The One-Use, Self-Destructing DVD Returns 561
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.
If this is basically a rental... (Score:1, Interesting)
So if the discs last 48 hours I could go rent it for 2 days and save myself $3, PLUS avoid generating pointless trash in the process!
Re:Heh, pirates ahoy! (Score:5, Interesting)
Are any of the many lawyers that read Slashdot able to shed a light on this?
Re:They Are Recyclable (Score:1, Interesting)
Which would waste the disc plus the oil to transport it.
How's that different from... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Heh, pirates ahoy! (Score:5, Interesting)
The only place I've ever seen one of the self destruct discs has been in a truck stop. These have not been sold to geeks to rip. They are sold to convience those on the road without alternative diversions such as high speed internet and blockbuster. No returns on the road is the selling point. How they intend to sell the overpriced product in Staples is a mystery to me. They don't compete with the $5 bin at Wal*Mart.
Why risk your player? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
The industry is out of touch... (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you long haul truck, in a week, you may be over 800 miles from the rental store. The only place I have ever seen a Flexplay disc is at a truck stop. Staples is a new one... I wonder who their target demographic is.
Staples and those far from home doesn't make sense except for business travelers, then I would expect them in airports instead of Staples office supply stores.
Re:I don't understand all the eco-fuss... (Score:3, Interesting)
E.g. plastic cups can be more eco friendly compared to traditional ceramic cups due to the large amounts of energy needed to create the ceramics and the energy and chemicals needed to clean the cup. It all depends on the number of times the ceramic cup is reused.
Moreover, downloading films might not even be more enviromentally friendly than buying these things
Thing is, the most eco friendly option is not always what people would guess
Too late, Netflix has already cleaned their clock. (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:They Are Recyclable (Score:3, Interesting)
Along the same lines, there are plastics that are manufactured from otherwise-unused byproducts of petroleum production, so often you have to create more pollution to recycle than you would to just make new ones. Maybe burying them would be a better option? At least you are then taking at least some carbon out of the loop.
I think someone has put forward the case that it is more environmentally sound to bury paper in the ground and plant more trees to make paper from than it is to recycle paper into new paper products. Again, that way you are effectively removing CO2 from the air and putting it underground.
Re:Heh, pirates ahoy! (Score:4, Interesting)
What? If it's good for our politicians who are working for the country, it's good for me who isn't.
Re:Heh, pirates ahoy! (Score:2, Interesting)
The same reason I pay $20/mo to rent 4-6 movies (Score:3, Interesting)
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.)
Re:Forbidden by law (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cheap Hack Workaround (Score:5, Interesting)
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*.
Re:DIVX vs DivX (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course if capitalization mattered when registering domains, it opens up a lot of possibilities:
Re:Heh, pirates ahoy! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not too good at math, so help me out: How many times does this have to happen before your home theater (including original purchase, time/money for installation and periodic setup, wear and tear, preventative maintenance, taxes, loss of use of part of your house, and popcorn) begins to pay for itself?
I know this is the popular rhetoric around these parts but I still don't comprehend it. Here we have a self proclaimed geek forum; a hangout for people who routinely spend weeks' and months' pay cheques on new computer and other electronic equipment but who can't see the beauty of a home theatre setup?
A few points to clarify why I wanted a home theatre for myself;
There are definitely some cost savings benefits to the home theatre, but that's not the only benefit.
As to the costs associated; I choose what to buy (component wise) and when to buy it. Usually I'll find a piece or set of equipment I want then wait for a sale. I also make what I believe to be rational purchases; for example, I want a PlayStation 3 which will double as a high definition Blu Ray player, it'll play regular DVDs as well as take over as the home network media centre.
If done correctly you don't have to pay an arm and a leg to get a very good theatre setup and with 0% finance options at the big box stores you can leave your money in the bank earning interest while you pay small instalments. When you factor the cost of an evening's entertainment even for as few as t