October 20, 2004

• It would so much cooler if they actually, you know, self-destructed. The whole family could gather round the DVD and dance and chant joyously as Alien vs. Predator bursts into flames.
• More material for fat, lazy Americans to dump into ever-growing landfills. Theatre-releases aside, can't the EPA turn these folks on to Netflix or something?
• This is just what we need... more disposable and useless plastic shit that will be here until the sun goes supernova. Is there any way for these DVDs to serve a dual function as AOL install discs? If we're going to be hopelessly saddled with both can we kill two birds wth one stone?
• This in my opinion, is tantamount to officially encouraging me to buy a computer capable of ripping and encoding a dvd in less than 48 hours. (kicks old late 90's peice of crap under the desk)...
• What Alex Reynolds said.
• This disposable DVD idea was already tried once before by DivX. IIRC they Sinclaired themselves into oblivion.
• Echoes all the "fat lazy consumers" and landfill sentiments. Can't we just kill the people who think this is a good idea?
• Actually, the_bone...yes, they could. That's quite brilliant, and I'm sure if AOL hasn't thought of it, they'll rush right out and see if they can do so. As for the technology as a whole...it may be a solution in search of a problem. For non-net-savvy people, there's the rental store. For net-savvy people, there's netflix. With the netflix/tivo partnership, hopefully we won't even need a disc sent to us, we should be able to have them download directly on our device. I would find it difficult to believe, economies of scale being what they are, that it's cheaper to manufacture these new discs vs. traditional DVDs. The rental fees are more, the flexibility is less, and there's every possibility that if you get interrupted in the middle of your movie, that you'll lose it before you get a chance to start watching it again, if your schedule is busy. The only advantage is that you can get it faster. However, I can guarantee you that if these discs are released the day a movie is out, pirates will buy the disc, rip it, and upload it to every p2p network available faster than you can say "antidisestablishmentarianism". Reading the article now...interesting. The whole distribution schedule for the movie is different, being released on cable two weeks after. Hmm. You know what I would do? Rather than all this fancy stuff, I would release my movie in the theaters at the exact same time I release my DVD with bonus features. People would go see it in the theater, then walk out into the lobby and buy the DVD. I'd charge more for the DVD than normal, say $45 or so, but it'd sell. Make sure the packaging is nice and put in some sort of pack-in that you can't get via the internet, then people would pick it up after coming off the high of watching the film in the theater. I doubt it would eat into too many sales for a blockbuster film, such as LotR, and those could be made up for by the DVD sales. It would be worth at least an experiment for one good, action heavy sci-fi film, at least. You know, if Hollywood went for experiments.
• This disposable DVD idea was already tried once before by DivX. Divx required buying a special player that cost more than a regular DVD player and connecting it to a phone line. These will presumably play in the DVD player you already have. It does take away the need for returning a rented DVD to the store and also ensures that you get a DVD that is not all scratched up. It could fly.
• What Freen said. This disposable DVD idea was already tried once before by DivX. Divx's weren't released the same day as the theatre premiere.
• Disney tried this as well. It did not do well.
• I wouldn't mind seeing square dvd's, however. Disposable or not.
• There are two ways this will work out. Either it will fail miserably and no one will do it. Or someone will quickly figure out a way to copy the disks and presto, you get a high quality version of a movie for less than $5 and then they pull them off the market because the movie industry complaining about piracy. WHen places like Brentwood sell 20 movies for $20 and you can keep them forever, even though the quality sucks, these ain't going to fly.
• Couldn't you (kind of) do the square DVD with Business cards CDs and crappy quality encoding?
• And yes, this things feels a lot like something on slashdot 2-3 years ago.
• I assume they have tried to protect them against ripping. But, and someone correct if I'm wrong, a VCR will record whatever is playing on your TV at the moment, and there's no way to stop that, right? Wouldn't the same go for a DVD recorder, seperate from your DVD player? And even if that didnt work, someone would just point a camera at the screen like they do in theatres (you'd need a plasma screen to avoid those annoying lines)
• Doesn't this sound a lot like an interesting and innovative internet business plan, somewhat let down by the fact that it involves manufacturing and distributing loads of crappy, awkwardly copy-protected little drinks coasters? These will presumably play in the DVD player you already have. I'd give short odds on the copy-protection and self-destruct mechanisms rendering them unplayable in a fair few regular DVD players. pull them off the market because the movie industry complaining about piracy Or, the movie industry will persist with them, but will try toget DVD burners outlawed; that's more their style...
• I've never ripped a DVD, but these kinds of shortchange developments, plus the Region fiasco, may inevitably have me looking at options. Drjimmy -- Macrovision is the only thing that protects a video IMAGE (not the datastream) from being recorded. It basically makes the signal impossible to track correctly by a VCR, but playable by a TV which is less tolerant to a defective signal. However this can be defeated by recording onto camcorders (not sure about DV but Hi-8 works) and then either keeping it there or writing out to VHS or whatever. I've always hated Macrovision as it always compromised the quality of the TV picture. Damn industry.
• Ack, meant to say: TV is MORE tolerant of a defective signal. Put that in your pirating pipe.
• DVDs had security on them too and look how well that is working out for them. The issues that they will have with being able to make these disposable dvds copy-protected are the same issues that music companies are having with cds in that you can't change the format too much or it will break the players, but because you can't change it too much that means it is incredibly difficult to prevent people from circumventing the copy-protection. As far as I know there aren't any CD copy protection scemes that can't be gotten around rather easilly (especially if you run linux). As far as Macrovision is concerned, most region free dvd players also disable Macrovision, and barring that, if you find an old enough vcr that is pre-Macrovision, you can get around it that way. Not that I would ever do such things...
• I wouldn't mind seeing square dvd's, however. Disposable or not. How about shuriken-shaped DVDs? That way, when the clerk at the video store recommends a stinker, one can get sweet, badly-dubbed, cinematic vengeance at the return counter.
• At least with CDs, there will never be infallible copy protection so long as there's a line-out. I feel like DVDs have more of a "Hey, it's ok to screw me" rating from consumers. But hell, I have a DVD player and still haven't sprung for the $3 cable I need to hook it up to the TV. VCRs, baby! They haven't died!
• "More material for fat, lazy Americans to dump into ever-growing landfills." Um, okay. They have been selling these at a gas station close to my house all summer, so I'm not sure this is really very new.
• More material for fat, lazy Americans to dump into ever-growing landfills. Theater-releases aside, can't the EPA turn these folks on to Netflix or something? posted by Alex Reynolds at 11:22PM UTC on October 19 I actually think that this characterization is most unfair. And if you insist on using tired stereotypes, then at least use them in a semi intelligent fashion to make yourself rich (so long as the crooked accounting continues to hide the staggering losses, at least). They're fat and lazy, remember? They want video on demand (aka Tivo) provided by their cable companies, so they never have to leave the couch. They want videos that they don't have to worry about late charges on (hello Netflix) that come straight to their door. They want to have lots of movies at home they can watch anytime they want whenever they want in any order they want (Has nobody seen the sales numbers for DVD's? Has nobody realized that they are, in fact, twice as expensive as VHS tapes, if not more?). And they don't want something they HAVE to watch in 48 hours or else it's gone forever. I'm pretty sure nobody really wants that last bit. I mean, look at the movie being marketed here. Limited release, small (ie: artsy?) theaters. Not carried by a major distributor, who normally aims straight at the fat lazy middle america bible thumping disney wearing starbucks coffee drinking suv driving McDonald's eating demographic. This "feature" we have been blessed with is all about marketing at best and piracy at worst. Perhaps if those overprivileged underfunded college kids with their free in-dorm 100mb pipes would stop "sharing" and started studying, the draconian copyright industrial complex would stop inventing crap like this. Full disclosure: I am one of those overprivileged underfunded, though long since out of college, punks that would share like it was the end of the world if only I could afford a fat pipe to send all that sweet sweet goodness through. And I was not very good at studying either.