Yet Another Degrading DVD

Aire Libre writes "Efforts to eliminate price competition from cheap DVD rentals and used DVD sales appear to be speeding up. Flexplay Technology's EZ-D self-destructing DVD, which goes dark in a lagardly 48 hours, has been surpassed by a French DVD-D that goes dark in a speedy eight hours. Because neither technology has anything to do with piracy, they both appear marketed at movie studios that might wish to drive up the price of DVD rentals. Presumably, once throw-away DVDs catch on, the studios can for the first time prevent price competition between rental and sales of DVDs by charging more for a regular DVD (rentable and re-saleable) and having the retail sales copies disappear 8 hours after opening so that no one can re-sell them, lend them, rent them or give them to charity. This will also suppress competition from rentals and used copies against currently uncompetitive online movie downloads."

Comments

Re:Absolutely Stupid!

[Anonymous Coward]

So warezing movies just got another thing going for it: not only is it cheap, it's enviroment friendly as well :)

MI

[aixou]

The Mission Impossible movies are going to have to think of a new way to transmit mission information. Once this technology becomes completely mainstream, the whole "this tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds" won't be so hip and cool, and you'll hear moms in the theater saying "Just like our Little Mermaid discs at home".

Anyone have any ideas for Mission Impossible to stay ahead of the game?

This message will self destruct...

[pubjames]

They should make them a bit more exciting. When you have finished watching the DVD it should display "This DVD will self-destruct in ten, nine, eight..." so you have to quickly take it out of the player and throw it out of the window just before it explodes. Would make watching DVDs much more fun, and would stop you falling asleep during movies.

8 hour money.

[antiquark]

I'll make money that goes blank in 8 hours, and buy them with that

Re:Absolutely Stupid!

[cosmo7]

This is not always the case. I remember the story of paper manufacturing that the real cost of making recycled paper is actually worse for the enviroment than using virgin fibres. The public wants recycled paper, so that is what they get.

Exactly right. People have the idea that paper is made with the pulp of virgin rainforest. Almost all paper is made from crop trees which are locking down carbon dioxide.

The final irony is whales and the rainforest, which people feel are somehow 'good'. People think the rainforest generates most of the oxygen in the air, but rainforests only produce something like 5% of it; most oxygen comes from algae in the sea. Who's eating the algae? That's right, the whales.

So the upshot is that if you want to make a real contribution to the environment you would be campaigning to cut down the rainforest to make harpoons to kill the whales with.

Re:Timeline

[TwistedSquare]

Good to see the scriptwriters for the next series of 24 posting their ideas on slashdot!

Can't you just picture the marketing meeting?

[Rogerborg]

• MarketDroid #1: Dammit, people aren't buying enough of our $30 discs.
• MarketDroid #2: Hey! What if we 'rented' them out for $3 per view?
• MarketDroid #1: Brilliant! Let's go snort coke out of hooker's ass cracks.
• MarketDroid #3: But... who's going to want to 'rent' something like that? We'd have to charge less than a proper rental disc to persuade them, so we'll only make pennies per disc. And even if we succeed, all we're doing is guaranteeing that we miss out on $27 of pure profit on a regular disc. Wouldn't we be better to sell people what they actually want, like a lot more regular discs for $15?
• MarketDroid #1: You must be new here.
• MarketDroid #3: Uh, yeah. Sorry. I guess I need to snort some more coke out of hooker's ass cracks.
• MarketDroid #2: Now you're talking!