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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?"
I figure it would take me about, oh, 24 hours to download a movie...
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?
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.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
...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
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.
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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!)
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.
Ta add to you theory read this:
Harry potter dvd does not have macrovision protection
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
Because of the following:
Which would you rather have:
Full-blown DVD, 5 days for $3-5, or:
Download - 1 day for $4?
I'd pick the DVD.
They'll have to drop the price a LOT to compete with brick-and-mortar rental store.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
DECSS was not an attempt to get free content, it was an attempt to play content on something other than a M$ 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.
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?
Nope, it's $3.99 for a video you can view for only 24 hours, after spending the downloading time. Compare this to a $4 5 day rental at Blockbuster, or buying it on DVD for $16.99, it doesn't look so good. Whose kid is only ever going to want to watch it once, and in most cases on a computer screen (TV out isn't *that* common)?
Unrestricted, it would make sense. For a lot of movies, they'd make up in volume what they'd lose in per-copy prices. (The $16.99 includes distributor and vendor markups.) Harry Potter might be one of a few where this isn't the case, simply because so high a percentage of the potential purchasers are buying it already.
I think this is just intended to fail. "Look, we offered stuff over the net, but they've already pirated it and refuse to buy it."
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
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?
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?