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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."
Well executed, convenient to me as a consumer, and available under terms of fair use.
If this works smoothly, I'm all for it. It's about time content providers realised the Internet was a place to do legitimate business!
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
Here is how it works. According to this page, it's Windows only. Too bad.
Downloading movies in any decent quality over the internet, simply for viewing it, is a joke.
Even with a very fat pipe, downloading 700mb for an ok-quality divx or 1400mb for a good quality DivX is still a very long wait. Streaming a pixelated mosaic still sucks over broadband, too.
Besides, if you have a broadband connection, chances are you live in a town with a Blockbuster video, and you can afford a $50 DVD player -- it's still by far an easier solution.
The media companies should just give up these crappy pay alternatives to piracy, as the capitalist model does not work in the digital world where there are no laws and the ability to mass-duplicate any form of media, unless the draconian Palladium takes over -- which will be over my dead body.
It'd just be easier to sell cheap DVDs and CDs ($10/DVD, $5/CD) with a business like newegg, where you get everything in 2 days and the prices are rock bottom. More people would actually buy their music and movies at full quality instead of downloading them if their prices weren't exorbitantly fixed.
Just a note before the usual /. yelling and screaming about how bad all the corporates are. Remember that the people trying this sort of stuff are still working out what works. Sure, it might seem over controlling now and make people just use KazaaLite etc instead but eventually we should reach a fairly agreed level of freedom.
:]
It is pretty unfair to think they should give everything away for free however it's also unfair to impliment such strong rules on the end user. Maybe in five to ten years we will have a solid system that (most) people like. [Plus maybe some decent broadband to help online movies become more of a reality
Anyone agree?
My blog [.net, rants, general IT]
I am preoccupied with my digital rights like most /.ers. Hence, I don't participate in this garbage. However, since the fall of Napster, many have sought legal and legit ways to get media on the Internet--the Internet is more than suitable. Hence, they accept license agreements that resemble the physical limitations on renting movies at Blockbuster, for example.
As much as I hate the DMCA, etc., this doesn't bother me too much. I don't lose any rights by not using the service which I frankly don't really have a burning desire to use, as others do.
So others may face crappy lame restrictions. If they don't like it--stick with Blockbuster. However, a number of people here on Slashdot have been asking for similar services for a while, and now that it's coming, I see no reason for anyone to whine (what did you expect?).
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
When are these studios going to get it through their heads that these ridiculous copy protection schemes don't do anything but instill bad faith? The IP address restriction seems silly, the IP address has almost nothing to do with the country of origin. I can think of a thousand different scenarios in which a person may appear to have an address located in Hong Kong but is in reality in the United States. And the 24 hour playtime limit? There is a reason Blockbuster just extended the rental time from 5 days to 7. That's how long people want it! Some people say it's good that studios are beginning to get the picture, they're becoming less restrictive with digital media, but a compromise like this is just bad taste.
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
How can they justify such a high price, whereas for cheaper you can rent a DVD:
-with a sound and image quality far superior
-that you will get in less time that it takes to download it
-that you may be allowed to keep longer than 24h
-that you can watch on your home theater and not on your 17" computer screen
Do they have customers for this service at all?
have you been defaced today?
...let's just hope their latest scheme is as successful as Divx was ;-).
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...
When I buy a movie on DVD at Blockbuster for $19.99 - I own it outright. I can set up a theatre and show it for profit.
Um, you "can", but not legally unless you jump through the proper "public performance license" hoops. Otherwise all you're allowed to do is to show it in your home to friends/family.
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
Actually, no. You do not have "public performance" rights when you buy the DVD, you need a special license for that.
The article says that this is limited to people from the United States. Couldn't someone setup a proxy or NAT server in the US to make WB's servers think that the request comes from the US?
No you cant!! You buy. And its yours to keep, but it for personal/private use. You cant open a theater and charge people to get in. You dont have "the license" to redistribute it (the content of the movie). Yea you can have friends over to watch it, but you cant charge people and advertise.
The last part of your is true though, DVDs can really dent box office sales.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
You know, the big red or blue screen that says something about public viewing, FBI, punishment, fine, jail...
Yeah, right.
Bah, here in Calgary, Canada I can watch recent movies from my cable company through my digital terminal set. Only costs $5 and I can watch them anytime and any number of times with 24 hours of ordering. Plus I can pause, rewind and fast-forward. Too cool. Now if they would improve the selection...
http://www.shawondemand.ca/
the movie studios are trying to co-opt the movie delivery mechanisms of the 'counter-culture' set
I'd say more like: "the movie studios are trying to get a clue and are pulling their heads out of their ass another inch".
I have no interest in their movies, legally or otherwise, but at least they're giving it a go. Maybe it will work out and they won't pass any more legislation. That's what I care about.
It's the time limit. If it was a week, it might have a better chance, but think about it. How long does it take you to download an iso? When does that 24 hour period start? After you have the whole thing downloaded? Or when it starts getting sent from the server? You don't really get 24 hours in the latter case.
Not to mention...$7.50 a movie? come on now. I'm not so lazy that I'll wait 6+ hours to download a movie at twice or more of the price of a dvd at the blockbuster or hastings or hollyvood video, all within 10 minutes.
I appreciate the effort, but it's just not gonna be pleasant to use. People download movies because they want to keep them and watch them when they feel like it. How about me being able to download a movie for $7.50, or even $10, and keep it for an unlimited duration? Heck, even if I have to put in a credit card number each time for verification (ala e-books) it wouldn't be bad at all.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Joke?
Just because you're not aware of the big leap coming in streaming video...the joke will be on you, me thinks.
The liscensing is being worked out now....
If you could somehow convince them to pay maybe $10 for a large popcorn & coke then you could still make a tidy profit.... and movies would be free .... oh hang on..
They are giving you the information. Only it is in a form that self-destructs (large appliance manufacturers take note). Remember that the only way for them to make sure this works is to take away your right to control the information on your system. Your right to hack your own files.
Every company in the world would like to be able to sell you a product with a self-destruct device embedded that you couldn't remove legally. Only Hollywood thinks that it is their right.
I don't see how 700 MB downloads, for $4 and expiring after 24 hours, are worth it for anyone? They are trying to compete against Blockbuster, which is both cheaper, higher quality (DVD), and has much more bandwidth:
Remember, if it takes you 15 minutes through BlockBuster and back, with a 5 GB DVD, you are getting a nice 5 MB/second transfer.
Test your net with Netalyzr
"maximum 24-hour-play lifetime for each downloaded movie"
Considering how long a DVD-quality movie will take to download (without going into bandwidth caps or more draconian ISP measures), that will leave me exactly 37 seconds in which to watch the movie before it erases itself.
no way an open source product will support the format... and not because they don't want to. think about it.
if they're enforcing a 24 hour playable window from time of download, this can only be enforced via software control. you can't throw in some downloadable atoms that will explode after a day. so that means if an open source program can play it, it can also be recompiled to disable the 24 hour restriction.
I'm puzzled as to why they think they need to enforce regional zones with this practice. It made sense like 10 years ago. Movies are gauged in the USA before sent out to other countries. Sometimes they're edited differently. Then there's translation into other languages, etc. I understand all that.
These days it's getting harder and harder to justify the segregation. It's easier and easier to launch a movie around the world. For example, I went to Brazil a week after Spiderman was released in the USA. I watched that movie, in Brazil, with Portuguese subtitles only a week after the launch.
Now, I can understand the desire to prevent people from watching the movie on-line so that they can go see it in the theater first. But why is that such a priority anymore? Seems like they still make money either way. In some respects, they could make even more money. There are movies I want to see. I'd be happy to watch them if I had the tape, but I'm not so interested in making it to a theater to watch them. I'm sure there are lots of people that feel that way.
If their concern is over theater attendence, why not make the experience more appealing? Headphones would be nice so you can't hear the occasional ringing of a cell phone. Bigger screen? Better quality film? I dunno.
In any case, I don't mean to ramble. I have a question: What is the big screaming deal about regional lockouts for movies? Is there an issue I didn't raise? It's just puzzling to me that they feel they need to prevent somebody from Australia from watching a movie in the USA. What if I'm vacationing there?
"Derp de derp."
Well, for the price of a couple of movies, you can also get a proxy (any kind of web hosting with Perl scripting will do) in the US or Europe.
To most people? "Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....."
What is music when you despise all sound?
I saw on The Screen Savers that Intertainer.com WAS doing online films. They had sample content, old TV shows and such, that ran pretty well over broadband.
They just closed shop and filed suit against the major US movie studios claiming that they couldn't get content at a reasonable price. It turns out that the movie studio "synergies" are set up to get any other source from being able to provide content.
So as we suspect, the MPAA isn't against movies being available on the net, they're just against the content coming from anywhere else than the big studios.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Shouldn't it be cheaper than renting a movie? - You wait longer to DL than to go to store - You only get it for 24 hours as opposed to 7*24 - It's of poorer quality, since the quality would be reduced for download - Most users don't have TV-out... they'd be watching on their 15" CRT Monitors... - It eats away at your bandwidth cap That's reason enough for it to be cheaper, since you, the consumer get a shorter end of the stick. There's more, though. You save them money by cutting out the middle man. They don't have to pay someone to press it to DVD. They don't have to pay truckers to send that video to the store for you to pick up. They don't have to pay the store to store it or rent it to you. Hmm...
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.
You know, the big red or blue screen that says something about public viewing, FBI, punishment, fine, jail...
No worries... looks like the DVD rippers and encoders skip that track automagically.
(kidding)
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
DRM Failure=IP Spoofing+Video Capture
If the client address is spoofed then it can't expect any IP datagrams to be routed to it when the hosting site responds to that address.
"Specious Argument" + "FP Syndrome" = "embarrasing declaration"
HTH
why run from Vincenzo?
You know, I have gotten pretty pissed off at Hollywood - trying to make sure I watch what they want me to watch when they want me to watch at the price they want me to watch it at.
:)
Has anyone considered BMWFilms.com? I mean, their films are short, but they are free. The only product they are trying to sell is BMW automobiles, and I already own one before I started watching their stuff. Now if they could just get other films produced, then we'd be in business. They don't even care if you share the films with your friends. Only hangup is that they need Windows Media Player, or Quicktime (they offer a third option, but as I don't use it and don't remember what it is - I won't guess).
When are we going to get tired of watching stupid Hollywood films, and just make one of our own - open source film.
There is a lot of discussion on delivery of movies via the Internet. Not only here at slashdot, but this is also used as justification for all the DRM stuff in Congress.
But, who would actually use this? Sure, dorm dwellers might want to watch TV & movies on their computer monitor to save space. But, they can already do that with DVD's.
At home, there is no way I'm gonna watch a movie on my 19" monitor rather than my expensive TV. On my big screen, the quality is even more important. I'm looking to upgrade to HDTV on D-VHS or HD-DVD, not downgrade to grainy overcompressed low bitrate formats.
For the record the downloads are priced at $4 American, its 7.30 Australian. Four bucks ain't expensive.
For the sake of objectivity I'll list some Pros:
-700 megs if encoded properly should be somewhere
between VHS and Satellite TV quality.
-You don't have to drive to the videostore to return it.
-The possibility for a huge selection. How many Blockbusters carry that foreign or hard-to-find film you've been dying to see?
-The 24 limitation isn't bad if you consider that this is "on demand" with some serious lag. You simply download it the night you want to watch it.
A few people have discussed quality already but I think you make the best criticism here with:
>-that you can watch on your home theater and not on your 17" computer screen
Exactly. Watching this on a monitor will only make its lack of quality more obvious, the sound will be poor unless you have a kickass sound card and speaker system, you can't crowd around it like you can the TV in the living room, etc.
What this is lacking is a internet/TV convergence device that lets people (especially non-techies) transfer the download to their TV. The lower resolution of a television compared to a monitor will help to cover up the artifacts and other low-quality issues. Sitting 8+ feet from the TV helps too. If WB leased a webtv-like broadband device with a HD big enough to hold a couple movies along then I'd be all over it.
That IS NOT a EULA. It is merely a quick and not wholly accurate restatement of applicable copyright law.
Of course, even software EULA's are of debatable enforcability.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Except if you can't get the content because you're in an invalid IP zone etc, which is why people region-hack their DVD players in the first place.
Of course, you could probably IP spoof etc. For those that don't know enough to do so, well, they're no worse than they were before the service came around.
However, I could see a lot of fallthrough on this service. Capturing applications would be made to capture the movie streams, and then they'd probably end up on kazaa, etc anyways prompting a big I-told-you-so.
Also, with ISP's already capping users due to kazaa bandwidth usage etc, somehow I don't think a dedicated movie-through-internet system would please them much more...
With the amount of data being transferred for movies? Get a few users and your server would be cooked faster than those unfortunate enough to have their personal servers linked through /.
IP spoofing would probably work better in this case, I wouldn't want to pipe 700mb downloads through my proxy...
Chances are it would be something built into either the file or the player. How else would they control the file's expiry once it is on your PC? In this case, 24 hour from the time the complete ISO has been downloaded, or perhaps from the first play?
It would be fun if it turned out to be as dumb as many of the older expiry settings for shareware... changing the date on your fixed those pretty handily.
"What this is lacking is a internet/TV convergence device that lets people (especially non-techies) transfer the download to their TV. The lower resolution of a television compared to a monitor will help to cover up the artifacts and other low-quality issues. Sitting 8+ feet from the TV helps too. If WB leased a webtv-like broadband device with a HD big enough to hold a couple movies along then I'd be all over it."
/. September 16, but it got rejected. Ah well.
Check this out. It's exactly what you ask for: a insanely simple to use Internet/TV convergence device, which, using the PS2 as an interface, streams mpeg, mp3, divx , xvid and more over your local LAN from your PC. I've been playing with it for over a month and it's beta but cool. Works on Linux, Doze and OSX.
I submitted a story on Qcast to
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
I guess since the MPAA is in bed with Microsoft, us linux users are going to still have to rely on newsgroups, and P2P to download movies?
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Of the advantages you listed, Netflix overcomes pretty much all of them. You get a real DVD (with extras, though for a two disc set you would not get the second disc without another rental), you don't have to go further than your mailbox to return it, you have a huge selection, AND you get to keep and watch it as long as you like - which I actually think is a very important factor to rentals.
Even Blockbuster has longer rental times now. I think that many people rent a movie without a defined period of time to watch it, and squeeze it in where they can... so Netflix works out pretty well for a lot of people and has very good turnaround time for a mail service.
Yes, with online rentals you can have the movie the moment you want to watch it (especially using some kind of stream so you get to start watching right away). But online rentals run into the problem of people settling down to watch a movie then being inturrupted, and wanting to watch the movie later - sometimes days later.
Even if the player convergence with TV was really good and I had the bandwith to stream a good quality movie (well, I do have that already) there would have to be very substantial benefits to the online rental beyond sheer immediacy for me to use it.
Not to mention that every time media companies try this sort of thing they forget that people like watching the full movie and not a pan&scan travesty - DVD has opened that door and they keep trying to shut it again, why is beyond me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have little desire to stream anything because I cannot archive it. Getting my hands on plain old media is still the better value. It can be loaned, watched later when the mood arises, resold (I know they *hate* that one.), played on just about any device I have, or destroyed. All my choice all the time.
Now getting the streams at the same time the movie is in the theatre would be interesting. It would be nice to check out a movie before dropping $50 on a flop. You would not have to watch the entire thing, just sample until you know you want to go. They could even include exacly this sampling feature.
So, it is likely I will remain uninterested in this --for now.
Do I wish it would fail? Not sure really.
Even though, I am not likely to use the service, I do know plenty of people that would. They should have the choice to do so.
Problem is that boom or bust, our Internet will be changed to meet the needs of those providing these services. I think this means more lockdowns, slower access for 'non monetized' traffic, and trouble for open systems in general. Think about it, they will *NEVER* make this avaliable on an open platform because they know better. Though they could just produce a binary, but why bother. Most of the money will be in the win32 user market.
This really is just continuing evidence that we are all still in trouble. Open systems and networks will suffer because they do not generate revenue which is what this is all about right?
Something to keep an eye on though.
Blogging because I can...
Lets see.
By keeping the average bitrate to a range DSL can stram over, it's not so bad. You've got a movie at your fingertips.
But on the other hand, I know what 650MB movies look like, and no matter what format you use they still look like crap. Worse than VHS, let alone DVD.
Sounds like they'd be better suited to cap the movies at around a gig and have the users have like a 2 minute streaming buffer or so. At around a gig, you can get much better than VHS quality.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you used some kind of a time-stamped public key on 10% of the frames (to be downloaded live), and those frames used as the source frames, couldn't you make it so that the decryption would have to be done live?
I don't think that such an idea would be impossible -- but I'm inclined to agree that practically, we probably won't see that happen.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
your TV isn't big enough to show the movie as it was originally filmed, you have to go see it in the theatre!
Well, the movie that I want to watch isn't currently in theaters. And it won't be until the studios set up digital cinema so that theaters can dedicate half their screens to something other than recent releases.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The only way it would ever work is if they partner with the ISP to host data on their internal network (or a dedicated link to their own network).
You mean like Akamai's core service? Apple already does this with QuickTime movie trailers.
Will I retire or break 10K?
why not make the experience more appealing? Headphones would be nice
Theaters already do that. They play the soundtrack on very low-power FM radio because some viewers may have hearing aids that are more compatible with their radio sets than with the theater's THX setup.
What is the big screaming deal about regional lockouts for movies?
The reason for region lockouts is that copyright law differens from country to country. For instance, Peter Pan and The Time Machine are still copyrighted in the EU but public domain in the USA. These works are still copyrighted by the Bono estate in the USA but public domain in Australia. Sometimes a studio has to release a movie in one market and use that market's box office revenue to pay the up-front royalties for licensing derivative work and public performance rights in another market.
Will I retire or break 10K?
how can you say that isn't expensive?
At the local video store here I pay $6.00 for 3 DVDs. Sure, it's only for 24h, but that's three movies, a 6 min round-trip drive, and 24h.
Instead, w/this god-awful idea, I would have to waste X-amount of hours downloading a movie, sit on my COMPUTER and watch it, and then it is still only good for 24h.
Ok. I download a TON of DVD-Rips from Kazaa. I have a TV-out card to my VCR's RCA inputs. I *could* tape these... Why? I can download the movies faster, rent them faster and CHEAPER.
This is doomed. They have one idea in mind... Blaming us for it failing...
I thought I put this post Here. Grrr. Fat fingered that one.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Sure, everything probably CAN be copied. What the studios can do is make it not worth the effort. If this price got reduced to a dollar or 50 cents, would anyone bother finding a way to do the work to distribute it for free? Even if they did, would a critical mass of people bother using P2P services (with the known problems of mislabeled files and really poor quality files) to get it?
The market for people who want to see older movies on the big screen is pretty limited, alas.
Really? I gather from previous Slashdot discussions about movie piracy that there exist lots of people who would still want to see movies on the big screen even if they are available otherwise. My own adoptive parents are two of them. Not everybody has a four-figure home theater rig.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How about $12 for being able to keep it forever, and the ability to suck it down through a fat pipe?
Like, come on, which would you rather download it from? Someone else's ADSL modem that has a 640K upload speed and 3 other people on it, or through the studio's OC-148, where you can download it at your max bandwidth?
For only $12 US, I'll choose the studio, thanks.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Well, yeah they have headphones for those who ask for them. I was thinking offering them in a general sense.
And that answer on the regional zones was very interesting. Thank you!
"Derp de derp."