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New Movie Download Pay Service
SailorBob writes " After nearly two years in production, Hollywood-backed Movielink is giving the green light to its online movie rental service.
The Web site, a joint project of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros., will debut Monday with a limited selection of first-run and classic films from the five major motion pictures studios, in a test of the technology to select U.S. residents. Though the film studios have licensed content to other video-on-demand sites, it is the first time they've introduced a service of their own.
Of course, just like the new music services, this is also only available to US residents. "
Dont they want money from outside the US?
I am interested in this, but they are not letting me in, so does anyone know of any open proxy servers based in the US so I can have a look see?
Cheers
Thank you for your interest in Movielink. We want you to take part in the powerful Internet movie rental experience that Movielink delivers; however, you currently do not meet our minimum system requirements. You will need to adjust the following:
* You Need Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP
They are severely limiting their audience here. While "normal" people will simply go to Blockbuster and rent the DVD, the Internet community doesn't allow have "Windows 98, ME, 2000, or XP".
As I (obviously) can't browse through the webpage, could someone tell me how format these are going to be distributed in?
[BTW, I'm running Mozilla 1.1 on SuSE 8.1 Professional.]
Thank you for your interest in Movielink. We want you to take part in the powerful Internet movie rental experience that Movielink delivers, but it is presently unavailable to users outside of the United States.
;)
I'm don't see why I can't even have a look? Are they just paranoid of people copying their service in the rest of the world?
I'd be nice to know more, but seems we have to resort to Gnutella/eDonkey/etc... here
.: Max Romantschuk
is this just going to be the movie or are we going to get the whole dvd experience? Extras and such. And just how in the world do they expect to keep you from watching it whenever once you get it?
It must be a propritary format and if so how long before someone figures out how to very convienently rip it. If it is propritary, what kind of a player does it have?
Give me exactly what I want or I'm going to aquire it illegally. Ahh, blackmail. Your morals are interesting.
Thank you for your interest in Movielink. We want you to take part in the powerful Internet movie rental experience that Movielink delivers, but it is presently unavailable to users outside of the United States.
The pirates are so much more user/customer-friendly.
Working in Turkey at the moment, around the block from the hotel people are standing around with these huge boxes full of DIVX movies. costs about a buck or 2 a movie (depends on your bartering skills)...
the amazing this is that they even have a system! It's all DVD quality, autorun feature that would install all the codecs, subtitling software,...
now i don't feel so bad for having bought some of those when i' really really bored...
i was going to buy some from your site mr. movie exec... but you wouldn't let me... so this was my only option
Much like with how you can rip streaming audio to mp3 and what not, has anyone figured out a way to rip these movies?
The only appealing use of this that I can think of right now might be to load a movie or two on the laptop prior to a plane flight.
I was hoping that this may allow you to burn a DVD or VCD from the downloaded site but no such luck. I can't think of any time that I would sit and watch a movie on my PC except when travelling.
I can't quite see how they expect to make any money off of this. To be competitive this services has to offer something better than the existing distribution channels. I see far too many bad points and only one good, no returns or late fees.
I hate it when I do stupid stuff like pick the wrong format. Once more with appropriate breaking:
Blackmail implies a negative outcome for the company. Or, at least, an outcome more negative than had I no dealings with the product. They gain money by providing me with product, and they lose no money (save what they had to gain) by not. That is not blackmail.
The part about acquiring it illegally is a given about much of the public in many ways of life. 30 seconds on packetnews, go to the appropriate IRC channel, and get the newest Screener or DVDRip. Been that way for awhile. You might bemoan that, but it's still the case.
Here they're trying to fulfill a market that doesn't exist (24 hour online rentals) and so of course it's going to fail. The only people interested in online rentals are agorophobians and people who live in desolate areas. So that leaves Johnny Carson, and who else?
Porn is the only industry that gets off (pun intended) on that business structure, and this venture won't change that.
Side notes: In my meager defense, I've downloaded a move exactly once, then realized why screeners really suck. I will likely do it for Spirited Away though, because of Disney's cock-up in distributing it to all of 200 screens in total, with the nearest being three+ hours away. I may do it for Bowling for Columbine too, because of the Regal Cinemas flap, unless Michael Moore wants to sell me a DVD personally, so I'll know he's getting my cash and not a distributor.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
This service will no doubt fail as it requires too many things for all it delivers. The more likely thing we will see from this is after this fails more lobbying in washington as they can now "proove" that the internet is only comprised of pirates! See we opened a pay service and nobody used it!
Got hosting
Any would they care if it ran on anything else but windows?
Before some linux fanatic mods me down, look at
this. In the "Web Browsers Used To Access Google" graph, IE clearly dominates everything else.
This is from August, but I doubt anything has changed. Linux is only 1% of the OS used to access google. Even with it's own linux portal!
I'm a big fan of linux. My websites use linux. My firewall is linux. My Tivo is linux! However, if you think that companies will try to build a web application that only 1% of population will ever see, then you're misinformed.
Now let's see if I get modded down...
Live web cams
Yes, gasp on that last one. I do actually pay-per-view right now, when there's something showing that I want to see. Look, actual currency, waiting to go into your bloated pockets! I'm not a habitual collector of free content. I'll only leech if there's no easier way to view the content (like, you refuse to make it available to me to maintain your artificial market segmentation).
But this is asking too much, offering too little, and it's hostile as all hell. It looks as though it's pretty much set up to fail, which might be the point.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Specs:
.75 * .65 * .8 * .2 = .078 or ~ 8%
You need Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP
You need Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher - Upgrade Now
You need RealPlayer 8.0 or higher
Windows Media Player 7.1 or higher
You need a Connection Speed of 128 kbps or higher
Most folks run 98 or higher, but still a large % don't. (Win95, Mac, Linux, etc.) ~ 75% do.
Most people have IE 5 or higher, but still a lot don't. ~ 65% do.
Most have Real 8 or Media Player 7 or higher. ~ 80% do.
Few have a high speed connection. ~ 20% do.
So, I hope my math is right, but:
Of those 8% of computer users, how many are going to use the service? How many are willing to wait for the download vs. walking down the street ot rent the DVD for less?
Sounds like an excellent business model!
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
"Back in the Day" I ran on-air ops for a major cable premium network, from whence this anecdote, and perhaps some inkling into H-Wood's current mindset, arises:
In the big hubbub prior to "The Day The Skies Went Black," i.e., the time when HBO and Showtime began encrypting their signals (early 80's), denying them from the long-standing C-Band pirates, various congressfolk went ballistic. Their gripe (inexplicable and amazing to us in the industry at the time) was that the cable networks could not all-of-a-sudden deny the pirates their entertainment; we had to at least offer a for-pay alternative to what they had gotten previously for free. This neccessitated a tremendous cost in building out certain shared encryption operations centers that would pool subscriber data, etc etc. (Happy upside that nobody predicted was that the revenues garnered from catering to the former pirates was HUGE, in some networks' instances well in advance of Cable susbcriber revenue.)
Of course, this didn't stop the real dyed-in-the-wool, off-shore-operating, parrot-on-the-shoulder, chip-modding, math-prodigy, Trans-Am-On-The-Cinder-Blocks, Complete-and-Total-Social-Outcast Pirates, who set about cracking the (ridiculously loose, in hind sight) encryption we used at the time. But... because we had gone to the pain and expense of creating this "inclusion" distribution for all the dis-affected Big-Ugly-Dish geeks nationwide, we as an industry had tremendous goodwill with the Gov't. This led to numerous FBI sting operations against the pirates, whereas before the industry couldn't really get the authorities' attention on the matter. In fact, my boss at the time was one of the industry guys who travelled around with the FBI agents cuffing the pirates. Big, Big, Fed-Entertainment Industry co-op, once the Ent Industry showed good faith in creating a system that ensured "no one was left out."
You see where I'm going with this. "Back In the Day," the pirates said, basically, "If you don't want me to view your network, keep it out of my living room." Tough to argue with, so the Ent industry encrypted and provided Joe Dish-Geek a means to buy his entertainment. Flash forward 20 years (ye gods... has it been that long? Christ, I'm old...), and Joe Internet-Geek is saying, "Look, I'm getting this entertainment on the Net, I'm accustomed to getting it on the Net, you can't deny it to me." By providing a net-based, for-pay service, H-Wood is "fulfilling its tech evolutional obligations" yet again. And they are doing so faster than their peers in the Music and Book Publishing industries.
Only Windows? Only US? Who cares? Certainly not H-Wood, or US Law Makers and Enforcers. It ain't about wide-spread adoption (although if they can make some money on this, they won't turn it down) it's about having some credibility and teeth in the subsequent piracy pogroms.
dude, you CAN spoof the OS in the browser useragent. I use a mac and believe the numbers, but if you believe that an OS can't be spoofed in the useragent you are mistaken.
"
Thank you for your interest in Movielink. We want you to take part in the powerful Internet movie rental experience that Movielink delivers, but it is presently unavailable to users outside of the United States. "
I guess Denver, Colorado isn't a part of the US. (Or AT&T Broadband, either.)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
* The services are fundamentally dissimilar. One is "on demand"
I bet I can pop off to the local video store, browse for a while, check one out and be home watching before your download is even half done. (even with broadband)
This service is (probably) faster than the post, but it is hardly "on demand." "Overnight" or "Later in the day (as long as you start early enough)" is a more apt description
I worked on the site, so I can't comment on the political aspects of it (which are large and complicated) but I can tell you this:
Last night I downloaded a 650mb film in under 20 minutes. I was even shocked when the Movielink Manager estimated the time to download at "less than 25 minutes", thinking it was in error. But the sucker came down at a steady 4mbps.
I've only ever gotten speed like that from Apple FTP, MSDN and one or two Internet 2 guys on IRC. Maybe it's due to huge capacity with probably only me using it (heh) but whatever the complaints, it's hard to complain the download is slow.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
It's a bit low-tech, but since I moved to NY I've been getting four or five movies a week from the public library.
I'm considering becoming a library contributor; I'll buy a movie, watch it until I'm tired of it, and then give it to the library for the tax break and the possibility of renting it again later.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Zoomtown DSL had paid movie downloading until recently. Apparently, they can't get access to current movies:
"Intertainer Discontinuing Service on October 21, 2002
As many of you already know, On September 24th we filed a Federal Anti-trust suit against AOL Time Warner, Sony, Universal and Movielink. On October 21st we plan to take the site down until we can work out a fair business model with the defendants, who control more than 50% of the theatrical motion picture business and more than 60% of the music business."
We have Netflix as well, $20/3 discs, and have been happy with it. No late fees, and never the god-awful feeling of returning a movie you never got around to watching. Now that they've opened a nearby fulfillment ctr (there used to be used one, in CA) we get 2-3 day turnaround. Their customer service has been fine, nice considering they're the only game in town, really. Once they get established ... watch out.
One advantage of Netflix over on-demand is that you can watch more than once. With kids, this comes up a lot, and they are heavy consumers of videos if you multiply out multiple viewings. Also the DVD's occcasional offer extra stuff worth watching, maybe not all at once.
They appear to have dropped the 2-disc plan mentioned elsewhere. Oh well.
I would expect on-demand to extinguish transitional by-mail eventually, but won't hold my breath.
If they're spamming, as alleged elsewhere here, I'll send them a complaint emphasizing that I am a subscriber and that's not kosher. I won't give them word-of-mouth if they're using strongarm.
Look at this way. There are only three reasons for a site to be IE and Windows only, or even IE only. The first is lack of resources for development. Houston ISD fits this category. The second is incompetent web development. Companies like Cingular and some credit services fit this category. The third is an explicit decision that certain customers are not important, or to keep certain customers out.
The movie industry had resources. The project should make enough money to justify competent programmers. Everyone watches movies, and success depends on popular appeal, so there is no basis to say a certain group of customers is unimportant. That leaves explicitly keeping certain customers out.
Who is being punished? The Linux and BSD users, who broke and published DVD encryption, and are a major thorn in the sides of the movie industry. Apple Mac users, who buy their computers to 'Edit, Rip, Burn,' or, in the eyes of the movie industry, pirates who wish to steal content and force the movie industry into starvation.
As such, I think we take this as an attack on the npn-MS systems. The movie industry does not like non-MS, and they will not play with them, at least until a time when the movie industry can set all the rules. It is the movie industries right to do this, but it is blackmail.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black