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The Movie Studios' Next Step in Online Movie Delivery
Con Zymaris writes "Here's another piece on the how the movie studios are trying to co-opt the movie delivery mechanisms of the 'counter-culture' set, but instill major restrictions such as IP-address range verification to ensure country of origin, and maximum 24-hour-play lifetime for each downloaded movie."
Here is how it works. According to this page, it's Windows only. Too bad.
Not sure where you live, but here in Japan with my 12MBit ADSL connection, I can suck down a 1400MB file in under an hour. That's usually about the same time I would kill driving all the way to a rental place and back, not to mention the money I save in gas and also not having to pick a different movie because the one I wanted was already rented by other people.
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
I live in Canada, and my ADSL ISP limits my monthly transfer to 5 gigs a month. After that, I pay 10$ a gig. So...
5 gigs = ~7 movies @ 700 MB each = 40$ (monthly rate for adsl)
+ 4 US$ * 7 movies * 1.5 exchange rate = 42$
= 82$ total (plus tax)
82$ for 7 movies? That I can only watch for 24 hours each? When I can buy NEW DVD'S for ~20$ each! It seems that the movie companies are shooting themselves in the foot multiple times with a plan like this...
Basic membership is free, Pay per View is $3-4, premium membership is $9.95/month.
/. weenies. Girls Gone Wild, etc...;) Have fun, kiddies.
Most of the newer relases are avialable only to premium members. Yes, they have an adult selection for you
There are a few free (as in beer) movies. Shorts mostly, a LOT of Mr. Bill from SNL, other movies no one's ever heard of.
Randomly cruising through the 650 movie list, I checked out a free 6 minute short, "Automatic". (It was pretty much the first 'free' one I came to.) Run in a window the stream quality on cable was 'not too bad'.
Pop it out to full screen, however, and there was significant pixelization.
(Philips 17" monitor, PIII 850, Intel i815 integrated video, or a Dell Latitude with AGP Matrox vid)
Oh yeah, don't have any auto pop up things (email, IM, whatnot) running on that PC. Awful annoying have your email client scream at you during a quiet scene in the movie.
Would I pay $4 for movie from here? Not a chance. Would I pay $10/month for premium access? HA. Netflix at twice the price is waaaay better.
The home movie experience is so far from the average PC user as to be unworkable via this method. I suppose if you had a hotrod PC dedicated to the living room, with all the fancy graphics, a fat pipe, a $1000 monitor, and a really good vid out signal, then maybe you could reproduce the quality of a $200 TV and a $60 DVD player.
But probably not.
Next, we shall investigate capturing a movie from here via a USB Dazzle.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I will agree bandwidth advances are going to keep continuing for a long, long time, and i will agree that it's inevitable that yeah yeah someday we'll be able to watch DVD streaming video on a TV downloaded off of your average consumer-level broadband service.
:)
However, i for one don't see any indication that the "someday" when this big leap occurs is going to be anytime even remotely soon.
I mean, the last i checked, all the big bandwidth-selling companies-- especially the DSL providers-- are having lots of financial difficulties. Also last i checked there's an absolutely huge glut of dark fiber just sitting there because doing the last mile to most places just isn't financially viable.
I wouldn't say the bandwidth market is dying, but it really honestly looks like it isn't going anywhere at the moment, and a lot of changes are going to have to happen before we start seeing big leaps of any sort.
Am i wrong?
P.S. If by "afoot" you meant "sometime in like five to fifteen years", then yeah you're probably right and i apologize for wasting your time
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts