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Bollywood New Releases Available via Video-On-Demand
af_robot writes "There's an announcement of a secure, DivX video-on-demand service for first-run movies, but only for Bollywood movies. 'Each new Bollywood film is released on the public Internet a day before or on the same day of its theatrical release, through piracy on multiple illegal movie download web sites,' said Al Mason, CEO of Cinema on Web. 'Our partnership with DivXNetworks represents the future of entertainment on the Internet. Soon virtually all new major Bollywood and Hollywood movies, including entertainment will be distributed digitally with secure VOD solutions like the one created by DivXNetworks, simultaneously defeating piracy and generating additional revenue for film studios and producers.'"
Excellent! I've been looking for a certain Bollywood movie. In it an East Indian guy saves a girl from a corrupt landholder and at the end they all dance. What was it called again?
Where have I heard that before?
But I don't see how this will 'defeat piracy'. Seems like it will aid it.
Let me get out my S-Video cable and my L/R RCAs and I'll be all set!
This is really a wonderful idea. If only our friends at the MPAA could do the same... ...
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
Bollywood refers to the Hindi film industry in India.
Video on Demand over IP is what will hopefully end the cable monopoly and if it actually gains acceptance with consumers eventually end conent producers monopolies as well. One can hope... (somehow always thought that stuff like this will be taken up in developing countries without as strong corp's as out here in the west. More power to India eh :))
how will it defeat piracy? If I'm going to pay for a movie, I sure as hell am going to see it in the movie theater on a huge screen instead of paying the same amount and watching it on a 17inch CRT. Ah the illusions of Graduer.
Sig? No thanks, I don't smoke.
How will this defeat piracy? Unless the price point is $0.00 an economic reason to steal the movies will exist. Even if the price point was at nothing, there are those who will remain unable to view the films on their desired architecture and will still need to find an 'alternate' method to acquire the fims.
paul reinheimer
What are we outsourcing our DRM now?
How about setting up a secure food delivery system to the victims of the tsunami instead?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
virtually all new major Bollywood and Hollywood movies, including entertainment will be distributed digitally
This flash of clarity and honest self-assessment is truly refreshing. I for one am glad that they've finally officially recognized that most of their movies are lacking in entertainment value.
omg, awesome. I can finally watch the hot bollywood flicks and the HOT girls in these movies. *lust* I'd even pay the real price too! Now if they could add zoom, and more revealing outfits and better dance numbers.
Ahar! Piracy has been defeated! The boats have all been sunk and Davey Jones locker has been secured for Bollywood! You'll walk the plank!
What is it that makes me think that maybe, just maybe a few illegitimate downloads will still occur after this system goes up?
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Well I give them a month at most to crack the new drm and things will be back to the way they were.
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
Most of the hopeless nerds I know would at least haul their butts out of their PC chairs for a few hours every other Friday night to see the latest and greatest adventure flick at the theater. I guess those days are coming to a close. (anyone remember the news story about the lady who lived on her couch for years, and the fabric actually fused to her body? hehe.)
...though, if anyone of you have ever downloaded a pre-DVD release movie on the 'net, were you actually considering going to the theater anyway? I personally go for the huge screen and surround sound experience.
This is a fantastic example of the movie companies beginning to take advantage of the fact that some people would rather stay at home...
Then again, with one of those "100' projector for only $14.95" do-it-yourself projection screen kits from eBay and a set of Creative Labs Gigaworks S750 speakers, what's stopping anyone anymore? *sigh*
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Reminds me of a quote I heard once: "One man's waste is another man's......soap."
So can a recording device. Whether they like it or not, the pirates are always going to have a way to circumvent the anti-piracy schemes. I think the industries would be better off focusing on quality that can't be duplicated by a DVcammed AVI or movie screen. There are always going to be jackasses who will prefer to not pay and watch a shitty copy of a movie as opposed to paying to see the real shitty version of the same movie. If the movie was really something worth seeing then maybe people would actually pay.
for bittorent or at the very least the multicast features in routers. ..has multicast caught on yet? seems like i remember reading it was starting to back when i was in college and gave a shit about the future
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Soon virtually all new major Bollywood and Hollywood movies, including entertainment will be distributed digitally [...]
You mean they're going to start including entertainment with their movies now? Good, because I was getting tired of the non-stop flow of crapfests.
the coolest club on
Dil Se. The song was 'Chaiyya Chaiyya'.
DilSe (From the Heart (USA))
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164538/
Not just projectors, but more and more people (I know anyway) are able to afford big screens with surround sound. Another thing this could do is bring the cost of movies down. I doubt it would happen, but theoretically this could lower overhead, and you could simply pay for the movie, instead of a teenager with an acne problem shining a light in your face and asking you to be quiet.
MPAA will never allow that though.
OFFTOPIC:
Since every BT site has been taken down, what is the best tracker site out there right now...
I am tired of searching for a good tracker site...
Man I miss suprnova!
Oh, no wonder... it's Slash DOT.
Bollywood's viewership is 3.8 billion vs Hollywood's 3.2 billion.
Former Miss World, bollywood queen, and my current heartthrob Aishwarya Rai was featured on 60 mins as the world's most beautiful woman and is among the cast in the next Hollywood James Bond flick.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
This seems like a smart plan. I don't think that the number of movie theaters dedicated to Bollywood films is that great outside of India so there are people whose only option is to dl a copy until the DVD comes out. Presumably the legitimate copy is of better quality than the pirate version so there should be some buyers.
Goddess!
Dev Anand, the legendary actor and film maker from India, is also amongst the first to collaborate with Cinema on Web (COW).
That's it, I'm revoking his membership from our Anonymous COWherd X club.
Excellent! I've been looking for a certain Bollywood movie. In it an East Indian guy saves a girl from a corrupt landholder and at the end they all dance. What was it called again?
Is that the one that had the conflict between the modern young people and the more traditional family elders? That was great.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Profit.
The Bollywood studios have an opportunity to embrace the technology so feared by their Western cousins. Their production costs tend to be much lower, their business model more fluid. If they get this right, they could ride the bandwidth wave into the next decade, paying less for distribution than the MPAA pay for toilet tissue. Let's hope they can provide a much-needed example
*This is a speed-bump only, but I would imagine that people who have paid for content are less likely to distribute it further than those who have not.
Loosely translated, "f*ck the consumers both coming and going."
Do not touch -Willie
Harold and Kumar Go to WhiteCastle was pretty good, too.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
This is supposed to nullify movie piracy? If anything, it will improve it! No more cams and telescans - only DVD quality warez from now on!
The movie industry has a big chance it seems. Downloading movies is ( for the most part) time consuming and frustrating. Speeds are slow and finding a movie that is not very popular is a pain in the ass. The size of ripped movies and bandwidth of most users , makes it imposible to download a movie if only 1-5 persons are sharing it.
That is exactly the point where the movie industry should hit. Bring a service of on demand video , with some basic protection ( cause let's face it it is going to get cracked) but wicked speeds
Seriously if I had to choose between downloading an older movie ( for example the Abyss) from the 10 guys that share it , taking 40 hours to finish , and getting it at 300kb/sec with 5.1 sound and high picture quality , and subtitles , I would pay the 5$ without a second thought. I think allot of people would.
If they are smart they won't wait for a "movie Napster" to evolve , and then act. They should create a fast , quality video on demand service , and create a user base. Subtitles , 5.1 Audio , high quality rips , different languages , Extras , Speed . These are good points they could use but..
I don't see it happening. All I see is more lawsuits and allot of bitching around.
Disclaimer: Yeah I know BitTorrent can be fast and easy to most of us here , but this is Slashdot , hardly the average click and play Joe. Anyway excuse the length.
-- TRUST ME! I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!
They always sing and dance.
At some point you see a guy be like "You are going down!" he shoots the enemy then his wife starts singing and the guy who was dead revives and dances with everybody very very happy happy joy joy joy.
Turns out the parents were right after all!
The James Bond movies are created by Pinewood studios in England, not Hollywood.
about the indian guy who smashed his car with an elephant and - oh, wait...
I use: http://66.230.165.157/ or http://203.119.12.252/.
The sites bounce around on various IP addresses, but they're both currently up. Some sort of distributed hosting scheme, I think.
...generating additional revenue for film studios and producers.
:-/
I never did get the term "generating" revenue. Specially in the context of trying to get money from people who would never buy the product anyway. I guess it's just biz lingo for "all your money are belong to us!" or "we want a bigger piece of your pie" or something
how is this going to stop it from being released illegally for free?
"Bollywood is trying to curry favor with RIAA", you could probably shoot me. As a matter of fact, I would recommend doing so.
Because it involves giving a cipher attacker the ciphertext, cipher, and key.
If it came bundled with popular operating system(s), was easy too use, look pretty, and was fairly inexpensive, it might go over. A lot of people actually buy movies, just look at DVD sales.
I doubt people just buy them to be honest, the're just too lazy (or not well equiped) to pirate them. If it's easy, and it looks glossy people don't mind being relieved of there cash.
Why am I not rapping? I am rapping with you in a way.
On slashdot DRM is the antideity
This sig is intentionally blank
As noted in another post, the movie is Dil Se by Mani Rathnam who is a wonderful director. That particular song was shot in a hill station in India named Ooty where they have these meter guage trains (the tracks are narrower than the usual broad gauge tracks in India) that are slow (so the scene you saw was not as dangerous as it looked)
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
When I worked for a satellite TV providor that I will not name, I had to sell foreign language programming. Including B4U (Bollywood for you), I suspect that it's due to cultural differences. In India, it's the norm for all prices to be subject to negotiation. People used to try to haggle down a set price.
The first few times it's not bad, when you get you're 80th call, it is supremely annoying.
When I hear of Bollywood, I think of cheap ass haggling customers.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Bollywood sounds vaguely pornographic. Ball as in balling, a euphemism for sex, and wood as in waking up with wood or having a woody, a euphemism for an erection. heh, heh!
Who provides the vast majority of broadband? Cable companies.
Who don't like it when you use your expensive broadband for anything more than web surfing and checking email? All ISPs, many of which are Cable Companies.
Major conflict of intrest and they could kill two birds with one stone by outright blocking sites like this.
The question is: will they and can anyone or anything stop them?
How is it that India can see the light in all its raging stupidity (seriously... have you seen some of their movies?), but Hollywood, in all of its supposed technological advancement is unable to do so?
And here's a discussion of that scene and the train :-)
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
...his name was Stampy. You loved him...
are they doing this because the sites hosting beheadings were getting "sloshdotted"?
its like this:
20% - song/dance - feels like 80% of movie
20% - crappy comedy - feels like 80% of the movie
20% - dialogues (actually 15% dialogues, 5% monologues, its must) - again, feels like 80% of the movie
20% - fight sequences/chases - 80% again
20% - unidentifiable facial expressions - takes forever!
By the time the movie ends, the amount of mental stress is around 400% of any average movie!
BTW, 80% of those 'gorgeous' babes are fscked by 20% of the producers in Bollywood!
I don't believe they're claiming their DRM scheme is uber-impossible to break or that you can't take a videocam or other analogue copy of the material if you're so inclinsed, but that by providing a convenient *MEDIUM* for "the message", they've removed one of the primary factors that make piracy an attractive option. Thus this helps defeat piracy.
well, if we eat shit, you will too, eh?? :-)
Make it compelling! You have to give the customers a REASON to want the legit wares over the illegal ones. Right now, the reason they're providing is a stick, when I think a carrot would be far more useful.
Take for example, Movielink. They're aggressively pursuing college students, probably the worst offenders of them all. I'd be surprised if they're profitable at all, mostly for the following reasons in no particular order:
1. IE-only site. While this isn't a huge deal in and of itself, when you navigate the site it doesn't make any sense. Not only are they cutting out about 5-10% of the total market (depending on who you ask), it's one of those pointlessly IE-only sites. The site itself doesn't make use of any super fancy scripts, DHTML, or much ActiveX. The only use of ActiveX is essentially for the client installer, which could easily be replaced with an EXE installer instead.
2. Timely Releases. Movielink's releases are typically 2 months after the DVD release. Who wants to pay $5 for a lower quality release of a movie that has already been on DVD for 2 months, and has already been on the Internet as a Divx rip for 2.5 months?
3. Quality and price. As I just mentioned, most of Movielink's prices are $5 per movie. Your "rental period" is 24 hours. This is really ridiculous, considering that Blockbuster usually has 48 hour/5 day rental periods for the same price, AND they just got rid of late fees. Quality is acceptable (your choice of RealPlayer 10 or Windows Media), but not high quality by any means.
How are movies like blair witch project going to compete against pirated movies. Even if the screen is filmed by camcorder, it still gonna be the same quality as theather.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Ok, one guarantee is there will always be freeloaders. Why pay, if you can go through some sort of effort and get it for free? And if the quality is lower, oh well...
To me $5 is a good deal, especially if it's playing in the theatres when I'm watching it at home. This is reasonable. Here, if I go with a couple of friends it's $36 to get in, let alone popcorn, etc.
$5, you're at home, no talking around you, no one getting up blocking your view. If it's a LoTR type long movie, have a pee-break in the middle of it by pausing it! This is the same price range as a movie rental around here (from the big chains, Blockbuster, VHQ, Roger's Video, etc).
Isn't this what everyone has been clamoring for? Cheap price, easy access? DRM? It's $5, let them DRM it all they want! It's not like you get to leave the theatre (which is really what we are comparing it to) with a movie after you've watched it! It's the same price as a movie rental, treat it as such.
If someone really really wants to spend a day downloading it, burning it, finding out it's not good quality, then finding a better quality one, then downloading that one for a day, then burning it, then finding out the audio sucks...ad nauseum,
let them. I'll spend the $5 knowing I'm getting a good quality release I can trust the first time around.
And $1-$2 for older releases, that's pretty good too. Movie rentals are much higher than $2 each.
Vip
I always wondered about the following: Counting the 3.8 billion people that watch Bollywood movies. How many of these will watch pirated movies. The article refers to the rich people who can afford to download a movie from the internet, but how about a farmers living in remote places. Can these people afford to pay for official versions of the movies. Which percentage of the income of the Bollywood film industry comes from selling movies (or music) to farmers?
Cinevents is releasing the old Grateful Dead Movie (IANACinevents flack, but I'm a Deadhead, though I'm not). Solely in a few DLP theaters around the country, in a two-day event to promote the general release of the DVD. When these digital projections are more common/stable, they'll all be distributed over the Net (rather than armored cars delivering film or DVD-Rs). This is the future of all "Hollywood": theatrical releases for a week/end or two "premiere" gala, to promote the sale of the DVD or cable/pay-per-view/VOD release. Which itself is largely marketing for merchandise and promotional tie-ins. Now that Hollywood makes its living from a handful of unpredicted releases, funding all the flops, over a few big $100M weekends, they're already nearly committed to this model.
--
make install -not war
.. or French-Canadian films :)
Er.. cable monopoly? On what? Last I checked there was a myriad of satelite TV services that are competition to cable, both for television and for video on demand. Then you have the movie rental outlets, the dirt-cheap online DVD stores..
Trust me, there is plenty of competition in the home video market.
First of all, P2P will be required. When the #1 online music store is barely breaking even at $0.99 a pop, imagine the profitability when you have to upload 500 MB instead of 5 but can only sell for $19.99 a pop...
;p
The bottom line is that the **AA have to write off 10% of their customer base if they ever want to keep the remaining 90%.
Every network basically relies on core nodes, and leeches. 10% of all players are typically the source for 90% of the trafic. The other 90% depend on those 10%. (Disclaimer: made up numbers of course, but you all know the 10/90 or 20/80 drill)
This is especially true given the asymetric nature of today's broadband connections. In a pure P2P network, your average download speed will be your average upload speed, which is a waste of downward bandwidth. Or, if you want to get that movie in 30 minutes, you basically have to upload the rest of the day.
While 10% of the user base has no problem with uploading all day long, the average Jane won't do that.
If you can remove core nodes from the equation, then you win. The **AA are trying to do so with lawsuits, but it won't fly. The more they tighten their grip, the more people will slip through their fingers... onto better networks.
The **AA cannot beat P2P. What they can do however, is join it.
Basically all they have to do is to start a system where consumers pay for downloading, but get paid for uploading (of course at a lower rate than consumers pay for downloads). Do that, and you can be sure the top 10% will remain on your network and not "leak" official releases on illegal networks. After all, every time someone is downloading a movie that you uploaded to an illegal network, you're losing a sale.
With the top 10% away from illegal networks, download rates and availability of new content will suck major time on them. So, the remaining 90% will have little choice but come onto a legal network and fork over those $19.99.
It will also attract ISPs to their side. Right now, ISPs are pushing for more widespread piracy, because piracy is what is pushing broadband. Instant, unlimited entertainment to the home is the killer app of DSL, we all know this, and so do ISPs. Earlier this year, for instance, the state telecom company in Germany launched a barrage of ads pushing just that, without mentioning where it'd come from (obviously from illegal sources) - just as another arm of the state was starting to prosecute major uploaders...
But remember, ADSL connections are asymetric. Who will be very happy to be paid to step in and fill the void? Bingo, ISPs.
Of course, something tells me they won't do that, because they seem to care more about control than about money.
They just need to make it inconvient enough to not be worht he hassle.
If you can pay two or three bucks to download a legit copy of the movie via a blistering fast pipe with easy-to-use, supported software, why would you bother leeching a pirated copy off IRC, at half the speed, then spending 20 minues unraring it, when you don't even know if what you are going to get is decent quality?
Some people will keep pirating, sure. But mom + pop won't bother, it is not worth the hassle.
All the ??AA groups want is to set the price point right, and make it difficult enough that it is just not worth pirating anymore for the majority of people. Then, they win.
It seems the site only carries a few ancient Dev Anand flicks (a yesteryear has-been actor still churning out embarrasingly bad movies).. and guess what Dev Anand is one of the collaborators of this crappy site.. self-promotion anyone??
This site isnt the first to provide hindi movies on the net. Theres <a href="http://indiamoviezone.com/>India Movie Zone</a> too, which has a substantial user base and all the latest releases.
"la la la I'm in love with handsome Johnny."
And then there was dancing and some swashbuckling.
What?
This would be India outsourcing DRM work to the United States, not the other way around.
Was that the one of them with the old woman who turns into a snake or one of the other ones?
Actually, I love Bollywood films, even ones with women who turn into snakes. I suddenly have the urge to go home and watch Dil Chahta Hai again, or at least all the parts with Preity Zinta and the singing/dancing theater scene with Pooja. Too bad no one turns into a snake in that one, though.
Was it five, or six hours long? Can't quite place it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think Bollywood is too late to destroy piracy.Netflix and Blockbuster are in a race to the bottom for 30 movies a month $14.95 postage included. Piracy should be finished by the end of the month.
For now it seems like it's just a singles meetup... I had paid for 3 showings of IMM or something I thought would lead me to Bollywood movies... but not yet, hopefully those credits are transferable...
How can it take less bandwidth to "narrowcast" something?
Because the largest implementation of IPv4 leaves multicast entirely unimplemented. It takes more bandwidth to unicast to a broad audience than to unicast to a narrow audience.
IIRC, he was planning to go to India to break into the movies.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Are they going to be released with English subtitles? If not, they're not interesting to most people here. Also the $5 pricetag for a movie at release time? For that much you might as well go to a theater. Heck, some matinee shows cost little more than that. I think if they charged the for new releases the same $1.99 they're charging for the oldies it might be more interesting, seeing how I've heard that some of their movies are worth looking into. Oh, and what can you get for $5 in India? (As compared to other places).
Alice Cooper was a rock star during the 60's and 70's.
Not all movies are cams. There are a ton of high quality movies available, whether from leaked copies, dvd screeners, foreign dvds.
You could buy different region dvds of movies like Shaun of the Dead before it ever showed in theaters here in the US.
The -1 day helps reduce some piracy, but not all.
Which is now called Mumbai anyway!
But Bollywood stuck as a name.
By the way if you want really interesting and varied Indian movies, often with comparable budgets to Bollywood, try Tamil films.
BSNL, India's largest telecom service provider started the Data-One Broadband service along with VOD and other services a few days ago. So all the better for the Indian surfers.
India's movie industry is so huge because until recently, the cinema and the radio were the only options for mass entertainment for much of the country. The poor (but not the very poorest) can afford tickets to film screenings. Bollywood took a hit from TV and now satellite breaking out into every village. They clawed much of this back with exclusive deals with operators like Star TV.
The price point to engage in piracy remains way too high for most Indians - you either need a TV and VCR or a computer. However the numbers that can afford such consumer luxuries are ballooning with the growth of what in the West would be called the middle classes (though a smaller percentage of the population than in the West, the Indian middle classes are in many respects wealthier than their Western counterparts as they are able to afford extensive home help). Bollywood does not want to miss a trick and will do what it can to keep making money in the urban centres where connections sufficient to consider downloading movies are available.
This software is linked to copies of VLC http://videolan.org/ and XVID http://xvid.org/ both of which are released under the GPL license. The EULA for this software consititues a violation of this license. The LGPL license would allow for a proprietary program to use the library, but the GPL only allows other free programs to use it. A cease and desist order should be expected. And anyone who doesn't believe this, check the link: http://people.via.ecp.fr/~jb/VLCthieves2.jpg
Looks like http://www.cinemaonweb.com/ needs heftier hardware and/or more robust code. How do they expect to serve movies to millions of Indians daily if they can't handle the slashdot effect?
This isn't the sig you're looking for... Move along.
The term "piracy" appears in this context (illegal distribution) in my 1958 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
References to eye patches and parrots merely demonstrate the ignorance of the poster.
In India, cow dung is considered sacred too (no joke).
"..simultaneously defeating piracy.."
Sweet, now you only have to produce something someone would *WANT* to pirate.
Bollywood on demand. Why this is the best thing since sliced orange juice!
I'd much rather wait who knows how many hours to get a tiny little poorly encoded pirated version than pay 2 bucks and get a quality download now!
This very project is Doomed from the start cos of the HIGH prices. Yeah high
In India tickets for movies in a good quality theatre in urban areas hover around $1.5 to $2. Thus Indians for one would never buy from here. Cam prints VCD's are available at 1$. After some days of release good quality ones are also available. Still at $1. Why would I pay $5 ? After DVD's are realeased , pirated DVD's ripped off the orignal DVD's available for $4.
Regarding Old movies; VCD's for these are available for $1.5 (orignals). NO sane Indian guy would buy these.
Another problem is broadband that is required. In India broadband is a myth. The recently launched ADSL services have a limit of 400MB for home users.
Only the Indian Diaspora would buy this. But I think they would still prefer buying DVDs. But still lets seee.(sorry for poor English)
By the way U guys have got it alll wrong. If you wanna see hot Indian chicks you will need to see Music Videos. Films have verrry verry low hot content. Aishwarya Rai hasn't performed a Single decent kissing scene on Screen till this day.
dEV
The train sequences are set in Assam (North-Eastern state). Not in Assam
Heard an interview with Suketu Mehta, who just published a novel about the city, and refuses to call it "Mumbai". He claims the new name is just the result of the Shiv Sena party pandering to their Maratha constituents, and the 60% of the city that isn't Maratha mostly still calls it "Bombay".