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The Movie Studios' Next Step in Online Movie Delivery

Posted by timothy on from the soon-you'll-rent-your-own-home-movies dept.

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."

5 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Too bad... by rob-fu · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is how it works. According to this page, it's Windows only. Too bad.

    1. Re:Too bad... by brad-x · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hmm, maybe MPlayer will support the format? Even if it is a new digitally signed media format, players like it are very good at using the Windows based codecs.

      Not time to panic just yet, there are still a few compatibility options.

      --
      // -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ -- //
  2. Some Simple Math... by manly_15 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...

  3. So I signed up for an account... by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 4, Informative

    Basic membership is free, Pay per View is $3-4, premium membership is $9.95/month.

    Most of the newer relases are avialable only to premium members. Yes, they have an adult selection for you /. weenies. Girls Gone Wild, etc...;) Have fun, kiddies.
    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.

  4. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion