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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?
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 :))
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.
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.
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
DilSe (From the Heart (USA))
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164538/
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
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.
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...
And, just like then, they are failing because of innovative new content delivery systems like this. Yes, some people will always steal movies because it's free. Most people -- say, those who haven't written their own BitTorrent client in the past year -- will move to a system like this, where for a small fee (less than the $20 required for two at the theatres or a purchased DVD), they can view the movie they want, and don't have to wait three days until they get it downloaded, only to find out that they got the cut-down version released in Shanghai, shot by some kid with a camcorder in his hoodie and subtitled by Altavista's babelfish.
People will happily pay for convenience; they will not, however, pay exorbitant fees for convenience. Bollywood is acknowledging that, and is hitting pirates back by competing with them. No one currently competes with pirates, which is part of why they're so successful. Now, their "z3r0-d4y \/1dZ" are getting pwn3d by Bollywood's -1-day vids. It's official: video pirates are going to be Bollywood's bitches, and it's going to hurt piracy to get screwed by that big, singing Indian cock.
End piracy? No. You're just as delusional as the *AA if you think there's a magic bullet to end piracy. A positive step towards ending it? Fuck yes.
Another one bites the dust
On slashdot DRM is the antideity
This sig is intentionally blank
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?
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)
It can be hard to find reliable sources for pirated material. If it's easy to find, it's usually going to get shut down. Downloading of P2P, you don't always know if a file is complete and free of corruption. It's hard to tell if you're downloading what you mean to be downloading. Even if it is, you don't know what kind of quality you're getting. All told, it's sort of messy and annoying and time-consuming process. And it's a messy, annoying, time-consuming process that might get you in legal trouble.
If someone can make a simple, easy, painless process, and they charge a nominal fee, some people who might otherwise have pirated may be willing to pay the price to save themselves the headache. For example, I know people who have pirated far less audio since the iTMS opened because they found shopping on iTMS to be an easier and more pleasant (and less frightening) experience than Kazaa, and therefore worth the $1/song.
Not that it "defeats" piracy, but it's stopping *some* of the piracy from happening.
I personally go for the huge screen and surround sound experience.
Who doesn't have surround sound in their home?
In fact I will say unequivically that the basic, relatively low end surround sound system I have in my entertainment room sounds drastically better than what I've heard at any theaters (which usually have such delicious features as "blown speaker rattling away"). Video wise I find the almost constant lack of focus in theaters (staffed by expert 16 year olds that would be rather off trying to score a boob feel), coupled with the fact that the projector physically bounces around (yeah a micro-number of theaters have digital projectors, but most have large physical contraptions that cause the projected image to bounce around by inches), highly irritating. While it's "big", the quality of the video is generally terrible.
Add to that some woman who keeps kicking on the back of your chair, the pack of teens intoxicated with gang power being loud and hoping for some lone wolf to confront them, and the important guy who has to receive cell phone calls (he might need to do an emergency phone meeterectomy). Oh, I shouldn't forget grossly overpriced food and drinks, long lines, and crowded little chairs. Wow, what an experience.
I would definitely rather stay home, or go to a friend's house, and the only draw of theaters nowadays is the artificial limit that it only plays there for the first X months.
(as a sidenote I have always thought "luxury theaters" could be a draw - theaters with actually good video and sound, a good seating arrangement, and with staff that actually enforce good behaviour [kicking out the asswipes]. I would happily pay significantly more for such a venue)
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.
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?
BTW, 80% of those 'gorgeous' babes are fscked by 20% of the producers in Bollywood! Why would Bollywood producers need to run a file system check? Are the Bollywood actresses that heavily corrupted?
Thanks a million. Push Start to replay.
Not that it "defeats" piracy, but it's stopping *some* of the piracy from happening.
Exactly. The MPAA could do itself a favor and look at commercial, off-the-shelf software way of doing business.
Is there piracy? Yes. Are companies still in business? Yes.
For sake of argument, ten percent of the population will always steal whatever isn't nailed down, and ten percent will always buy things legitimately. It is the hearts and minds of the other eighty percent that the MPAA has to win over.
Hollywood, awash in money and talent, should be ashamed that Bollywood has bested them in the online distribution market.
There are plenty of people who will pay to have the movies at home. This explains how netflix become so popular.
It also explains how Blockbuster Video became popular.
I think a lot of it hinges on the price. If I go to the video store, it costs about $4 to rent a movie, which I can then watch over the course of 5 days, with as many guests as I want. If I get Netflix, it's even better as long as I check out at least 4 or 5 movies per month: for $18, I can check out 3 movies at a time, with no late fees to worry about. Now compare all this to the movies, where I have to pay $6-8 per ticket, plus overpriced snacks and drinks. That comes out to probably $20-30 for a night at one movie for me and my girlfriend, depending on how much food I have to buy her. Ouch. Add in the cellphones, lack of seating choice unless I want to sit in the theater for an hour before the movie starts, people sitting in front of me, etc., and the theater looks less and less attractive.
So for this video-on-demand stuff to take off, it really needs to be priced right. $4 per rental maximum, and it needs the ability to rewind, pause, etc., or else it simply won't compete well with videos/netflix. If they try to jack up the price so that it's similar to a theater, just because it's available at the same time as the theatrical release, they'll get a few buyers who absolutely hate the theater, but everyone else will pass on it and wait until it's available more cheaply (through DVD rentals, etc.). This would not be a successful business venture.