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'Harry Potter' Offered (Legitimately) on the Net
Skyshadow writes "Warner Brothers is distributing several movies, including Harry Potter and Mars Attacks via the internet. The price is the same as I pay for Pay-Per-View from my satellite provider ($3.99 for a 24 license), and the movies are in the area of 700 megs. I'm sure that movies on demand will eventually take off as a legitimate and feasible distribution method, but given that a vast majority of US households are without broadband, is this an idea before its time?"
It does show they're starting to get the idea though.
I figure it would take me about, oh, 24 hours to download a movie...
No need to apply DRM to this movie
Given that they are not copy protecting Harry Potter, this seems to make sense. Better to make a little money selling it.
Dropped broadband in 2001. Haven't missed it. You know you're in a recession when businesses keep pushing the same dead horse.
it was a good movie, then this deal would be great.
I see this ending as badly as the Circuit City DIVX attempt did. the "CinemaNow" software will be cracked, and we'll see these movies all over the newsgroups in a matter of days. Microsoft, who came up with the anti-piracy CinemaNow scheme, has admitted that they don't necessarily engineer for security, so I wonder what makes WB think they can start now?
What the what!?! Amidst all this lagal brick-a-brack and industry association B.S. a company is actually doing something that reflects a real consumer market?
Somebody please ask the flying pig if hell has frozen over.
crazy dynamite monkey
How long until the digital Protection is cracked and distributed?
This model, while prompting faster connections and satisfying demand by users is bound to fail.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Which will be hacked to allow unlimited playtime in... 3...2...1...
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
But when is the next book coming out?
It would be really cool if someone who previously DL'ed the movie could cache the movie for others in the local network. This is where STB technology will really make things like this affordable/profitable. Imagine a box that anticipates your viewing and downloads stuff overnight...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I certainly applaud companies for taking on this risky move. On the one hand they are embracing technology and making it cheaper and easier for consumers/fans to buy movies, but on the other, you're also giving out free copies for the warez kids to go distribute illegally.
For me I'd buy it, but the damn pirates always ruin it for the rest of us honest folks. Keep your fingers crossed.
eTrade SUCKS
Here in Canada, I don't know ONE PERSON who doesn't have broadband -- even among people who don't know how to use a mouse-wheel. Beyond ranting, it is my feeling that US broadband is far behind the times, and must catch up. Hopefully the new demand created by services such as this one will help to move the market forward.
I quess that points to Windows Media DRM which uses this kind of architecture.
Of course, that kind of comment (my own), misses the point. Those that would take the trouble to do such a thing (college students, "self-taught" anti intellectual property zealots) are probably not substantial lost revenue anyway.
My prediction: Whoever it is is doing this is smart enough to realize that they wont make any money off of it anytime soon, even when broadband makes it to the home PC as long as the home PC sits on a desk with a 17" screen. Rather, they are using this time to pilot technologies and probe some of the subtleties of user behaviour so that when more fully internet-aware TV-related devices like that whatzit that microsoft is working on are released, they can capitalize.
...renewals of the license are cheap. (Provided that the big honking file can actually be reused.)
:^)
I don't think I'm ready to pay $2.99 or even $1.99 every time I want to watch the movie. Maybe $0.99, but even that would get old after a while.
After 5-10 viewings, I'm better off having bought the DVD, since that's got infinite viewings (theoretically speaking) and resale value.
As much as we live in a virtual world nowadays, humans still like shiny material things they can hold in their hands. Hard to see how a timelocked file can overcome that urge to "own".
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
If they offered it for free, then we wouldn't be able to download other copyright material (read: mp3's) with the limited bandwidth we have.
I'd be more inclined just to purchase the dvd, for several reasons... number 1 of which is that dvd would be of higher quality (with surround sound). Harry Potter made really good use of surround sound IIRC, especially in the game they play. (Sorry I bought it for my nephew and had to watch it with him so don't remember too much) Cribbage? I dunno.
I somehow doubt it is broadband's killer app.
I know it can be a foolish position to maintain on this site, but I strongly support the emergence of (open, cross-platform, fair) DRM technology.
As someone who makes his living from what I write, I know that I wouldn't release my work to widespread, instantaneous copying unless I knew I could secure some of my own rights as to how that copying takes place. Many other individuals (as well as big, greedy corporations) feel the same. The fundamental idea is that before I hand you the keys to my car, I want to know whether you can run out back and give my car away to a dozen of your buddies - or strangers.
So as long as DRM is reasonable about fair use, stops the majority of people from doing the wrong thing (and can more-or-less keep up with the bleeding-edge crackers), I look forward to it. This way I can get the downloadable movies, music, and text that I want, while actually supporting the person who made it all for my pleasure.
But man, I wish that software was available for Mac or Linux.
four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
I don't think this will last. It has Circuit City's Divix written all over it. I'd hate to take 23 hours to download "Lord of the Rings" over dialup only to find out I have one hour left in which to watch it.
------
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
I figure this is a test. They want to see if people will copy it.
I would be willing to bet they've got something in there which they can look for to prove that any given copy of the film came from the download site. So then they can point to it and say "see - people do copy things and pass them round once they've downloaded them from the net". And it will make a great lobbying tool for them to use to get all the anti-piracy legislation through that they want.
Hmmm... sorry... maybe I'm just feeling a bit pessemistic today.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
New studies indicate that Linux users never buy movies online, showing once and for all that linux users are evil h4x0rz who steal for fun and torture puppies. More at 11.
(I'd go check the site myself, but I don't have a flash plugin for my browser so I was stuck on the front page)
I think it's hilarious that a company is, for once, not stepping blindly on the rights of consumers and experimenting with a delivery method that utilizes broadband in a way that slashdot readers and geeks all over have been asking for for some time, and all I see in the comments are people saying it won't work. What the hell is wrong with you guys? do you like ANYTHING?
In this case, I believe stuff like this will drive the demand for higher bandwidth. Up until now, if you didn't game, porn or warez, then getting off of dialup had no practicle applications. As these sort of services start to take off, assuming high quality, having a better connection to view it might become more important to your average user.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
I can't believe my eyes. This is offered in good faith...wait a minute...Mars Attacks?...Oh dear...
Alien's eyes widen in terror...
Ack...aacckk..ACK ACK ACK!
Cut to scene of all hell breaking loose, weapons being fired
...spam, spam, spam, spam, e-mail, news and spam.
Finally a good idea. The music industries should learn from this. And it's not ahead of it's time. Well at least not in my country. As a Dutch citizen (Dutch people life in The Netherlands, extremely small country from an US point of view) I'm fortunate enough to be able to choose from a wide variety of affordable broadband connections (cable, xDSL) from a wide variety of providers. Most people of my country have the option to get such a connection. Trading movies is very hot over here as it is in other European countries with broadband connections like Germany. A lot of people leave Kazaa running 24/7 on there PC's. Also students "abuse" there high-speed campus connections (often > 100 Mbit) to host ftp servers full of movies. For all these people downloading movies the legal way for such an affordable price is certainly a great option. As a big movie lover I will still want to buy high-quality DVDs. For the occasional not-to-great-flic I used to rent DVDs but now I can download it for the about the same price. And have it fast.
The glass is half-full. With poison. And there are cracks in the glass. The dirty, dirty glass.
have you taken a look at their site? With the exception of Potter which, let's face it, everyone who is going to own it has already bought it, the rest of it is B-grade flicks. All of the films are out on video, and who is really going to spend 2+ hours downloading it? Not to mention that, unless they are using one of the professional codecs (the $40,000 per license kind), the video quality is going to be small, to say nothing of the audio.
Is any one actually watching downloaded, full-length movies on their PC?
I'd rather get it from Pay-per-view or rental.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
The price seems a little steep, I can rent a DVD for under $3.99 which will have much better quality than a 700 megabyte rip will. There's convenience, I don't have to drag myself to the rental place, but I don't think that it outweighs the degradation of quality. Factor in the download time for 700 megabytes and it seems like a pretty clear loser to me. I can't be bothered to pirate movies as it is, so I don't see this being a winner for me at least.
This offer will only be appealing to broadband users, I don't know the current market penetration but I'd be suprised if it was greater than 1%. Of that portion of broadband users available downloading anything of that size for what effectively is an impulse purchase will only be attractive to a small subset of this group.
I think this is going to lose money, I also think its going to be used as an indicator that they're losing money to piracy. I don't think this is an actual dishonest effort, like Stephen King's electronic publishing effort, but I still think its doomed to failure.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Not too practical for most of us out here.. but at least its the correct direction.. not backwards.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If they know it's too early to do commercially, they don't lose too many sales from a quick, successful crack. And if no-one cracks it for a week, say, they get some good feedback about the quality of the encryption. What they can be sure of is that a lot of people _will_ work hard to crack this [unlike some films, which only a masochist would want a free copy of] -- which matters if they're now standing around looking at their stopwatches while crackers test their security for them.
Ta add to you theory read this:
Harry potter dvd does not have macrovision protection
Make yourself matter, then (be you a Linux user, a Mac user, or just a user of an alternate player.) As i wrote previously, as I believe that this is a run up to an integration with MS's TV-linked PC initiative, I think I see why it's MS-proprietary at least for now.
You see they offer a product that virtually requires broadband, and then when it doesn't sell will be able to claim that they were right, and the internet is only a piracy tool, furthering their cause with congress.
:)
Its similiar to the way the Bush administration has decided to start off with the assumption that we need to invade Iraq, and its up to the iraqi government to prove their own innocence.
I don't think so. Two reasons: this is what plenty of posters here are waiting for, and the other thing is: it's easy, and it's there for you.
What do I mean with the second thing? It's the convenience, stupid. If I can download it always whenever I want it, for not so much money (okay, 3.99 is a bit steep, but that's new films - for older ones, consider 0.99 realistic), in guaranteed quality, then I might just as well not bother with cracking the stream (we're talking mass audience here, not hackers) and loading up my hard disk with something I might only watch another couple of times, if that. Downloading from P2P (in my experience) typically is hard work, trying to get the right stream, figuring out that the file is rotten, having no guaranteed feed and so on.
Apart, this might just be the killer application that triggers the breakthrough of broadband. Who knows.
Hurricane Application Group, Dept of Meteorology Control, Ministry of Proactive Defense
I thought you only had an international bandwidth cap? So if this is successful I would expect the film co. to put up a local server for you.
I live in Toronto, Ontario, and at least one of our main broadband providers (Bell Sympatico) has instituted a bandwidth cap of 5 gigs up/down per month (roughly US$27 flat rate fee). Over the limit usage is charged to the consumer @ $4.75/gig.
Presumably its purpose was to wean people off of P2P file sharing networks, but it will also kill the emerging broadband entertainment business. US$3.95 for a movie is fine, but not when I have to pay another $3.85 to my isp. It doesn't take a lot of movies to hit the cap.
already has Harry Potter. If they didn't buy the DVD in May, they downloaded it already. A rip of the the DVD was available via P2P download in February. That's right, 3 months before retail release. And this is getting more common. The DVD rip of Lord of the Rings was available in May, and rips of Spiderman and Star Wars Episode II: AOTC are available now, all months ahead of retail release. These aren't copies filmed with camcorders in the local theatre, but copies of the actual DVD's ripped into DIVX or SVCD format. The studios are so behind in this avenue of distribution that they will never succeed.
Because of the following:
Which would you rather have:
Full-blown DVD, 5 days for $3-5, or:
Download - 1 day for $4?
I'd pick the DVD.
They'll have to drop the price a LOT to compete with brick-and-mortar rental store.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
...and now the big W has finally done it! Go Warner! Ok, so the price point is still slightly high (don't these guys do price-elasticity studies?), but the fact remains: this is how everybody here has been wanting the studios to update their businessmodel. And what do I see? Whining about how the security will be cracked. This proves that most people on /. are warez-ers and leechers. Because you should be giving them kudos for this step, not ragging them off.
Hurray Warner bros for (finally, maybe even too late and too expensively, but finally nontheless) seeing the light!
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
everything. Bitch bitch bitch. I think that this is very encouraging. Leaving aside the pain of actually having to watch it on a small screen or having a tv-out card, I think this is a step in the right direction. Of course, a 700 meg download isn't exactly video on demand either....;)
DECSS was not an attempt to get free content, it was an attempt to play content on something other than a M$ box that had bought and paid for.
Will this play on my OS X box or has M$ closed this off?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
No, the bandwidth cap is on any data we download that is not from a set of specified servers (read: server's attached to the company you use for broadband).
I hate the phrase "chilling effect." Nevertheless, it's a good point. I also wonder about the bandwidth cost on Warner's end.
I only have a couple issues with this:
1) I have DSL line at home and I have never come close to the claimed 2 hours for a 700MB download. Using Prozilla and Download Accelerator I have come close to the 4 hour mark. I find it hard to believe that the average AOL/MSN user on 56K modems will have any interest in this.
2) Who wants to download a movie, pile everyone into the home office/Basement/Den, and watch the movie on their 17" monitor with mediocre speakers. Hell, I can go to Hastings, Family Video or even Blockbuster and rent the movie for the same price or less and watch it at my leisure on the couch. Not to mention that for the price of about 4 rentals I can buy the DVD/VHS and watch it whenver I like.
3) Can it really be that long before there is a work-around for the DRM protection? I have heard MS speakers regularly state that things like DRM and security are "not a game of perfect" meaning that there is no 100% way to protect/secure media and systems. Logically, that would mean this method will be vulnerable. When that is the case I am sure that many consumers will be happy to "rent" movies for 3.99 then burn them to VCD and happily never look back; illeagal or not.
Just my $.02
When in danger or in doubt,
run in circles scream and shout.
L. Long
No, it's not pessimistic. And maybe we shouldn't copy them now that they're doing what we said we always wanted them to do. I only think that they should figure out how to offer this on something OTHER than Windows/IE. I do not like to use IE because it is essentially part of the operating system. Also I would like an option to buy the movies instead of just having a subscription. Realistically, people gotta make money somehow, and if we want a digital economy, we have to prove that it can be supported.
And what else would we do with movies? Pay the artist directly? You can't treat it the same as music.
That's backwards. There need to be more things that increase the consumer demand for broadband. What broadband needs (and the Internet as a whole) is the next "killer app" to rekindle its growth and further legitimize. I spent much of the dotcom boom watching the pundits desperately search for this next killer app. One day it was "push" technology, the next it was Java. The next it was this and that and the other. Mosaic and the propogation of the WWW into the public consciousness was a killer app. MP3 was a killer app. Broadband is out there but there are a lot of "average users" who don't see much they can do with it.
But they've proved that if Saddam had access to nuclear weapons grade material, and if he could get all the electronic parts, he could build a bomb and lob it as far as Israel.
Wow! They must think he has an internet connection or something (or the address of a mail-order libertarian library).
Welcome to the future boys and girls. Divx (think circuit city) may have failed, but it's what media companies want, so it's what they'll make consumers "want".
Pretty soon, EVERYTHING will be "licensed" instead of bought. I can't wait to get my Microsoft House(TM) with Human Rights Management(TM), this condo of mine is getting cramped!
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Strangely enough, I actually don't mind the use of DRM in this situation. It is basically an online video rental shop (remember when most video stores were only one day rentals?). Just as it was supposed to be difficult (too difficult to be worthwhile) to copy video tapes, it is supposed to be too difficult to be worthwhile to copy these files.
Sure the determined user will probably find away around this, just as people defeated macrovision, and sure it will become easy, just as dual-deck VCRs made copying videos easy. But, even though it is possible to copy the videos that you rent from the shop, most people don't. Perhaps it will be the same with this system.
Perhaps this is actually a viable business model for DRM.
Note: I only say this is viable from the "video rental" standpoint. I do not and will not agree with the DRM-ing of anything I buy. Cheers. :-)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Sounds like Warner Bros is trying to grow a brain...but they're creating a "chicken-and-egg" scenerio:
Have massive files to download
Have massive pipeline to household
Which drives the development of the other? Since they're all one Big Happy Family(AOL Time Warner), I suppose this is an attempt to turn people on to their cable modem services.
"Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither!"
Yeah i no like im really going to was 1/3 of my download limit on something i cant even keep i hate telstra its so shit i hope that some new company will come and offer decent broadband with no limits its absolutley bullshit sorry to be so harsh but have u ever gone from no limit having the best time of ure life to 3g if u havent wait till u have this is so doomed in australia
I'm a geek deal wit it
They came damn close this time to actually using the internet well and giving their customers what they want. But the 24-hour license kills it, and proves once again that the movie studios just don't want us to own anything any more.
Downloadable movies for $3.99 that the user then OWNS would be a great way to allow people to "try things out" or beef up my movie library for cheap...it would give people more value for their money. And I have NO doubt that it would have no affect on DVD sales - if someone is willing to pay for the movie but not the extras, they aren't going to buy a DVD version anyway!
I have downloaded movies off P2P services before, but ONLY movies that I saw in the theater and I only keep them until the DVD comes out and then I throw them away. I'd LOVE to be able to do this without breaking the law, and I'd be willing to pay $4 a movie to do it - as LONG as I can keep the movie if I choose. Is giving the users that choice so anathema to the movie studios?
If MS has anything to say about it, I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot of this type of marketing in the near future. Why? So that the average consumer will be used to using content how, when, and where MS wants them to by the time Palladium systems roll out. By then, they'll be able to spin hardware-based copy protection as an improvement in speed.
... you just rent temporary rights to it.
Who wants to bet the RIAA gets a system like this on deck about one year out from Palladium/fritz chips being mass-marketed? Just to get you warmed up to the thought that you, as a consumer, no longer own anything
OK, first of all this reply is coming from Broadband Britain, a fictional island between the Irish Republic and the European mainland, so it may strike fellow subjects of Her Maj and all who sail in her as a little sci fi. Sorry.
The idea of doing this makes sense, as for relatively little outlay, Warner can add a new revenue stream to its business. Given the fixed cost of making movies, any channel that helps boost revenues is a good thing.
Secondly, I think copy protection is a red herring. Even without DRM there are ways to version the market so that there is a higher price and value version. In this case, stuffing a DVD full of extra value content is a good way of doing it, especially if you use things like posters, sleeve notes or other "hard" devices. Even without
versioning a physical product, the studio can compete on convenience of service. I wouldn't buy dodgy ripped copies on Holloway Road if I could get the same content at a price that satisfied my valuation and with greater convenience.
Finally, it's going to be a bigger problem for Blockbuster than for file rippers. This is the first time that a major studio has put its catalogue directly into competition with a rental chain. People with higher valuations will probably still buy the DaViD (Harry potter is a perfect example here, anyone who has ever babysat will know that children are rarely satisfied with one viewing of anything that they like, so parents will probably, on balance prefer to buy them the disc). Where this competes is with people who can only really be bothered to watch something once.
Sure, it's great to be able to download a movie anytime you want but, I frear that the net can't handle it.
Lets fast-forward a few years. Everyone has xDSL or cable and everyone downloads or streams their movies. At 700+ MB per movie and possibly per person what is the internet going to be like? I know that there is presently excess bandwidth available and that there is supposed to be a fair bit of dark fibre but, is there really enough. How much bandwidth will be left for email and surfing, not to mention IP phones, when everybody is downloading their movies?
Today, it is possible for several people in a household to be watching several different movies at the same time but, on different channels. What will it be like when those same people are all downloading a 700+ MB film? Remember that their neighbors will be doing the same thing with possibly different films at slightly different times. What will it be like when, rather than broadcasting 100 streams to millions of viewers, there are millions of streams. Many of these streams will be the same, as is the case with broadcast, but they will be separate because they will be out of phase time wise.
It all seems grossly inefficient to me and I don't believe that the internet or even Internet2 can handle the kind of traffic that this will produce and still remain usable.
Set your clock back ;^)
A lot of people are saying that the file format is bound to be cracked, but I think that Microsoft did a pretty good job on this one. Media files with a time bomb has been here for a few years in Windows Media Player. I remember downloading the Mission Impossible 2 theme from the official site which was in windows media and it had a 30-day life, after that, it wouldn't play. I've never found (thought I've never really searched also) or never heard since then of a software that rips the content and converts it to an insecure format. Same thing with videos. Microsoft has done a good job of making this thing secure it seems. Sure, it still doesn't defeat an analog solution, but then, what does?
I have Time Warner cable:
We know have video on demand here which means I can order Harry Potter and watch it anytime I want for an eight hour period. This sounds much better than waiting to for a huge download and watching the movie on my pc!
Its also a little cheaper... $3.95 for new movies and $1.95 for older ones.
Considering the amount of people who sit and wait on Kazaa for crapppy copies.. i'd gladly play for a dvd rip
"Be glad you sailed for a better day, But dont forget there will be hell to pay" - Dave King/Flogging Molly
Content has to be offered online to push people who want that content into getting a broadband connection. If nothing is offered, no one will bite.
It's cool to have bigger harddisk but how about the speed? the focus has been on capacity for a while now, don't they want to focus on speed now?
7200 is just too slow these day for normal user?
How is this offtopic? the only way this service is available is via CinemaNow, which is MS based.
Perhaps I am wrong on this, but the current catalogue didn't seem to have anything has had a cinema release. Perhaps there are some gems in there but movies such as Star Warp'd and Olympic Greasy Watermelon do not exactly inspire me to spend some money.
Patriotism is the opium of the masses
The things mentioned in these posts aren't exactly revolutionary. Of course someone will hack it one day. But the fact is that consumers that the industry actually care about are not going to bother. They like their one-hit wonders and pay-per-view movies just fine, thank you. It's only teenagers and life-long teenagers who'll bypass the $3.99 they weren't going to spend anyway.
Slashdot types are not the majority, by far, and this business model will work. Copy-capable VCR's didn't stop people from renting the same movie multiple times, nor will downloadable movies stop me from buying a convenient, $20, special-feature filled DVD. DVD-burns are available in chinatown (nyc) for $5, but have you ever bought one?
Similarly, I think if the record industry added benefits to CD's over mp3's in the way the DVD's have more than just the movie, they'd see an increase in demand for music on CD.
$8.95/mo web hosting
"is this an idea before its time?"...this really pisses me off. Why? because for months we have been preaching to the MPAA and RIAA "give us the option to to pay for the movie in this great format at a cheap price and we will do it instead of pirating".
Guess what folks they seem to be listening or at least making an attempt. Ok so maybe the price is a little steep for a 24h "rental". Perhaps they can change that so its longer. At least they are trying.
Also what is this crap of "idea before its time"? Common Skyshadow how long have we (the internet users) been downloading movies from Kazaa and friends? why is that not an "idea before its time". The people who can afford to get the high speed connections will be able to download it, its not really going to cost WB that much to implement this so what the hell. I say go for it! power to you WB, but just give the lic a bit more than 24hs, why not 7 days or something.
through Kazaa?
I was just about to download the movie when I noticed a couple things...the 700 listed on their site is actually 700K stream quality...and the size of the movie is about 500-550Megs. Plus it's only a license for a 24 hour period. Make no doubt the industry is moving it's butt in the right direction...it's just a very large butt and moves very slowly. I want a legal solution to download a movie...but I want a high quality version 700megs-1400megs and I want an unlimited time frame to view the film. Until that point I see no compelling reason to download from the corps. They have to create a system that is closer to what is available illigetimatly. Problem is...if they do this...and say they add some commercials into the file (or generated by the player) or something to pay for the costs...those files/or systems will simply be hacked. Right now there seems no way to surplant the P2P systems. It will be interesting to see what comes of the new palladium system going into new system hardware and software. Whatever they devise it's only a matter of time before it's cracked. But if it is affordable, has high quality files, has no time limit on the file, and isn't in some way overly cumbersome with commercials or some other scheme...then it will be accepted by a lot of people...but then would it be profitable?
Any movie released is already availible to download from Newsgroups or Kazza etc. The fact that in 24 hours another copy will be availible is not really going to affect anything much. If the Movie companies have a copy that people can download (at a fairly high cost, granted) then it may well tempt some of the more legit downloaders to pay for this copy (thus making them some money they would have lost). Personally I only watch things I've downloaded a couple of times and buy the DVD if I really like it.
Considering that if things are crowded that day 8 of your 24 hour license is spent actually downloading the file. Echoing the bandwidth cost concern the only clever way I could see this working is if you ordered in advance and it downloaded the day before you wanted it... Pay Per View has so many more legitimate advantages and Idon't even use that. Does this maybe play into that crippled multimedia PC story I saw a few days ago?
Get a new ISP then. And tell them why you are leaving. Put messages in their newsgroups/boards encouraging other users to do the same.
If we don't make a stand soon, we'll all have to pay this eventially...
but given that a vast majority of US households are without broadband
How come USians think USA is the whole world, when in fact the population of USA is less than 10% of the world? Sure, US companies makes it often infinitely hard for non-USians to pay them (their loss) for any product or service, but why do you yourself limit this? Is it just ignorance, is it misguided patriotism, or is it just plain stupidity
The cost isn't that big, and this is EXACTLY what we've been asking for all this time. Don't think of it like renting a movie, think of it more like voting with your dollars, showing that this is the kind of system you'd like to have in the future.
This just looks like the same old story over again. The recording/movie industry is just trying to come up with some answer to the file sharing phenomenon again. And once again they answer with an inferior and over-priced service.
Just like the music industry's attempts at a pay service, this will fail. Anyone who might actually be interested in this service probably has enough know-how to go download a movie from a file sharing service anyways. To those who do not know, a movie rental store is more convenient.
It seems like there is an easy solution to all of this -- offer download that are rather inexpensive, especially compared to other media (CDs DVDs, etc). If it is cheap and with little restrictions, people will buy -- many people will buy. And since this would be virtually a perfect economy of scale and many people would be buying, this would reap large profits, and people would be happy.
Unforunately this is not utopia, so I'll put my eye patch back on and keep "pirating" away.
A computer is a valuable tool, so use it and stop whining.
The article blurb should probably mentioned that they have a free section!!! That's cool of them to offer so much bandwidth for a no-profit item, as well as get more exposure for lesser-known movies.
$8.95/mo web hosting
I have Road Runner (owned by Time Warner) and they are always bitching about how bandwidth hogs are clogging up the service.
Now Warner wants us to download 700MB files for home viewing? Interesting...
Why would I choose to do this? Let's assume that their copy protection scheme works as planned and it is only good for 24 hours. What exactly is the value added against going to a video store
Even on a broadband connection we're talking hours before it's downloaded and viewable. I can practically run to the video store and back before the popcorn is done popping.
Quality wise it is inferior in both video and audio. Compare the video display on an hdtv (or standard for that matter) and a 5:1 surround sound system.
Price wise, well, it gets me nothing. At least with videos my money is going towards supporting a local economy.
If VOD service like this become popular ISPs will probably simpy exclude VOD providers IP subnets from traffic calculations.
Why are they so costly? I can rent this at Blockbuster for the same ammount and keep it for 7 days. They need to acknowledge that the medium's cost is cheaper. It is one copy of a movice on one massive server with a huge amount of bandwidth verses hundreds of stores with thousands of copies and employees. What is with them. Why be so greedy, when they could be fairly priced, and maybe hold the market. I think they are afraid, that once people realize that this medium isso much cheaper they may abandon the others. This is why it is not wise to have such large large meida monopolies. They own the store, the theater, and the station. They end up having to cut off one toe to save the other. Really tragic, since they often end up decaying from lock of innovation. Let's hope they take the plungs.
Everytime I buy a DVD I would like for them to also offer me a downloadable version of the movie. Sometimes I just need to have the movie on my computer to and sure I can copy it myself but why can't they do it for me?
This way makes it a lot easier for me. I wanna be able to save the scenes I want, show a funny scene to my friends, etc. It comes in handy for Simpsons episodes.
click all features, then in the top 'sort by' column, click 'free'. click a film and log in as slashdot:slashdot. (I didn't make the account, someone beat me to it.) if you want to use your own acct (or if Mr. Slashdot changes his PW) the registration is just name, email, age, gender, password, and they don't require a real address--a@a.com works just fine. :-)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
A couple of points that people seem to be missing, probably from only reading the article, not visiting the movie site itself.
* Rentals are for 48 hours, not 24.
* The site heavily implies that the movies are streamed, not downloaded and locked, though they don't state that anywhere.
* There are a number of free (ad-supported) films available.
* There is a $9.95/mo subscription service that provides unlimited access to Premium movies.
This still has problems, especially the streaming part, but it is a BIG step in the right direction, in my opinion.
SablKnight
CinemaNow's FAQ:
d ia/en/d ownload/default.asp
d ia/en/d ownload/default.asp
d ia/en/d ownload/default.asp
d ownload/default.asp
STEP 1 - Register
Registering with CinemaNow is easy and painless. Well worth it for all the great films you are about to see. You can click on Log In/Sign -Up or simply go to the film you wish to view and click on the Watch button. If you have any trouble registering, please check our FAQ/Registering.
STEP 2 - Make Sure You Have The Right Components
To watch films on CinemaNow you will need the latest Microsoft Windows Media Player version 7 (which is also available for Macintosh users) and can be downloaded for free here. In addition, please keep in mind that films on CinemaNow are best viewed with a broadband connection (usually 100k or higher) and that the quality of the picture may vary based on your connectivity. If you have any difficulties watching a film, please check our FAQ/Watching A Film.
STEP 3 - Select A Film
To find a film, you can use the Channel Selector located on the left of the screen to help you browse our titles. Each film is broken down by at least one channel and each channel can be sorted by free, premium or most watched. When you have found a film you are interested in, click on the image. This will take you to the individual film page where you can launch the film, find out more information, check out special features, and more.
STEP 4 - Free Films and Premium Films
There are two kinds of films on CinemaNow, Free (actually, ad-supported) and Premium films. The free films on our site are of no cost to you the user and will often be proceeded by and streaming advertisement of 15-30 seconds. The Premium films are available in two ways. At a pay-per-view cost, which gives you unlimited viewing of the selected film for a 48 hour window, or, as part of the Premium Pass subscription. The Premium Pass is a monthly subscription which gives you unlimited access to all the Premium films on the site unless specifically noted. If you have selected a Premium Film, and are not already a Premium Pass Member, you will be prompted by a secure credit card screen. Simply fill out your credit card information and away you go. If you have any questions about the pay-per-view or Premium Pass, please go to FAQ/ Pay-Per-View and Premium Pass.
STEP 5 - Select A Connection Speed
The first time you watch a film on CinemaNow you will be asked to select a connection speed. Here is a chart for choosing a connection speed based on your Internet access. Of course, this is just a guideline and it is often the case that you must select a slower speed to receive the best quality viewing. Also, you will always be able to select another connection speed at any time on the CinemaNow player, even in the middle of watching a film!
Suggested Speeds
Dial-Up Modem, 56k - 56k
ISDN, Cable Modem, DSL - 100k
Cable Modem, DSL, T1, T3 or greater - 300k
Cable Modem, DSL, T1, T3 or greater - 700k
STEP 6 - Enjoy The Film!
Frequently Asked Questions (and the answers that go with them!)
Registration
Q: I am having trouble registering, what do I do?
A: 1) Make sure you have completed all of the required fields on the registration form and are using a valid e-mail.
2) Make sure that your "cookies" are enabled. "Cookies" allow CinemaNow to keep track of your e-mail, password and most recent connection speed so that you do not have to sign-in every time. In order to enable cookies on your browser, please follow the instructions below.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or Higher
Click on Tools > Internet Options > Security > Custom Level
Reset the custom settings to "Medium" or change the "Allow cookies" to "enable"
Netscape 4.0 or higher
Click on Edit > Preferences
Choose the Advanced drop down and choose "Accept all Cookies"
Watching a Film
Q: The Windows Media Player launches, but nothing happens?
A: 1) If the Windows Media player indicates that it is opening, but never launches the film, then you may just want to try selecting a slower connection speed.
2) Check to make sure that you have the Windows Media Player properly installed. Also, CinemaNow always recommends the latest version of the Windows Media Player which you can download here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme
3) If you are using Netscape as your browser, try Internet Explorer.
Q: How come the picture is choppy/unclear/ like a slide show?
A: This probably has to do with your connection. The quality of the stream often depends on the amount of bandwidth that you are receiving and this can vary based on many factors. The best thing to do is select a slower connection speed or try back at a time when there is less net congestion.
Q: How come I can hear the movie, but I cannot see it?
A: 1) First, try selecting a slower connection speed. This should allow the audio and video to synch up.
2) Make sure you have the latest version/codec for the Windows Media Player. Any required codec (upgrade) you may need for watching certain films, you should be prompted. The latest Windows Media Player can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme
Q: How come I can see the movie, but I cannot hear it?
A: 1) If the Windows Media player indicates that it is opening, but never launches the film, then you may just want to try selecting a slower connection speed.
2) Check to make sure that you have the Windows Media Player properly installed. Also, CinemaNow always recommends the latest version of the Windows Media Player which you can download here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme
3) If you are using Netscape as your browser, try Internet Explorer.
Q: Can I watch on a Mac?
A: Yes and no. You can watch FREE films and trailers on the Mac, but unfortunately, you can not currently watch any of the PREMIUM or PAY-PER-VIEW films. This is because of a compatibility issue with the Digital Rights Management (DRM) we use to securely deliver our content. To watch the free content you will need to download the latest Windows Media Player for Mac, which is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/
Q: I am using Windows ME, how come the player cannot acquire the license?
A: Click this link http://support.microsoft.com/search/ for information on how to resolve this issue.
Pay-Per-View and Premium Pass
Q: How do I cancel my Premium Pass subscription?
A: Click on the My Account button at the top of the page and log in. Then click the Cancel Subscription button and follow the steps to cancel your account. If you have any difficulty or are unsure if your account is canceled, e-mail boxoffice@cinemanow.com and be sure to include your username in the e-mail.
Q: What are Premium Films?
A: Premium films are films that are not shown on a free (ad supported) basis. These films are marked with a price next to the films information. You can watch a Premium film in two ways. The first is as a pay-per-view which allows you to watch the selected film and unlimited amount of times in a 48 hour window for the indicated price. For the terms of the pay per view, click here. The second way is through a subscription, which we call Premium Pass. You can read about Premium Pass below.
Q: What is the Premium Pass?
A: Premium Pass is a subscription to CinemaNow. Premium Pass allows you to pay a recurring monthly fee in order to get unlimited access to all Premium Films. You can read more about it here (link to Premium Pass more info).
Q: How come some Pay-Per-View films are not available as part of the Premium Pass?
A: The only films that are not available with the Premium Pass are those that are marked "Pay-Per-View" as opposed to "Premium". The reason for this has to do with legal rights issues over subscription. Thus, CinemaNow can only make these films available on a pay-per-view basis.
Filmaker Questions
Q: How do I submit my film?
A: You can send a VHS copy of your film to the following address (and please remember to include your name and contact information):
Attn: Acquisitions
CinemaNow
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Or contact Eric Stein at erics@cinemanow.com with any questions.
SablKnight
Everyone and their dog already has a pirated copy of Harry Potter. I just got a copy of pirated Harry Potter in the mail yesterday as a free sample. If I went into CompUSA I could probably buy a 10-pack of pirated Harry Potter for $6.99.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
so we need media player 9 to do this, and doesn't their eula mention something about being able to snoop around your machine? one less brick in the wall. people start adopting this and ''trusted (by corporations)'' computing becomes a reality. all they have to do is ease people into just accepting the fact that they have no control over their machines, that they've got no choice and "that's just the way it is"...
sigh. if only there were more kid's programs on linux, i'd convert my house entirely.
As others have said, I think this is a step in the right direction. (And PLEASE, don't encourage breaking the protection. There's nothing wrong with DRM on rentals, and that will only give them more examples for their arguments to congress). A big problem is going to be the time to download. When I want to watch a movie, I don't want to wait god knows how long to download 700 Mb's, only to have it expire 24 hrs later. (I haven't checked to find out when the clock starts ticking).
However, my real issue with the whole movies on demand is that I really wish they would leave our computers out of it. I realize that currently computers offer the most unniversal method through which people can currently receive movies on demand, but this is really a poor option. First of all, most computers are not in the living room connected to the TV.
Second, by using a computer they are encouraging hacking. It is true that a proprietary set-top-box could be hacked. But, if they make their own set-top-box, they can add all sorts of encryption in hardware and software. If they use the computer it will not only get hacked sooner, but they'll then want a more protected computer to keep it from happening again in the future.
If they want a system for delivering movies on demand, there are better options. As some have pointed out, some cable companies offer it (and I wouldn't be suprised if satellite companies do, too), but I have no idea how flexible those systems are. (How are the selection of movies? Do they only start at set times? Do you have to wait). Another option would be to add the capibility to PVR units. All the ingredients except the software and maybe the ethernet adapter are already there.
They really should recognize that a computer is not made to be a protected content delivery medium. It is made to compute - that is, manipulate or do anything else with its content that the computer user wants. Trying to neuter a computer to be simply a delivery medium is a bad idea.
I can not see how something which gets displayed in human viewable form can possibly be secure. After all, at some point the video must be decripted and written to VRAM, or audio to the output buffer. So why not just read back the VRAM?
Even if the graphics cards were made to support cryptography -- never holding a decrypted copy of the data, they still must output their data. So data can be intercepted before it gets to the monitor, and saved that way. If worst comes to worst, you can always just film your monitor.
I simply fail to see how data which is human viewable can ever be "secure." If the user is allowed to see the (unencrypted) data even once, than it is no longer "secure." (Some may complain that there is always going to be quality loss, but that seems to be more of a side effect of the current technology. When using completly digital systems, there will no longer be any quality loss)
Then there's the competition angle. A lot of broadband is provided over cable TV lines. Cable companies do their own Pay-Per-View.
If this takes off, watch broadband providers start placing monthly caps on consumed bandwidth and start charging per gig over it, adding to the cost of the movie download. Hell, they are already wanting to do this...
I am actually glad that the studios are at least experimenting with other distribution formats, but I wholeheartedly agree that, Harry Potter and a few other blockbusters aside, $1.99-$3.99 for a medium quality digital copy that I can keep and watch as many times as I want would make a whole lot more sense.
Most of the titles in their list I might watch once or twice, then delete. Why would I want to pay $1.99 for Blood Sucking Chainsaw Junkies IV, spend my time downloading it, then rip them off by turning around and uploading it to a newsgroup? If I was looking for that film, why would I bother getting it off a newsgroup if I could pay $1.99 to download a known good copy from a legitimate source?
Even for things like Harry Potter, I would essentially be paying $3.99 for a copy that looked like it was recorded on an old VHS tape. If I really liked the movie, I would buy the DVD.
The fact is that there are tons of movies out there that people would pay a small amount to watch/own, but wouldn't even consider paying >$10 to buy on new media.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
As usual, the hearing impaired users get the shaft.
There is no support for subtitling or closed captioning. This is a very scary trend as more movies are available using the internet. Even though MS's Media player and Real's RealPlayer support captioning, I have seen very little use of this feature. Now that these movies are available for download, how are the hearing impaired users going to be able to enjoy the movies? What about foreign language support? With DVD's, you were able to turn on/off subtitling at will.
Sidebar: It took an act of government (as I understand it) and the FCC mandated closed captioning on 13" and larger TV's. Eventually, the FCC mandated that new programming (with exceptions) be closed captioned on the airwaves, phasing in to 100% by 2007 (barring extensions). More info is here.
Will the same happen for the internet content? I believe that subtitling/captioning support should have been done from the beginning because it's cheaper to add in features from the beginning than it is to go back later and add the features that should have been included in the first place.
Alright, enough ranting. Blockbuster still gets my money because I can still can access captioning and subtitles from their DVD's and VHS's. God forbid should they try to copy Cinemanow's approach and do the same thing, discard subtitling/captioning support....
Well actually this seems like a "Good Thing"(tm) I admit that I don't like the 24Hour thing (seems a bit stupid actually) but the price seems fine (if you could keep it) cheaper would be better of course.
Personally I like the idea - as long as the format is open (I don't want to see this as another MS Format for them to beat us over the head with) - downloading a movie is quite a cool idea. For them it seems pretty cool, I get it from their servers, no cutting it onto plastic, putting it in a box, driving it to the store, where the store have it sit on their shelf for a while. No the ecomomics seem to make this the way to go.
But there needs to be some way of making sure WB (or whoever) makes their $s, personally I have no problem with that. But this IS going to happen with or without them - I think they need to turn it in to a business. Maybe somekind of "monthy membership"? As we're all aware in this "all you can eat", there is only so much anyone can eat (download speed and to a lesser extent drive space).
Of course this could lead to one less reason to move from my Mac (but that's okay - I like it here)! Oh, and an excuse to get a "wide aspect" Mac, imagine Cinema HD Display.
Now if someone can figure out how to download popcorn and Coke!
Now, this is only the case in the more heavily populated areas in Canada. As you get further out, first DSL disappears, then Cable. This is due to the fact that DSL is apparently difficult to send over long distances.
However, where it really gets interesting, is when you hear about how Bell used to be the telephone monopoly in Canada, and Rogers used to be the (Cable) Television monopoly. Now, Bell sells Satellite Television, and there have been rumors about Rogers selling Telephone service in the future!
All the rules have changed!
Maybe. But maybe this is an idea that will bring its time.
This might just be the reason for the people who were not interested in the internet before, to reconsider and go with it. If Joe Sixpack did not have a real reason for broadband, he does now. When more common technologies will be merged with the 'net, more people will find a good use for the internet.
It seems to me that they would be better served by charging, say, $10 (or something) per month and allowing unlimited download of licenses during that period. If you could download the movies in advance, then just download a 24 hour license when you're ready to view the movie, that works much better. Then you could just set 2 or 3 movies to download one night when you go to bed, and you have the files when you want to watch them.
I'm not so familiar with mergers and cooperations in the American businessworld, but isn't WB somehow connected to AOL, that provides internet access, internet access needed to download these movies? This is a pretty smart move for a movie company affiliated with an ISP... Making money on all fronts. Maybe there is something good in this concept of ubiquitous corporations after all...
This idea is long overdue! If media companies would start innovating instead of wasting time trying to beat back hackers, they'd open up a huge market for themselves.
A better pricing scheme, though, would be a subscription. As many movies as you want for $10 - $15/mo. (like a legit Movies88.com) Think about it- would you go to all the trouble of P2P if there was a fairly priced alternative with guaranteed quality? Maybe some would, but the majority of users would get broadband and take the easy route.
A DOMESTIC INCIDENT
Filled with dark humor, "A Domestic Incident" takes us on a roller coaster ride through a night of typically dysfunctional Americana.
24 HOURS TO KILL
Mickey Rooney plays an American smuggler stuck in Beruit in this exciting action thriller with several twists and turns.
MR. BILL'S 20TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
Tune in for some of Mr. Bill greatest hits...plus several of Sluggo's, too. No fan should go without this compilation of greatest moments!
A GLEAM OF HOPE
A Hong Kong detective on assignment in China awakens to find his dead lover's body beside him. Knowing that he will be sentenced to death, he must escape arrest.
ADDICTED TO MURDER (I II and III)
Two vampires in one lifetime is not a coincidence. The more Joel's drawn into the vampiric vortex the more he becomes aware of his own horror.
AMERICAN TRAGEDY
The OJ Simpson trial. It was an epic trial. The outcome was controversial and the events that led to the judgement hold a sordid tale of their own. Starring VING RHAMES.
AND YOU THOUGHT YOUR PARENTS WERE WEIRD!
A couple of wiz kids build a robot, but when their dad's ghost winds up inside, this family gets really weird.
ASIAN DOLLS UNCUT VOLUME 13
China Doll (a 21 year old blonde), Tammy Lee (a 22 year old), Kimmi Kann (a Filipino cutie in her first video), Tina Toy & Mayumi will all show you what it really means to be an Asian Doll.....
BEAUTY INVESTIGATOR
In order to capture a serial rapist, two beautiful policewomen go undercover as club hostesses.
THE BEL AIR BITCH PROJECT
The life of a beautiful model, living in Bel Air, is cut short by an unknown assailant, but her murder may not be a mystery to the many men she teased along the way.
THE BLACK WITCH PROJECT
A group of military rejects go on a retreat to find themselves, while in the process they notice how spooky and strange the camp becomes. Point blank a mad killer is on the loose.
I can't imagine paying for this crap (except ASIAN DOLLS UNCUT VOLUME 13). I'd venture this stuff didn't even maket it direct-to-video. Frankly, I couldn't go through 80 pages of CASTLE ORGIES (3,000 girls are hand-picked for the Shogun to satisfy his insatiable lust). On second-thought...
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
If you record using a card based on the brooktree bt848/bt878 chipset, your recording software (which might have to be modified to grab the 25 line vbi information, since it's given in a different buffer, iirc) can also record the caption information from the VBI, and overlay it using some kind of OSD. I don't know if there's a consumer digital recording system, however, that preserves the VBI data within the file. I've always wanted to make one (don't have time to do much independent coding these days), or know if one existed, though.
A solution to the problem with music today
1000s of GNU/Linux users paying WB $3.99, and then contacting WB to express profound disappointment (not anger) at not being able to watch Harry Potter on their computer.
There are a ton of movies there but there is exactly one movie worth seeing there, Harry Potter. The rest is populated mostly with chinese films and very old first films.
This seems like an irresponsible use of internet bandwidth. Yeah so this might be convenient or whatever, but I think we should save our traffic for other things, like reloading slashdot every 13 seconds
Like the 2 hours that you need to basically dedicate your broadband connection to download the movie, the 700MB of local disk space to store the movie, and the obligatory reboot that will be required somewhere along the way because it _must_ be a Windows machine.
#include
But let's let them know that. Not with 'omg u r teh sux' but with logical thoughts.
;))
Let them grasp the brutality of how many people do not have broadband; and also how many do *not* want their RoadRunner service, and their reasons. (You know they'd try to shove it at you
Point out the theoretically good (Low 'rental' prices) with the bad (Low quality compared to grabbing a DVD from Blockbuster).
Let em know that their '24 hours only' scheme probably won't last. Explain to them the theory of copy protection. (What is protected; is inevitably unprotected by some guy with a magic marker out in Assbackwardsistan.)
Personally, I'd thank them for at least trying to satisfy consumer needs.
Hell, I'd even thank them for trying to stop piracy. Oh no, the big bad MPAA/etc. are evil!
Nah, just the RIAA. And George Lucas. Anyone who can think up Jar Jar Binks..
By midyear, the Harry Potter DVD had shipped 6,550,000 units (#1 for the year).
The studios should see this as proof that if they sell a reasonable package at a reasonable price, people WILL buy it. Yup, piracy sure is killing this business, isn't it?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
"Not only is our prehistoric hero flying a hanglider... But he's doing it over a MODERN CITY!!" - Crow T. Robot
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
You almost have to wonder if this isn't being done knowing that it will fail.
Delivering video over the Internet is a stupid idea that is doomed from the beginning:
1. Half the people in the US don't access the Internet. Right off the bat you've cut your potential audience in half.
2. Too few people have broadband -- many people are unwilling to pay the extortionist prices charged by the cable/DSL companies while millions more live in areas where broadband isn't available at any price.
4. Broadband is too slow -- even if everyone magically had broadband tomorrow, it still takes hours to download large movie files and existing broadband is too slow to deliver streaming DVD quality full screen video. The cable/DSL companies in their infinite stupidity are making matters worse by imposing speed caps and download limits.
3. VCRs have been around for 20 years and people are used to the idea of being able to tape programs off TV for later viewing. Streaming video that can't be captured and other DRM schemes make Internet video devilery less attractive, compared to existing products.
5. Nobody wants it -- who wants to have the whole family crowded around a 17 inch monitor? Even people who live in rural areas usually have a video rental store a few minutes away.
BLOOD SURF
Follow an MTV-style filmmaker as she and her crew shoot an expose of the latest, most dangerous craze in extreme sports: bloodsurfing ! PAY-PER-VIEW (1 hr 28 min)
ADDICTED TO MURDER II: TAINTED BLOOD
New York City is one of the prime breeding grounds for a creature that is very selective in whom it chooses to bestow the gift of eternal life PREMIUM (1 hr 15 min)
No results found for the keyword: harry potter
I'll tell you why it's not going to do any good. The movies all suck!
Now if you've tried to download movies of the internet thus far you'll have found that on warez ftp sites you're dealing with 4 hours bnefore you can start downloading at 5k/s (but only if you're willing to put up with some 13 year old h4x0r's ego first)
Maybe you've tried the web and found 200 pop up ads for porn sites before you get to a half dozen broken links.
Maybe you've downloaded 685 of 700 megs off of the newsgroup only to find that the last 15 megs didn't make it to your newsserver and it's not going to.
Or perhaps you've tried the wonderful and great Kazaa. Run a search today for "The Two Towers" download it from various sources over the next 2 weeks (with KB/s running anywhere between 0.01 and 0.26) press play on the film only to find that what you've actually got is a copy of the new ice cube vehicle "Barbershop" ...
to top all that off *IF* you ever do get a copy of the film you're looking for, some stupid dude in the shanghi theatre that they brought the handycam to walks in from of you every time something cool happens.
Personally, If I can find a rock solid reliable, high speed source for movies (lemme see 250KB/second) on the net, i'd gladly pay the $3.99 a film *OR* go so far as to subscribe to their $9.95 a month deal. Bandwidth alone makes it work it...
Then again maybe these particular films also make it worthwhile...
ASIAN DOLLS UNCUT VOLUME 13
China Doll (a 21 year old blonde), Tammy Lee (a 22 year old), Kimmi Kann (a Filipino cutie in her first video), Tina Toy & Mayumi will all show you what it really means to be an Asian Doll..... PREMIUM (1 hr 57 min)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE LAYER
Buffy's lost in Transylvania. The evil lawyer/vampire Count Hymie "The Impaler" Draculwitz has summoned her from Budapest, and if he has his way, he'll be impaling the little Buffster for a long time to come. Like forever, dude. PREMIUM (1 hr 22 min)
Here's what you do.
1) Make sure you have mplayer installed and working.
2) Make an account at thier site.
3) Click the play movie button for a free movie.
4) View source.
5) look for the embed tags. Add 'http://www.cinemanow.com/wmp/' to the front of the src= (mine was cnplaylist.asp?movieid=402&bitrate=300&user_id=xx
6) run mplayer on the URL like so....Enjoy!
I don't know if this would work on thier ppv movies though.
First, as others have stated, this may be just what broadband needs. Also, the high prices may be in the beginning- I know for the video rental business, prices have gone down a bit(at least relative to inflation) and rental periods have gone up as the business gets bigger. More volume, you get more revenues and can afford to cut prices to spur more volume. That may be part of the high prices here. If this turns out to be profitable, I'd expect to see prices drop a little or at least a longer rental period. In addition to more movies being available, and perhaps even a few really old movies available for outright purchase. If they add a link to purchase the DVD, this could take off even more.
Unless its cracked, I don't see whats good about it. "I want to see a low quality version of Harry Potter tomorrow, better start the download NOW."
Movie rental and pay-per-view still reign supreme.
Why should people (or many people) get their crappy WMV version with cracked DRM when they can have a free uncracked DivX of it?
I guess even the quality of the "original" unlicensed version is better than the new one...
Of course there'll be people illegitimately copying this version, and cracking it just "because they can". But most movie downloaders will already have it, or get a version that's easier to use.
Two Worlds - One Sun [Spirit]
Mr. Burns: "Smithers, I believe I'll donate $1,000,000 to the local orphanage....when pigs fly! hahaha"
*homers pig flies by the window*
Smithers: "Will you be donating that money now sir?"
Mr. Burns: "No... I'd still prefer not"
Even if there was a chance of this succeeding, it'll fizzle what's ISPs start putting a monthly bandwidth cap on people.
The problem with broadband content on the net is that not enough of the population have broadband. Most of the population are content with their 56K connections. They don't see the need for broadband because there is not enough content out there that needs it. IMO, this is a big step forward. It is true that there may not be tons of people who log on just to download this movie, but some will. And perhaps in a month or two, there will be more movies available. Once there is content that you have to have broadband to access, there will be more people who will decide to go with broadband, and then there will be a bigger thrust for broadband content. It all starts with one company willing to put it on the line like this.
Another note: I saw a few months ago on Silicon Spin (TechTV) a segment on broadband. The conclusion of the interviews is basically what I have in the above paragraph. Another thing that they pointed out was that current DSL and Cable modem shouldn't really be considered broadband. The bitrate just isn't high enough to easily allow you to view streaming high resolution movies yet. So, it may take you a while to download this move, or maybe they need to be offered at lower resolution for a while. But other broadband options may be on the way, such as VDSL (16 Mbps Up, 52 Mbps Down) may begin to spread faster if we have such internet broadband content available.
Does anybody remember when Yahoo was the Bees knees (pre. Google era) and were setting up a scheme to allow downloads of Honk Kong action and Kung Fu movies at low prices? I was waiting for this to happen and the current thread has just reminded me. I would offer the original slashdot url but the search engine is defeating my efforts!
No one will buy into this because the selection stinks, plain and simple. Have you seen it? 98% of the movies are steaming piles. Warner knows this; they're just waiting for it to become a statistic the [RI|MP]AA can use in their "Legitimate Downloads Can't Work" report. "Warner Bros. offered pay-per-view downloads, and if failed miserably. This proves that the consumer prefers 'free' over 'fair'."
The shareholder is always right.
i tried a classic login/passwd: cypherpunks/cypherpunks
and lo and behold, it works! enjoy.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
30 minutes here... assuming they don't cap their upload speeds. I might have considered downloading it, but it looks like it's all requiring Microsoft stuff to play. Anyone know what video format it uses and if there's a X11/GNU/Linux player?
Luke-Jr
Any RIAA marketoid who tries to tell you that there's a license attached to DVD sales that don't contain a user-accessable list of that license is blowing smoke.
DVDs are largely protected by copyright law--and the only "license" there is the implicit right to make "copies" necessary for use of the DVD (such as "copying" it into RAM.)
Unless something changed, they're in the same catagory as books; doctrine of first sale, fair use, et al.
Yikes! Compare the cost to something like netflix or even your local mom and pop movie rental store (or, i suppose, that really big one). There's no way I'd go this route unless it was $3.99 for unlimited viewings or something like $0.99 for 24 hours. Don't forget software compatibility either. I didn't see anything about a Mac viewer. If they just made the darn thing 4 bux for a big ol MPEG, then they would have something. I'd pay 4 bucks to have a quick download (instead of finding 20 segments on a P2P network and putting them together). Then you don't have to worry about spyware enabled viewers and all that crap.
news.com.com? not news.com? cnet is weird.
They are basically treating existing broadband users as a test market. What they learn now will inform how the procced along these lines in the future.
Thank the accountants who finally realised that:
6.5 million units * the per-unit cost of licensing macrovision > the margin on the remarkably low priced harry potter dvd * the number of people who would have bought it but copied it instead
You can go to intertainer.com and watch Harry Potter as well as some of their other movies:
1. Harry Potter
2. A Beautiful Mind
3. Rollerball
4. Bandits
5. Spy Game
6. Best of Adam Sandler
7. Bugs Bunny Collection
8. Hard Rock Live
9. Sesame Street
10. The Bikini Open
Check out the previews for free... they look great and are near DVD quality.
Owen
Its already obviously not DVD quality. And they are not thinking of the people who want to rent it on DVD. They are thinking of the people wholl buy this on one of those all day ticket pay per view channels. And besides that, this sort of thing will likely be out before it hits the rental stores in the future anyway. I used to download movies a lot, and lets just say that there were times Id rather just pay a couple of bucks and quit with all the waiting.
As many other posters have pointed out, $3.99 for one day is pretty steep compared to a four or five day rental at a video store for a similar price.
But the real problem is convenience. A higher price might be worth it if it was more convenient. At 1Mb/s, however (which is a very common "broadband" speed), this movie will take between 1.5 and 2 hours to download, and that's if your getting the full bandwidth of your connection. Problem is, I can drive down to the local video store and back five times in that amount of time, and then have a movie I can keep for four days, not 24 hours. The convenience is just not there at today's broadband speeds. Change the speed to 10Mb/s and things might be different.
Sure, sometimes the corner video store is out of the movie I want to rent, but that doesn't happen all that often, and I can always drive to the next video store (remember, I can drive to four or five in the two hours it will take to download the movie).
The second problem is the cost of the broadband connection, as slow as it is, which must be factored into the cost of the downloaded movies. In my area, a DSL connection costs around $35 more than a dial-up. If, for many users, the only reason they need a broadband connection is to download movies, then this overhead must be added into the cost of downloading movies, which will make them look even more expensive compared to video store rental unless you watch literally dozens of movies per month.
The overall problem is that with the current speeds and cost of broadband connections, the corner video store distribution model is still tough to compete with, both on convenience and cost. Again, when the bandwidth of broadband goes up by a factor of 10 and the price comes down as well (not likely to happen in the next few years at least), then things will change.
Seriously. I piped my DVD player through my VCR for the first 6 months after I got it, it took that long for me to get a DVD that had that god-awful technology.
Interestingly, the lack of macrovision isn't the only copy-prevention technology being left off of a lot of releases. Go to the record store and look for the budget B-movie, etc, releases ($5-10 per disc, usually old horror films, "The House on Haunted Hill", etc) and you'll find almost all of them are macrovision free, region free, and... CSS free.
Wonderful. I have a bunch of Hitchcocks and The 3rd Man, amongst others, in forms I can play, legally, on my Linux systems. And about effing time too.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
No need to go to the video store.
If you're only keeping the movies for a day or two it comes out to $3/movie - Probably closer to $2 or less.
I have Netflix and I love it.
The cost of this isn't worth the convenience, especially with Netflix out there.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I'm also a lazy bum.
But with Netflix, who cares? Yes, there's a bit of a delay if I REALLY REALLY want to see a particular movie. But in general, I'm fed with a constant stream of movies, usually faster than I get around to watching them, at what probably averages to $3 a movie or less. (Depending on how quickly I get around to watching em')
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I get about 4.2 kilobites a second. There's 60 seconds in a minute (4.2k * 60) and 60 minutes in an hour (252k * 60) and 24 hours in a day (15.12mb * 24) = 362.88mb. Now if I wanted to watch a 700mb movie (god help me if it's streamed) it would take me about 2 days non-stop to download at a constant connection. If I was using a calling plan where I had say, $.05 a minute charges on my phone bill, downloading this would cost me ($.05 * 2820 min) = ~ $141 + 3.99
so 144.99 isn't bad for a movie you can't watch, right?
| - | - |
Cnet puts the
My other first post is car post.
Maybe even $10, but only if they remove the 24 hour limit.
This is *almost* a good idea, it's a step in the right direction.
sometimes things happen with the bits and bytes coming across the ocean
They probably get stuck in customs.
Let's see: I can only get modem access at a decent monthly rate so I can expect it to take 12-24 hours to download, that's R120-R240 for call charges, plus the R50 fee to the studio.
A new DVD here costs R200-R300.
So I can pay R170-R290 for an inferior copy that lasts for a day or I can get a DVD with much better picture and sound quality plus probably extras, and it lasts for years.
DVD wins until we have very, very fast downloads; and even then why pay R50 when I can just hire the DVD for R15?
wich is about $299 in its basic downloadable version.
Nah, the author of the article is talking out of his ass. There are no so-called "digital locks"; the protection is that, even if you copy it to another computer, that person won't be able to play it, because they won't be able to get the decryption key from MS.
"digital locks" is how you explain DRM to clueless readers who want to feel like they're up on the latest tech fads.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
I'd pick the DVD. They'll have to drop the price a LOT to compete with brick-and-mortar rental store.
Why? You're also paying for the convenience of downloading the movie over broadband without ever leaving your home, remember. I frequently pay NetFlix more money than I would at Blockbuster, just so I can get anime DVDs the stores don't carry and have them delivered right to my home.
Eventually the record companies are going to have to recognize a few things:
Anyway, personal rant. I would LOVE to able to BUY digital music and movies and make my own mixes. This is a step in the right direction! JR
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
So the set-top box is where Microsoft comes in. And now they've got Intel involved. Try sticking a mod-chip on your cpu. Wait until your parents and all the other tech-illiterate people out there are buying Dell's with DRM in the cpu and OS. It's going to get tougher and tougher to work around Microsoft's rules until the hackers out there put their efforts towards providing an equal or better alternative platform. And even if one day we do see an equal platform, good luck convincing the studios to encode their content for everyone.
Competition is the only thing that can defeat Microsoft at this point. The problem with creating an open DRM solution is that if the source is available, it's too easy for hackers to write tools to unlock content forever once a single license is granted. So while Microsoft is somewhat protected from these kinds of hacks by the DMCA, their primary competitor (Linux) is, by nature, not. So not only has the DOJ failed consumers, so has Congress. Other companies could take up the cause and build a DRM solution into other OSes, but Linux wouldn't be usable for this cause because the GNU license would force them to release their source code. Apple isn't going to step up to the plate on this one as they have too many other things to worry about, and with their closed hardware platform, there isn't any more competition to be had there. Right now the best most of us can do is to boycott MS and Intel, and to urge those around us to do the same. It's long past time to create an alternative.
I have to wonder how successful this would be. It seems to me I could rent a DVD for either movie and keep it longer than 24 hours for the same money. I'd be able to watch it on a nice home theater rather than on a computer, with vastly better picture quality, and I wouldn't have to download for two or more hours.
The second thing I wonder is how they could prevent me from loading the movie into Virtual Dub and making a DivX or some other format file out of it, which would not have the DRM stuff in it.
As long as they offer the same stuff I can get at Blockbuster I don't see this succeeding
Since they are providing the movie as an individual download from their server, each download should be unique. I would be very surprised if they did not watermark each download in such a way that it could be traced back to whoever originally paid for the movie (credit card, or whatever). This should make it harder to pirate the movie, because of the danger of being caught if the pirate failed to strip the watermark completely (not easy, if hidden well and the original is unavailable).
Also, I would be very surprised if they did not require an Internet connection to activate the movie once it has finished downloading. The 24-hour timer could then start at that point. It would be extremely unfair to start the 24-hour timer before the movie has completely finished downloading, as many of those hours could be used up by a slow download! Each viewing of the movie probably also requires an Internet connection, as pointed out earlier, if only to connect to an external trusted clock (it would be otherwise trivial to change the computer's clock to defeat the 24-hour timer).
Think it will succeed? $3.99 is a competitive price with Blockbuster and other conventional video stores. However, the selection is very poor. HP is clearly an experiment by the studio, as they released it on DVD without Macrovision. They took a leap of faith there, and they are doing it again with this Internet download offer. They are waiting for results before offering any other major film (hence their padding of the service with only obscure B-movies).
I'd be interested in knowing the piracy rates for HP versus a similiar major film; my bet is that the lack of certain copy protection measures doesn't make a difference, as the DVD format has already been cracked six ways from Sunday. Affordable downloads are the way to go to defeat P2P, making it easier and less frustrating to get the content legitimately!
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
MOD PARENT UP - he hit the nail square on the head!
Better to start now while broadband is fairly low, than to wait later when it's more rampant and they get caught with their virtual pants down!! This way they can ramp up the server pipelines to meet the demand, rather than the other way around.
They contain digital locks that prevent the files from being copied. The license expires after 24 hours, rendering the file useless unless the license is renewed.
So, I'd have to download 700mb (Au$105 assuming it's outside my monthly bandwidth allowance), and then I have to pay Au$8 every time I want to watch it afterwards? When I can rent it on DVD for Au$3?
Good idea, wot?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Take a look at this site. There are over 300 movies up (including the ones mentioned in the story). Most interesting, they offer a $9.95 / month "all you can eat" option, which is a much more interesting proposition than $4 / movie / day.
Of course, 90% of they movies they are offering are total crap, "Backyard Fight Clubs 2", you have to have Windows Media Player, and picture quality is pretty poor. The free movie I checked out had a piss-poor transfer as well as bandwidth issues.
But $9.95 for all the movies I could watch on-demand would be an interesting proposition if the catalog were any good... even with DRM.
Geez, and I used to get pissed just having to rewind a movie before watching it...
Likewise, can I watch these under Linux? Xiner and MPlayer can use the codecs, I think, but I'm sure CinemaNow adds all sorts of other stuff into the mix.
I have broadband, I'd like to buy movies, but I'm not going to pay for or put up with another format I can't play ruling the day.
If you're like me, living in Australia and paying 15c/mb for your traffic... That's $105 in download costs, plus the $3.99 to watch the movie once.
How can that be cheaper than paying $34.95 for the DVD?
Anything is possible, except skiing through revolving doors.
I'll tell you why alot of homes in the US don't have Broadband access. I used to work for AOL/Time Warner and they can't handle their own staff more/less the clients. Our one Houston, TX location hired more people than they could handle DUE TO POOR MANAGEMENT and it resulted in techs leaving. When I tried to leave, they tried to stick me with $3,000 worth of 'stolen' equipment - Cable Modems, HDTV Decoders, and Cable Boxes. I'm assuming this is a way to scrape up some more revenue? But its because of companies who don't give a damn that people don't have broadband access in their homes. The idea of movies on demand is not before its time. The idea of cable companies treating their employees and clients with the respect they deserve is desperately needed.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
What is the sound format? stereo!??!
I mean, I have a $25 zoltrix 5.1 sound card here, go figure how cheap they are now...
So, what will be the sound format?
Windows Media 9 has 5.1 , Realvideo 9 has 5.1 sound... If those guys, send a DivX (er,regular, I know it has 5.1 sound too) for that price, how can they blame people?
Only 24 hours? Geez. At 56Kb it takes 29 hours and 7 minutes to download.
Reminds me of the early weather forcasting computers that would take 25 hours to calculate the next day's weather.
To be honest i dont think the American market is the ultimate target for this tech, at least in the short to medium term.
Here in central England everyone i know has broadband, even the old people who don`t use it that often as it is a cheap option with our cable tv. The nearby housing estate which is the second largest in europe is flood wired with fibre & so are all the other nearby estates.
All the streets were dug up in the mid 90s and fibre was laid to almost 1million homes.
The connections are 1mbit & ping times to UK sites are sub 20.
The cost is cheap enough that some homes have more than one internet connection of this speed & are only charged slightly extra (3boxes is the technical maximum).
Theres no bandwidth cap & in theory we could download a film in around 2hrs, and just keep on downloading them.
My point is, the target audience for these films(the couch potato) in my neck of the woods at least , already has the means for which to download and more importantly pay for these films readily.
It's a matter of choice. And yes, I also have applets and animations turned off.
is this an idea before its time?
Hardly, I'd say it's well behind times. I can download a 1.4gb version for free!
... and then there were none
This should be a useful feature for those who don't want to violate the law but find it difficult to discover their distribution rights on a MP3 file. Maybe it is applicable to software as well, so that you don't redistribute some file illegally without knowledge, or running non-free software when you really want to live on OSS only. Just make them advisory and optional.