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Movielink.com: Nice But Not Ready For Prime Time
We had just a couple of references here on Movielink.com and some comments but no reviews. Well, I have tried it and here are my thoughts on it.
For those not familiar with that, they call themselves an "IP based movie rental service". You basically rent movies by downloading them to your PC (as of now, only WindowsMedia or RealPlayer formats) for watching at a convenient time.
The media files have about 512Mb which in my case (AT&T cable modem) takes about 50min to download. You register using your credit card and they don't ask for too much information there.
The price varies with an average of $3 and the selection is OK, not great. You can see some titles that have been just released for PPV channels. There's no search function, so you have to browse using their categories (action, comedy, blah, blah). In some cases you can see a small trailer for the movie.
They have their own download manager that looks a little bit like those p2p programs. You can see the progress of the download and can launch the player at the end. You have a period of 30 days to watch the movie BUT, only 24 hours to watch it once you hit "play". Of course you can pause or watch it again but only within the 24-hour period after the first play. I think they should give you at least 5 days for that.
The quality is OK, not great but quite alright to watch something for fun. I think it's something around SVCD. My greatest complain is that they only have full screen versions of the movies. No widescreen.
Once you download the movie you have to be connected to start playing it. That's because you have to "authenticate" yourself. So, another bummer. You can't download something to watch on a flight for example. Well, I guess you may be able to start playing at home and then stop it and start again on the plane, but I didn't try that. That would be one advantage over a DVD since you wouldn't be using the DVD-drive thus saving some battery time.
I had problems playing the first movie and had to call support. They gave me a code to rent the movie again but after 3 tries they though there was something wrong with the movie! Bingo, other customer had the same complain. Then I decided to try another movie and had to call support again, which by the way was quite knowledgeable and attentive. I could not download the movie. Here's where I decided I would not use the service again: they recommend that I disabled my firewall (ZoneAlarm) to download it! Even after I did that, it didn't work. The problem seemed to be that I was on my home network on a LinkSys router. They asked me to bypass the router, hook the computer to the cable modem directly and it worked! Here's my complain: I never had to do that for anything, from my company's VPN to my other download services. So if I have to tweak my network/router just to use their service, they've lost a customer. Well, maybe that was just me!
I really liked the idea of being able to download a movie and watch it on my PC, without having to wait for it to come in the mail (NetFlix) or drive to my local video store twice (to pick up and to drop off). I watch the DVDs on my computer anyway, so it doesn't bother me that I don't use a big screen.
But they need to at least work on that download issue and enhance their website (at least include a search button) before I could use their services on a regular basis.
Hope this is helpful to you folks!
Slashdot welcomes reader features and reviews -- thanks to Ismenio for this one.
"I really liked the idea of being able to download a movie and watch it on my PC, without having to wait for it to come in the mail (NetFlix) or drive to my local video store twice (to pick up and to drop off)"
*cough* kazaa *cough*
This won't be ready for prime time until someone builds a set top box DVD player that will plug into a router and do this automatically (with minimal configuration). The AOL of movies, if you will...
A good application for MiniITX and LinuxBIOS?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Doesn't do me much good if I can't use it, eh?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
does it work with the linux real player?
Sounds like an interesting service, anyone else try this out? How is the audio quality?
Sounds like they need to upgrade their spyware.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Bottomline is:
320 x 240 video resolution in Real Video 8, 700 kbit/s constant bitrate, thereof 64 kbit/s for audio - JUST DOESN'T CUT IT.
A DivX of the same movie had something like 584x304 in resolution and was only 25% larger in size.
Nevertheless their download manager worked flawlessly for me and I got download speeds of 250 kbytes/sec. The movie had arrived after 35 minutes.
Video quality was fair, even though the low resolution killed some details.
Bottomline is: Whoever they hired for video encoding just doesn't make the job right.
--- Eat my sig.
Reminded me of an earlier story concerning Netfilx bandwith.
9 23 4&mode=thread&tid=95
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/23/171
I'd pay $3-4 for new releases via web, but not PPV fodder.
You should have first tried find out what ports the program was using and use the port forwarding feature of the router to forward those. If that fails to work try using the DMZ, demilitarized zone. That should give you all the freedom of straight to the modem, with no router blocking.
I remember seeing an advertisement for movietickets.com when I saw the new Bond film and several times previous to that in the past year. It seems to have completely flopped here; my local theatre isn't even set up to accept the online tickets and lacks the barcode scanners which are necessary to admit a customer. I actually saw a family get turned away after having purchased tickets to a 'participating' theatre. Is this another dot-bomb, or does anyone have positive stories about this service to report?
Who cares, so did I.
Cyberbite Networks - Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers & Colocati
Once you download the movie you have to be connected to start playing it. That's because you have to "authenticate" yourself.
So, when the service goes away and there's no one out there to do the authenication, then what? And, if the file you downloaded and paid for is corrupt, do you get your money back or are you told, "Oh, gee, that's a bummer, sorry"? Do you pay once for unlimited views, or is this a one time view per download? If you only get to watch it once per pay, do they let you just pay again or force you to download all over again?
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Here is an earlier Slashdot article. It mentions that the current database (as of Nov 10) has 200 titles
Its a valid critisim about the service which is reviewed.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
DIVX I made this morning:
Duration: 1:49:43
Audio Bit Rate: 190k
Video Size: 720x480
File Size: 1 gig (1,079,824,384 bytes)
--- I do not moderate.
Sure, it's a pain that you have to tweak things for software to work, but you really need to know what you're getting into with things like routers and firewalls -- with security comes the loss of features.
Instead of connecting the modem directly to your PC, you can set your router to have your PC as a DMZ (De-Militarized Zone) host. Basically, this forwards all ports to your computer. Once you have a connection, you can take a look at what ports are being used, and forward just those. The problem is that some software, such as ICQ, use random ports for connecting.
Well first off this dosent seem to be streaming but DL and play even through each format allows it. Why it's not multipass DivX is just screaming for low quality. I have seen this done right and so far these guys dont even come close, there encoding is subpar. They have a pretty narrow viewing window and they have to be chatty with there servers to do anything so no disconnected play. It has problems with basic firewalling (porbably due to useing funky encrypted tunnels) And lets face it for this to work sombody needs to make PS2 and Xbox software to deal with it.
No sir I dont like it.
Sex - Find It
There is no such thing as a protected file format or a movie that can only play once. If you can play it, you can use a screen capture program to capture the video. If it has sound, you can capture it from the sound card. As long as you can play it, there will be a way to rip it or save it. Yet they keep insisting upon having new "protected" file formats or movies that only play once. This will never work. They much concede the fact that if they let you borrow a movie for your home use, there will be a way to record it forever. Only then, once they admit that, and perhaps start to trust the customer, can they have an economic model for such a service.
Wow. That's amamzing. Accoring to this story at beconnected.org Divx files can be watermarked and rendered obsolete after a set period of time. I wonder why people aren't using that feature? It would seem to make sense. One other thing these companies need to do is to tell people with popular laptops how to connect them to their TV sets. Just about every laptop on the market today has video out, but nobody uses it. I even use wi-fi to deliver movies from my desktop to my laptop/TV all the time. It isn't that hard, but I know Joe Sixpack hasn't thought of it.
...Welcome to Slashdot...
I live in Calgary Canada.
And at the beginning of last month (Octobre) they opened a new service called shawondemand (www.shawondemand.net) where you can order a movie by the internet and as long as you have internet and digital cable through them (I know... *cough* monopoly). You can order a movie online, and watch it through your calbe box hooked up to your TV INSTANTLY. It has play, pause, rew. ff. and all the basic features, you also get it for 24 hours to play as many times as you want.
The only quams (sp?) that I have about the service is the lack of new titles they have (sure they got LOTR, Blade II, 40 days/nights/ and bunch other titles, But you watch a movie a month, and that's all on there list thats appealing. oh, also all the adult you can imagine, that rivals there normal movies), and the lack of widescrean. But all in all, it's a cool service here, also you can watch music videos, trailers and stuff for there videos for free.
It'll be nice to see how there new revisions are the service go.
CowboyNeal ROCKS!
-isolenz
I rented "I Married an Ax Murderer" from the site and it worked great, and the first time out. It was late at night, it was cold and snowing outside and I did NOT feel like driving to Blockbuster. Plus I'm horrible at returning movies and usually have late fees on my account. So for those reasons, I like it. The quality was marginal, but the convenience is great. I got my much needed chuckle out of watching Mike Myers do his scottish father's "look at his head...it's a big as Sputnik" bit.
So MovieLink may not be for all, but it serves my occasional purpose.
I'm glad that the movie industry and distributers are finally embracing the Internet as a distribution medium, instead of fighting it. This sounds a lot better than having to drive all the way to the video store and back, as long as you have broadband. And no late fees! Sounds pretty reasonable to me, and I can watch the movies with a clear conscience.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
In ten years, this is pretty much the way people will be 'renting' movies, either through a computer or a set-top box that acts like a computer.
Movielink.com doesn't have it quite right yet. Neither does shaw.ca (cable provider) which is starting to do the same thing over your digital-cable box. They have problems with limited selection and play time. Can't say anything about the technical side, as there hasn't been anything I've wanted to see to bother trying. Price is not an issue, they are trying to get people to try it by charging only C$2.00, a real deal when rentals are in the C$5.00 range.
What is needed is selection comparible to a video store, with a reasonable view time (at least 48 hours for new releases, and 7 days for old stuff to mimic the video stores). Quality has to at least equal VHS. As long as the price is competitive, going to the video store is going to become a thing of the past for all but the completely unconnected.
W9x:Thanks for the make-work project Bill.
Your theoretical situation isn't so theoretical -- there is at least one virus that slowly encrypts files on its host's disk in addition to itself, making the host system dependent on the virus.
I'd like to think that the government would wake up and smell the new millenium if it realized that its laws made it technically illegal to try to recover one's own system from a viral infection, but let's be reasonable: no major company is going to sue you for breaking encryption for the purposes of getting rid of a virus, and in the best case, the government will re-write the laws to prevent a very limited subclass of such lunacy without making any serious adjustments to the fundamental problems behind the law.
First off, the movies only stay good for a month. I don't think your first question is valid.
Plus he made it clear that the file didn't work several times, and the customer service was excellent. Your second question is already answered.
That is what I get when I go to Movielink.com.
Cons: Only supports Microsoft users
You will need to adjust the following:
You Need Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP
The site movielink.com is running Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) secured_by_Covalent/1.5.4 on Linux.
(noted from netcraft.net)
What a bunch of hypocrites they run linux but we cant
The movielink logo looks like they took the "M" from Miramax and played with it in photoshop. Trademark infringement, anyone?
Unfortunately this is going to fail and paint a bad mark on the future of this idea. I would much rather go to one of the 3 video stores in walking distance of my house and rent the DVD to watch on my 5.1 surround sound system then pay $1 less to wait an hour to download a poor quality version to watch on my computer. This would be cool in a rural backwoods area, but then you most likely will have only a few (if any)expensive broadband options, making it likely that you wont have high speed access anyway. In 2 or 3 years this will probably pan out, but now it's just premature.
Sound waves should be free!
is it cheaper than pay per view to video tape?
...and the copy-protection that the client uses is a joke.
The client purges files 24 hours after they are first viewed or after 30 days of sitting on the hard drive. The process that actually performs the deletion is designed to look like a Microsoft application in the task manager, which I thought was pretty sneaky. However, it's very easy to bypass the deletion by simply killing the process, copying the file, or playing around with the system clock. The client tries to hide the files by giving them random names, making them invisible, etc etc, but as you can imagine, it's not too hard to find a 500 mb file sitting on your hard drive.
Movielink is putting all their money on the DRM that is enabled with each movie file, which supposedly is smart enough to know when the system clock has been messed with. We didn't have any movie files with DRM enabled, so I can't say how well that works. Hopefully for Movielink it performs better than the client itself. Has anyone here who has played with this service also fooled around with the DRM? How fool-proof is it?
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
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.
If it's a viable business, VCs won't find it "risky" enough, therefore no "potential". This is just how they work, and it's why there's an awful lot of office space available on Sand Hill Rd right now.
I refuse to believe we're in a recession as long as there's still money around to throw at this kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah, whine, whine. We know the real result of this "review": he couldn't pirate his favorite movies and give copies to his friends. Well, sorry Bluebeard, you'll have to pay for your movies now.
.. why would an individual need such an industrial-strength technology? Remember, VPNs were used by al-Queda to transmit instructions for terrorism. They are also used for so much piracy, VPN should stand for "Virtual Piracy Network".
Check it out. This "reviewer" has 1) a computer, and 2) a broadband connection. As far as I'm concerned, he's a copyright-infringing pirate. I could imagine having one or the other, but BOTH? Put a parrot on his shoulder and you're done.
And he uses something called a "VPN"
Almost as bad as those stinkin' Mac users. They think all you have to do to copy a file is drag & drop. More like Drag & Steal.
If he wants to enjoy digital movies, he should go to a movie theatre.
For someone living in the middle of nowhere, dialup is still about my only choice (no - DirectPC satellite access is not my idea of broadband), netflix, or the local video store is better for me. I'll pass on spending days downloading a movie thats crappy quality compared to a DVD... Also, what about the people who have caps on the downloads per month? That could make it cheaper to just rent the movie than to download it.
snake oil
3.243F6A8885A308D313
yeah, they should switch their site to windows!
But I can tell it's not the same "M" just by looking at it. Even if it was, fonts can't be copyrighted.
ScienceSeeker.org
From this review (and others that have been floating around), IP rental just won't work in it's present state. My guess is there are those who will try it for its novelty value (such as the reviewer, and for that matter, my self), but they need to improve/change several things before it will ever take off.
1. Quality, quality, quality. DIVX is good, but by no means near DVD (or even a good quality VHS). From what I understand, this uses a lower quality compression then DIVX.
2. Co-branding with service providers. As it stands, the movies are delivered to from a remote IP address and the actual transfer of data runs over your pre-existing ISP. With more and more ISPs trying to cap large data transfers, this spells doom for both the consumers and the movie service. On the other hand, there is tremendous untapped bandwidth between the local office of the provider and the end user, espically for cable. Place a good server with a terribyte hdd filled with movies at a C.O., and you end up getting the information to the end user faster (or with better quality) without the added expense of having to run outside to the Internet.
3. Usability. They would have to either a: make it very, very easy to use whatever propritary viewing/authentication scheme, or b: allow the user more flexibility in choosing a media player and authentication system. Somewhere along the line they need to develop a system where you can download the movie and play it whenever the user wanted without having to jump through excessive hoops.
4. Value. At present $3 for a movie for 24 hours, even they could increase the playback quality signifigantly, can't compete with the added features of a DVD or the typical 3-5 day rental period.
5. Selection. If the average consumer were to turn to the Internet to rent movies, they would have to be able to compete by providing a selection of movies that would rival the catalog of a mail order rental service or even a well stocked Blockbuster. (15,000 - 30,000 titles would be a good start).
If somehow they could address all of these issues, I could certinatly see more interest in it, but as it stands now, I doubt we will see anyone getting rich renting movies online, or seeing your local video shop going out of business any time soon.
The Internet is generally stupid
This isn't insightful. This is whinging.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Hmm.. I popped open Moz/Phoenix with my XUL-enhanced browser, selected I.E-Win98 as my UA, and went to movielink. silly javascript...
:-)
Of course, it just stops while 'checking the selection', presumably because moz/phoenix doesn't support ActiveX and VisualBasic..
(i mean, who really uses <script language='VBScript'> anyway? sheesh!)
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
Well the license I received for my Real Video clip was indeed valid for 24 hours only. So even if you bypassed their auto-deletion mechanism, you can still watch the clip only within 24 hours.
.. what do I choose ? what do I choose ?
You forgot to add ".. on the player that respects license restrictions". No matter how they protect the movie (encrypt it with a key that must be fetched from the movielink server or whatever) it will be unprotected right before it goes into the codec or at some point inside the codec if the codec implements DRM. Anyhow, it will be possible to capture raw data and save it for 'the future use'. Requires varying degree of effort, but it is always doable.
It is all snake oil. If they are not being able to control the data on your machine, they will never be able to control it at all. Period.
That's the main driving factor for shoveling trustworthy computing down the customers throat. Either swallow it, relinquish control over your own hardware and rent movies online OR don't rent movies... Hmmm
3.243F6A8885A308D313
I tried it... but they need some improvments before i will try it again.
Prices: Compared to DVD rental at blockbuster... movielink is sometimes more expensive. You dont even get close to DVD quality. There is a convenice factor in the price and i expect that.
Quailty: Movie link is really poor. i dont like movies that are 320x240 standard. I did email them about this. they told me that in the near future they will make available widescreen movies. Hopefully at a res higher than 320x240.
Serivice: This is probably where they score the highest. I had no trouble paying for and downloading the movie i wanted to watch. I had mistyped my email address when i signed up and customer service made it really easy for me to fix that.
So in the end. I really think that movielink has potential. If they get less afraid that someone will copy thier movies.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
So you'd rather they buy W2K Advanced Server and give MS even more money? At least they're part way there!
And for a new service it's probably just not cost effective to build a client for 5% of your potential client base when 95% of your potential customers already have the software necessary.
I don't think hypocrite really applies here - they aren't saying "go forth and use Linux" while they use MS. Plus they expect your client to Windows and I'm sure their clients and most workstations are Windows - I doubt if they've gone and built themselves Linux clients just for their use. Linux is their *server* here.
Their encoder really should visit www.doom9.org or www.divx-digest.com. And see how professionals do it!
The problems that have been mentioned are encoding quality, audio quality, picture size, proprietary up the wazoo, and limited viewing time. But for their first attempt at this, we really shouldn't have expected anything more, so I actually give this first shaky effort two thumbs up for the try. A few things that we can reasonably layout for future attempts:
- Limited viewing time: This isn't really bad at all. Maybe the 24-hour window is (why not 48 or 72 hours?) but remember that you only get a few days at Blockbuster/Hollywood Video too. This is a standard rental model. They're not going to let you keep the movie indefinetely for $3, folks.
- Proprietary format: Whether or not you disagree with proprietary formats and copyright in practice is one thing, but pragmatically speaking, I don't ever expect the studios to release movies in an unencrypted format, especially not with the cheap price of CD-Rs and DVD-Rs now. This is here to stay. That's not to say, however, that a Linux and Mac player couldn't be built, or that the player source code (minus the decryption codecs) couldn't be made open...
- Quality: The Slashdot crowd has access to lots and lots and lots of bandwidth, unlike most of the rest of the world. As such, the ~200K streaming rate they're talking about is all most people can sustain right now.
In summary, I think this is a great first-try for the movie studios. There's much room to improve, but we ought to at least congratulate them on starting to embrace the Internet as a viable means for content distribution, and not simply a ship full of pirates.Boy, this should really piss off American ISPs who complain about a small percentage of users using up most of the bandwidth.
I maintain that businesses such as Movielink won't be able to really take off until they have the blessing of the major ISPs. ISPs need to either say "use all you want" or "you're being capped: be frugal".
how long it takes to reverse engineer the 'secret' info they store in the movie so one can easily convert it to avi, mpeg, etc etc.
Any company that only offers their services on the Windows platform or through technology that must be utilized on the Windows platform (like a web site that only works with IE, or Windows only download clients needed, or Windows Media player format only, etc) is useless to me. Immediately, it is appearent that they lack the vision and skill of a truly talented and innovative company. They do not deserve my money, let alone a second of my time. They should be IN SOVIET RUSSIA.
"The Slashdot crowd has access to lots and lots and lots of bandwidth, unlike most of the rest of the world. As such, the ~200K streaming rate they're talking about is all most people can sustain right now."
Yes, but this doesn't have to mean bad quality. Take a look at the VP3 codec (that's being wrapped into OGG as we speak) at 200k/sec, and you'll see you can get really close to NTSC quality with 200k/sec. And that's full screen, widescreen will look even better because there's less vertical picture information to compress.
-- sudo.ca
They aren't going to expend much effort on a computer that less than 5% of computer users use. Get a PC and drop the Fag-intosh.
they dont have to aim for that 5% of users. they just have to not put the extra effort in that locks them out.
they have to do LESS to support linux. they just remove all of that bad code that checks the browser tags. i hate when "html programmers" lock out users when the site works fine in linux. they go through the extra effort for zero reason. thats what vb people do.
I was told I didn't have the minimum requirements..I tried on my Linux box AND my Solaris box. If it's just RealPlayer, I have it..so, what's the problem?
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
I just happen to be an American, however I am also stationed overseas in Japan protecting this companies right to apparently descriminate against me. I can walk into a Post Exchange on base and legaly buy new DVDs, or rent them, however I'm not authorized to download them? I think they need to rethink their delivery system.
magnanomous.
I got a perfect score on my breathalizer test, but I don't go around bragging about the 1.0
I dunno, but with all the ISPs whining about how much traffic things like Kazaa use, I wonder if they would be too pleased at this kind of thing catching on? With each movie being 500mb + thats going to be an awful lot of data whizzing around...
When you are grown up, I hope you will realise that children's test scores do not mean entirely what you think they do as a youngster.
You can (if you choose) learn that relatively young children of your age who do not score so high in school tests are not necessarily always less intelligent. And vice versa.
You can also learn, that tests do not always select the best poeple, and they certainly do not always deselect the worst people.
If you got a good test score then be happy, your working the system nicely, but don't automatically elevate yourself compared to those around you because of that score.
Bragging is generally the domain of small minded or retarded people.
welcome to slashdot.
If you got a good test score then be happy, your [sic] working the system nicely...
Although I agree with most of what you have to say about braggarts, I think your argument holds a lot less water than it would if you used proper grammar. Don't be so quick to judge.
I drink to prepare for a fight; tonight I'm very prepared. -Soda Popinksi
I wrote this on my site a few days ago. I'll post it here just for the hell of it.
Last night I felt like watching a pay-per-view movie. So I switched on the tv and there was nothing but crap on. Then I thought of what movie I should download from kazaa but that wouldn't be done for a couple days at least. So then I figured I would give Movielink a try. Its a service that lets you download new movies for $4 a pop and old ones for $2.
So I download and pay for We Were Soldiers. The download app informs me that I have 30 days to start watching it, and then 24 hours to watch it once I start it. That's a decent amount of time for a pay per view price. So every thing is smooth up till I start watching it. The video and audio quality is worse than most downloads from kazaa. The sound is sometimes tinny and is very quite when its just talking, extremely loud during action scenes. The video quality also blows. Its very blurry if your sitting close to your monitor, it looks ok from 6 feet but not perfect..
Bottom line is that its not worth $4 for shitty movies that you have to sit in your computer chair for 2 hours to watch.
Hacker Media
Apart from the downsides mentioned in the review, there are a few that have been pointed out here on /. before. Time to rehash the list, and add some asides.
First of all, not everyone has broadband. There are still alot of users (me included) that are stuck on dial-up due to lack of speed by Comm companies to get the ball rolling. I was once told that DSL would be available within three months by Verizon. One year later, I'm still waiting for DSL. And while Adelphia has done a better job with their PowerLink cable service, it still hasn't reached my town (but is available five miles away: anyone know where we can get some cheap WiFi repeaters?) yet.
The second big deterrant is the fact that this service is limited to Windoze. Can you say DRM is a bad thing? I can. The fact that this service isn't available to *nix, MacOSX (not sure about 9.x and below) or BSD users. Screw that. It's about freedom of choice.
Then there are the network troubles mentioned in the article. Even with broadband, we're expected to compromise our network security and configuration just to download a movie? BS. For the 50 minutes (give or take) that we would have to sit there waiting for the movie to come down, our networks could be compromised. I'm sure alot of us aren't willing to sacrifice the security and structure we spent money and time to build up.
The watch limit is horrible. Just 24 hours? I'd rather drive to my local movie shack and rent a VHS copy which I can keep for a few days. The reccomendation of 5 days in the review would be much better, and worth the pains taken to download it.
Having to connect to authenticate is a bit of a pain, especially for mobile users. After all, you're not going to go WarDriving or pay for special access to a WiFi network just to watch a movie. That adds to the cost, something we economically-minded users don't like. Even open WiFi networks aren't that sound of a notion, because they're not quite available everywhere. While it may be a necessary evil to prevent piracy, it's also a pain in the arse...
I don't think I'll be renting movies from this service anytime soon, if ever. I'd much rather wait for a DVD release and shell out $20 to own it for the rest of my life. Wany my opinion? Screw this...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Yes Movielink has issues, (some major) to work out. But as geeks, /. people are far more technically savvy, have bigger pipes and can tell the difference between a 750kbps SBR encode and a true VBR encode. I would take a wild guess and say that of the moviegoing public, people with that level of technical sophistication are less than 5% of the public.
/. users geting the same treatment from Hollywood and the media business. Hollywood wants MASS marketing of films over IP, and Movielink is the very first tentative step in that strategy. It's a test essentially. And personally, I think they did a HELL of a job.
/.'ers take for granted: "broadband" is a relative thing. So the Movielink encoders did the best they could under the constraints they had. I'm sure that if they had encoded into Divx WS VBR, there would be just as many whining "but the movies are too big and take too long to download, this sucks!"
/. think it's perfect, awesome in encoding quality, UI and experience. Not so easy huh?
We're all the equivalent of Mac users, and when people snap back "Macs are only 5% of the userbase, who the hell cares about them?" you might think of
Think for a moment how hard it is to build a service like Movielink. Many posters have discussed the technical aspects. Divx or MS/Real? Well, most PCs can play the latter, only geeks play the former at the moment. Jeez, Divx wasn't even legal till they got rid of 3.x code.
What about bitrate? The developers had to balance quality vs download time. Yeah, I have a huge pipe, so gimme a 1.5gb DVDIVX or SVCD, I have no problem waiting. My Movielink download took 15 minutes. But many don't have the bandwidth many
I won't even get into the DRM swamp. Yeah, all DRM can be hacked, no shit. But the question is, how do you make a relatively painless, somewhat protected experience that won't encourage mass copying and trading by people who can't hack a video driver or run screen capure video software to a gigantic drive?
Then add another few dozen issues: delivery architecture, bandwidth costs...how about windowing? Know what that is?
Movies are released in 'windows:' the first being Theatrical. Forget about seeing VOD in the Theatrical window anytime soon. Too many political issues to deal with, and besides, no one wants to fuck with box office revenue.
Lots of other windows, Airline, PPV, Home Video (Movielink's window), HBO (when no other entity other than HBO can show the film), Broadcast.
So, if you were planning Movielink, how do you offer content that is in a window that appeals to most people, but doesn't piss off your business partners ? (HBO, MSO's, Wal-Mart, etc...) Not so simple.
And remember, Movielink is not a single entity, but a joint venture of five Hollywood studios. Do you have any concept of what it must be like to get five studios to agree on anything? Remember, every movie encode has to be approved by the studio, plus the director, producer and talent. A fucking nightmare scenario. Add that to five sets of movie execs, each who want to put their own stamp on the business, and increase their own revenue.
Now, build a technology that all five sets of movie execs approve, that all five sets of movie execs agree will generate revenue, that all five are willing to commit their most precious resource: their intellectual property.
Now, make it so that the geeks on
Anyone remember what AOL looked like as they changed from Quantum Link (C64/128 only) to a mass market business? It sucked. Remember the first weeks of Amazon and all those 404s? Every business has growing pains and Movielink will have more than most.
Give it a chance.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
When this was first posted to Slashdot I went and "rented" Harry Potter. I'll save you all the review of the quality of the video, and get to what most of us care about: how easy is it to circumvent the DRM technology they're using?
h is_Folder.txt", and this folder is secret...using top-secret "Hidden Folder Attributes" technology it cannot be viewed by your average Joe...but, me, being a 1337 haxx0r was able to click on the folder properties and change the folder to a viewable one...phew! I've made it through their first protection scheme.
;-) / DVD-R for me. ;-)
In summary: not very. As someone mentioned previously, the file (along with the DRM license keys) sits in a folder (the default location is C:\Program Files\Movielink\MovielinkManager\data\content). But be careful! It has a warning in this folder - "_Please_Do_NOT_Delete_Or_Change_Any_Files_From_T
Once I found the file I copied it to one of my other drives, RAR'd it, and then burned it to a CD-R so I could "play" with it after it expired.
Flash forward...24 hours are up...the file in C:\Program Files\Movielink\MovielinkManager\data\content is deleted automagically by their client app. I attempt to play the file - no love. Of course, since they use DRM which requires a "phone home" to play it, it doesn't work. I tried setting the clock back - no love. All is lost? Well..maybe...I did some googling and all I could come up with was an app that removed DRM from WMA (A for Audio, not V for Video) files that use DRM version 2 (it was written by "Beale Screamer" back in Oct. 2001)...I queued up the app (FreeMe.exe) and unfortunately I didn't have any luck...the new keys are longer and Microsoft has since fixed the "bug" that FreeMe.exe exploited at that time.
In the end...I was thwarted...I could only watch my movie for the 24 hours I paid for ($5 to boot, arrrr!)...I guess it is back to NetFlix / DivX
VOTE with your wallet. It's the only effective way to get the message across.
By the time they get a clue, someone else will be the Linux user's movie vendor of choice.
Play the preview. And the end, when the video part is over, you'll hear the techs who are recording it. Evidently, they didn't do a direct audio transfer. They actually recorded the sound with a microphone.
Using OPERA 6.05 I was greeted on the front page with the following message, "You need Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher - Upgrade Now" I know nothing past that point .... Upgrade my a$$!
I consider myself a rather devoted movie fan. I go to the theaters about once a week, and I currently own about 120 movies on VHS, about 30 on Laserdisc, and about 50 movies on DVD. I have a full list online.
I would never go for a deal like this, even if it supported MacOS X.
I have gotten to the point where I only rent a movie a few times *a year*. Owning is far easier. Blockbuster is slowly catching on to the idea that the used DVD market is going to be huge, similar to the new VHS market (and the VHS rental industry as it used to be). New DVD sales are also going to be large. Walk into any Bolockbuster and notice the growth in their used and new DVD for sale sections.
I buy most of my movies on DVD for about $8-$10, and most of my movies on VHS for $3-$6. Compare these prices against a one-time watch fee of $3, with quality that probably approaches VHS on my nice television.
My thoughts - I would rather buy a movie for 2x-3x what it coest to rent provided I have a decent notion that the movie is watching more than once. If that is the case, the cost to buy competes directly with renting it ($8 to buy a DVD, or rent twice for $4 each time).
(As far as watching movies in the theater goes - I justify that since the theater has things to offer than I cannot get at home - a huge screen and an atmosphere of being at the theater)
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Windows Media player... They should be IN SOVIET RUSSIA.
In SOVIET RUSSIA, movie player watches you!
Everything will be taken away from you.
NO FIRST POSTER FOR YOU FAG
PROCEED DIRECTLY TO GOATSE, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200 lame lame lame lame to many caps, waa waa, why are there so many caps in this message, i just don't know why there are so many caps here!
What's the deal with requiring a specific browser? Are they being arbitrary or does their DRM require IE, in order to make use of ActiveX or some other technology?
;-)
Any site which requires IE immediately loses me as a customer. You might say I'm a "browser bigot", but I call it a "personal choice".
Very simple: Hit the reset button. No, not that stubby plastic thing on the front of your case. I mean reset copyright law back to what it was when the US founding fathers wrote it right the first time. Let works enter the public domain after 14 years. That would mean every movie released since 1988 would be free to distribute. That'd be a lot of good movies legally on Kazaa or what have you. And then Hollywood would have to "compete" against the public domain and actually write *gasp* original screenplays. This would drive down ticket and video prices to the point where people would no longer bootleg to beat the system--also knowing that they were helping to increase the public domain!
Of course this will never happen, because Hollywood is sickeningly corrupt and gluteonously wealthy enough to pay for laws that make them richer. So there's only one option left: boycott.
Vote with your dollars.
Windows Media Player *does* watch you, at least last I heard...
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http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/03/29
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
So quit posting as an AC and get the mod points for yourself.
/grin
Dumbass.
Anyone remember what AOL looked like as they changed from Quantum Link (C64/128 only) to a mass market business? It sucked.
And it doesn't now?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Judging the quality of an argument through examining spelling and grammar shows that you have fully bought into the system.
Good for you. You get a good test score. However, it is irrelevant.
People keep saying the quality isn't up to par with DivXes. I rented Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone from MovieLink. The file size was 700-something megs, and only took about a half hour to download. I was extremely impressed by the quality. It was better than just about every DivX (even much larger ones) that I've watched, and was just about DVD quality. And for the cheap price, it was quite worth it. I would (and will) definitely use their service again. My only complaint is that for some reason Windows Media Player wouldn't let me full-screen the movie (I've never had that problem before), which I figure has something to do with the DRM. Even that didn't bother me so much, as I could just stretch the video window to take up the whole screen, and isn't a big enough problem to stop me from renting again. It's not quite a kazaa-killer, but it's getting there.
I use the service at Cinemanow.com and I have no problems using it with my Linksys router. They offer PPV and a monthly subscription service too. With the subscription service you have access to literally hundreds of films (even adult titles). You can watch them as much as you want whenever you want. I've got subscription service films I downloaded months ago. I still have not watched them, because of all the other films available, but they still work and I could watch them now with no problem. Once I stop subscribing the films will not work though.
You have a period of 30 days to watch the movie BUT, only 24 hours to watch it once you hit "play".
HELLO? The downloader/player program is software running on open hardware. All copy protection schemes for information are inherently crackable, but these kinds should be easy for a competent software engineer with access to good debugging tools. I can't wait for these to start appearing on the net, in ogg multimedia containers no less.
If it makes you feel any better, this is what I get:
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I miss Intertainer.tv!
I love the sig. It's just like a quiz I made a while back...
I think not. I have the NetFlix 4 out program for $24.95 per month. I turnover about 4 movies a week. Using the Movielink service at a similar pace I would pay for 16 to 20 rentals a month at a cost of $48 to $60 per month.
John K. Davis Web Portal: http://JohnKDavis.net
Why are people in slashdot even *considering* this service as something they might wish to use?
This is clearly a big business trying to control your computer and infiltrate your privacy. DO NOT SUPPORT *ANY* company which uses DRM to restrict your rights. Anyone who supports Movielink does not support freedom.