Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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...
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/
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."
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.
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.
If you consider self imposed restrictions on availability on an otherwise world wide network 'convenient', then I guess maybe it is.
It's just like DVD region coding. A convenience to the people who are lucky enough to be in the right locale, and an artificial hindrance to others.
Ray
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.
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...
Comment removed based on user account deletion