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Disney to Make Movies Available Online
musiholic writes "Disney has cut a deal with Movielink to make various Disney (and Disney subsidary) films available for 30-day paid downloads. Users can watch the film an unlimited amount of times before the movie expires. The movies requre Real Player or WMP."
Now if only the RIAA could follow this lead. I don't seen anyone hating disney - oh wait, they're not suing the youth of America.
find / -name "*.sig" | xargs rm
Users can watch the film an unlimited amount of times before the movie expires.
What's to stop me from using a screen capture program while I'm playing it to make an unexpiring copy for myself?
GMD
watch this
I like this idea. It's pretty much a lazy-man's Blockbuster. If the price is right, I see this idea taking off and spreading to all film-makers.
"Do not hold strong opinions about things you do not understand."
I was trying to find out if the Linux version of Real player was supported, but it blocks anyone not in the US.
Guess they haven't quite got the hang of the fact that the biggest advantage of the internet is it's worldwide reach yet.
Beep beep.
If this is going to be targeting the broadband users, then why don't they use a better codec? I know I'm burning karma here, but I'd rather see the movies in mpeg4 or divx form.
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
Disney seems to get a lot of grief, but it does seem that they are able to take some risks every once in a while. Disney said they'd never release their animated classics on DVD, but they did (and they've made a lot of money on them). Disney feared VHS/DVD, now they embrace it. Disney fears the Internet, but now it seems they are trying to embrace it.
Do a search on "Moviebeam" and check out what else they're up to. Moviebeam is a TiVo like service that beams digital movies over the broadcast airwaves (encyrpted of course) to a set to box. The box stores something like 100 movies that a person can purchase for viewing on demand.
Disney gets a lot of flack, but at least they experiment.
What's really dumb is that (so far as I can tell), there isn't anything that is Internet Explorer-, let alone Windows-specific there. If they do both Windows Media Format and Real Player 8, it should work on most all desktop OSes, since there is a Real Player 8 client for most desktop OSes (either through Real or through one of their "community" versions).
Quite assinine requirements, imho.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
the movie rental lasts 30-days... but when you choose to start watching it, it expires in 24 hours
While I may have a misunderstanding of Disney's market, I am under the impression that they primarily sell family entertainment, esp. movies for children.
Now, children's entertainment is a special category, in that kids watch movies OVER and OVER and OVER again - more often on VHS format than DVD, due to the relative durability of the former (though this may be changing). because of this, families tend to BUY disney movies (vs. renting); if they rent, it's to check something out before buying it.
Now what aspect of the above market does Disney hope to satisfy with downloadable movies?
- these movies will have to be accessed on the computer (not as easy as VCR/VHS, let alone half as childproof)
- these movies expires after 30 days
(not as permanent - and kids will obsess over their shows for far longer than 30 days...)
- the cost is $3-$5 dollars per download (cheaper than rental for the amount of time, but even considering an optimistic 1-hour download time, it's still going to be faster to drive to the store and back (for most US citizens) than to download - and (I believe) that there's still not much coverage for broadband in most rural areas...
d) Also, for those who don't mind waiting (or lack broadband), Netflix (and its competitors) offer a similarly-priced, keep-as-long-as-you-feel rental system.
Now I realize that Disney is not just a kids' movie company, but I still don't see how this system makes much sense.
OTOH, I am pleasantly surprised to see (even this much) innovation from a company with such a draconian distribution history.
This is lame, for the many reasons pointed out in this thread (too short expiration, buy vs. rent for kids, etc.) The interesting thing, at least in my mind, is that Disney is opening their intellectual property up a bit (granted, it's got DRM up the wazoo.)
What would happen if Apple/Jobs did a movie service like they've done with the iTunes Music Store?
They've got the inside connections in Hollywood (Pixar, editing suites, etc.)
They've got the technology (QuickTime, delivery mechanisms & bandwidth)
And they could make it easy enough for my Mom to use...
-ch
I don't trust this scheme. I smell spyware being loaded into these movies or something. Last thing I want is for my harddrives to be commanded with del *.mp3 when I least expect it.
Life is not for the lazy.
At the moment, only if you use (closed source) codecs imported from the commercial versions of those programs, which are closed source (AFAIK). The status page for the various formats is here. I don't know if this closed source component will therefore still prevent you from getting around the restrictive DRM measures in place.
On topic, I tried the service and the video quality was quite poor. Off topic (slightly on), since DRM is bad, what would be a good alternative? I don't think online rentals will ever work without some restrictions. There has to be an opportunity for profit. I would like to be able to download a DVD quality movie and watch it.
I think the answer should be open (not proprietary). Like SSL encryption. How about some time of key encryption system. Your system uploads unique data which is used to encrypt the movie and generate a decryption key that will only work on your system.
There is no perfect solution, because of our lack of integrity. If everyone was honest, we wouldn't need locks on our doors.
MS is working closely with the content providers. The content providers are going to reward MS but insuring that IE and Windows is the only platform that is supported for content distribution. MS guarantees total copyright owner control and will happily implement arbitrary restrictions.
Furthermore the content providers are going to run away from anything remotely open source. OSS, in their minds, are synonymous to pirates. It would be easy to write code that intercept the data stream and copy it with perfect quality.
Finally, IE is not a web browser. It can be used as a browser, but it is really an application front end, a fancy terminal if you wish. Most web designers, especially those who come from traditional media, don't understand what web publishing is. They want to control precisely how the content is presented, exactly what ads the user will see, exactly how the user works with the content. IE provides that level of control. Sites like /. that are web publication don't need it. Other sites that can't think into the abstraction of the WWW can do nothing more that duplicate traditional media.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black