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MPAA Sued Over DVD Screener Ban
bigjnsa500 writes "Fourteen small movie houses are suing the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) trying to stop the ban on DVD 'screeners'. 'It will chill the financing of independent films by limiting the awards they can receive', say the plaintiffs, who include Talking Wall Pictures, Sandcastle 5 Productions and Salty Features. They feel they are being treated differently because several 'specialty' indy film shops are still allowed to send out 'numbered, encoded videocassettes' to Oscar voters. This ban was issued by MPAA President Jack Valenti initially to stop the illegal distribution of DVD screeners on the Internet."
The indie films cannot offer a screener in these categories less face the wrath of the MPAA which controls the Academy Awards and a great deal of the movie industry.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
When I first got my DVD player I found that if you try to "skip" to the next "chapter" it doesn't work; you have to watch the commercials.
:)
But if you hit "stop" and then "play" without powering off, it goes right to the movie.
Sounds like a good idea to me. I'd love to pay for what amounts to advance movie ticket(s) to get a movie made that I want want to go see (or download), and sell short the shit I don't. Making a little change off of good taste doesn't hurt either.
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Power to the Peaceful
dupes of a retail DVD won't affect box office numbers. Screeners come out around the same time as the theatrical release, and people probably go to the movies less if they can get the same movie in dvd quality from the internet for free or through ebay.
Most screener rips aren't distributed as straight copies; usually they're DivX or XviD, heavily compressed. So any straight-data change will most likely be lost in the conversion process.
At any rate, there's an easy way around this; do a diff between screeners from two different sources. If there's any identifying information, scramble it in the copy that's distributed, so that there's no way of telling where it came from.
Hamster
It doesn't make them very much money. Theater chains have been going bankrupt for a while now - some consolidated, some are just closed. Open your eyes man.
taken from vcdhelp.com:
Screener
A video usually recorded form a promotional video tape or DVD which is sent to censors and film critics etc. The quality is usually as good as a commercial video or DVD. Sometimes a copyright message appears on the screen.
In .au where our dollar is lower still, the candy store is a 40% profit generator, I guess.
.au movies, and no butter with the popcorn.
Hilliariously, in 20 years I have known exactly 2 shops to set up popcorn/drink stands in competition, which lasts for a month before they close doors for whatever reason, as did the supermarket below, stop selling ice creams.
However, while you can still bring your own goodies in, I buy none of their overpriced shit.
Lately they seem to have hit a brick wall in overpriced dental rot products, so ticket prices rose 25% last year. Not a smart move, given dvd prices stayed the same.
When I buy the ticket, I ask when does the movie actually start; usually 15 minutes later - Latte time. If the time is inaccurate, a complaint follows. NB AFAIK - no hot dogs allowed in
IMHO - maybe they should offer low cal salads - but they dont.