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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, $26.40) and £20. Microsoft's new disc will enable the studios to release a "play-once, then throw away" copy for as little as £3, much the same as renting a video or DVD. But unlike a rented DVD, the new disc allows consumers to decide when they watch films and there is no need to return it. The new generation of DVD disc will spearhead a fresh assault by Microsoft on the home-entertainment market." Update: 10/06 03:38 GMT by J : Kinda important to read the followup story.
Haven't we gone through this already? How many times have businesses floated this concept over the last couple of years? What on earth makes them think consumers will want self-destructing DVDs this time?
The new generation of DVD disc will spearhead a fresh assault by Microsoft on the home-entertainment market.
Not to mention the fresh assault on our landfills that this disc format will make!
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
consumer: "hey, so you can make DVDs for £3. Why are the rest £15?"
Play once == Read once
Read once == Rip once
Rip once == Play forever
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
like i just posted here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=164258&cid=137 17025
if you can play it once, you can copy it. they have to ban all non-DRM enabled devices (i can see this happening) in order to stop piracy. one DRM free copy is all it takes...
"where words meet intent, lies rhetoric's lament"
i guess this is going to work just as good as the one time use digital cameras? also. what happens if u have a power outage etc where you have to restart the movie? does it register when the last second plays and then corrupts all the data or what does it do?
Do they have some way to recycle all this plastic? We're entering the biggest petroleum crisis in history, and they're finding new ways of wasting oil. Shouldn't there be a petroleum tax for something like this that creates so much waste?
Wow, we're all still trying to figure out ways to make more permanent data storage, and M$ has jumped light years ahead of us to making data storage that doesn't store data. WTG!!!
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
This is so ridiculously wasteful. Because someone is too lazy to drive a couple miles and return a video, they buy a disposable DVD instead? How idle can someone honestly be?
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
No, much like everything else out of Redmond, Microsoft has merely copied an innovation developed someone else, and called it their own innovation.
They started out copying somewhat useful things, such as CP/M, a BASIC interpreter, on-the-fly disk compression, and web browsers.
Now they're copying DIVX discs. Look on the bright side -- it's proof that they've run out of good ideas to copy.
Interesting...my only question is whether it can tell the difference between "playing" and "ripping". Even with DRM, the scheme will eventually be cracked, allowing people like me (who buy DVDs and then rip them so they can be played anywhere in the house without having to tote the disk around) to buy them much more cheaply and achieve the same goal.
On the same note, will there be some sort of click-wrap agreement to forbid this? If not, it would seem to be well within fair use to rip the discs after buying them for a fraction of the cost of a normal DVD.
The article was a little light on details...I wish they had addressed the more technical side of things.
How long til someone figures out how to mod the hardware to prevent the disc from being destroyed?
Couldn't they have just done the same thing using CD-RW and having the player write zeros over the disc as it plays? Or did I just guess how this works?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
*Watching start of movie*
*Kid screams out in pain downstairs, having tripped and fell, or been punched by brother, etc.*
*Run downstairs and deal with them for 30 minutes*
*Return to view movie again, to find it unable to play again*
Doh
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Way to go, Microsoft. Didn't they learn from AOL?
I know they're not giving it away, but all its going to take is a year of these things being popular and the amount of landfill junk would be astounding.
That, right there, will alienate loads of people. Fair use and content control issues aside, this is a stupid, stupid idea from an environmental perspective and a PR perspective.
And I'm sure it wouldn't be cost-effective for them to include a recycling program for it, either.
Microsoft: Buy our Garbage!
I just need to play it once to make a copy of it anyway.
People didn't like online, interactive, DRM'ed DVDs 5 years ago, why would it change today?
Test your net with Netalyzr
It seems pretty unlikely the media self destructs. Maybe, but I doubt it. Why would a new player be needed if it were in the media itself?
Perhaps it's really a dvd+rw type media, where the player uses a higher power laser to erase the disc during or after playback?
Or maybe they're going to try Circuit City's DIVX approach (nothing to do with the mpeg4 coded, for those who don't remember those days), where the player will phone home.
Or maybe it's something else? Any ideas?
Maybe Microsoft's research teams have turned out something truely revolutionary? Or maybe just another lame idea, as usual?
Unless it really is media that degrades, or even if it really is in the media, if it's not compatible with existing players, then people are going to have to "upgrade" their players... for no real benefit other than being able to get a play-once disc for about the same or slightly more than simply renting a regular disc. So the players won't sell well, so they won't get the ecomony of scale that makes for a sub-$100 dvd player. It's quite an uphill battle. Witness Circuit City's failure... and that was in the early days of DVD when a few studios were releasing some movies in their lame format but not on DVD. This thing probably going to die before it even gets started.
But even in a world of perfect DRM, where movies are only distributed on these play-once discs, and no ordinary DVDs are made anymore, and movies aren't ever distributed in any other digital form.... it's still only going to take one pirate with special equipment to capture a pretty good quality "rip", and then upload to a circle of friends, who give to others, until someone makes it available on a file sharing network.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
These one-use DVDs aren't made on the cheap, they're just made to work once.
If you heard your child screaming in pain, would you generally think of the all-important task of pausing the DVD you're watching before going to help them?
"DVDs do eventually wear out."
Thus the pursuit of more durable, longer lasting storage media goes on...
But here comes Microsoft, trying to make shorter lasting storage media?
Preservatives, scratch resistant, stronger, longer lasting, etc...
Everything these days is supposed to last longer......
Why spend all this time and effort to make something last only once, when it should last forever??
/sig
Don't they mean a rip-once only DVD?
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
That second trip to the rental shop to return your DVD is very important for their business. They want you to come back and see something else you want to rent, so why exactly would any rental shop support a product that not only removes that extra trip but also must be replaced all the time, for every bloody title that the shop carries, every time someone rents it. This could only be useful for postal DVD rental which is going to be dead soon. I won't even get started on one-play = one-rip.
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just one more thing for us to consume and throw away. What a great idea!! Almost as grand as the printers that cost less than their ink cartridges.
Something is wrong with this type of thinking...dead wrong.
Yeah, if you have a mailbox at the end of your driveway. Some of us who live in apartments have to run to the post office for outgoing mail. Same thing happens on campus in a dormatory/"apartment housing."
... no return postage, no return handlers, no restocking. "Everything goes out... nothing comes in". Could save a lot of dough.
Also this could potentially reduce costs for an operation like Netflix
And how about those queues? Netflix only has a finite number of copies of each movie, sometimes you have to wait. With a model like this, potentially, they could ship out an unlimited number of read-once DVD's.
-everphilski-
The short and nasty of it is: People expect to be screwed by Microsoft. Their feeling is that this is what Ballmer and Gates do. When your a monopoly, of course, you don't have to care. But on the long run, that can't be good. If I were working in their PR department, I'd probably feel suicidal after reading this thread.
Previously you had the "time expired" DVD's that ran in a standard DVD player. They self-destructed 24 hours after coming into contact with air (I.E. they were unwrapped).
Nobody bought them anyway.
There is just that feeling of having your toys taken away. With a rental car, you rent the thing and have to give it back because the next person needs it. Same with video. But if you buy a disk, and it is set to explode after a few plays, you're buying something that is crippled. You don't have to give it back because somebody else needs it, they're taking it away purely to try and get more money from you. Microsoft is used to kicking it's customers in the teeth, but maybe that's why it is stuck in Operating Systems and Corporate Lock-in land.
Even without the player dongle this would probably be doomed. But with it, the system might as well run Microsoft Bob.
The ______ Agenda
"The new generation of DVD disc will spearhead a fresh assault by Microsoft on the environment."
Every post I make begins with the assumption P=~P.
ssssh! you'll wake up all the mass-transit freaks that think waiting for a bus that only shows up every 40 minutes and scheduling your life around same is a viable option for people outside core city areas where the schedule actually makes it feasable.
next thing you know, bobbie-joe the hippie will be petitioning congress for the "single use" car to try to get people on the bus.
Then you'll get Boeing all excited about pushing single use jumbo-jets. You think safety is iffy now? just wait.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Slap a $10 per disk tax on Microsoft to cover environmental costs. Coupled with a $500 billion fine if they try to pass the cost on to the customer.
Just what I need, more GARBAGE.
This idea floats by over and over again because if people would actually accept it, the profit potential is enormous. Of course if people would just pay me $100 for my autograph, the profit poential would be enormous.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Unless, of course, they provide a way for the average consumer to melt their play-once dvds into fuel for their car.
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
The headline was the funniest part of the article:
"Microsoft invents a 'one-play only' DVD to combat Hollywood piracy"
First the big threat to the survival of the movie industry was crappy-ass copies of mini-camcorder tapes shot in theaters. They solved that problem with night vision goggles, stiff fines and jail sentences. Still ignoring the fact that 80% of unauthorized copies come from originals leaked by Hollywood insiders, the new danger to the industry now comes from the DVD buyer's ability to watch a movie more than once.
Absolutely Pathetic.
People fight for the parking spot closest to the door of the gym so that don't have to walk too far to get to the treadmill. People aren't lazy, they're insane.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Oh, yeah, I'm really looking forward to that.
Me, who sometimes falls asleep watching one..."You mean I have to buy ANOTHER disc?????"
Ah, and the wonderful coordinating of family viewing times, especially if both you and your spouse want to see it, but can't quite get your schedules worked out. Oh, and one or both falling asleep right about 2/3 through it.
Oh, yeah this technology will just fly off the shelves. I can't wait...