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The One-Use, Self-Destructing DVD Returns
BonrHanzon writes "Looks like DivX (the stupid one, not the codec) has been resurrected in the form of Flexplay. Staples will be selling these movie disks for 5 bucks a pop at the checkout counter. The disks can be played in any DVD player, but a special adhesive will render the disk unplayable 48 hours after the package has been opened. As if our landfills weren't already overflowing with enough crap." The blog post notes that Flexplay has actually been around for 5 years; the Staples distribution deal is what's new.
1. Buy cheaper disposable movie.
2. Rip it to harddrive.
3. Dispose of movie.
4. ???????
5. PROFIT!
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
Staples will be selling these movie disks for 5 bucks a pop at the checkout counter.
Why not just use Netflix then? Unless they are hoping for purely impulse buys, which would be better suited for buying DVDs then simply renting them.
http://flexplay.com/recycling/
You can recycle them. You can return them to the store you bought them at for recycling. You can even get a free mailing label and ship them to flexplay for recycling.
You can also shoot yourself in the face if you're dumb enough to buy this crap.
Why would anyone do this when you can usually rent it for a week cheaper?
Here in Australia they're selling once-mainstream DVDs for $6-$8 all over the place. If shoppers would just exhibit a little patience instead of rushing out to buy the latest shiny, they too would benefit from the eventual lower prices.
I saw the first full page ad for Blu-Ray disks in a supermarket catalogue today. If the shops keep pushing those, DVDs are only going to get cheaper and cheaper.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
These things positively scream "rip me! rip me!"- and if they came with that right, I'd probably buy them just to save me the trouble of downloading them. Until then, sorry guys, combining the shoddy packaging of a pirated copy with the transience of a rental is pretty much a prescription for failure.
Yes... After all it didnt stop the oil industry why should it stop the MAFIAA?
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Someone should really forbide this practice by law, for the sake of the environment.
And someone should really explain those i**ots that this way they'll give the pirates a simple cheap way to get DVD quality copies, without assles and a few pennies.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Well, how's that different from...
1. Rent movie.
2. Rip it to harddrive.
3. Return it.
4. ???????
5. PROFIT!
Effectively, this is just a simpler way of renting movies. In fact, so simple that any regular store can get into that business. They don't need to keep track of who rented what, who's overdue, find and replace scratched movies, etc. It just lets them use their normal logistics, which they have in place and are already in place. And it makes it a lot simpler to "rent" them by mail over the internet too.
It also makes life simpler for people like me, who live half a city away from the nearest movie rental shop. It's more convenient to chuck it into the bin, than have to make a second trip to give it back. In fact, it would save me a lot more trips, since now I'd be able to just go there once and buy a small stack of disposables, and watch them whenever I have time. (The clock starts ticking when you opened it, not when you "rented" it.) No more "omg, I got the whole LOTR trilogy, so it's time to drop everything else and stay awake until 1AM to watch it all. Or just order a small stack of them by mail.
Of course, it has the same caveats as rentals. Including that if someone wants to rip it, they can. It's not a new problem, though. And I'll venture a wild guess that if it wasn't the end of the world or of the movie business before, the new version can't be that much more destructive
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The dvd's will come standard as part of a kit: the degrading dvd will be bundled with a writable dvd.
Oh, so you want me to pay you $5 for something that will self destruct in two days? Sure I'd be glad to... NOT! Who the hell came up with such a stupid idea? Why on earth would I buy this piece of crap when I can rent a DVD for less than that? This shouldn't even be legal and if it is then humanity is more screwed up than I thought.
I have scoured around TFA but can't find much detail on the actual chemical process. Now, I know it's probably all internal and doesn't involve copious amounts of actual liquid adhesive.
But still, would you want to the first person to discover you have left one of these in your player and it just happens to be a rogue one in the batch that has written off your player.
As someone else has said, renting the film for a week is cheaper and buying them new isn't loads more anyway.
The only place I can see these having any place in the market is for the Mission Impossible box set.
... are the movie and music industries ran by a bunch of monkeys suffering from Alzheimer's disease? A three years old would immediately see all these new attempted business models of theirs as unbelievably idiotic ideas. How on Earth is it possible that somebody actually believes such crap could possibly work? This is beyond me. Please, if you are a CEO of a "content" production company, could you enlighten me, pretty please?
- You have a limitted time in which to view it.
- You have to return it. Not everyone lives near a video rental store.
- you will be charged if the disk gets damaged or lost.
If you buy a self destructing DVD- You can buy it on spec and watch it some other time (these have a shelf life)
- You just throw it out when you're done with it.
- The maximum cost is the cost of a disposable DVD.
The environmental damage isn't as big a problem as people seem to think. Much smaller than takeout, and probably less than the waste from a day's food for most people. That and they're recyclable.The main problem is making people realise that this is a rental and not a purchase. When they own the physical media they think they own it. Prices are also a little high, but they don't need a vast number of customers. Just enough movie fans for stores to justify the shelf space.
"FlexPlay"
No flexibility, and after 48 hours no play!
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
DIVX is the crappy circuit city DVD rental program. DivX is the codec.
Case matters.
The troll with karma.
The entertainment ESPECIALLY the movie industry is out of touch with their base. While I think the TV and RIAA are idiot and are extremely out of touch with their base. At least the RIAA has come up with some half decent solutions (although stupid) like amazon mp3, rapshody/napster (unlimited), audible, etc. Although I think they are all stupid due to DRM and i dont use them anyways but at least are heading towards the digital age (not forcing people to use CDs).
:P).
/end rant
At the same time I think the TV industry is making strides. NBC put full episodes on the net (althouth the player was shit) and now they partnered FOX to make hulu which isn't half bad. Heck for all the work it takes to download a movie off BT
-Find the torrent (its hard to find tvshows compared to movies)
-Download the torrent (ahhhr may take a a few hours)
-Get past ur shitty ISP (shitty ISPs: its comcastic!)
-Than finally watch the video and than delete it
I'll gladly watch a sheer minute of ads in a site which has a better player than youtube. You can resize the player an it will start where you left off. Also there is no annoying parts and you can even preload your shows in advance.
All the industries are doing SOMETHING and even the tv industry is excepting people just aren't willing pay as much for content. Obviously they are making a lot less money money off hulu (1 minute of ads vs 9 minutes) but they figure that it's more money they'de be making than if people downloaded their shows. THEY ARE ADAPTING!!!
The movie industry wants it to the stay the same as when i was buying topgun in laserdisk.
They still consider it illegal (according to the DUMB F*** DMCA) just to put a movie on your IPOD or PC (and I'm talking a DVD that you own). There is no movies on itunes but their is a ton of ad free shows that you can do pretty much anything with (of course there is still DRM but its not as big of a deal for a show their is only so many places you use a video for
DAMNIT MPAA learn something. What you guys should be doing if you weren't still living in the glorious 80s where your focus was guys on the side of the street. What you should do is negotiate with every ISP and have ISP hosted downloadable moviees for dirt cheap (like 2 or 3 bucks) that you can do whatever you want to. Or watch on your TV (um comcast/time warner/Adelphia/Advanced Cable)
DRM is stupid....people will just bypass your DRM and go straight to the net.
If you do ISP hosted downloads
-it'll be super cheap because you're not using any physical bandwidth (probably like a cent or two a movie)
-No shipping or any crap
-Compares in convenience considering how hard it is to download movies.
-Can offer Blue-ray quality videos for dirt cheap (considering that it costs a lot of money to burn blueray) and people could play bluerays on their PS3 (well Sony will be for anything to further their standard considering the PS3 was for the sole objective of pushing blueray).
And i don't want to get to the RIAA. Its almost 5 am and btw im finished itll be 12.
They are also living in the past because of how incredibly easy is to download thousands of songs in a couple hours.
An jeeze ADAPT!!!! Think of new solutions. Jesus if the most protective industry could get over their retardation anyone can.
I think what they need is a guy to tell them that they need this and execute it for them in a decent way (because they won't). Like NBC/FOX would never have made this on thier own it's a good thing these guys from outside the industry did it for them. Andthey only used like 10 million which isn't bad considering the scope of the project such as servers, software R&D (since the damn thing is better than youtube), converting the movies (they are pretty awesome quality and load really fast must be some sweet compression), and such.
*ps: I NEED TO QUIT CAFFIENE
How is a disposable DVD different than all the water bottles, plastic bags, yogurt pots, polystyrene trays, etc. that are currently being dumped by the trillion?
This is a drop in the ocean compared to that. Heck, the snack foods consumed while watching the movie will probably create more garbage than the DVD.
No sig today...
You mean DIVX not DivX!
Given the quality of films today can they make them so they self destruct with bad movies "before" they are played? Could save a lot of pain and suffering especially with Uwe Boll movies.
Ok, so I admit that my Roku box just arrived today, but it's just awesome. $9/month for the unlimited Internet watching. And then don't have to push around a bunch of plastic discs, keep discs in stock in case people want to watch them.
Netflix is positioned to become the next "cable company" without having to lay all this cable. You can pick what you want, when you want it, pause it, skip around, and given 15 seconds or so it will spool up the data and play a perfectly reasonable picture. And with no commercials...
I haven't had cable TV at home for the last decade, because it doesn't provide what I wanted. All I wanted recently was Heroes and Battlestar, but to get those two I had to buy 40 channels of other crap, including commercials.
Or I could just wait for it to come out on DVD. Or lately a bunch of us have been gathering at a friends place for it.
The installed base of DVD players is huge, but Netflix will already bring you the plastic disc, to your home, so it's only missing the ability to have an impulse buy the plastic disc.
For the $100 box, you have the ability to get what you want without having to wait for the disc to arrive, don't have to return it, and can watch all you can stand.
Netflix is poised to eat a lot of other folks lunch.
Sean
...the submitter picks up on the worst one. There's plenty of landfill space. That doesn't mean we have to go and waste it all right now...It means that I never have to go back to the video store. That is worth a 4x price premium for me. (Oh noes, my entertainment costs increased for $.50 to $2 an hour... oh, phew, not a starving college kid anymore so that difference is no longer supremely important to me.)
It means I never have to worry about forgetting to go back to the video store (I let two months worth of rental time rot because I just got busy and forgot about movies for a while -- the rental *store* would have charged me boku bucks and sent nastygrams to get their property back, the rental *service* put a little sticker on my database record saying We Love You Man Feel Free To Keep Paying $20 A Month As Long As You Want).
It means I never have to worry about finding time to go to the video store on a day where I just don't have the freaking time. (See point #2.) Sometimes life gets busy and when life gets busy "Drats, I need to return these DVDs" is not a worry I want to have.
(My $20 a month plan is for the Japanese equivalent of Netflix -- 2 DVDs at a time, capped at 8 cycles a month. I rarely use anything close to my allotment. I prefer (legal) downloads to renting, honestly, but much of what I want to see is not available in that format.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
- no DVD logo (may or may not play on real DVD players).
- disc contains a dye which reacts with oxygen to discolour it (either to red or black).
This is in the resin bonding layer between the two layers of a DVD-9. For DVD-5 it's in the surface coating.
48 hours is the "alleged" time the disc will last before being unplayable. Since this is a chemical reaction expect that time to plummet dramatically in hot environments. So, how are they going to deal with the howls of indignation from customers who open the thing, decide they don't have time to play it today, and find they can't even play it once (assuming their DVD player doesn't bork on it)?
Staples will back out of this one real fast...
Andy
Microsoft also uses a similar model. Their popular Windows product starts to deteriorate immediately after installation with all of the bloatware and is unusable within 48 hours.
Since you already have rights to the work's initial medium, does this mean than hacks are not violations of DMCA?
They provided technology for the ORIGINAL disk to self-destruct. You are not breaking tech to make copies, you are *preventing breakage*.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
That's kind of steep. I can get $5 movies at the bargain bin at Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc. Or I can rent a movie from Blockbuster for $4 and keep it for 2 weeks. Or I can use netflix and rent a bunch of movies for $10 a month, or I can download it from Xbox Live. There seems to be better alternatives to watch a movie.
Can I bum a sig?
I really hope someone sues the company responsible for putting all of these toxic chemicals into landfills.
and yes, discs are made with toxic chemicals.
This is just a horrible waste of resources. Especially when the content could be distributed in harmless electron format.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Obviously, they must be running out of people to sue for downloading movies. This new technology is clearly designed to frustrate even more consumers, and drive them to download so they can keep their profit margin high with lawsuits.
Fortunately (for me), there hasn't been a movie coming out of Hollywood in 20 years that I have the slightest interest in either wasting money on, or risking an infringement lawsuit for downloading.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
So what they're really saying is that they can profitably manufacture, distribute, and sell DVD movies for the low price of $5, even after paying some company to add their technology to the disc which not only doesn't enhance the consumer experience, but seriously degrades it. So why do they charge $20 for the other discs again?
Actually, wouldn't you be making a backup copy in case your original stops functioning. IANAL, but wouldn't this mean that the DVD that you would burn as a backup count as your legal copy of that media? --The FNP
So, I've been thinking of this idea to help reduce this kind of landfill-feeding stupidity. What about a scheme where companies are forced to pay a tax on the percentage of a product they produce that is not recyclable. For example, let's say a DVD is 100% non-recyclable. The company would then have to pay an n% tax on 100% of their selling cost (or some similar scheme). Sure, they could pass the cost on to customers, but companies who made "greener" products could then sell for less. What say ye?
Twenda Learning: Educational Apps that Engage.
1) Open self-destructing DVD 2) Spray said DVD with something that prevents oxygen from reaching the disk, cheap hairspray seems like a good candidate here but there are probably even better materials that could be used. 3) Your self-destructing disk fails to degrade? This is aside from just ripping the, of course. And perhaps you could then return it demanding a refund because it was defective, it failed to seld-destruct!
An earlier poster suggested spraying, boiling or doing something to treat the "DVD" to keep it from decomposing. Assuming something like this is possible, is that a violation of DMCA? I mean, is spraying a special coating on a digital reproduction hacking? Are we going to have "intellectual property" owners lobbying Congress to plug the "hairspray hole?"
At what point do we as a people say enough? It's time for these dinosaur media conglomerates to die out already. They don't make art and music. They don't provide a useful service to society (certainly not for the outrageous profits they rake in at the expense of both consumers and artists). A long time ago when distributing film and music was a comparatively enormous and complex undertaking these businesses may have had a use. Today they merely serve to stifle creativity, exploit artists and gouge consumers. We don't need them.