now faces a choice, they can either listen to consumers and release unprotected, recordable, easy to use formats, or die, as consumers turn to other (possibly illegal) sources for the products they want.

One time? Pfft...easy..

[SamMichaels]

Once is all I need to copy it :)

Difference

[emmons]

The difference between Circuit City's fiasco and this is that divx required a special player which dialed an 800 number to see if you're eligible to play the disk. That part wasn't so horrible. The bad part is that CC wasn't making any money with it so they dropped it and screwed all the people who had paid extra for the specialized players.

These new ideas are entirely different.. they rely on the disc itself to limit how many times you can play it. I, for one, wouldn't mind paying $1-2 for a DVD which allows me to watch a movie a couple times until the coating on the disk makes it unreadable. You only have to read it once to rip it. ;)

This technology was already pioneered...

[Xpilot]

... on Mission Impossible. Jim sticks in those shiny discs in and it self destructs after it plays once...

Shooting itself in the foot

[Platinum Dragon]

An introduction of this technology will almost certainly increase DVD piracy, as people will see an opportunity to get a full movie cheap. FlexPlay, at least, claims their discs will work in all DVD drives, including DVD-ROMs. The market for DVD burners, currently technophile and media professional toys, may witness a small upsurge in demand, and ripping tools will become popular as the damn-copyright set notes the obvious ways around the time limit - make copies of the discs.

There's no way this can come to any good. Abort mission.

play once dvd + betty and joe customer = bad

[DRACO-]

A play once dvd priced at $5.88 or just a buck would severely break a store. Customers wont know the difference from the play once dvd's or the standard dvds. They will see that cheap price for say, Fast and the furious and nab it before someone else does. Then when they get home the kids will spark up the dvd player while mom is in the kitchen cooking. Mom calls the kids for dinner and the kids stop the dvd player and have dinner. The family retires back to the living room and starts the dvd from the beginning only to find mom is not going to see any of it because the dvd has alredy burned off it's boot sector.

You will turn up with upset customers, fast.

I work at a walmart in the nortwest houston area. I can vouch for the fact that customers are not very quick at understanding things much less take the time to read anything. All they see is a Price, and an object they want. A while back we were stocking Jarassic part 3 in dvd. One full screen, one wide screen. Most customers dont have a clue there a difference and have a problem with the wide screen letter box format. Most of them come back and ask about full screen. They didnt see a little sliver of text at the bottom of the dvd that said wide screen.

Customers arent very bright when they come in stores. They will plow through water on the floor, spilled legos, anything. They never see signs higher than 6 foot, (never can find the 2 signs in the store both with 3 ft letters saying restrooms).

Customers seem to check their brains at the door and dont understand what Out of stock means and ask, "well, what does that mean?" Out of stock means out of stock, there is not a magic hat we can pull a 19 inch tv out of and if you ask me again Im going to scream!

These things are going to be bad stuff. Just think, they might write games to these discs. Then we will have a war on our hands.

DRACO-

Capitalism Beats Environmentalism once more

[gessleX]

The United States, a disposable nation. We build our lives around the convenience of Dixie cups, Saran Wrap, dime store paper plates, a Ziploc bags.

Now, disposable movies. Like we needed one more thing for the landfill?

CSS encryption + these two companies = more AOL cds

Waste products.

As Nancy Reagan was once said, "Just Say No!" :)

Re:Bad

[jellybear]

I like eat-once popcorn too. The other stuff is shit.

DivX is not the best comparison...

[singularity]

The best comparison to this technology is renting a DVD from your local Blockbuster. While I am not a big fan of Blockbuster, per se, I see absolutely *NO* advantages of this technology over renting at Blockbuster.

At Blockbuster, I walk in, give my $4, and walk home with any movie on DVD. I can watch this movie any number of times in a certain time period. With these discs, I walk into Blockbuster, put down my $4, and walk out with a movie on DVD that I can watch any number of times in a certain amount of time.

Why, then, would anyone get one of these?

Well, I suppose you do not have to return these new movies, but is that a big enough incentive?

If you charge $3.99 for one of these movies, I assume that Blockbuster is going to walk away with $2 per disk. That is a 100% return. On the other hand, if Blockbuster buys a new DVD for $20 and rents it 15 times at $4/rent, that is Blockbuster walking away with a 300% return on the investment.

On top of that, Blockbuster still has the movie! They can continue to rent it out, or sell it as a previewed move for $10, making even more.

No, this makes no sense for consumers or for the rental people.

Re:One time? Pfft...easy..

[FastT]

Blockbuster want these more than life itself.

Wrong. Late fees, which frequently cost more than the original rental, are a major revenue stream for Blockbuster and other movie rental companies. They don't have any incentive to back this sort of technology.

An Application

[rlp]

How 'bout a copy of Battlefield Earth that self-destructed before you watched it. I'd pay some bucks for that ...

Warner Brothers = cheap

[LetterJ]

I read an article in the paper this week that pointed out that Warner Bros Studio is irritating many other studios with their pricing strategy. WB wants regular DVD's to become impulse items like magazines and priced accordingly. They are already pricing new titles at $15US and many at $10US. If WB keeps up this strategy, it'll be pretty hard to sell a one-view DVD for $2US when many full DVD's are only running $5-7US.

Re:DivX

[telecaster]

(AP) - Hollywood Exec's have filed a lawsuit against... All of Mankind.

Hollywood Executives today have filed a lawsuit and a motion to stop all
of Mankind from infringing on what they calling "long-term memory copyright infringment".

It seems that Hollywood fears that Mankind might actually retain copyrighted
material in long-term memory -- which Hollywood claims is a violation of the
digital copyright laws.

Tom Werner has been quoted recently as saying: "We've suspected for a long time
that most people retain what they see on television or in a movie for months, and we
believe that we are losing millions and maybe billions of dollars of revenue
because of this phenomenon. What we'd like to see is that all of Mankind simply
forget what they just saw within in a reasonable time frame, or atleast until
AFTER a show goes into syndication, and NOT steal copyrighted material by holding
it in memory."

The Holywood heavyweight and creator of Friends, a popular televion show which
airs on NBC, has been working closely with lobbyists to try and move a
bill into congress that would mandate all of Mankind to simply erase what
they watched on televsion or saw in a theatre within in a "reasonable time frame" before
they are in a 'copyright violation situation'.

Opponents of the law are having problems the language, mainly around the
terms "reasonable time frame". But insiders believe that eventually Hollywood
will be succesful in moving this law through congress and by doing so it will
require all of Mankind will to eventually forget anything that has been
copyrighted or trademarked. If Mankind does not do so in a "reasonable timeframe",
they (we) could stand to pay another "rental or transaction fee comparable to
the original fee."

The Artist Formally Known As Prince, has issued a
press release by saying, "The System is broken and now they need to find another way to
make more off the work of the actor, artist and musician. The artist is the
real loser in this situation. Now company's want to collect on copyrighted material
that you've remembered? Where and how does the artist get paid for this?
And what if two people want to swap memories? How do they handle that?
I think this will only force more artists to move towards a 'lifetime
memory subscription model', this way it will cut out the middle man and ensure that
the artist gets what he or she deserves."

...hey, its friday