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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?
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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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!
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What did they invent? This appeared and failed years ago, it was called Divx
I'll stop being cynical when the world allows
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.
So how environmentally friendly are these? If MS is going to be trying to put rental places out of business, do they have a plan for millions of now-useless single-play-DVDs and the associated packaging?
Didn't you already say "already" already?
What is your penile percentile?
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"
Let's say I had to stop/pause early to do something urgent. Would that count as one usage?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
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.
Watching this movie I just payed $4 to rent, power goes out (brown/blackout, or whatever). When the power comes back on... I can't play the movie anymore!
Or I'm part way through the movie that I just rented, and I have to leave the house for whatever reason, come back later to find out someone took the dvd I was watching out of the player because they wanted to watch something else. Now it won't play again.
I just see this being another headache for customers and customer support.
Its not what it is, its something else.
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.
We need them to scream about the "big trash pile" and "wasted plastic" again...
Because coming from the previous article on Sony, we all known consumers will lap up new DRM.
As long as you use DVD Shrink to play it the first time!
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.
My power went out, now I have to wait to watch the end of the movie... HEY!! I can't see how this can be done without compromising the whole DVD concept. Menus, special features, secondary audio tracks, etc., etc.
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?
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how can they get away with calling it a DVD?
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.
Two scientists in lab coats. One is holding up a test-tube. He says:
Finally! Success! A moth that eats synthetic fibers!
Yes, we have been here before. Crippled DVDs have been tried and failed.
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You cannot wash away blood with blood
Yeah, but you generally don't buy a new car every morning.
Correction, twice a day: once to get to work and once to get home.
At that point you're better off sticking with the bus -- i.e. watching broadcast/cable/satellite TV.
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.
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.
To my knowledge, no one makes a car that will run forever. OTOH, I can buy DVDs that will work as long as I own them.
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People didn't like online, interactive, DRM'ed DVDs 5 years ago, why would it change today?
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Here we go again, DIVX take two! I wonder if Circuit City will be selling them...
You also generally don't buy several or dozens of cars every year, nor do you have dozens of cars laying around the house. Also, people don't tend to rent a new car every weekend. Cars also don't cost $20.00 . Oh, and we're not talking about cars, we're talking about DVD's.
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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Didn't anyone else notice you'd have to buy an entirely new DVD player to have the privlidge of buything these watch once then throw away discs? What is going through these people's heads when they think this is a good pitch?
Not only will I have to buy a new type of disc, which offers little over today's rentals (what, I don't have to return it to the store? Welcome to Netflix 5 years ago.) but at the same time I'm supposed to want to replace my entire living room set to do it?
Then there's the question of whether or not this new tech will work with the next gen of DVD's. I might see people replacing their DVD players if that means they'll get the 30GB or whatever version of DVD's, but for the same 9GB crap we have now? Don't think so.
Granted they went into zero detail as to how this will work, but I wonder if it will incorporate into the new DVD formats. (or maybe that's they way they plan on releasing it, who knows)
Funny though that the music and entertainment industry would rather put their fate in the hands of MS over the hands of their customers. Although the customer might eventually stop putting his/her hand in their pockets to pull out their wallet at the drop of a hat, and least they won't be putting their hands around your throat.
Netflix, by contrast, was a low-tech approach (except that DVDs were still early-adopter back then) that absolutely rocked, because it matched what most customers generally wanted to do most of the time.
Bill Stewart
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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.
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.
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If I go to Blockbuster or my local video rental store, the movie I'm renting eventually goes back to the store, where they can rent it to the next guy for another few bucks. They stop renting that particular disc when it gets scratched or broken, but otherwise, it's a continuous revenue stream.
If video stores started sending home these self-destructing discs, they could only rent them once. Then they'd have to buy new copies from the manufacturer. Why would they choose to do this? The answer is, simply, they wouldn't.
Don't these idiots give a shit about the amount of crap they produce ?
If these awful things don't evaporate in a flash of smoke the minute they've been used then people should get together and mount a campaign to send every single used DVD back to Microsofts headquarters. And then their local waste collection people should make sure they charge them top dollar to dispose of them.
How to stop irresponsible "environmentally unfriendly" crap like this: Make the polluter pay the full costs of disposal/cleanup.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Microsoft Denies Single-Play DVD Plan
On Tuesday, Microsoft refuted earlier reports that it plans to introduce single-play DVDs aimed at curbing music piracy. A Microsoft representative told me there is no single play DVD initiative at the company, denying a report that first appeared in "The Business."
"It appears there is considerable confusion coming from [the] article in The Business about features within Windows Media DRM that allow for single-play of promotional digital materials," a Microsoft spokesperson told me. "This has been an option for content owners to use for some time with the Windows Media format--but not for the MPEG2 format found on DVDs. Windows Media DRM technology allows for a wide range of business models and scenarios, but it's important to realize that this is at the discretion of the content owner to implement and that the market will dictate whether or not these features are compelling enough for consumers to make a purchase."
"Sufferin' succotash."
Surprise, surprise. Sure would be if fact-checking was a requirement of being an editor around here.
Microsoft Denies Single-Play DVD Plan
On Tuesday, Microsoft refuted earlier reports that it plans to introduce single-play DVDs aimed at curbing music piracy. A Microsoft representative told me there is no single play DVD initiative at the company, denying a report that first appeared in "The Business."
"It appears there is considerable confusion coming from [the] article in The Business about features within Windows Media DRM that allow for single-play of promotional digital materials," a Microsoft spokesperson told me. "This has been an option for content owners to use for some time with the Windows Media format--but not for the MPEG2 format found on DVDs. Windows Media DRM technology allows for a wide range of business models and scenarios, but it's important to realize that this is at the discretion of the content owner to implement and that the market will dictate whether or not these features are compelling enough for consumers to make a purchase."
"Sufferin' succotash."
These one-use DVDs aren't made on the cheap, they're just made to work once.
"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??
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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
Dang, you missed *the* main reason why Divx didn't succeed. It *didn't* play on "any 'old' DVD player"... and neither would these ( if they were really going to be made, which apparently they aren't ).
It's too late for something like this, and it might have never worked, since we don't really want it. Way too late now anyway- DVD penetration is already too great, and guess what? DVD players don't go belly up often enough for replacements to get a lot of these out there quickly. I'm certainly not about to run out and buy a more-expensive-than-average DVD player just to 'buy rentals'... they'll have to figure out a way to make NetFlix go away first.
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.
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?
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.
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Basically, DivX the codec was named to make fun of Circuit City's DIgital Video eXpress. From http://www.divx.com/support/what.php:
When we say "DivX," we are not referring to the Digital Video Express
(DIVX/DVE) service previously marketed by Circuit City. If you need
information about Circuit City's DIVX, you might try the DIVX Owners'
Association.
Every post I make begins with the assumption P=~P.
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 wouldn't call it "honor" so much as "not wanting to go bankrupt from getting our asses sued off".
Even with the limited audience that DivX got, enough counsumers would have attacked Circuit City in court and otherwise (as well as the shysters that they partnered with) to ground the company into paste, if they had not taken the "unlock all" step.
To this day I will not set foot inside a Circuit City purely on principle. If they could have gotten away with orpaning all those players, they damned sure would have.
I wouldn't have given you $10 for the average life expectancy of a Circuit City store manager in that scenario, but I'll betcha the VPs and up would have all kinds of bodyguards...
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
The really funny part is how many people keep posting complaints about Microsoft's new product after the fact that Microsoft isn't doing it has been posted here several times.
Fact-checking is fast on the internet, but not yet effective.
When are we as a people going to wake up and smell the cat food?!
More technologies like this which by their very design add:
A.) to quickening consumption of fossil fuels (to make more and more just to throw away) and
B.) to the landfills (when you're done with 'em)
DO NOT MAKE SENSE. Period. Paragraph. Final. End of story.
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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.
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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...