Self-Destructing DVD's Coming Soon

BrianH writes "Looks like a close cousin of everybody's favorite self-destructing video format is making a comeback. Four years after Circuit City and its Hollywood backers pulled the plug on the self-expiring DVD concept, FlexPlay Technologies has introduced the EZ-D...a 48-hour self-expiring DVD disk. The difference? This time around you don't need a special player, and "time extensions" are no longer an option. It looks like Buena Vista has already signed on to the format, so Disney, Mirimax, and all of their other companies should be using this soon. As if that wasn't bad enough, it looks like this works for music and software disks too!" Here's an older story on these technologies.

Comments

So what?

[DarkHand]

Is this really a problem for people who have access to DeCSS and a DVD burner?

Trying to put rental places out of business?

[Maul]

Obviously, nobody is going to pay full price for a DVD that self destructs. This is meant as a rental replacement. However, something like this could put rental places out of business.

Why? Rental places typically buy a certian number of new copies and rent them out repeatedly, after a few rentals the disc is paid for and it is pure profit on the disc after that, especially when you factor in the real money maker, late fees. When the movie is no longer a hot rental, they'll then just sell off their excess copies as pre-owned DVDs.

With the self destructing DVD, rental places will continuously have to replace their stock. They will not be able to charge late fees, nor will they be able to sell excess copies they've already made money off of. Ultimately, the rental place will no longer even be necessary since you'll likely be able to buy the destructable disc at any retail outlet or direct from the company for $2 a pop.

Re:Trying to put rental places out of business?

[nightcrawler77]

Excellent point.

And just imagine what happens when the public gets used to this crap: the studios permanently end the sale of DVD's and slowly inch up the pricing on these self-destructing ones. There you'll have it, the pay-per-play business model they so desire.

That would also throw a fat wrench in the whole Fair Use/DVD copying argument...right now, we are entitled to make backups of our DVD's since we have purchsed them. But once you can no longer buy a DVD that will last more than 48 hours, what argument do you have that you should be allowed to back it up? Sadly, none...it's going to be gone in two days anyway.

And I'm not even going to go into the issue of the waste this system would produce. I guess the MPAA's five-year plan is to have a worthless DVD sitting next to every worthless AOL CD in every landfill across America. Someone just shoot me now.

Re:Capitalism

[XxtraLarGe]

Capitalism at its best means that we consumers have the ability to reject this stupid idea and cause it to fail....

Re:Ways to crack it

[narfbot]

What happens under different atmospheric or weather conditions? Will it, in some places, never work when opened, or in another, they will never destruct? Are you sure it's caused by reacting gasses or some maybe some kind of timer?

Nobody cares about polution?

[anagama]

This is just a cheap excuse to avoid digital distribution. Downloading the movies would be cooler, and more enviro.

It seems the polution comments are not getting modded up. Why? How many billions of these things are going to be produced? Where does plastic come from for the most part (hint - we just had a war over this stuff)? And recycling? Just how easy is it separate the thin metal film from the plastic? Besides that, if these things are reactive to air - the article mentions that they begin to expire as soon as their opened - that would suggest some sort of strong plastic/foil packaging.

Scrap the crap - just put it up for download.

Re:Nobody cares about polution?

[HeghmoH]

Of course nobody cares about the pollution, think about this for one second, it's not a very large problem.

In my household, we go through a couple of good-sized garbage bags a week. Even if we rented fifty movies every week it would hardly make a noticeable addition to our trash output. Even if you only count the nondegradable trash, an average movie watcher's rental consumption will not come close to touching the amount of other stuff they already throw away.

I disagree

[poptones]

I think widespread use of this tech could really drive the sale of huge-GB hard drives.

Speaking as someone more than 30 miles from the nearest "good" rental shop, I really hope this catches on.

Re:Environment? Market?

[DennyK]

Can't speak for the 799 others, but I'd like this. If I could pick up a 48-hour DVD for a few bucks, that'd be a good deal to me. I don't have pay-per-view, I hate making two trips to Blockbuster for a single movie, and Netflix is a bad deal unless you rent at least four or five movies a month. There just aren't that many movies I'd like to see. Plus, since you don't need to have a rental system in place, they could stick these things anywhere: 7-11, grocery stores, Wal-Mart...all places I usually go anyway. I'd love to be able to pick up an occasional movie "rental" when I stop for gas or groceries, without having to worry about returning it by such-and-such a date. It's like DivX without the expensive equipment, the invasive privacy issues, or the hassle. Pretty cool stuff, actually.

And what's with all the yelling about DRM? I hate overly-restrictive DRM as much as anyone, but how is an essentially normal DVD that just stops playing after 48 hours any worse than a normal DVD that you have to give back to Blockbuster tomorrow? DivX, with all its nonstandard technology, "activation" crap, etc. was ugly. But this EZ-D thing you can play in any DVD player, there's no one tracking what you're doing with it...what's the big deal? It's not like these are going to replace real DVDs in the market. This technology is made to target renters, not buyers...

DennyK