Starz, RealNetworks Offer Movie Download Service

Mz6 writes "The New York Times and others are reporting that RealNetworks and the Starz Encore Group will introduce an online service today that will let high-speed Internet users download and watch many of the movies shown on the Starz cable channel. This report is just on the heels of TiVo's announcement to stream from the Web. This move is another early attempt by Hollywood to build a business out of downloadable movies and head off the sort of piracy that has hurt the music industry. The new service, called Starz Ticket on Real Movies, will cost $12.95 a month, and subscribers will be able to download and watch 100 or more movies each month, using Real's media player software, but only if you have a 600Kbps connection or higher."

Comments

When will piracy begin ...

[jokach]

So it states ....

"Each film will have an expiration date that coincides with its last showing on the cable station. The movies will be encoded so that they cannot be played after the expiration date."

Any estimates of how long it will take to crack this encoding?

Re:Is this a new thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've been getting movie dowloads from this site for months. Oh, and its free."

• Yeah ... A friend of mine was too ... until he got a letter from his ISP informing him that Universal Pictures had taken an interest in his movie-watching habits. Beware. BitTorrent isn't transparent. Everytime you download, you're also uploading ... and those are the people that organizations like the RIAA have gone after since the beginning. I'm guessing that MPAA will do the same.

Good luck

[Warlok]

My cable service (Comcast) offers On Demand viewing of movies via the set top box they provide. I have yet to sit through a 90 minute movie without having some decompression artifact appear on the screen because they can't maintain the throughput, and they're on a dedicated network. I don't see how Real can guarantee quality via the 'Net without buffering the whole damn movie first...

For the price and quality, I'm thinking Netflix is a better deal...

Re:Good luck

[Warlok]

Forgot to add - I think a more compelling business would be the flip-side of this. Rather than DL movies to my PC, how about letting me upload my own content from my PC to my cable provider for listing in the On Demand style service? With the proliferation of digital video cameras (especially on cell phone) and movie editting software for various platforms, I'd be willing to bet there's a market in every city for this, similar to the public access channels without the lottery or weekly trip to the studio. Sell the movies for a dime a piece and take a few cents off the submitter's bill everytime someone watches it. There's some details about content rating, categorization, backend capabilities, and other things to be worked out, but I'd like to see it done.