In Stores Soon: Perishable DVDs 683
Makarand writes "Technology that renders optical media useless after a short lifespan will soon find its way into stores
in the form of perishable DVDs. Retailers in the Southern United States will soon start giving a sample DVD to buyers of a CD (by Nappy Roots, a hip-hop group). This promotional DVD from Atlantic Records will work for only 8 hours. This promotion is aimed at finding if music fans would be interested in buying a package with both audio and video instead of just plain audio. A special dye sandwiched between the layers of the DVD will interact with air making it opaque and unreadable later. If this media catches on you may not have to return your DVD rentals in the future." We noted this 2.5 years ago.
divx (Score:4, Interesting)
the consumer would "rent" the "dvd" and then they would have a certain window of time in which they could watch it
Re:This is great! (Score:1, Interesting)
-russ
More Trash (Score:4, Interesting)
seal it (Score:5, Interesting)
if the air can't reach the dye in between, I guess the cd stays readable, no ?
a just a thought.
rkoot
I'm not as think as you drunk I am
Eight hour life? How about shelf life? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is great! (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, you can try to argue that the sheer weight of the DVD will cause teh vehicle to use extra fuel I guess...
Re:no! don't do it (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that after the media had been in the stores for a little bit, the blockbuster guys would get used to regularly re-issuing DVDs, or giving people refunds. Otherwise they'd quickly gather a class action lawsuit.
The material that the DVDs are made on needs to be biodegradeable, though. Perhaps a cardboard disc?
-Sara
Re:Why not (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is great! (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank you for your comments. We have been sharing your frustration as the new reports have failed to report this product will be a recyclable. Just a drop the disc in the bucket next to the butter container and milk bottle. It also eliminates the car pollution of returning the movie to the store. avg. 10 miles and 1/3 gallon of gas.
We appreciate your concern.
SpectraDisc
I still think it's a stupid idea, but it's moved from monumentally stupid to moderately stupid.
Perishable media - patent, and vacuum drives! (Score:3, Interesting)
6,161,106, was granted to Motorola, in 2000. While this depends on a magnetic method, it is interesting to know that the current referred method depends on interaction with air. How long before "mods" are made to have a drive enclosed in vacuum???
Air or light? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm, two years ago it was a light-sensitive coating that opacified after multiple playbacks.
Re:Congratulations! (Score:2, Interesting)
You'd be surprised. When the first phonecards came out in the UK, (back before the dawn of time/widespread use of mobiles) it was discovered that if you coated the back of them with clear nail polish, then they wouldn't decrease in value...
I think I must have made about a hundred hours of phone calls until BT wised up...
Re:So copy it the first time you watch. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is great! (Score:3, Interesting)
A DVD is 120mm in diameter and 1.2mm thick. That puts its volume at 1.2 * 60^2 * pi, or 13572 mm^3. That means that a DVD's volume is about 1/74000 of a cubic meter.
Assume that every American buys 10 disposable DVDs per year. That's 3 billion of these things that wind up in the landfill, for a total of around 41000 cubic meters.
Switching to American measurements, these would fit into a one-acre, 30 foot deep hole. There are plenty of places in the Nevada Desert where you could dig such a thing.
Or, think of it another way: If you threw away disks like this every time you rented a movie, by what percentage would it increase *your* personal trash output? For me it would be well under 1%.
On the other hand, assume that each DVD rental results in one extra mile of driving to return it. (Yes, I know you could walk, but the places I usually rent from are 4 and 9 miles away.) That results in an extra 3 billion miles of driving, or at least 100 million gallons of gasoline burned. Given that 1 gallon of gasoline results in 20 pounds of pollution (mostly CO2 and H2O), that's 1 million tons of pollution.
So: One acre hole in Nevada, or 1 million tons of pollution. Your choice.
Lemme think..... (Score:3, Interesting)
The earlier use of this mentioned in the article used some weird dye that was on the surface of the disc. After the laser hit it, it started a slow process of becoming opaque, and in a few days it was unreadable. Some college students discovered that a product called "soap" mixed with a catalyst "water" removed the dye and made the CD readable again.
This uses a dye in the middle of the disc, between layers. If air can get in, why can't another solvent? Wouldn't the same technique be true of these discs as well as the previous attempt?
While the future of non-returnable DVDs is dead in my mind, I'm glad to see that the RIAA is finally looking into "value added", giving me a reason to buy the CD instead of download it.
You're Missing the REAL Application for this tech (Score:2, Interesting)
What if you could pickup a brand new release while you're on your way through the checkout at the grocery store for something like $1? Maybe you're interested in watching the movie but not necessarily interested in owning it or maybe you just want to check it out to see if it's worth a buy; either way you'd pay a dollar to find out right?
I think the real goal as far as the movie studios are concerned is to get people like BlockBuster out of the way. If a really cheap disposable DVD might lead to a more expensive purchase (say a boxed set with extra goodies) then that's even better for the studios.
It's also not necessarily bad for consumers since you're potentially not risking much to check out if a movie is worth a purchase or not.
As far as piracy goes this could be a big winner for the studios also. What's the point of hassling with ripping a DVD that you might only watch one or twice if you can grab one for about the price of a candy bar when you stop for gas?
Re:divx (Score:1, Interesting)
We are *SO* glad you happened by at that moment. We could have had a serious capitalization incident there.
*phew*
Re:This is great! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How long... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why wait for nature to take it's course here? When these start shipping in the US, I'm going to the record shop with a needle!
Re:So copy it the first time you watch. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Inert-gas filled Air-free DVD players (Score:2, Interesting)
Infact, a submersible DVD player would go great with the TV player by the hot tub.
Marking direction (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, the distribution methods look somethin like this, from most desirable (and most profitable) to least:
Pay-per-Use - Require consumer to pay for each experience (i.e.: theater movies, pay-per-view, arcade games)
Subscription - if pay-per-use isn't possible, require the user to pay a recurring subscription fee for access to the material (i.e.: cable)
Media Ownership - if subscription isn't possible, sell the media in a permanent form to the consumer.
Media ownership is of course the most desired for the consumer. It allows them to experience themusic/movie/etc whenever they want, trade or sell it to friends, etc. Of course it's the least profitable for the industry.
The problem media companies are facing is that, as technology matures, it's allowing consumers to use the media in any way they want. For example, using a Tivo to turn subscription-distributed media into owned permemant media.
What we're seeing now is the entertainment industry scrambling to use laws that were originally enacted to protect companies from each other, and bend them to try and keep consumers from using the media for which it wasn't originally intended.
Here's a hypothetical situation: In 15 years medical science progresses to the point where they fix eyesight with little nano machines. In the process they also give people the ability to record what they watch and play it back (kind of like a Tivo built-in to your head). Thus turning everything you experience into the potential for permenant media. What do you think the entertainment industry will do then? Legislate congress to make all medical nano devices capible of recording motion images be part of a digital rights management royalty payment system, and likely called something along the lines of the Digital Medical Device Copyright Act. That's if the entertainment industry is still alive in the same for it is today, which I doubt.
One dumb idea to rule them all... (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously, this won't fly because human beings have an infinite capacity for carelessness -- which Blockbuster has exploited to great success, I might ad. There are too many opportunities for something to go wrong here, not only on the part of the consumer, but the factory workers, the shippers, and the handlers at the grocery stores and mall CD chains where these DVDs will be marketed relentlessly. (Watch once and throw away! Only $4.99!) A couple batches of ruined airtight seals will turn retailers away from this idea in a hurry.
This idea is destined to go the way of the caribou. IMHO, that can't happen too quickly.
Re:So copy it the first time you watch. (Score:5, Interesting)
It all does depend so the question is will they give you a choice?
Re:This might not work in the summer (Score:2, Interesting)
Rince
Re:So copy it the first time you watch. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm realated to a Mr Joe Average. He bought a consumer DVD recorder for his television, and returned it to the store angrily when he realized he couldn't copy the DVDs he rented onto blank media.
Joe average may not know about how the technology works, but he's also not willing to pay for something that removes functionality that he's previously had with video tapes.
Similarly, my mother only listens to CDs on her headphones that are pluged into the CD-ROM drive of her computer at work. Guess who isn't going to be buying any copy protected CDs.
The copy protection battle will be won by Joe Average.
Re:So copy it the first time you watch. (Score:3, Interesting)
I doubt you'd need to go to that trouble. It's more likely that the disc reacts only with some particular component of the atmosphere (it's most likely that it would react with oxygen, since oxygen likes to react with stuff). Put your computer and the disc in a big box, flush it with nitrogen or carbon dioxide (dry ice would be easiest to handle...drop in a chunk and wait for it to sublimate), open the disc in the oxygen-free environment, and go to town. Since carbon dioxide is heavier than air, you wouldn't even need to close the box...just seal the cracks with tape so it doesn't leak out. You might want to put a cover on it once the disc is loaded up, though, so that air currents in the room don't find their way into the box and contaminate it.
(Hmm...does this mean dry ice will be outlawed by the DMCA as a "circumvention device?")
Chemistry for fun and profit. (Score:5, Interesting)
Put the wrapped DVD in the aquarium. Take two rubber gloves and some saran-wrap to effectively seal the top of the aquarium (make sure to use enough that putting on the gloves won't break the seal).
Tip the aquarium on its side, and peel away a small hole in one top and the opposite bottom corner.
Light a votive candle and place it in front of the lower hole.
Add helium, via the PVC tube that almost certainly came with the aquarium (if not, pay the $0.15/foot for a few feet), to the upper hole. Add it slowly, and when the candle goes out, keep adding for a few more seconds.
Voila! You now have a home-made, inert-gas, anhydrous glove box! Put your hands in the gloves, unwrap the DVD, and apply the clear nail polish to the edge. Oops, you *did* remember to put the nail polish in the aquarium before sealing it, right?
I've used the self-destructing discs (Score:2, Interesting)
I had a chance to try a DVD video as part of a consumer test. /.'ers will find the last part really interesting. It was called EZ DVD, and, upon contact with air, would begin self destructing until, within 72 hours, it would be unreadable.
My wife came home from the mall with a package of materials for a consumer test EZ DVD. It was a copy of "Kate and Leopold" (they had others but that was the wife's choice-- oh boy!). The questinnaire included what we thought of the quality (poor- no chapter stops, pan and scan), how much we would pay (I put $3.95 but they had up to like $7) etc.
Here is the whack part: I put it in my DVD-ROM. It would not play back correctly nor would DVD-Decryptor rip it. I put it back in the DVD-V player and it worked fine (it was suppsed to last 72 hours before destruction and it had only been about 3 hours). I don't know if this was a test of a new anti-copy device or a side effect of the disc's construction. Mysterious. Has anyone else tested the disc's as well?
Re:So copy it the first time you watch. (Score:2, Interesting)