Movie Studios OK Download-to-Burn DVDs

fistfullast33l writes "The Associated Press is reporting that today movie studios have approved Sonic Solutions' technology Qflix, which allows people to download movies and burn them to DVDs that include CSS, the method of encryption that protects all pre-recorded DVDs sold today. According to a press release issued by Sonic Solutions, they will be demoing the technology by appointment at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 8th. Apparently the DVDs will also be subject to DRM restrictions placed by download services such as limiting the times a movie can be played back and how many times the movie can be burned. Is this the death of NetFlix as we know it? Interestingly enough, the AP article mentions burning kiosks in the future and the Sonic release mentions Walgreen's as a partner, so maybe DVD burning is coming to a drug store near you. Sonic Solutions is the owner of Roxio, which produces a well-known CD and DVD burning software suite."

Comments

DRM=WTF

[JoshJ]

A limit to the number of viewings? What the hell? Limiting the number of burns is reasonable (as far as DRM goes) if the number's around 3 or 5, but limiting the number of viewings is outright inane. If you pay for a movie, you should be able to view it as many times as you want.

Re:DRM=WTF

[Chyeld]

If it's a DVD that you've burnt, exactly how do they think they are going to limit the number of times you've viewed it.

It's not as if your DVD player has a built-in shredder. And most DVD players I know of don't have any ability to write to DVD's, so it's not as if the DVD itself will keep track of the number of time.

So what gives?

Re:DRM=WTF

[EvanED]

I don't see anywhere in either article that says they are limiting the number of times it's viewed. Can anyone clarify?

Re:DRM=WTF

[Propaganda13]

Yeah, it's Slashdot. They didn't RTFA. They mentioned limited number of burns, not views. This would be similar to some DRM that's been used by certain online music stores already.

Never ever going to work

[kentrel]

This might fool the media, but it can't fool us. Nobody is going to adopt any technology that requires you to buy a special DVD burner and discs. It's crazy. We live in a more or less free economy where the consumer has so many different choices. They are NOT going to pick something restricts their choice, particularly something as stupid as this.

I want downloadable movies, but not like this. It's still not an excuse for piracy (in case anyone gets funny ideas) but there are so many better solutions to this.

Re:Never ever going to work

[dgatwood]

It won't really require a special DVD burner. Your DVD burner already burns zeroes over the CSS area if that area isn't pre-burned on the media. As best I can tell from a Google search, this is done for both DVD authoring media and DVD+R media. Thus, it would require nothing more than a firmware change with existing media to enable writing of CSS data.

Of course, they will tell you that it requires a special drive because they will want to keep the cost extremely high (so that it is only affordable by people running kiosks) to prevent people from buying the drives, installing them on their PCs, and doing byte-for-byte copies of movies including the CSS region....

My guess is that before this becomes available to your average consumers, they'll come up with some cryptographic handshake that only authorized software can perform, and will use this to prevent unauthorized software from writing to the region. That aspect of it might require updated burner hardware, but not because of any hardware changes needed to support the burning process itself.... That said, maybe they'll just relent, realize that CSS isn't stopping piracy in any useful way, and simply allow all the DVD burners' firmware to be updated to support burning CSS (and maybe pigs will fly, and...).

Re:Never ever going to work

[Spritzer]

"They are NOT going to pick something restricts their choice,"

You mean like an iPod?

Netflix will live on

[D4rk Fx]

Death of Netflix? Unfortunately for some of us, (me included), The USPS has greater throughput than the only reasonably priced internet connection. So... Netflix will live on. At least for a while.

The end of Netflix my ass

[photomonkey]

There is no way this will beat Netflix. People like my mother use Netflix simply because she doesn't like buying movies. It costs her a few dollars to see a movie through Netflix, where I doubt that these 'download' movies will be less than $12.99USD.

Riddle me this: Do you really think there are more people out there willing/able to download and burn a full-length DVD (including those who know what DRM is) than willing to hop on a website and order movies to their homes? Hell, for as fast as Netflix is in getting movies out, you could likely order one and have it delivered before your download of the same movie would be completed.

Somebody wake me when I can go online or on my TV and order any movie I want on-demand.

Oh, and the DRM scheme of limiting the number of times you can watch the movie on your computer is about the most fucking stupid thing I've heard today. This is another industry trying to ensure that you will NEVER own anything.

Glad they've finally OK'ed it.

[NineNine]

I know people who have been downloading full DVD's for several years, now. They'll be glad to know that the RIAA has OK'ed it.

Reality check

[jmorris42]

Listen up folks, the limited viewings are not for DVD, read carefully because two seperate concepts got mangled in the summary.

What is interesting about this is that Hollywood is close to giving up on CSS. They are about to permit hardware makers to market a drive capable of writing the CSS blocks and writable media to leave a factory without the CSS blocks preburned to zeros. While I suspect they have a DRM trick up their sleeve we know it won't work in this case, as there really isn't a way to retrofit around the flaws in CSS and remian compatible with the installed base of DVD players.

Ding dong the witch is dead, but of course it has already been dead and the body is pretty smelly, enough that Hollywood couldn't ignore it anymore. I think this is a good idea actually. Not for everything and everybody, but I can imagine cases where I might actually use it.

Scenario 1: Downloads. I could see paying to download and burn vs paying to have physical media shipped. If there was a big enough price gap to make the slightly faster delivery enough better to offset the loss of the professional screen printed artwork and such. Or if it were used for obscure titles that wouldn't rate a production run and the choice is between a DVD-R and nothing.

Or try Scenario 2: Go to a website, pick the titles you want to purchase and pick up the media (which could even be dye sub printed and cased) at your friendly neighborhood retailer (the article mentions a deal in the works with Wallgreens) later the same day. Note that this scenario would even allow Hollywood to tightly control distribution of totally blank burnable media.

Re:not a chance

[EvanED]

This technology is a few years too early to have a serious impact on Netflix. ... Who in their right mind is going to feel good about waiting 5 hours for a movie download?

The same people who have to wait at least a day for Netflix to mail you a movie you want?

Now, this is before we even get started on the addition DRM crap they want to subject their customers to.

Which for practical purposes is no more DRM than Netflix gives you. Once you take a file you download and burn it, you have what Netflix would have sent you except on a DVD-R instead of a pressed disc. (I think the bit of the summary about limiting playback is FUD; I don't see anything in either article mentioning it, and two other posters as-of now concur. I think it's just an iTunes-like thing: you download a DRM'd file, then can burn it.)

In fact, in some sense, you can do MORE with this file because you can gave it on your computer hard drive without running the DVD through DeCSS first.

Already cracked -- it's just CSS

[whoever57]

This article has more information and clearly lays out that it is disks, burners, etc. "upgraded" to burn CSS

Movie Time

[mattwarden]

Apparently the DVDs will also be subject to DRM restrictions placed by download services such as limiting the times a movie can be played back

We're sorry. Viewing restrictions on this DVD are such that you may only watch Star Whores Episode II - Attack of the Bones between 2pm and 5pm, when your wife is at work.