'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?"

Comments

Format?

[TechnoVooDooDaddy]

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?

Re:Format?

[snaggen]

Yes, it will be cracked. But by doing this they can control the quality on the movies swaped. This means that people who likes the film will buy a good quality film on DVD since there are only bad quality films around.

I think this is the way to go to control piracy, handout low quality alternatives for a low cost (or for free).

Re:This is a change

[Ubergrendle]

Once there is a digital copy on a PC, whatever timebomb exists to limit viewing to 24 hours can be stripped. It might take some time for hackers to develop something, but it will happen. The risk here is that $3.99 is a reasonable price compared to DVD/VHS rentals, but is it really enough to cover the bandwidth/hosting costs for a popular title from a service provider perspective? 700 mb in the 1mbit bit cap world (e.g. any high speed in canada now it seems) will take some time to download, also, from a consumer perpsective. This sounds like a really good option, but I'm still skeptical if it's got the right price point/features to be successful... also, all it needs to be is hacked once and then kazaa/bearshare/limewire/etc will get you all the free copies you need.

Pruduct first

[sehryan]

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.

Before its time?

[g.a.g]

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.

Re:Before its time?

[iabervon]

They probably don't expect this to catch on. But offering something online that nobody downloads is no big deal. It's not like they don't have the couple GB of disk to have this around.

They want to get this in place before its time, because people will get used to whatever method is best when downloading movies becomes feasible. So they set it up and get people to use it as they get the necessary bandwidth. It's too soon to make money on it, but at least it's not too late to establish market share, and it will be really important to catch the early adopters, because they're who people will ask where to get movies when the masses can download them.

It'll die in its current form...

[Andy Dodd]

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.

But can I watch 'em in OS X?

[crovira]

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?

Re:Harry potter dvd does not have macrovision prot

[sdo1]

Yea, and they really lost sales because of it didn't they?

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