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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."
That's just great. Lets overflow landfill after landfill with disposable view-once or twice DVDs, and use up those fossil fuel supplies even faster making these disposable frisbees. Oh yeah, while we're at it, lets gouge the customer's wallets more on regular DVDs that don't self destruct...
The combinatiom of these things does nothing to stop piracy, it may even increase it. You could rent one of these and copy it in the first 8 hours to a regular DVD-R and enjoy it forever.
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
I'll just rip it and burn a copy before I watch it.
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
These disks should not be used for backing up valuable data
That man tried to kill mah Daddy
What happens when you want to get a dvd to watch the next day?
48 hour dvd disks are much more suitable for rental.
Everyone will have to do this, or else people will just stop buying DVDs from people X. Sure they might miss out on some movies, but people would rather that then not being able to own a DVD.
Also, the distributors who use these DVDs better make sure they don't distribute the same movie in VHS format, or else people will just go back to that. How this helps the distributors I'll be fucked if I know (it is possible to pirate videos, just before DVD became popular they were experimenting in copy-protection, but there would have been work-arounds).
I really don't get the point to this, this will only increase piracy. People like to own stuff they buy. If you make them think they don't own it, they won't buy it if there is an alternative (even an illegal one) available.
It's sad that most consumers won't 'get it'.... The disposable DVD costs more to make, has the same data on it, and costs 25% the cost of a normal dvd.... which is identical without the degrading chemicals...
I heard about the first degrading disk a long time ago, and I really see it as THE WORST invention in many years.... It's a horrible product for consumers, and a clear example of many things that are horribly wrong with companies today.
8 Hours?!? WTF is that. That's hardly enough time to watch some movies. What with all the comentary from this director, and that actor, and rewatching it again with the in-movie game.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Calm down, guys. They've tried self-destructing DVDs before and they didn't sell then either.
Remember, the technology has only been developed. The movie studios haven't bought in yet. And if they do, it'll only be a financial disaster for them.
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?
Nobody in their right mind would buy one of these discs. Unlimited-view DVDs can be easily found for $10-15, and a five day rental is usually about $3.79. They would have to sell these for $0.99 to get anyone to buy them, and even then I imagine that most people would much rather spend a bit more money to get an item that they can watch again whenever they feel like it without running back to the store to buy another copy.
Also, think of the environmental impact of these disposable discs! Thousands of them would be thrown away every day, and our landfill sites would quickly overflow with these discs. It is also a complete waste of energy, as using the same amount (or less) of energy could easily produce an item that could be viewed/rented a practically infinite number of times.
What type of idiots think this stuff up? Do they really think this is going to help piracy or something? Just copy it in the eight hours you have it!
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.
This still won't prevent me from buying the cheaper copy and ripping it, er... backing it up... onto my hd for later viewing...
Actually it might lend people into making this a standard procedure - just in case. And once the image is on HDD, it is easier to decide to make a copy/reencode it (easy-to-use tools are available) - so this will propably actually promote piracy of rented DVDs.
People just don't want to buy something that becomes worthless as a matter of course, and they probably never will. As far as I'm concerned, these products are just interesting exercises in chemical engineering, and nothing more.
-=20
me doesn't live for do [DEPRECATED]
Now the studios expect Blockbuster to carry 3000 copies per location to get that same number of rentals? Or order 30 copies per week, every week, for the same time period?
Shyeah, right. Blockbuster's a big enough corporation that they won't hesitate to tell the studios to get stuffed on this.
I seriously doubt that any company will ever put these DVD's to use in the general consumer market - its just too risky! Aside from the potential to actually INCREASE piracy as opposed to decrease it, think of the monumental bad press that they would get, not only from those of us "in-the-know" about such things, but the casual consumer as well. This is to say nothing about consumers' rights groups and environmentalists.
If someone *were* to take a gamble on these, I bet the geeks in the world could find some kind of solution to either remove the darkness or penetrate it pretty quick. Failing that, its still readable (and thus, ripable) in the first 8 hours anyways, which once more leads back to the piracy-increase arguement.
(On the subject of penetrating the darkness, if someone were to just turn down the potentiometer on the DVD drive's laser [as is sometimes done in XBox Thompson DVD drives to help them perform to spec], do you think that would be enough to "punch through" as it were, and still allow enough light to escape upon reflection to allow reading after the blackout has set in?)
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
The new disposable DVD will cost more to manufacture and they will charge less for it at the retail point. Doesn't this just beg the question of their ethics and business practices?
Stay tuned for new sig...
how about someone designs a dvd player which floods the disc with nitrogen while playing?
umop apisdn aw pow f,uop aseald
Once Video-OnDemand it pervasive won't the idea of buying or renting these things become obselete.
Imagine this...the full TV/Movie library on Demand...anytime you want it. Let's say $50 a month. Would it be worth it? You could bring up "Tails of the Golden Monkey: Episode 7" at 2:13am.
Other than portability to take it to your mom's house in BFE...why do you need a hard copy?
Reuse the space in your living room that you were using for that Danielle Steele movie collection. Those VHS tapes aren't needed.
Any other ideas?
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
People have been copying cassette tapes for years. They had also been copying software for years (all of my software on my Amiga was pirated). They have also been copying VHS video's for years. But it was only until a year or two before I got my DVD player that they started making copy-protection for VHS videos.
So the question is, why then? What happened then that made everyone from that point onward paranoid about copy-protection? It's like America with terrorism. Before 9/11 your average-day joe didn't care about it. After 9/11 they did care. What was the 9/11 in the music, video and software industry?
Hour 0: DVD Purchased. Child or sibling opens it while you are not looking. ...
Hour 5: Reinstall finish. Hunt for DVD burning/decrypt^H^H^H^H^H^H backup software begins.
Hour 6: DVDXCopy found and installed, read phase begins. You realize that you burned your last blank DVD last night.
Hour 7: You return from Staples with a rediculously priced 5pack. Burning begins.
Hour 8: You finish just in time to watch the light show on the back of this 'novel' disc. Perhaps a 48-hour version would be less stressful in the future.
Hour 1: You realize the package was opened, but do not know when. Hour 2: You finally get home, only to realize that your Windows machine is DOA and needs a reinstall.
All you need to do is take the thing back the next day and demand a refund.
Say that when you tried to play it the DVD was already dead. How can they prove the air seal hadn't failed already or the disk was faulty due to a manufacturing defect.
Philip
Philip
Signatures are broken
So does this mean that the A/V quality of the film will degrade as I watch it? If this thing is slowly going dark over 8 hours after I open it and the movie is say 3 -> 4 hours long, will I notice a loss in quality as the film progresses?
I imagine that Hi-Fi DVD players will not like these discs one bit...
They've done that already. I believe the reply to DeCSS was "Oh c'mon! That took us forever to come up with!"
Let's face it, people, copy protection is really really easy to do. It's really really hard to do it well.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Yes, the costs of collecting it, transporting it, sorting it, and breaking it down, far exceed the cost of creating fresh glass.
In addition... On average, a city pays $50/ton to throw away garbage.... and $150+/ton to recycle it.
I'll make money that goes blank in 8 hours, and buy them with that
The two potential uses I can think of for disposable DVDs would be:
a) "screener" disks and
b) maybe giveaway disks on cereal boxes? Neither one of those even makes much sense. For the screener problem, this would introduce a nuisance copy protection measure. (Note to industry; have those ever done anything to prevent copying?) For cheap giveaways, I'm missing why you'd want kids not to play your commercials-for-Fox-programs disk as many times as they'd want.
But this product page calls these "the new video rental." For anything like a Blockbuster chain, these'd *cut profits*. Rental places don't want to be paying extra for the media that get thrown away, and they make a ton of their money on late fees. I could almost, almost, imagine a model with re-recordable disks and a deposit system, but even that would just create a big nuisance for both customers and the store, with no payoff for them. Moot point, these aren't re-recordable.
If you imagine them as one-time-only purchases (as in "I want to watch this movie, but only once"), the priced had danged well better be way less than a ticket at the multiplex.
Where's the blinkin' market? Who's going to sell this to the audience? What market is there? Steve Jobs couldn't pitch this crap...
It really is as if, in some incredible example of snake-eats-its-own-tail self-reflexive logic, media companies are working steadily to assault their own audiences and remove their own products from circulation. They rant about how they don't want customers to have "near perfect" versions of their stuff, because that'd let people rip them. (You want me to have an inferior version of your product?!?) They steadily try to introduce restrictive DRM measures that prevent people who DO want to buy their products from feeling comfortable about it. Presented with the original Napster, they try to conduct a scorched earth war with their audience.
We didn't choose to accept this mission. The tape should not self-destruct in two minutes.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
They can't decrypt it that quickly, but they can copy it to their hard drives, or to a stable DVD with plenty of time to spare, then decrypt it at their leisure.
Sorry, but your case is baseless.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
So you're saying that glass, which can simply be remelted and recast, is more expensive than obtaining sillica, dyeing, melting, and casting it?
That's exactly right. Even worse, most recycled products that are generated to satisfy 'green' consumer demand use more energy to produce than normal products and so are worse for the environment.
The goddamned hippies are ruining the planet.
That's an interesting point, but I doubt that is a suitable alternative. It costs a fortune to take a family to the movies these days because 'somebody' always gets thirsty or wants a snack. Plus you can't pause the movie when the kids want you to take them to the potty.
It cost me $50 to take the family (of four) to see Shrek II. I got the reduced matinee pricing for seeing an early show. I got the discounted 'combo snack packs' which allowed one treat and a small drink for each person.
Next time, I'll wait for the video to come out. Even if it becomes a limited view video. I'd much rather have more control of my viewing experience to be able to get a beer or a snack without missing a part of the movie.
For those 'single' people that don't have a need to pay for a full family's worth of movie adventure (or who watch the movie anyway). Invest a one time amount of about $300 in a portable DVD player and drive your date to a private area to watch the movie. If you're lucky, you probably won't see the movie anyway, but you're only out the price of the disposable DVD. You can afford to go out the next night and 'watch' another movie.
------
Movie Goer to Movie Usher: "The concession stand prices here are outrageous. Besides, I haven't had a barbeque in a long time." - Steven Wright
...or take it out of its container and expose it to light/air.
Phew! I was worried it would key off something very common, that i might accidentally expose it to.
If someone is carrying sensitive data on CD-ROM/DVD-ROM, they are probably better off just trying to snap the disk in half.
DO NOT TRY THIS YOURSELF!
Or at least, for the love of god look away while doing it, most cheap CD-Rs explode into lots of tiny little pieces. I'm not sure how recoverable they are after the data layer is lying in the dust on the floor, but my guess is "not very".
They'll be able to sell 48 hour self destruct DVD's in the regular retail chain. Why do you need Blockbuster and all it's overhead dealing with returns, chasing late fees, stock management, etc.
Just sell 'em at retail for a couple of bucks, and the purchaser get's 48 hours of viewing once they crack open the package or first play it. No returns, no lost DVD's, no damaged DVD's
Gee, I usually watch the movie one day, and the "special" features on the DVD a day or two later.
No problem, I'll just rip a copy -- of course I've never done that before, but this will motivate me to start.
I'm not sure of the reasons behind that, but what if its due to the inefficiencies of the process, and the fact that recyclable goods are still a somewhat "niche" product?
If everything was recyclable and recycled, the costs of such a thing would come down, and the process would become more efficient. It would have to.
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
Before that, you had to know someone that knew someone that knew someone.... With the Internet, suddenly you have "friends" everywhere. Least friendly enough to give you a copy of their copy.
Basicly, the time aspect disappeared. Before, you usually had to wait a while and dig around to get the latest and greatest fad. Nowadays they're released as fast or faster than retail.
Also, I think it might have something to do with DVDs having CSS. It would even it out "they both have it", no reason to stay on VHS. Unlike the music industry (which is still stuck on protection-less CDs) the video industry saw it early and made precautions.
The software industry always saw it. I remember floppies with special bad sectors as copy protection. They've been pirated since the very start.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Ever since I got a TiVo, I don't rent movies from blockbuster anymore. Why? Because Pay Per View is just too convenient with a TiVo. If I want to watch a PPV movie, I simply set up a recording of it. I can watch it as it happens or watch it later... or watch it much later - as long as I want to save the recording.
/. crowd to universally deride them. Isn't that like me telling you how you should spend your own money?
Which means that I pretty much NEVER rent from the video store anymore. PPV usually costs a little bit less than a video rental, I don't have to return anything, and I can keep it as long as I want. Other than the fact that the concept is really kind of insulting, decaying DVDs are irrelevant to me.
I suspect that they're going to be irrelevant to most people, too, which means that there's going to be almost no market for them. But if there is a market for them, who am I to say how other people spend their money? These things are only going to take off if there's a demand. If there isn't demand, they'll die. If there is demand, they'll sell. If they sell, I think it's a bit presumptuous of the
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
I only need 20 minutes to rip it. It seems like more than anything else, this technology is on its knees, BEGGING you to make a copy.
Point 2: I frequently open up a disc to check it out, read the book, look at the artwork, etc, and sometimes don't get around to actually watching the thing for weeks.
Of course, they will probably use this for totally cut-rate, disc-in-a-jewel-box, no booklet, no commentary, no extras crap versions. Knowing their market, they'll probably all be 4:3 pan & scan shit, too. Remember DivX (the original, BAD one)?
How many times has something that was seemingly impossible and way too costly been figured out by some tinkering person? Never say never.
I can just imagine the heaps of shimmering garbage produced as a result of this idea. Consider how many of these would be produced if each "EZ-D" or whatever the f**k they're called is a one-watch-only disc.
Not to be an environmentalist or anything, but our garbage production is already out of control, and the manufacturing process for CDs and DVDs is already polutant enough. This is over the top.
This is a great example of when scientific researchers should pause and think "is this the right thing to do?" It's time the concept of ethics got reintroduced to science, but that's unfortunately not likely to happen.
Science, meet my good friend Ethics. Ah, you know each other! Well then, here's to old friends!
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
The DVD burner will be your best investment. As you probably know, Disney movies have 30 minutes of commercials up front and either you can wait until the startup gets to the point where you can actually hit play or you have to hid forward for 5 minutes to skip the commercials.
I would highly suggest you go get a DVD burner really soon, the prices of even a Dual Layer Burner are below a 100 bucks. You can then rip out all those commercials and simply insert the DVD and Walk away and it will play automatically. Download DVD Decrypted and DVD Shrink. You will never touch the originals again. The convenience of a movie playing when you insert the disk is the greatest thing for kids (no waiting no fussing you'll agree).
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Glass has always been an expensive business. Recycling glass bottles has been a money earner for decades.
I know people want to hate the green lobby because it does some daft things, but not everything the green lobby proposes is being done simply because the green lobby has proposed it. Sometimes it makes economic sense for businesses to act in a way that happens to be environmentally sound.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
There are people concerned about the enormous numbers of AOL CDs in the landfills and dumps. What do environmentalists say about these so-called "disposable" DVDs? Asside from a pretty consumer-hating business model, are they totally forgetting the environment too?
(Note: I'm not an environmentalist, just looking for other ways to poke holes in this technology plan)
Even if there were a market for disposable DVDs, it wouldn't (as the story implies) destroy the existing market. Raising prices of regular DVDs would not effect the rental market. Studios have charged high rates on VHS rentals for years. Some tapes were selling for $130+ to video stores for 6 months before being released to the general public for $13. It wasn't until DVD came out that home collectors made is feasible to price initial releases at low prices.
Raising prices on DVD won't crush the video rental market. History has proven that Blockbuster can make money renting out a $130 video. Raising prices will kill the home collector market. The rental market would stay constant, and the result would be a net loss for the studios.
The whole conspiracy theory just doesn't add up.
In a Spinal Tap interview on NPR, back when CDs came in elongated cardboard boxes, Nigel said that they'd had the manufacturer put the CD in an extra long box just so there was that much extra cardboard for recycling...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I don't believe this for one second. Glass recycling schemes predate the whole green thing by decades. In the UK back when virtually every soft drink came in glass bottle form, virtually every bottle had a rebate available to people who returned the bottle.
That's bottle recycling, not glass recycling. Your refreshing bottle of Vimto or Dandelion and Burdock had to be returned intact because the manufacturer wanted to clean and re-use the bottle. This actually makes sense both economically and environmentally.
Most glass recycling in the US is less logical; here in New York you are legally obliged to recycle glass. The glass is carefully sorted into three categories - clear, green and brown - before being mixed in with regular garbage for landfill because no one wants to buy the raw glass.
A year ago Mayor Bloomberg lifted the recycling requirement, to howls of anguish from armchair environmentalists. The recycling requirement is back in place now, but the glass still gets mixed back in with the regular garbage.
"Recycling, anything but cans, is actually more harmful to the environment than just throwing it away."
I think that's too simplistic.
Recycling has sometimes been given a bad name by poorly thought-out schemes which don't include all energy/pollution costs at all parts of the product lifecycle.
There are so many factors to consider, like:
1/ Environmental transport costs to disposal facility vs equivalent costs to recycling facility.
2/ What you are going to recycle into - recycling paper waste into pristine new white paper may be environmentally stupid due to the purification/bleaching necessary. Recycling high grade waste to lower-grade waste like newsprint and toilet paper makes much more sense.
3/ Recycling a given product may initially be environmentally negative but once the amount reaches a threshhold level you get economies of scale, and it makes commercial sense to develop more energy efficient processes.
4/ More complex items often make no sense to recycle because there are too many different materials mixed together in a way which is too difficult to seperate them. If the products are designed for dismantling followed by a combination of re-use and recycle the equation changes drastically. This requirement is being phased in for example for all new cars in the EU.
It has the additional advantage of making it easier to repair such products by replacing smaller components rather than larger assemblies.
5/ Combined facilities can overcome the inefficiencies of standalone processes. E.g. mixed household waste can be partly burnt to generate energy onsite (no transmission losses etc.) for recycling its glass/metal content.
I'd agree that not all recycling that's done at present makes sense but for example glass recycling has been going on for many years on a commercial basis, before recycling was 'fashionable', so presumably the claims that it can be more energy efficient than manufacturing from scratch are true.
MINIMIZING inventory?!? How is keeping 3000 disposable DVD's on hand as opposed to 30 reusable DVD's minimizing ANYTHING?
More purchase costs, more inventory costs, more staffing costs, more shipping costs, etc... The only thing you save on is reshelving costs for returns.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Penn and Teller as a primary source of information? I get my info from old Ziggy comics but I digress.
You are wrong about many things so I'll just focus on a couple:
1. AL isn't the only product worth recycling. There is a little thing known as the scrap iron business that has been a major industry for over a century. In China and S Korea scrap metal is so valuable that people in Mongolia are collecting old junk cars and rebar and shipping it to China.
Glass is another item that is especially energy intensive to make.
2. Landfills fill up my friend. Ever see those big piles of dirt with vents all over them near cities and towns? Those are landfills that filled up or got to big to allow to stay open. The cost of transporting trash is going up as there are fewer and fewer places willing to take it (right now poor towns in places like Africa and Pennsylvania are the world's trashcans). Since I haven't seen a plan for taking every scrap of trash and compressing it into a 30 cubic mile box it will continue to sit spread out near the places that generate it, like, for instance, the homes of slashdotters.
The cost of transporting it away to be recycled is real but should be born by the generator. This would be more fair than how people who drive don't pay gas taxes that cover 100% of the cost of roads and are subsidized by other tax payers. The cost of NOT recycling has to be added in to the equation. Quality of life also has a definite value. I doubt even the most die hard anti-environmentalist (a "brown"?) enjoys living in a trash strewn world.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
That's exactly right. Even worse, most recycled products that are generated to satisfy 'green' consumer demand use more energy to produce than normal products and so are worse for the environment.
Essentially you're right. The big exceptions are metals, especially steel, aluminum, copper and lead, all of which are profitibly recycled. Of these, only aluminum recycling really benefits from consumer action. There is one big benefit to deposits on bottles though, and that is that some people find it worthwhile to pick up litter.
I like my beverages with warning labels!
What they are talking about is glass containers. Where the bottle is smashed and smelted again to create a new bottle.
Now a lot of the right wing make all kinds of claims that this kind of recycling is actually more costly. Funny thing is that the glass industry itself doesn't seem to think so. Just that the only problem is that the margins are extremely narrow so it is hard to make the business of collecting a real profit maker.
Oh and those who suggest landfills, you are of course the volunteer to have it in your backyard right? Thought not.
Remember the only difference between left wing and right wing loonies is the wich words they spew from the hole in their head. They are both loonies who take the facts and take the ones they like and twist them to suit their objectives.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Puts new meaning in their advertisements: "Own it today (only)".
For glass that is probably true -- it is a fairly plentiful natural resource. However, some materials are well worth recycling. It is extremely expensive, for example, to extract aluminum from bauxite ore. Recycling aluminum is far cheaper, and you just about break even as far as the money for collecting it goes. This also doesn't take into account the fact that thrown away garbage is either taking up space in a landfill (space that is going to become extremely scarce in the coming decades) or adding pollutants to the air from an incinerator. It is also more "fair" to society to recycle than to thrown away, because landfills and incinerators tend to get sited where nobody has the money to fight it.
In addition... On average, a city pays $50/ton to throw away garbage.... and $150+/ton to recycle it.
Back when DC had a recycling program, it cost less, per unit weight, than the trash disposal program. Of course, they shut it down, citing cost.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
...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 ... 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, ...
You may want to loosen that tin-foil hat a little--it's cutting off more than just the spy-waves.
What self-degrading DVDs do is allow a whole bunch of retailers (Walmart, Target, gas-stations, etc.) to sell 1 viewing of a movie. That's a new product for them. That allows them to hit the $8 pricepoint for single viewings and the $30 pricepoint for durable DVDs. It's not like the durable retail DVDs we have now are going away any time soon. (All of which is bad for consumers, of course.)
Current rental shops, BTW, should _hate_ degradable DVDs. First, they cost more per sale than rerentable durable DVDs. Second, rental shops _love_ late fees, which degradables don't have. Third, rental shops love returns because it causes people to go to their store. Fourth, degradables allow big-box retailers to enter the rental shops' price range, eating their business.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
...it can be played till the end even if the viewing window is finished. If the user tries to play the disk after the end of the viewing window, the DVD players displays "NO DISC".
So it can also become unusable just by taking it out of the box (suffiently long time). I wonder:
- is the entire disc degraded, or just the headers (whatever these are called on DVDs)?
- if the entire disc degrades: how sharply is the viewing period defined? I can imagine that, if you are unlucky, you will see the onset of degradation (artefacts etc) even during your 'legal' viewing time.
The notion that it is cheaper to dump garbage than recycle it is only partly true. It assumes that there is a place nearby to dump it: a place near by that is cheap to transport the garbage to, a place that nobody wants for any other purpose. These places are becoming rare and will be more rare in future years. Especially when just dumping garbage and sewerage into the ocean becomes impossible due to the destruction of sea life.
Dumping garbage is cheaper because it is only one small part of the recycling process: collecting and 'warehousing' of raw materials. Recycling is expensive because so much energy is required to seperate the various components of the garbage from the pile. By seperating the components before shipping it all to the central dump, recycling is cheaper than inital processing from natural raw materials.
Please no more remarks about 'gaddam hippies'. Hippies are smarter than you. This is website that respects intelligence and creativity: Hippies are respected around here.
Please n
I think you're thinking of "reusing" not "recycling". If a company gets their own bottles back they just wash them out and reuse them. Recycling a bottle by breaking the bottle up and putting it back together as a new bottle is more expensive because it involves a separate collection (your milk example would pick up bottles on a normal run - $0), it requires sorting from paper, cardboard, and whatever else people throw in the recycling bin (again, $0 for the milk company), and then the glass is shattered and reformed (I'm sure if you've followed me so far you'll see that this is again $0 for your milk company).
A company reusing its own bottles is a money saver. Society trying to recycle all glass currently is not.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Recycling isn't just about saving money with raw materials. It never was. Materials processing and manufacturing is where the greatest savings can be made. The closer you can get an recycled product to its already processed state, en-mass, the better the savings.
This lesson needs to be drilled into those in charge of the programs. It's not enough to simply try to resell people's rubbish. You have to encourage the rubbish to be seperated by more than just "what it's made of". You have to encourage manufacturers to make things that can be recycled easily.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The economic model for content distribution is really, seriously screwed up. You've got a product with extremely high fixed costs (The cost to produce the movie or the video game or the music) and essentially zero marginal cost (The few cents paid to make the jewelcase and the packaging), sold by a single company with monopoly rights for at least 70 years to a set of monopolistic competitors who demand to buy all products at a similar price.
That market is so far out of normal economics that most conventional economic laws fail to exlpain anything about it. Normally, prices convey information to buyers and sellers about the relative abundancy or scarcity of the product. The problem here is that only one entity is deciding how many of said objects to produce, and then a separate group of buyers and resellers (think companies like best buy or circuit city) all decide to buy and then sell at about the same price, regardless of the demand for the product or how many they have to sell.
Price changes for content are based almost entirely on the time since the content was created, rather than the relative popularity of the product itself, and so no information is conveyed to either buyers or sellers about scaricty or abundance. It's all completely absurd. The price at which CDs and DVDs and Video Games are sold does not at all reflect supply or demand or any sort of market condition other than the whims of the single supplier. That's why companies like EBGames and GameStop are all buying and selling used games - they don't make any money on the used games since they have to buy them and sell them for about the same price. There is intense competition among buyers of new games and media (by buyers, I mean resellers here) but only entity supplying those games. Once you have a reasonable supply of used games entering the market, you start to see a semblance of a market economy, with the price of a used game representing the abundancy or scarcity thereof.
How is this all going to be resolved? Suppose the movie companies decide to release content for extremely high prices at first, and then they set their price to about the same level as the going rate for used content. They'll keep selling products because there are plenty of people willing to pay a little extra for a new product over a used one. But then, as more new copies enter circulation, there are more sellers of used copies (since all new copies become used copies and thus all buyers of new copies can become sellers of used copies) and so the price of used copies falls, and then along with it the price of new copies. This causes more people to want to buy the product and the cycle keeps repeating with the price of the content getting closer and closer to the price of the medium on which it is stored. At this point it doesn't make any sense for the movie company to stay in production, so they should just pull back, but keep watching the market. Instead, once games and movies and cds have been out for several years, the content producers tend to ignore market fluctuations in the prices for used content. There are some used games selling on ebay for prices far above the original $50 because they went on to become cult hits. If the producers weren't complete idiots, they would start producing more new content and selling it at a little above the market price of the used games.
Instead, since the content producers seem steeped in economic ignorance, we're getting more of these stupid ideas like disposable DVDs and easily circumvented DRM.
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Money is a measure of value which can be used to quantify anything, including intangibles such as environmental impact, etc.
If you want to balance environmental impact againt other relevant factors, and you want to do it in a scientific way, you need to quantify everything in terms of dollar values.
On the other, the more they push them, the more people will realize how hard they're getting screwed, and will resort to MODERN methods of aquiring media, ie, P2P, and BT.
Now, of course piracy is bad...and there WILL be actions taken (like the RIAA suing), but they can't sue everybody, and sooner or later we'll have something similar to what happened with prohibition.
Who knows, maybe all we have to do to usher in the new era the right way is just sit back, keep doing what we're doing (including developing new distribution technologies, and yes, pirating) and let the companies shoot themselves in the foot over and over again.
It may get worse for us before it gets better, but these things take a long time, as they have a lot of money. Sooner or later though, either they'll run out, or they'll lose enough where they are forced to do things our way.
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...of environmental conservation. They are:
1. Reduce
2. Re-use
3. Recycle
IN THAT ORDER OF IMPORTANCE. Yes, ultimately anything can be recycled, but recycling still requires energy and has an environmental impact.
The only widespread commercial use of TDP at the moment involves waste from food production. Food scraps, sewage and so on are basically "natural" organic waste. Things like CDs and DVDs are make from plastics--an organic chemistry process but still an "artificial" polymer. There are also a lot of inorganic components in the various layers, requiring extra energy and time to process out and re-use.
The best known commercial application (involving the turkey waste) has achieved quite a remarkable efficency in making waste into low-grade heating oil (upwards of 85%). However, consider the source--it is renewable. The original energy was from grains/poultry feed and water. Also consider that for every 1000 BTUs of energy stored in the waste only 850 BTUs becomes usable heating oil.
Now think about all these disposable DVDs. They are made from petroleum products--non-renewable oil pulled from the ground. It takes energy to make them to begin with, then it takes more energy to handle the waste (trucks burning fuel to haul the spent waste to a recycling facility). THEN it takes the 15 percent stored in the DVD material to convert it back into heating oil.
Why don't we forget about all of that crap with disposabel DVDs and just heat our homes with the oil that came from the ground in the first place? That would REDUCE how much non-renewable energy we used. When we buy DVDs today they don't become useless garbage in a few hours-- we can RE-USE them. that way we don't even need to RECYCLE them, and we can devote our resources to more effective recycling efforts--particularly those with big payoffs like composting, metal cans, glass bottles, building materials and scrap paper.
Besides the overtly greedy nature of such a scam as disposable media it is also blatantly wasteful. It makes me cringe when people casually throw away empty tins of soup, but at least food is a necessity and there are few proctical alternatives.
In the case of these throw-away DVDs their mere existence offends me. They are not a basic need, and take no less resources to make than a normal DVD--a practical alternative that is very re-usable. I hope they become the miserable flop they deserve to be and that the inventor and company responsible for them end up broke and destitute.
*phew* good to get the nut-case out of me from time to time...but you get the idea---recyclable or not they are a lousy idea.
How will their return policy deal with defective merchandise???
If the disks work on how long it has been since the disk has been exposed to air, then 8 hours would hardly be enough time to get the disk back to the store you purchased it...I imagine one of the advantages of this format is that stores not likely to rent DVDs could sell at a competitive price. The only problem is, most people play DVDs at night (after they get home)...you pick up one of these disks from a local store and open it at 10pm...by the time the store opens in the morning, the disk is already dead.
And the other method is to base it on hours of actual play (i.e. the laser destroys part of the disk as it reads)...this too would be a bad idea, as most defective disks don't show problems until somewhere around the layer change. On some movies, this isn't for an hour or so into the movie. Some cheaper DVD players (Apex players specifically) exhibit similar problems when the player needs to be reset. You would certainly be asked to try reseting the player first (at which time you'ld probably already be at least half way through the 8 hours).
How does the technology work with fast forward??? slow motion??? If I run a film in slow motion, could the disk actually die before I get to the end??? If I run it in fast forward, could it die within an hour??? Do intro trailers and such count??? (they shouldn't...that's not what I bought) And what about Enhanced DVD-ROM content??? Probably none. These will likely be bare bones DVDs with little more than a few trailers. Which means they probably won't even compete with DVDs...
And lastly, what will this technology do to people's DVD Players??? Harsh chemicals and electronics don't always mix well...
DivX by any othe name is still DivX.
Whales do *not* eat algae.
Whales eat krill - small, shrimplike creatures. Krill eat algae. Less whales = more krill. More krill = *less* algae.
In tropical waters it's actually slightly more complicated; some tropical krill eat zooplankton as well as phytoplankton, which muddies the situation.
It's pretty much true about the paper. One thing that recycled paper does have going for it is that it's usually not bleached; production and use of chlorine is really nasty, environmentally speaking. But paper made from fast-growing plantation forests is very "good" for carbon levels. These forests do tend to leave behind rather acidic soils, which many plants don't like, and the forests themselves have terrible biodiversity ("green deserts")... but they do chew up that CO2.