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Microsoft Invents A 'Play-Once Only' DVD
auckland map writes "Microsoft has developed a cheap, disposable pre-recorded DVD disc that consumers can play only once." From the article: " Buying an ordinary DVD of a new film costs between £15 (E22, $26.40) and £20. Microsoft's new disc will enable the studios to release a "play-once, then throw away" copy for as little as £3, much the same as renting a video or DVD. But unlike a rented DVD, the new disc allows consumers to decide when they watch films and there is no need to return it. The new generation of DVD disc will spearhead a fresh assault by Microsoft on the home-entertainment market." Update: 10/06 03:38 GMT by J : Kinda important to read the followup story.
This will easily prevent piracy as everyone knows it takes multiple plays of a DVD to copy it.
Sheesh.
$3/disc is not cost effective with so many DVDs available for $9. Plus the need for new hardware? Nice try, been there, done that.
Already got this - it's called Netflix. You just throw it away in any mailbox.
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Didn't you already say "already" already?
What is your penile percentile?
It's like watching a fly repeatedly run into a glass window. I can only guess that these companies can't help themselves any more than the fly.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
do they have a plan for millions of now-useless single-play-DVDs and the associated packaging?
Yes, they're going to resell them to AOL use to then send out their software on the re-formatted discs. You'll be able to throw the same disc away twice.
Bradley Holt
More important, the discs would prevent copying and digital piracy, which is costing the film and music industry billions in lost revenues.
Let me be the first to say: bwah ha ha ha ha.
The revolutionary product could be on the market as early as next year, with the new DVD players needed to view them .
And exactly how difficult is it going to be to mod these players to say they're erasing the disc as it's being viewed, while not actually doing anything at all?
Researchers at Microsoft believe they have a simple solution to the challenge of piracy.
Microsoft: simple solutions for simple people.
Chairman Bill Gates has been working on a solution to the film industry's piracy problem since making a now legendary pitch to the industry in September 2002. Showing a video of himself dressed in a sailor suit...
Ewww. I had to stop reading at that point.
____
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They didn't mention in the article how this would be done... some sort of DRM (new format) or is the disc itself made out of some material that will corrupt the data shortly after being read by the laser?
From the article: "Showing a video of himself dressed in a sailor suit pretending to audition for the blockbuster Titanic, Gates pitched Hollywood with the proposition that only Microsoft could solve its piracy problem"
Is there a pirated video of this available anywhere?
Office Space trivia game - play it now douche hole.
Hush, hush, Don't tell them!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Two scientists in lab coats. One is holding up a test-tube. He says:
Finally! Success! A moth that eats synthetic fibers!
Wow. Remind me never to watch DVDs in Michigan.
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I wonder how many brilliant Microsoft engineers it took to come up with this
brilliant "innovation".
This wouldn't be one tenth as funny if it weren't true.
Here we go again, DIVX take two! I wonder if Circuit City will be selling them...
A disc that the average consumer will have little use for and hackers will likely turn into a brilliant way to build their collection of DivX files on the cheap. Thanks Microsoft!
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Microsoft Invents A 'Rip-Once Only' DVD
Microsoft developed a "view once" neural movie format that will erase the corresponding contents of your memory after you play a video. This way you won't be able to remember what you saw and copy it to the unprotected and forbidden physical media.
Microsoft expects to ship its "Amnesia(TM)" DRM technology by the next year. However, the first people who tested it complained that their enjoyment experience was erased too. Microsoft is currently working on a bugfix.
I will file news of the "Play Once Only" DVD in the Write Only Memory on my home network.
Divx isn't dead.
He's just become a mean drunken lush.
/sig
I'm so used to seeing voila misspelled that I misread it as "a tame journalist, a little bit of paid advertising and vodka."
The environmental impact will be compensated by the increased efficiency of DVD players and remotes designed without rewind buttons.
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But being that it runs on windows, it will probably be hacked by simply holding down the shift key. Just like all those "Copy Protected" cds they are putting out lately.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Why spend all this time and effort to make something last only once, when it should last forever??
Microsoft is giving the studios what they really want: a pay-per-view product on media. (I'm sure the RIAA would love to have the same thing for CDs.) The problem is that the MS solution requires special DVD players, which makes all existing DVD players unusable with these discs. Even then, I don't see what's to stop me from running the output to my Linux PC's TV card and burning a regular DVD (unless MS also intends to require special TVs). I hereby declare this DRM scheme DOA.
What Microsoft really wants is that lock on DRM servers that was mentioned, but the studios are so avaricious that they will jump at any dumb solution that's offered and fill Microsoft's coffers while chasing the ghost of a dead business model. Everybody think about the great (new) movies you've seen in the past year that came from the major studios and shout 'em out . . . Okay, nevermind.
What's funny is the title of the linked article, Microsoft invents a 'one-play only' DVD to combat Hollywood piracy. Hollywood has always been a great promoter of piracy. There must be hundreds of movies glorifying piracy. The most recent I can think of is Pirates of the Caribbean, where the pirates are the funny, intelligent, good guys. Is Hollywood sending us mixed messages?
Uh, the DivX file format has become immensely popular for video storage; if Microsoft's new product gets half the popularity as DivX did, then they would be doing extremely well.
Shoot, Saturn goes that many miles in 10 1/3 hours, its average orbital speed being around 9.6 km/s.
But then, I guess that's not really a domestic vehicle then.
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I have to wonder on this. Can we send the discs back to Microsoft for disposable? Or do we fill our local landfill with more plastic? I read a while back that Microsoft is talking about buying AOL. I guess they would fit right in.
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ok, you wanted to watch your shit ... but what does that have to do with driving there? Or was your car like Knight Rider and it watched over your cloths for you?
A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man with heavily soiled underwear. Night Washer, a young loner on a crusade, to clean those stains, the organic, the chemical. In a world of laundromats that operate 24 hours a day...
Now, that's a give-away. Now that this new technology doesn't require new DVD players, I say, what stops us from making a copy of it during the first and only play that it allows? Admitted, not everyone will be able to make it. But not everyone is as aware of their digital rights, privacy, blah, blah like the /.ers :) Atleast, the /.ing l33t crowd can rest assured that nothing can come in their way of perpetual record of their p0rn.
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
Write only memory? /dev/null rulez!!!! :)
For Aiur!!!
Yeah, the three of them need a forth for bridge.
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Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar