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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."
Ah, a new hell for us parents:
"IS THE DOWNLOAD DONE YET?"
"No, 63% to go."
"IS THE DOWNLOAD DONE YET?"
"No, 62% to go."
"IS THE DOWNLOAD DONE YET?"
"No, 61% to go."
"IS THE DOWNLOAD DONE YET?"
"sigh"
I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
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
I can't believe Disney actually came up with this. But what prevents the people who pay for the movie to share it?
I don't watch movies on my computer screen. I watch them on my TV.
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
Or is this going to be just as expensive, but require the introduction of DRM crap into the holy of holies that is my machine. (Which implies that it's DOA, as far as I'm concerned.)
That, and I wouldn't give the jackbooted DMCA-wielding, CTEA bribing thugs at Disney a cent, anyway. Mickey Mouse can suck my cock.
~~~
"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"
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.
Should be fun, but I don't think the disney rental world is the best for downloaded time stamped movies. I know as a parent, the KID movies are the ones you end up BUYING, as they are most likely to be watched over and over and over again for the next several years... and disney is the most common of that genre. Though if it's not TOO expensive I would probably try it... and if they tied it into a discount if you purchase the DVD... hmmmmmm
wordtrip.com
This is closer to renting a movie than anything else, aside from the 30-day storage option. From the story: Customers will be able to store movies for up to 30 days. Over that span, they can watch a movie as many times as they wish in a 24-hour period.
Another article is more detailed: The movie files can be viewed on a PC or on a television connected to a computer, but customers have a maximum of 30 days to begin watching their downloaded movie. Once they begin to do so, the movie can be viewed only over the next 24 hours.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."
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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.
Dear Disney, I have two children. They are demanding. What the hell makes you think they are going to wait for a goddamn movie to download? My two year old son throws a fit if I can't put the Ice Age DVD in quick enough!
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
"IS THE DOWNLOAD DONE YET?"
"No, 1% to go."
"IS THE DOWNLOAD DONE YET?"
"Yes! You can watch Monsters Inc 2 now!"
"I DON'T WANT MONSTERS INC ANYMORE I WANNA PLAY PLAYSTATION"
*twitches, vein in forehead pops*
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
The last I heard, Disney owned Miramax -- does that mean that titles like Clerks and Pulp Fiction will be released? Don't get me wrong -- I like both movies, but I'm not sure that Disney would want people to associate them with movies that use the word "fuck" more than the word "the"... :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
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.
And let me tell you, when you've got DRM coming out your wazoo, it doesn't do a thing for your complexion.
Put it on DVD-R, then...they're getting cheap enough now.
Having never run across a DRM'd file, it's hard to say...maybe it'd be possible to cobble something together between GraphEdit and the Windows Media Format SDK that would at least strip out the DRM. As for converting to other formats, mplayer seems to do a better job than anything else. (WMV allows for either variable framerate or frame skipping...not sure which, but I know you don't get frames from the decoder at a constant rate. mplayer converts WMV to AVI by writing a 1000-fps AVI with the source frames put in wherever they need to go. You can then use an Avisynth script to convert the framerate to something more normal (like 29.97 fps) before reencoding with whatever you want.)
I don't know about Real, but then I don't have any of their stuff on any of my computers.
<rolleyes>
Score: -1, Unimaginative, Repetitive Microsoft-Bashing.
</rolleyes>
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
For $3-5, you get to spend all evening downloading a file. When you get it, you have 30 days to play it before it self-destructs. And it self-destructs 24 hours after you start playing it. And you have to watch it on your computer, and the computer must be a PC running Windows.
On the other hand, video rental stores charge you the same $3-5, and you usually have at least three days to watch it.
Or pay-per-view cable which costs the same $3-5 for 24 hours, but doesn't involve any download time.
Or NetFlix where a $20/mo fee lets you watch your rentals for as long as you want.
Can someone tell me again what advantage there is to using Movielink?
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
Because the copyright they hold on Steam Boat Willie should have ended when the law originally said it should have expired, not 80 or 100 Years Later
For the good of man copyrighted material was Supposed to end up in the Public Domain at some point
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
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.
This is nothing new...
How is this possibly news?
Disney and ShareReactor have partnered up for quite a few years now.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
Of course not, they're too busy extending copyrights from here to eternity.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
" 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."
Rest assured that if movie downloading ever matches the level of music downloading, they will. Disney aggressively protects their copyrights and properties, and was one of the prime movers in getting copyright terms extended.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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.
...because they arrest the youth of America. And judges because they put the youth of America in jail. And our peers too because they form the jury that convicts the youth of America.
How dare we punish kids who do illegal things.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
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.
Disney has a music branch, Walt Disney Records that is a member of the RIAA, so yes, they are suing the youth of America.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
* I will not use Windows to do anything, and you're not going to make me. :)
* I don't want to wait an hour to download it and then get to view for 24 hours, when I could get it for the same price in 10 minutes from Blockbuster.
* The rental will have far superior video and audio quality.
* My computer is upstairs, and the TV with a real sound system is downstairs.
* DRM. Although at any rate, I could simply connect my video cards' S-Video out to my capture cards' S-Video in
So, in short, the quality necessary to shove it down even a broadband connection sucks, it's DRMed, and I don't like watching movies on my computer.
I thought the DRM in WMP was all smoke, and that using some Dev tools provided by Microsoft, you can easily grab a lossy stream (and possibly a lossless one using more advanced techniques) of any DRM file.
If I was a business, I would definitely make sure that my files were protected going out there...then again they don't care, they just want the money at first, then they get real greedy.
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