Hard Drives Shipping with Star Trek

crimeandpunishment writes "Paramount Pictures is trying to live long and prosper by selling Seagate Technology hard drives with the latest Star Trek movie on board ... along with 20 other films. The 500GB hard drive will sell for a special promotional price of $100. It's the latest way for Hollywood to combat falling DVD sales due to piracy."

Comments

$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[eldavojohn]

The 500GB hard drive will sell for a special promotional price of $100.

Oh yeah that is, of course, if you don't want to watch the titles. If you want to watch the movies:

The other movies distributed by Paramount, including "GI Joe," ''Nacho Libre" and "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" come pre-loaded with a digital lock that requires a code that can be purchased online for $10 to $15 each. Even watching "Star Trek" requires registration.

So yeah it's $100 or over triple that if you actually want to watch the "promotional" material. Otherwise you're buying a hard drive with a (presumably Windows) partition that has Windows DRM and twenty movies taking up 50 gigabytes of space. Sounds to me like a lame AOL CD that gets you working with the shit and then hopes that you just keep using their platform for buying and downloading movies.

I guess a brave soul could buy the drive and leave the 50 gigs intact and then download the 20 movies and feign ignorance if the MPAA comes knocking at the door. I wonder if there's some consumer protection laws that states if you buy something legally you have a right to enjoy it. Because right now you're buying a digital copy of something that is encrypted but you're not receiving the license that is required to watch it. They better carefully label that the PROMOTION part of the sale lest a consumer figures that they're paying 10% for the movies and 90% for the drive and then becomes upset when they get home and can't watch the movies without ponying up an additional 200%-300%.

Both companies declined to say if they were taking a loss on the promotional price.

Really? Oh yeah, sounds like Sony is bending over backwards to trap you into paying the retail price of owning the digital movie that sells for $15 right now on Amazon. They're using Seagate and Seagate customers are rubes to get around paying for streaming bandwidth of these 50 gigs to potential customers.

I choose to rate this tactic as USDA certified lame. Shame on Seagate. Shame on Sony. I feel sorry for those that might buy this without realizing what they're getting themselves into.

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[wjousts]

Also, the drive itself is about twice the price of the cheapest 500 GB drive you can find on Pricewatch. So even as a 500 GB drive (if you're not interested in paying to watch the movies) it's a rip-off.

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[Uncle Rummy]

And what's up with their $100 "promotioal" price, and the claim that "an empty 500 GB Seagate hard drive usually sells for $140"? It took me all of 20 seconds to find a 500 GB Seagate on Newegg for $54.99 with free shipping.

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[Reikk]

In other words.. you could say this hard drive comes with Data?

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[Captain Splendid]

AND it's a post-Maxtor buyout Seagate drive. Avoid at all costs.

How the mighty have fallen...

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[Shakrai]

I noticed something similar when I picked up a copy of Gran Torino a few months ago. It came with a little insert that had a code I could allegedly use to download a digital copy of the movie. I thought, "That's cool, I can put it on my laptop and watch it on my next trip." Then I got to the website and was eventually prompted for a credit card number. They wanted more money for the privilege of obtaining a DRM'ed copy of the movie I already paid for.

Yeah, that was going to happen.....

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[IICV]

Also, for $100 you can buy a reasonable 1 TB hard drive. A 500 GB non-insane speed drive should cost ~$50.

Since the movies won't come unlocked, you're paying ~$50 for 50 GB worth of data you could otherwise get for almost free, and which is almost free for them to provide. Is the movie industry just incapable of coming up with a business plan that doesn't involve ripping people off?

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

Maybe so, but he could at least have ended his message with, "P.S. Frost Pist!!"

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[PitaBred]

Is the movie industry just incapable of coming up with a business plan that doesn't involve ripping people off?

Is water wet?

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[plover]

People complain about DVD prices, about movie prices, about whatever the studios do that isn't "give away their stuff for free." And those same people (on slashdot and elsewhere) say "You need to find a new approach." So this looks like an effort by the studio to say "See, we're trying a new approach."

However, as you've pointed out, we all recognize this is simply a different approach to packaging and marketing, rather than trying to change the economic model. And this particular attempt is almost sleazy in that the movies are advertised but aren't coming with the rights to watch them.

But here's the deal: high quality movies still cost a truckload of money to make. And they're all a gamble: you can spend $200 million on a movie that flops at the box office, or you could spend that same $200 million and get an epic blockbuster; until the movie hits the screens you really don't know.

I don't expect them to ever give them away for free, and I don't think anyone should ever expect that. They'll simply stop investing money in big movies if there's no chance of payback. Then all we'll get are the low-budget films. (Not that they all suck, but they certainly mostly suck.) I suppose the plus side is that they'll stop giving Michael Bay to make fake-looking CGI explosions.

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[markov_chain]

This diagram sums it up well.

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[HikingStick]

That $140 figure was probably the price when someone thought up the promotion. By the time it got through all of their bureaucratic muckity-muck, they're putting an overpriced device on the market.

That's almost as bad as our local Wal-Mart. They have a Battlefield 2142 gaming mouse in their clearance section. It has been on clearance there for over two years (and was likely on the shelves for two years prior to that point), and they still have the price at around $69. Retailers (and, apparantly, movie studies) have a mistaken notion that tech gear holds its value over time.

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[wjousts]

Actually, it's this drive Seagate FreeAgent Go which is $100 on NewEgg. But, oohhh...it comes in pretty colors!

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[icebraining]

high quality movies still cost a truckload of money to make.

That's the whole fucking problem.

Good movies don't have to cost that. The problem is that nobody watches them, most people want to see the most expensive brain-dead CGI fest that can be made.

The Ice Storm is a very good movie. It had a budget of $18 million. Critics at Rotten Tomatoes give it 75%+. Yet it failed, because people prefer to watch overpriced shit.

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[camperdave]

Whoosh!

Rip-off vs rip onto.

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[Shakrai]

Is water wet?

Not when it's in the solid state....

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[Shakrai]

Define "wet"

A female state that most /.'ers will never experience first hand ;)

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[c 0xFF]

Sorry. The sarcasm wasn't pointed at the concept of playing movies on a hard drive, but at the promotion itself.

Let's take the hard drive out of the picture. It's like selling rewritable DVDs with "free" movies on them and then requiring a code to be purchased as well. Oh, and there's nothing free or lower-priced about it.

Yeah, that's a great way of promoting your products!

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[ender-]

Well, I never had that problem with Best Buy. As a matter of fact, I've even gotten them to price-match an item from another online-only store. It was easy.
1. Print out page showing online price [Crutchfield in this case, $179 free shipping, for a Logitech Harmony One]
2. Bring print out to local Best Buy - regular price $250 but on sale that day for $225 - plus tax of course]
3. Nicely speak with the sales rep. Mention that you know they don't *HAVE* to match the price from a non-local online ad, but that you would appreciate it if they would do so anyway. Maybe make some mention of what great customer service that would be, and that while it'd be nice to be able to pick it up today, for that kind of price difference you'd be willing to wait to have it shipped].
4. They may offer a lower price, but not fully matched to your offer.
5. Mention [still politely] that you're already going to have to spend like $15 more on tax by choosing to purchase it locally.
6. Purchase your nicely price-matched item. :)

I'll admit, I did have one minor extra advantage. When I walked up to the sales guy he was discussing the same remote with another potential customer, who asked that he put it on hold while they looked at other items and thought about getting it. I added to the sales guy that if he would price match the online price, I would be nice and not mention to the other customer that he could purchase the exact same remote for $46 less. :)

The point is, act polite. Understand their point of view. Be willing to walk away but not huffy or angry about it. Most of the time, you'll get the price you want.

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[icebraining]

I'd bet "good" stars are happy to take less to play in good movies.

See Jim Carrey in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), another $20 million movie. He made that movie just a year after charging a salary of $25 million for Bruce Almighty.

Make good movies that real actors can be proud of being in, and they'll settle for way less.

Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title

[CodeBuster]

A female state that most /.'ers will never experience first hand ;)

Well, you know what they say: "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush".

Fixed that for ya.

[TooMuchToDo]

" It's the latest way for Hollywood to combat falling DVD sales due to netflix and other cheaper content avenues."

Re:Fixed that for ya.

[FriendlyLurker]

" It's the latest way for Hollywood to combat falling DVD sales due to piracy" citation needed

Re:Fixed that for ya.

[TheRaven64]

Sounds closer to the truth. I have a hundred or so DVDs, but I've hardly bought any since I subscribed to a DVD rental service. I get 2-4 DVDs in the post every week to watch for about the same price as buying one DVD a month. There are very few DVDs that I've watched more than a couple of times, and I'd almost always watch something new than re-watch an old DVD, so buying doesn't make economic sense. Per viewing, it costs more than renting for all except the most exceptional films.

Re:Fixed that for ya.

[plover]

You have a copy of GI Joe "on the printer"?

You're doing it wrong.

Re:Fixed that for ya.

[jmauro]

It's actually the movie studios forcing this and not Netflix. Netflix and RedBox signed the "deal" because they were pretty much forced to or have no access to movies sold on the bulk market.

Re:Fixed that for ya.

[fermion]

Also, for Star Trek, lack of sales due to pricing content for the rental rather than consumer market. Voyager, a not popular title by most measure, is $250-300. Alias, a much more popular series by the person who did the new star trek, can occasionally be had for around $100. Now that is 5 season instead of 7, but it is still a difference between $20 a season and $35 a season. For old shows, and shows that want to be sold, $1 or so an episode is the price. For older show like the original Star Trek, the market is hovering around 50 cents an episode. ST:TOS is around $200.

Even Farscape eventually got sold and came down in price to something mortals could afford. And you know what? I bought it. I admit I had rips or many episodes, but when I could get DVDs I did. I must say the price gouging, at least IMHO, turned my off the whole franchise.

Re:Fixed that for ya.

[Nadaka]

It is perfectly legal to format shift media. Perhaps he just prefers the flip-book format his is video needs.

Re:Fixed that for ya.

[AshtangiMan]

to me it looks like *** **

Re:Fixed that for ya.

[noc007]

Not to mention the state of the economy.

I'm not making as much as I use to, so money is tighter and I'm thankful to just have a damn job. We've budgeted to have a NetFlix subscription and go out to a movie once every three months. That budget is considered luxurious by some people I know.

Quoting piracy as a reason for dwindling sales is a cop-out IMHO. Anti-Piracy groups need to focus on the people selling pirated DVDs as legitimate ones; they're really taking traceable sales away. Is it possible to download a pirated copy of a movie for free? Yes. Will it always be in high quality, not require you to go find some new or obscure codec,and can be had in a matter of minutes? Hell no. My time is worth something and all that dicking around just isn't worth it for me and I may not even end up with what I was downloading not to mention the legal ramifications and possibilities of a fun lawsuit.

NetFlix is a good deal for me. I have the patience to wait for the disc in the mail and Watch Now (on demand) is great. It's a little annoying that they're cutting deals with the studios to hold off for 28 days, more so for the wife than me, but it means more content that can be streamed to the TV and not take up a slot in the mail queue.

MOVIE STUDIOS, I have some advice for you:
1. Stop making a lot of crappy movies just to see if they'll stick to the wall.
2. Make better movies and it doesn't always require $100+ million budget.
3. Understand that your low sales isn't a 100% result of piracy.
4. Understand that spending a lot of money on a movie doesn't mean it's going to net a lot of profit.
5. Appreciate that piracy in the US isn't as bad as it is in other countries.
6. Invest most of your anti-piracy efforts in the groups that are mass producing pirated DVDs for profit. They're taking significant profit away from you.
7. It's fine to educate people within reason that pirating is illegal.
8. Stop with all the DRM and DMCA. All it does is hurt your legitimately purchasing consumer and can potentially cost you money in the long run with refunds when shit doesn't work right or the authorizing servers go offline (e.g. Yahoo music).
9. Understand that fair use isn't costing you much money. I have the right to make a copy for my personal use and I'm going to do that so the original doesn't get damaged. If it did get damaged and I didn't have a copy of it, that doesn't mean I'm going to go and buy a new one. I'm not going to dick around with re-encoding it so it fits on a single-layer (dual-layer is too much and you might as well go legit for the cost) that I'm going to give to my friend, plus he can go out and pirate it himself or go down the street and rent it from RedBox for $1.
10. Understand that if people don't have a lot of disposable income, they aren't going to spend money on your product that they don't need to live. If you have a problem with that, either do something positive to get the economy rolling so people have disposable income to trade with you or change your business to something that involves basic needs like food, clothing, and/or shelter.

Re:Fixed that for ya.

[Shakrai]

11. Smack J. J. Abrams upside the head one time for each lens flare in the new Star Trek film.

Re:Fixed that for ya.

[Toze]

2 and 4: studios constantly post net losses from films. They do this by spreading the profit to other companies, owned by the same people. They do this in order to screw people whose contracts guarantee a perfect of net profits; the creators of the IP they're exploiting and then aggressively defending. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

from the link;
The guy who wrote Forrest Gump got $0.
The guy who wrote The Last Unicorn $0.
B5, despite the series pulling in >$1B, is supposed to be $80M in debt, screwing Stracynski out of a lot of money.

Studios are not losing money. They are swimming in it. Their hilarious accounting allows them to claim that they're losing money, and being able to blame pirates (and so turn the Government of Canada into their bag man) is just gravy.

Added bonus

[elrous0]

They also come loaded with a DRM system that will probably function like a virus or some form of malware to not only make it impossible to watch these movies without calling into the server, but also possibly scanning your system for other Paramount movies and either deleting them or reporting you to the MPAA. They could include 100 movies and it still wouldn't be worth it to have something like that lurking around on my system.

Frankly, I would have more trust in a hard drive I bought from a sleazy-looking dude with a Russian accent hanging on my local street corner. And Sergey is not very trustworthy.

Re:Added bonus

[Ungrounded Lightning]

So, it ["joke" about included malware] is not as funny as you thought.

Actually I read it as straight (except for the flip line at the end) - and was just cruising to see if anybody had raised this point before raising it myself.

Studios have a track record of shipping DRM that acts as malware. (Remember the one on the audio CDs that caused so much flap?)

No way in the world I'm running any software that comes "included" on a hard disk - built into a movie or otherwise. And when I install a new disk on one of my machines the first thing that happens to it is a surface analysis - run from a linux live CD boot - to wipe out anything that might have been installed at the factory or in the market channel.

Buying a license for the movies?

[siwelwerd]

So, can I buy one of these drives, reformat it, and then torrent these movies legally?

Re:Buying a license for the movies?

[TheRealMindChild]

If you were going to throw these on a torrent, I recommend trying this BEFORE you format the drive.

Re:Buying a license for the movies?

[Rich0]

:) Good luck with that plan.

And, if nothing else you're massively overspending for a 500gb drive...

Ummm

[Kylere]

"An empty 500 GB Seagate hard drive usually sells for $140" This is factually inaccurate, the only way I can see you spending that much on a 500 gig drive, especially the typically bad Seagate drives is to buy them at Best Buy. For that much cash Newegg was selling a 2TB drive yesterday.

Re:Ummm

[idontgno]

Minor correction:

Well, you don't expect some Paramount idiot board member to send his personal assistant to shop anywhere other than a big box chain store, do you?

Re:Ummm

[mtmra70]

I just bought a 1TB Western Digital Black Edition hard drive from Best Buy for $99. I don't what the MPAA is thinking....

Meh

[ak_hepcat]

I can get a 1TB hard-drive for under a $100 at many locations (costco, google-shopping) so this seems like a big waste of money to me.

President of Seagate talked about this years ago

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

He was suggesting preloading content as a way to struggle against commoditization and to do something with today's enormous capacities. I don't think he mentioned saving bandwidth as a reason, but never underestimate the bandwidth of a 2TB drive on a UPS truck.

I don't have a citation for you, but I think it was a Forbes article.

Due to piracy?

[Scrameustache]

Well stop shipping your cargo through the waters off the coast of Somalia!

Re:Amazon referer ID

[eldavojohn]

Thanks for sneaking in your Amazon referer ID in the URL, asshole!

1. Go to the Star Trek 2009 page on Amazon.
2. Hover over "Video On Demand" option.
3. Note internal site auditing URL.
4. Apologize.
5. Look up how to spell referrer.
6. Have a nice day.

Not really surprising...

[Svartalf]

Nothing new. They've been at selling Star Trek branded USB Thumb drives with the movie on it in a DRMed format for a bit now. Showed up about 1-2 months ago at Fry's. I suspected that the HD's with that same story would show up shortly in the consumer boxed drives. (And people wonder why I would rather have the OEM bulk-pack stuff...)

DRM makes this useless crap.

[RyanFenton]

...Even watching "Star Trek" requires registration...

The pre-loaded movies come with a Windows-based digital rights management system that prevents file sharing. They take up about 50 GB of the drive itself.

This means the drive is filled with extra useless crap wasting space before a format. It'd be a sad thing to discover you paid extra for this, only to not be able to actually use the movies as you would any other file, or even DVD. Hardly a "promotion", more like a way to gamble and write off a loss on old stock.

Ryan Fenton

The DVD is Dead, Long Live the DVD

[MrTripps]

Why would I pay $15 to take up drive space for a DVD quality film when the Blu Ray runs $16?

Re:Wait... I can see it already!

[biryokumaru]

It's vitally important that we recurse those sub, uh, avi files... *cough*

You know, to get the snakes.

More information

[MaddMatt]

Seagate has a press release with more information about this.

The drive is an external drive, which Newegg is selling for $100.

Ehm, you are forgetting Hollywood economics

[SmallFurryCreature]

Remember in Hollywood a movie that earns millions in ticket sales, nonetheless fails to make a profit when the author has to be payed.

In Hollywood a shared movie does damages to the tune of roughly the world economy * infinity.

And in Hollywood a 500gb HD costs the price of a 2tb drive to anyone else.

This ain't even the typical scam of naming the recommended retail price as a the value of a gift, since Seagate doesn't even recommend this price itself.

Ah, hollywood and scamming. Remember, if you buy a movie, you are supporting these guys. Safe the free world, be a pirate!

Not necessarily piracy

[Livius]

"It's the latest way for Hollywood to combat falling DVD sales due to Hollywood making crap."

Re:Amazon referer ID

[clone53421]

He wasn’t. He was referring to the Amazon referral program. The ?ref, on the other hand, was referring to the HTTP referer header to which you referred, which was referring to the word “referrer” but designed by people who couldn’t be bothered with referring to a dictionary.

"requires a code ... purchased for $10 to $15"

[Joce640k]

Um, can't you buy real DVDs for a similar sort of price?

}"An empty 500 GB Seagate hard drive usually sells for $140."

Sure it does...in the year 2007.

Re:Amazon referer ID

[eldavojohn]

He wasn't. He was referring to the Amazon referral program.

Actually I was referring to Amazon's referal program where I was released back into the Amazon jungle and accepted by a pack of developers. In time I relearned their ways and mated with their women. As fate would have it, Amazon had only deferred their deferal program and as soon as it went back into effect I took advantage of it and here I am clean and shaven--almost fully capable of using a keyboard again!

"due to piracy"

[Touvan]

OMFG!! Why is hollywood so fixated on this ridiculous lie. Piracy isn't the reason no one buys DVDs. They don't buy DVDs because the movies suck.

They were saying the same stupid nonsense about why no one goes to the movies anymore, then what happened? Good movies came out, and look! People went to the movies in record numbers (and it wasn't the god damn 3D that was just icing - the movies were good!!).

Hollywood is run by morons.

Dear Paramount Pictures,

[zerospeaks]

Dear Paramount Pictures, When I read that a 500GB hard drive came with a copy of Star Trek on it, I reached for my wallet. Even though I already own the blu-ray version. When I read "20 other movies included", I dropped my wallet because I was trying to pull out my debit card too fast. Even if they are old low quality/low budget movies I think this is a great deal! I want to buy one before they sell out. Then I read "DRM" and "additional fees to watch the movies". I now feel like you have insulted my intelligence and I will be sure to pirate your movies from now on. It's not about money. I spend plenty of money. It's about convenience and value. Your ex-customer,