Warner Bros. to Try File Sharing in Germany

Carl Bialik writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Warner Bros. plans to sell TV shows and movies online in Germany via P2P. In2Movies, to launch in March, 'will feature movies dubbed into German, including "Batman Begins" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," for a fee that Warner says will be similar to the cost of a DVD. It will also offer television shows like "The O.C." and locally made programs and movies. Users, who will have to register for the service, will be able to keep the movie indefinitely. But instead of getting a movie from a central server, pieces of it could come from other people on the network who also bought that movie.' The president of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group says, 'Studios can't just turn their backs and hope "P2P" is going to go away tomorrow.'"

Comments

Incentive for the user?

[Fusen]

So why would someone use this service against say The Google Video Store, or iTunes. TFA doesn't mention if the files would be cheaper, but they will still be DRM'ed so by using this service you get the movie like you normally would be you also have to sacrifice your upload.
I don't understand why anyone would want to sue this over the services that are already out.

Re:Incentive for the user?

[ehrichweiss]

From TFA: "for a fee that Warner says will be similar to the cost of a DVD"

It doesn't look like they're planning on passing any of the savings on to the real distributors/consumers, that was my point. And as has been stated repeatedly, if the prices are not going to be reduced I'd rather just buy the DVD and save my bandwidth(upload and download) for things that profit me as an individual. They need to pass on some form of secondary gain here and SIGNIFICANLTY cheaper pricing or free movies in exchange for sharing your bandwidth are the first two that come to mind.

Re:Incentive for the user?

[Lumpy]

did you even read the summary? they will be charging "similar to DVD prices" for something that is of lower quality, lacking the DVD extras and you pay for the bandwidth.

Yeah, people will jump all over that.

it simply reinforces the fact that the movie industry is ran by a large number of retarted people that have zero clue about business let alone how to sell a product.

They're still not quite getting it

[Anonymous Coward]

So, for about the same price as a DVD, you get a DRM locked copy of the file and you get to pay a good chunk of their distribution costs. What a great deal!

Sounds like a good idea

[TheRappingShoe]

It will be interesting to see what kind of formats will be used, exactly how much they charge, and how much DRM they cram into the thing. If they do charge the same cost for downloading a film as the DVD version then where is the incentive to download? Surely the price should be lower to reflect the savings in materials and distribution costs.

More DRM... great

[chris098]

Although it's good that the movie industry isn't completely blind, I think they're going about this the wrong way. It's definitely a good thing that customers will be able to keep their purchases forever (instead of some 'limited time' offer), but I still have trouble seeing the value for customers in a P2P environment where they have to pay the same price as a DVD.

The article mentions the videos will have security features added to them so they can't be copied. Without more details, it's impossible to say how much of a hassle this will be. What if I have two computers and want to watch the video on the other one? The article is a bit weak on the details...

Wow, same price as a DVD?

[GrumblyStuff]

...but you get nothing? If there's any sort of limit on how many copies you can make, you'd best hope your computer never dies.

So let's see.... None of the usual DVD extras? One language? No hard copy? SAME PRICE?

Wow that's a bunch of ass.

What?!

[lbmouse]

No Bay Watch or Hasselhoff music videos??

Pay as much as a DVD! ugh? no thanks.

[xirtam_work]

Are these companies stupid? Do they think we're stupid? Why ask us to pay the same price, or similar to a store purchased DVD when there's no manufacturing, packaging or physical distribution to pay for? If anything an electronic copy of a movie or song should cost less to the consumer - much less.

I can understand people paying a similar amount for a 'premium item' like a just aired TV show or something that is similar to pay-per-view like a sports game. But, expecting people to pay full price for something that comes without the same quality of packaging as a movie that can be bought in a store is rediculous.

And to top it off they're using a Bittorrent style system where their customers are the ones paying for the bandwidth! If I upload your show to another customer for you it comes out of my quota of data from my ISP for the month and costs you nothing! What's in it for me huh?

These outfits really need to figure out that an electronic product should be *LESS* not that same price or more!

Don't forget these movies are likely to be compressed to a lower quality than a regular DVD as well.

what if...

[MooseTick]

Everyone is complaining about the fact that it will be "similar to the cost of a DVD." What if it will be 1/2 the cost of a DVD. Would you want to use it then. Would that make it worth the hassle of downloaded, potentially using up dl quotas, DRM, etc?

When you can illegally download nearly anything for free or goto Blockbusters and rent whatever for $5, what would you pay to be able to legally download content using P2P that will be DRMed?