Self-Destructing DVDs: Son of DIVX 488
Stavr0 wrote to us with a return of an idea that already had its time. Yes, despite death of DIVX, a company is working on creating DVD discs that will work with existing DVD players but will stop working after a certain amount of time. The process is at least an interesting one: the company has created a special coating that is activated when hit by the DVD laser. From that moment of contact, the disc begins degrading, a process which can anywhere from minutes to three days.
Re:cost a daunting factor (Score:2)
Right now it is... but the fact DVD-RAM's are only... let's emphasize ONLY ... $500 or so, probably indicates this won't be cost ineffective for long.
Remember how expensive CDR's used to be? Look how cheap they are now, and how much they've dropped in price.
Now, if the same percentage reduction came about for DVD-RAM's, it'd be cheaper to burn DVD's than CD's. (Do you "burn" DVD's? If they're not ROM's, it must not be permanent... whatever. ;)
And for the most part I didn't mean this for a "home grown piracy job," just people who know they're getting this sort of "self-destructing" media will merely make a copy the first time and throw out the one they bought.
Interesting legal issue there, too... are they agreeing to only own a working copy for X number of days? Or is making a permanent copy legal? Hmm.... IANAL, so I can't comment. ;)
Re:Great for the environment (Score:2)
Consumers being inconvienienced, that's a story.
Planned environmental pollution, not a story.
Trusting the amount of coating? (Score:2)
Re:yeah, they're all out to get ya! (Score:2)
I may be paranoid or not have much faith in big companies to keep my best interests at heart but if nobody raises the point, nobody will think about it until consumers start getting ripped off. It's happened before and it'll happen again.
And nobody moderated me up, I have the +1 added automatically because others have thought I made more than a few good points in my long posting life on Slashdot.
Re:Hey it's me again (Score:2)
If it's so easy to get a +1, why are you posting anonymously? Why not get an account and rock our world?
Actually, that's a damned good idea (Score:2)
Of course, why the hell would you want your advertising circular to _expire?_ You'd want it to be permanent. You wouldn't pay an extra 2 cents for the tech to make your DVD quit working. That's crazy. Now for the evil part- brace yourself ;)
If you can sell disposable DVDs at a profit of a penny for $3.00, and the degradation tech costs a penny and all of shipping and distribution costs a penny and the entire content costs a penny, then making your advertisement DVD as a disposable will cost you $2.96 for the media. On the other hand, it costs less to make the permanent sort of DVDs that are sold for $20 and up...
Isn't it interesting that this proposal reveals the true profit margins for the industry? The media clearly costs well under $3. So why are unit costs higher than VHS tapes, for which the media and duplication costs are drastically, drastically higher? Something stinks here.
I just hope we (as in, the public) end up eventually being able to do things like make little films or advertisements using this type of media, and being able to distribute them. It concerns me that these people on the one hand are successfully maintaining a trust holding the cost of DVD media at many times its free-market value (it should be _less_ than VHS, with some allowances made for additional media, but duplication and media costs are orders of magnitude lower than VHS), and on the other hand are also wanting to keep access to this technology out of our hands so only they can produce the media. That's just wrong, wrong, wrong...
What about the environment? (Score:2)
Point taken, but... (Score:2)
Re:Are We There Already? (Score:2)
Meanwhile, I'm going to try and get references for my colleague's CD-R life expectancy theory. Watch this space.
Regards, Ralph.
Re:Throw away disc's? (Score:2)
It's like the old argument against electronic cars being true "zero emissions" vehicles - even if the car itself produces no waste, you don't help the environment if you power it from a plant which burns coal to generate power.
Eco-nightmare (Score:2)
More devices, less CPU overhead... (Score:2)
Ahh, you've paid far, far to much money.
I can't really argue against that -- I clearly paid a heavy premium for an arguably-marginal benefit -- but then I also can hardly complain about the price I paid: $30/GB still seems pretty cheap, when you can almost remember it being that much per MB, even if I could have had it four times cheaper. I guess the value you put on things like that is pretty subjective. For one thing, SCSI has less CPU overhead. Also, I now have a floppy, CD, Zip, and three hard drives in that system -- they can't all be IDE. Plus, I figured that the disk is by far the biggest bottleneck (other than the internet connection) in the system, so why not max it out? It seemed like the right decision at the time, given my priorities, even if it wasn't the best price/performance tradeoff. The thing is, the hard drive bottleneck keeps getting worse, because they keep getting bigger and cheaper, but not much faster.
Anyway, it looks like hard disk storage for a DVD movie would currently be about $30, which is not quite practical, when the movie itself is about $25, but it's even closer than I'd realized: less than one doubling away, rather than the two or three that I'd estimated. Better yet.
David Gould
"licensed"? (Score:2)
Who says I'm "only licensed to view it for one day"? Sure, that would have been their intent, but if I bought the physical disk, rather than renting it, what license is there? Even if they put a shrinkwrap license on it, like with software, would it be valid? The part about not reproducing and redistributing it would, I guess, but it seems that the exception for archival copying would still apply. If I own a copy of a work, I'm entitled to have a backup.
They may have sold it to me at a reduced price on the premise that I would only be able to watch it once, but that's their problem; I don't see how I would be bound by that. Try this: what if, instead of ripping it and making a backup, I found a way to prevent the disk from self-destructing (put some kind of coating on it, a player with a special laser that didn't trigger it, or some such thing)? Would I be "stealing" then? Surely they'd like us to think so, and the "best justice money can buy" might agree with them. I realize it would be overly optimistic to think that this would actually work, but I don't see any moral problem in either case.
Oh yeah, you're right that the original form of Moore's Law (about transistor sizes) does not apply to disks, but they seem to be following roughly the same growth curve.
David Gould
The Difference: this is stupid, DIVX was evil (Score:2)
The difference is that this is just a misguided but mostly harmless copy-protection scheme, while DIVX was an evil, privacy-invading monster which only had the purpose of artificially separating users from the content they wished to purchase.
DIVX was far worse, bar none.
- -Josh Turiel
Re:The Difference: this is stupid, DIVX was evil (Score:2)
Although I do like the idea of defeating the scheme with a bottle of Turtle Wax and a good polishing cloth...
- -Josh Turiel
Re:...will they never learn? (Score:2)
Does anyone besides me wonder about the popularity of Mission: Impossible on this new medium? Oooh, I know. They should make an auto-degrading movie of William Gibson's auto-degrading prose poem Agrippa (that will probably be just as bad and sell just as poorly).
Re:Congratulations (Score:2)
This was one of the biggest gripes about DIVX; the studios figured a digital disc was a digital disc, and DIVX gave them a cash cow rather than a one-time sale, so many movies were never released on DVD until after DIVX died (like Di$ney stuff).
This would DEFINITELY get me to buy a recorder though. I bought DVD *because* the discs last forever. I got tired of buying the same tapes that I'd already bought because they'd gotten unviewable.
Re:This hasn't been thought through very well. (Score:2)
Don't be ridiculous. The media companies would take the issue to the courts, and the courts would support them because it's piracy plain and simple. If you have bought an auto-expiring DVD in the full knowledge that it is *meant* to be usable only for one day, and that a condition of the sale is that you *will not* make a copy, then you simply do not have a leg to stand on.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:This hasn't been thought through very well. (Score:2)
This is all just plain wishful thinking on your part.
All of you are forgetting that the sole purpose of the product would be to expire after a day's play. Even an idiot can surely see that if the user is allowed to make a backup copy then the product would not be sold in the first place. If an idiot can understand that then I believe the courts would too.
You're also forgetting that the law protecting you right to make copies is about "fair use" copies. This is not a "fair use" copy because it would allow you to keep a recording permanently when it was licensed for only one day's viewing. There can be no "fair use" justification for making a backup when the thing only has to last one day, for crying out loud!
With regard to contract law, IANAL and I'm not certain about the US in particular, but in the UK at any rate, when a sale is made there is an implied contract which does not require any signature. This is the basis for consumer rights so I imagine there is a similar provision in the US. What this means is that shrinkwrap licenses are legitimate - at least as long as the terms are displayed on the outside of the packaging.
So, as long as there is a prohibition against backups printed on the outside sleeve of these one-day DVDs, any laws about the right to make backups would be superseded.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:This hasn't been thought through very well. (Score:2)
LOL! I thought I'd never see that!
Pity you weren't working for the EFF. Looks like *their* lawyers were outnumbered (I'm trying not to jump to conclusions about their competence).
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:"licensed"? (Score:2)
BTW, In other circumstances I'd be on your side (say for example regarding the DeCSS issue). I'd be happiest if we didn't have to put up with stupid restrictions about stuff we've bought that we legally own.
I guess this argument is about whether it should be possible for a product to be made, whose sale can be covered by an auto-expiring license (or in more general terms, whose use can be covered by a contract which does not need to be signed by the purchaser).
There are two answers to that question:
(i) Yes, it's possible. In that case using the product (or a copy thereof) after licence expiry is a contravention of the terms under which it was sold, and is therefore illegal.
(ii) No, it isn't possible. In that case the whole business model is impossible and an auto-expiring product cannot survive in the market.
Out of these two possibilities I prefer the former because it allows a useful product to come to market. I'd benefit from these things because I'd no longer get fleeced by the video rental store every time I couldn't return my rented movie to the shop in time to avoid a fine.
If you choose the latter however, then nobody benefits. If the product can't exist then the home "pirates" can't eve get hold of it let alone copy it.
The answer that the courts come up with is bound to be influenced by the fact that software has been "licenced" rather than properly "sold" for quite some time now, and there is a body of law to suport the practise. So I don't hold out much hope for your interpretation. I still think it's wishful thinking.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
This hasn't been thought through very well. (Score:2)
Remember that you STILL have the right to make backup copies of all software you own. The fact that the media is auto-degrading doesn't deprive you of this right.
If this came to pass, a smart person would amass all the titles of the DVDs they wanted at bargain prices, put them in cold storage, and wait until all the factories that are currently churning out 99 cent CDRs convert over to churning out 99 cent DVD-Rs. Then they'd start opening the discs, make PERFECTLY LEGAL backup copies, and keep the degraded master discs as proof of purchase.
This pay per view scheme hasn't been thought through very well.
- John
Re:Bad idea (Score:2)
Re:Price of media (Score:2)
Re:The "coating" isn't the data layer (Score:2)
So what happens if the phone rings or you have to take a crap while watching a "this disc will self-destruct in ten minutes" DVD? And what kind of shelf life does the coating have? Will DVDs need a "freshness date" on them?
Please. No. The discs will be sold in vacuum-sealed containers, and only when opened does the degradation begin. The (patented) process can be formulated to give you a lifespan of anything from a few minutes to a couple of weeks. Two days is currently considered a likely time.
Besides, do people really want throwaway DVDs? Sure it can be a pain to return rentals, but you
eventually have to go back to get more rentals anyhow. One big problem with DIVX was that you had to go all the way to Circus City, of which there might be one or two in any given city, rather than a local video rental place, of which there would likely be one within two miles of where you live.
The idea here would be to sell them in the drugstores and department stores and such. Since these will play on regular DVD players, they may not run into the resistance that the original DIVX did. In fact, I think they have a pretty good chance of succeeding.
One question that nobody's answered (in my hearing/reading/viewing) is whether the things are recyclable, 'cause that's a whole lot of nasty environmentally bad stuff to be adding to landfills if it succeeds and isn't recyclable.
--Parity
Re:The "coating" isn't the data layer (Score:2)
Besides, you could put a vaccum-sealed wrapper inside the cardboard sleeve. I'm thinking here of something like a packet of peanuts or potatochips.
Alternatively... Pringles come in a cardboard tube, and are vacuum sealed.
--Parity
Date Correction (Score:2)
--Parity
Re:The "coating" isn't the data layer (Score:2)
--Parity
You're ruining it for everybody. (Score:2)
Personally, I'd always sided with the Movie Industry during this whole fiasco. After posting a bunch around here, it seemed to be made clear that the only reason that this technology was created was to enable playing DVD's under Linux and other OSes that weren't being supported.
What I'm getting at here is that if you rent a DVD, or purchase one that is specifically engineered for ONE TIME VIEWING, you're breaking the law, in that you have no right to do that. You have no right ro back up that data to watch it once (again), just as you have no legal right to sell your older versions of software after using them to upgrade to newer version.
The more people like you talk like that, the more I can see specifically why the industry wants to kill DeCSS, LiViD, whatever. And I sympathize.
Just because of comments like that, part of me hopes that the DVD industry succeeds in blocking the software decryption from being distributed, publishes their API's instead. Or creates royalty-free read only libraries. Or something like that.
Re:Bad idea (Score:2)
One of the great things about digitalness is that it doesn't degrade. Now we seem set on introducing a digital technology that degrades. No matter what the ethic behind it, I'd never buy a disposable movie for the simple fact that I'd have throw it out when I'm done. I probably rent one or two movies a week. So with just me, you can figure on 75 discs a year being thrown away. A thousand me's equals 75,000 discs a year.
Now imagine 1 million of me. That's 75 million discs a year being thrown out. And that's still a far cry from the total number of VCRs out there. What's the weight of a disc? 2 ounces? It may not sound like much, but 4600 tons of additional waste a year seems a bit much to me, just so we don't need to return videos and DVD's anymore.
How about we just WAIT for the bandwidth to arrive for video on demand?
Re:You're ruining it for everybody. (Score:2)
Or do you simply not believe in people and companies having rights to the property that they create?
Re:You're ruining it for everybody. (Score:2)
If you purchased a one-time viewable DVD for less than the price of a regular DVD, burn it to a non-degradable medium, and view it more than once, you've just broken the law.
If you want to watch a DVD multiple times, you legally need to get a real DVD, not a one time use DVD coupled with a duplicator.
And yes, there are legimate reasons why you'd want to archive a DVD you purchase. However, I can't think of a single legitamate reaso nthat you'd want to archive a one time use DVD. Enlighten me.
Sick the DVD consortium on 'em (Score:2)
This is a hell of a lot more pro-piracy than the Linux DVD player project. Whereas the DVD player project could tangentally have its worked exploited by pirates, this project actually encourages people to make copies.
---
Re:Those who do not learn from their history... (Score:2)
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
...will they never learn? (Score:2)
Besides the obvious, think of the ripoff potential...unethical video stores (online OR b&m) could sell these as real DVDs, although that wouldn't last very long. But stores could also sell partially used (returned early) timed DVDs, and blame the early failure of the movies on "technical glitches". Dumbness and abuse potential...ah, the beautiful results of invention and greed mixing.
</rant>
"If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
Conspiracy (Score:2)
It will not be any easier or cheaper for the companies to produce self destruction media, in fact they should be more expensive due to the fact that there are now research costs to recover. Yet, they want to sell these for less than current DVDs. How much is the mark up on DVDs?
This would not be so bad if there was competition but since the recording and movie industries have presented united fronts, there is no free market competition to bring down the prices. Isn't price fixing illegal?
I think there is a huge untapped market for cheap movies. I go to the video store and there are a lot of older movies I can't find. Same with old music. I think that it probably would be profitable to sell to this market in the traditional manner we look at profit and loss. but the limiting factor, the reason they want such a strangle hold on the market, is the eyeball factor. Each person has only so much time to be looking at movies, advertising and the web. I think that companies want us focused on the new stuff with the huge advertising and merchandizing tie-ins.
Maybe I don't want to buy into the hype. Maybe I want to spend my entertainment budget on new movies. Maybe I would rather spend my time and attention on movies of the 1940's. Yes, there is expense involved in producing a larger variety of offerings, but I think it should be possible and profitable,but they want to steer comsumers toward new stuff as much as possible. They don't want to lose eyeballs. Companies won't pay as much for product placement if there are fewer comsumers watching. DVD's that last forever are bad to this industry, because they let consumers view movies even after the hype has subsided.
Broadcast networks faced this situation. Once they had the monopoly. I have heard that streets were emptied when Milton Berle's show came on. No time shifting, if you wanted to see it, you had to see it then. Very sweet for networks and sponsors alike. Then came cable. Then came VCRs, etc. The recording industry and hollywood don't want the same thing to happen to them. They certainly don't want to provide their own conpetiton bu making it easy to consumers to timeshift viewing and keep old media forever.
The competition for eyeballs is fierce. Companies will do their best to focus as many eyeballs on what is the most profitable for them. Competiton should mean cheaper prices, but it has not fr the recording industry, and for the movie industry. Something is very wrong. This product is a symptom of a sick culture.
Re:You guys just don't get it! (Score:2)
When you get a Blockbuster account you sign a document that is an open-ended rental agreement for any media item within the store. It states that you will return the item within a specified time frame or you will be billed extra for it. If you refuse to return the item by a specific date after rental they will bill your credit card (which they have on file) for the damages.
When you rent an apartment or a house you sign a legally binding contract that states that you will vacate the premises by a certain date and that you will leave the location in as good a condition as you found it, accepting normal wear and tear. You also put down a deposit against damages.
The same holds true for a car lease.
I seriously doubt Wal*Mart will require you to sign a legally binding agreement in order to purchase goods in their store. The overhead just to process such paperwork would be greater than the profits realized on the rentals. That leaves a shrinkwrap-eque copyright/agreement on the VDvd case. Those, just like software shrinkwraps, would have to be proven in court before they could be considered 100% legally binding.
Batteries are a good analogy. In both cases you are buying goods which provide you with short term benefits (entertainment or electricity) and go bad after a period. The batteries are mine to do with as I please. The VDvd would be also.
Re:Congratulations (Score:2)
The specific clause that places making archival copies of software under "fair use" comes from the U.S. Software Act of 1980, which explicitly allows the making of archival copies. Nowhere else in copyright law is this right explicity allowed.
Of course, one could always argue that DVDs are computer software, since the information on them is stored in digital form and processed by a microprocessor, much in the same way a computer does...in fact a DVD player is really a computer....
Better than Divx (Score:2)
This could be a new form of copy protection for DVD-ROMs, as well. Install a program and the disc self-destructs... that's not so good.
______________________________________
um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
Info from SpectraVision on recycling. (Score:2)
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
Now this I don't understand. To my knowledge the metal center wouldn't allow for easy recycling.
On the other hand, most DVD players now allow for layering, with the first layer being on the metal disk, and the second layer being semi-transparent and actually in the plastic medium. This recyclable statement leads me to believe that they may well be doing away with the aluminum center alltogether and simply putting writing all the data to the plastic. This is all speculation, don't take my word for anything.
Re:Ha! they overlooked... & a waste reduction idea (Score:2)
Did they ever have a cents button? I don't even remember.
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
-Linus Torvalds
Re:Throw away disc's? (Score:2)
Even if you could reuse the disks (so The Matrix stays The Matrix until it's recycled) the logistics of collecting them with normal recycling would be a nightmare unless everybody took them back to the video store...
Re:Throw away disc's? (Score:2)
Also, I bet there's a lot more petroleum in the disk you're throwing away than the gas to burn to drive to the video store. Or you can walk or take a bike.
If they can be recycled and if the ARE recycled by the public, then the choice isn't so clear.
Can you have rentals that last forever? (Score:2)
I don't really like the idea of them myself - I think it would make it all too easy for movie companies to slip into the habit of making DVD's with no care at all with no special features and no letterbox versions. I wonder if they have figured out that was the OTHER reason why DIVX failed.
Re:Throw away disc's? (Score:2)
Or would you rather burn gasoline/alcohol to return the disc?
This attempt won't fly (Score:2)
1. It's legal to make copies of something you own for your own personal use (like mp3ing a CD you own).
2. Once you buy something, you're free to do pretty much as you please with it (Established when a foreign automaker bought a Ford and reverse-engineered much of it).
Therefore, it's perfectly all right for you to buy one of these disposable DVDs and copy it, because you are buying not renting it. If it were a rental situation, and you did not own it, the situation would be significantly different, because the DVD would not be yours to copy. However, the whole premise of this is that it does away with traditional rentals which you have to return. To conclude, it sounds like a very good idea - unless you're a studio trying to make a profit. Why buy a normal DVD when you can copy a "disposable" one?
Other major issues, already touched upon:
If it degrades when exposed to heat/light, wouldn't that mean that these things are inherently perishable? I seem to recall that one of the major advantages of digital technology was supposed to be its staying power...
And why, exactly do we need to throw everything away? Is it really that terrible to reuse things? Ever since environmentalism passed from the public eye, people seem to be rejoicing once more in expending non-renewable resources for silly things like saving a trip to the video store. Regardless of how you feel about the issue, the fact remains: we're running out of resources. As far as something this lame being worth contributing to our eventual exhaustion of resources and whatever repercussions that entails, I don't buy it.
So, yeah, basically, this won't fly, and will probably just engender more DeCSS-type lawsuits as the company scrambles to try to _make_ it work. Whatever.
---sig---
Re:One question... WHY? (Score:2)
...I'll be buying this for all my entertainment needs, nothing like pausing a movie only to come back and find the disc turned blue and unusable! Why use something an infinite number of times, when you could only use it once? I throw out toilet paper after I use it, why not storage media? Sign me up for 20 copies of Dumb and Dumber (comes free for every idiot who buys one), I can't wait.
Re:Well look on the bright side (Score:2)
Well, except that this doesn't bolster the rental industry at all -- it completely bypasses it. Blockbuster and Hollywood Video aren't going to want to sell the things:
Rental DVD
Self-destructing DVDs
I can see this making it to market, but it would be playing to a completely different audience than "conventional" DVDs. Kind of like those bins of grade-Z tapes and CDs you see at drug stores and gas stations. These aren't any threat to anyone.
I seem to remember several attempts to do this with VHS tapes back in the day. Some kind of gizmo that wouldn't let you rewind the tape more than X times comes to mind, as well as something that would slap a magnet against the tape after X plays. You can see how far those got!
(BTW, I'm a Netflix Marquee man myself.)
Re:Congratulations (Score:2)
(BTW, I HATE America's disposable society. At least this isn't that horrendous disposable cell phone idea.)
Re:The Difference: this is stupid, DIVX was evil (Score:2)
The data is still there, it's obscured by an opaque film -- which is coated on the outside of the disc. Just break out your trusty ol' Turtle Wax and buff it off!
---
Re:Great for the environment (Score:2)
Re:The "coating" isn't the data layer (Score:2)
Re:The Difference: this is stupid, DIVX was evil (Score:2)
Re:Eco-nightmare (Score:2)
or a door, even...
I suppose you could grind them up and make insulation out of them, but that seems almost practical 8^)
Re:The "coating" isn't the data layer (Score:2)
Ummm.. that's why I rent. It's $3 (for 5 days)[1], and if I return it the next day, I get a $1 off coupon... not to mention that, but you can usually find some promotion - I had a pack of 10 $.99 rental coupons. At least when you rent them, you have the full five days, without worry, and you don't have the enviornmental implications of all that plastic getting thrown away...
[1] - I've never seen these kind of prices at BuckBu$ter, but my local Hollwod Video is a little bit more friendly (and I don't think the local BB has DVD rentals yet... what good is large corporate muscle if you don't use it (for me) 8^) )
Re:The Difference: this is stupid, DIVX was evil (Score:2)
>I can see a few uses - mainly for sending large amounts of sensitive data
That's really a good use for these - think about it - send info to your consulate in Kreplachistan, and they can actually tell if the disc was read before (becausethey won't be able to...). And at the price that it costs to make them, you won't even need to fill them to get you "money's worth". A neat solution to problems (better than trying to figure out if your quantum transmission has been intercepted...).
One time pads - really one time now. That would be killer. Make two copies of degrading DVD - label it (or not), and then after you use it, it becomes far more difficult to recover the pad, and you can tell (like above) if someone intercepted it and tried to read it. Nice...
Re:Those who do not learn from their history... (Score:2)
Try netflix if you are lazy - just drop it back in your mailbox when you are done... and they send it to you, so you can never leave the comfort of your pajamas and still get your DVDs (assuming of course, that you can telecommute, and not have to leave the house anyway
Re:Intruguing... (Score:2)
If I wanted an AOL coaster after a day or two, I wouldn't pay $3/4 for one, I'd just check my mailbox again 8^)
Re:Eco-nightmare (Score:2)
Christmas Ornaments
String them together for Neat Banners
Homemade DVD disco ball
Re:yeah, they're all out to get ya! (Score:2)
Monitors generally implode, not explode (when they 'plode at all).
uProcs go under a lot of testing before they get sent out.
This coating could easily be activated by the testing - w/o teting you can't be sure, and with testing, you might get a coaster in the box (and who's going to believe you? "My DVDegrade doesn't work!" "Of course not - goodbye.")
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Re:Those who do not learn from their history... (Score:2)
OTOH - why should we care what you wan, either...
>How is droping this disc in the trash any diffrent from droping a netflix in the mail?
No garbage, for one thing... product gets reused. The concept of this for everyday consumer use just doesn't make sense... the only way it even seems acceptable is because of our society, which seems to think that everything from paper cups to people are disposable... so why not DVDs, too. I'm not telling you to go hug a tree, but just think of the things you throw away each day. If you even consider pitching stuff like this (or if you even *own* a DVD player), you are doing better than most, and should make an effort to improve yourself and your community. You don't have to donate money, you don't have to spend hours down at a shelter. Just help in whatever way you can. Wasting time and $$ on DVDegradables certainly doesn't help this, and your attitude isn't helping anyone [/flame]
Just my $.05
Re:Environmentally scary, but can we fix it? (Score:2)
to the company, what then? They pay you your $3
for being a good, environmentally friendly person, then
chuck the disk out due to the fact it is totally useless.
Alternatively, it might be possible to have a way of
repairing the disk -- but then the pirates simply
repair the disk. Or copy the disk before it destroys itself.
Or....
The problem is, it doesn't matter if the disk
physically drives itself back to the rental shop,
unless someone finds a way to allow the disks to
be played, without being copied. Which IMNSO is
not possible. If there are cheaply available
'rental' DVDs, along with reasonably cheap DVD-RW/DVD-RAM
drives and disks, someone *will* be able to intercept
the signal going to the TV, and copy it.
--
David Taylor
davidt-sd@xfiles.nildram.spam.co.uk
[To e-mail me: s/\.spam//]
Re:DIVX Redux (Score:2)
I would do this, if they were $2-$3, just for the convience of having the movies in my house already..
As long as this is kind of like a "trial version" of the DVD, and the non-crippled one is avalible if I want it, I would like the added choice...
However, if a movie I liked like the Matrix was only avalible as "crippleware" it would REALLY piss me off!
Re:Rental places hate this idea (Score:2)
That's also why some rental places close their drop-boxes during open hours.
Re:Good idea... (Score:2)
Presto, replayable DVD.
gomi
Those who do not learn from their history... (Score:2)
People want to collect movies. They don't want disposable disks that self destruct. They don't want to have to keep paying for movies after they've paid for them once. This is why so many people have large collections of VHS tapes.
This might have worked a year ago,
In the end, I have just one question: Why go through all of this for something so thoroughly trivial? Video stores work. Blockbuster is a perfectly valid rental revenue channel for DVDs. Even if you add the convenience of throwaway DVDs, its just not worth the added costs.
Re:Throw away disc's? (Score:2)
Who's writing this stuff that shut in who will only order stuff from the net? I'm half expecting, "Its bad for your engine to stop it and start it one extra time at a videostore, might as well throw them disks away."
Re:One question... WHY? (Score:2)
Do me a fav.. Next time you see an obvoius, unfounded MS bash, please flame on! You are right in noticing there is too much of it going around.
Re:Styrofoam is Good! (Score:2)
Yes, once it is created, Styrofoam is inert and does little damage in and of itself. However, the process to create the styrofoam, including the oil drilling and refineries have plenty of well documented negative environmental impact on people and animals.
When styrofoam is incinerated, a practice that is becoming more prevalent as landfills fill up (with styrofoam) and close, it is also plenty toxic. I'd love to see you melt that styrofoam into a liquid and drink it instead. Or burn a few hundred pounds of it in a closed, unventilated room. Then I'll be convinced.
Then there's the aformentioned landfills. How many habitats do we need to destroy to have giant holes in the ground full of inert petroleum products?
You imply that the "green spin doctors" will have trouble with dumping trash in the ocean and have no trouble with radioactive waste in Yucca Mountain. You should actually talk to one of those "green spin doctors" once in a while. You'll find none of them advocating burying U238 in that mountain.
Re:Congratulations (Score:2)
put it in the microwave at high power for 3-5 seconds. you get to watch a wonderful little lightning show. (don't leave it in there longer than that or you'll break the magnetron.)
then take it out (caution: contents may be hot) and enjoy your new coaster. you can easily distinguish it from good discs by the fact that the metal layer is all cracked and shattered-looking.
great... more garbage (Score:2)
Plastic is, environmentally speaking, one of the most harmful substances we have ever created.
One example of the impact of plastic manufacturing is this: chemicals used in the production of plastics emulate sex hormones and cause infertility and birth defects in amphibians. This is one of the reasons that amphibians are disappearing around the globe.
I wouldn't like to see this idea go mainstream... we throw out too much stuff already. Now they want to manufacture DVDs that are specifically designed to be thrown away? Definitely not cool.
Re:The "coating" isn't the data layer (Score:2)
Of course, I just use kozmo.com to deliver movies to my door and pick them up when I'm done. I don't have to go anywhere!
-Jeff
Re:The "coating" isn't the data layer (Score:2)
Sounds like they want to encourage piracy (Score:2)
Hmm. Methinks the greed has blinded them.
I like this (Score:2)
I think a lot of people are going to have a knee-jerk reaction that they don't like it simply because of the reference to DIVX. However, I think this is a great idea.
If I could get a disk for $2.50 (or the average rental price), and not have to return it, this is a big win. I hate returning video tapes.
Note that this is not meant to be a replacement for the ability to buy permanent DVDs, which was the big problem with DIVX.
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Re:Are We There Already? (Score:2)
All the major CD-R manufacturers claim expected CD-R lives of at least 50 years, although (being manufacturers standing to profit from longevity) their results may be dubious.
The Special Interest Group for CD Applications and Technology [sigcat.org] has performed a study [sigcat.org]; after artificial aging, 3 (TDK, Avery-labeled TDK, and Taiyo Yuden) out of 8 CD-R manufacturers' discs could not be read. There are some limitations to this study, though. There were not enough discs to subject them to the full "Life Expectancy of Compact Discs (CD-ROM) -- Method for Estimating, Based on Effects of Temperature and Relative Humidity" (ANSI/NAPM IT9.21-1996), so there is not estimate of how long these discs are expected to last (which almost makes the aging section of the study useless). The aging conditions were 80C, 85% relative humidity, 750 hour period, ramping rate of half that of ANSI IT9.21 recommendations, and equilibration time of twice that of ANSI IT9.21 recommendations. There are some other links at http://www.cd-info .com/CDIC/Technology/CD-R/Media/Longevity.html [cd-info.com] that you may want to take a look at.
In my own personal experience, though, I have made about 40 (TDK) CD-Rs that receive heavy use that are about a year old, with no reported problems. Taking life expectancy to mean the average life span of a CD-R...
"Proof" by reduction to an absurdity that the life expectancy of a TDK CD-R is greater than 10 years.
If the life expectancy of a CD-R were less than 10 years, then (As x goes from 0 to (infinity), Integral(2^(-x/h))dx = 10, so h/ln(2) = 10) the half-life of a CD-R would be less than 10 * ln(2), or 6.9 years. Then, the probability of decay after t years would be less than than 2^(-t/6.9). So, the probability of a CD-R surviving one year is less than 2^(-1/6.9), or 0.90. Hence, the probability of 40 CD-Rs all surviving a full year is less than 0.90^40, or 0.018. This is approximately (within 1.1%) the probability of drawing the Ace of Spades from a deck of cards with jokers: possible, but unlikely. Since all 40 CD-Rs did survive a full year, it is much more probable that the original assumption was false (or my math is wrong :-); i.e., it is much more probable that the life expectancy of a TDK CD-R is greater than 10 years.
Now back to studying for my English midterm... :-)
Daniel J. Peng [mailto]
Re:It will encourage piracy.... (Score:2)
Re:It will encourage piracy.... (Score:2)
This will encourage piracy....Think about it. Buy a cheap self-destructing DVD, DE-CSS it and its yours forever.
Right, except that it isn't piracy. Since you bought the DVD, barring a signed agreement to the contrary, you have a fair use right to "make a backup copy, solely for archival purposes in the event of the loss or destruction of the original."
Costs to rental stores (Score:2)
I can see a couple reasons rental stores won't like this...
Taken together, these would seem to undermine the typical rental store's way of doing business. Your favorite rental store will no longer be a repository of movies that can be shared and enjoyed for years to come, but a clearing house for disposable wastes of time. Oi.
Only through hard work and perseverence can one truly suffer.
Better Recipe (OT) (Score:2)
When you don't need the key anymore, place the DVDs onto a hard surface and use 1 hammer to mix. Cook in a 1000 watt microwave for one minute. (1:30 for low wattage ovens)
This will stop most spooks. Now, the NSA might have uncooking technology, but of course they're on our side.
Great for the environment (Score:3)
Styrofoam is Good! (Score:3)
It's like the *best* place to dump toxic and radioactive waste being in an oceanic subduction zone. It's the best answer but will never happen for publicity reasons. "You want to pollute the oceans!" The green spin doctors will have a field day with this. while burying U238 at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where it can eventually get into the water suply.
Re:Price of media (Score:3)
I think you're getting a bit carried away. There is no way that the courts would consider making a copy of one of these things "fair use". The very idea is ludicrous. Why on earth would you need an archive or backup copy when you're only licensed to view it for one day anyway?
Oh, BTW, Moore's Law was only formulated for integrated semiconductor devices, not magnetic media. Though I take your point about the similar price/performance evolution curve.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
One question... WHY? (Score:3)
How is this new technology going to be different? Oh, that's right, you *can't* pay for extra time, the disc itself degrades under laser exposure. All the drawbacks of DivX with less long-term potential for the customer. In the end, you're still stuck with a coaster (or microwave experiment... kids, don't try this at home!).
Am I way off the mark here? Which was the bigger drawback of DivX? Heaps of coasters or lack of universal compatability? If it was the heaps of coasters, this technology will fail the same as DivX.
On the other hand, this technique could surely be useful elsewhere... I'm just not immediately sure where.
Eric
Re:Great for the environment (Score:3)
Does anyone else remember that sandwich? It came in this giant foot long ozone destroying syrofoam container with the only job of keeping the "hot side hot and cold side cold" for the 60 seconds before you got to magically combine them. Who says we were wasteful in the 80s?
-B
Yeah....it's offtopic...do your worst.
Re:One question... WHY? (Score:3)
Re:What's this useful for? (Score:3)
You need something like an acid which REALLY melts down the data-storage layer of the disk...
Re:Very cool idea! (Score:3)
As far as I'm concerned, the idea of thousands upon thousands of dvd's being tossed into our already overflowing landfills is disturbing as hell. Rather than spend money on technology like this, we should focus on getting high bandwidth connections to the home. Want to rent a movie? Download it. That way there's nothing to return or throw out.
postage paid recycling (Score:4)
Your Working Boy,
A correction here: (Score:4)
http://www.projo.com/cgi-bin/frame_it.cgi?URL=/
Also, all this talk about pirating by copying it is really annoying. The disks will most likely NOT have all the goodies that are on a full dvd, and will probably be pan and scan only to boot. Who want's a copy of that? Certainly not me. Might as well just wait and get a previously veiwed vhs copy for all that's worth to you. I will pay the $15 - $20 it costs to OWN a dvd I want with all the enhanced features intact. I'm not rich, but I'm sure not that cheap, especially considering the cost of a dvd ram drive + the cost of media.
The one thing they need to iron out is some type of recycling effort once this goes into production, where you take your stack of watched disks back whenever you want, and they give you 10 or 25 cents each and send them in to be recycled into whatever they can to keep them out of landfills.
Environmental pollution (Score:4)
With self-destructive media, that second trip to the vidshop is totally unnecessary. Only ninety percent of rented movies are actually watched. About ten to fifteen percent are kept one or more days late because they haven't been watched yet. And less than twenty percent of the time people go to the video store to return a rented movie do they rent something while they're there. Imagine never having to pay a late fee again, or having to return an unwatched movie. Imagine not having to waste twenty minutes and a third of a gallon of gasoline returning what could be thrown away more cheaply and more efficiently. Oh, and if you've got a two-evening rental and couple of five-evening rentals from Blockbuster, you could be saving two trips to the store.
The day will come when you can just download the movie, thereby eliminating the video store and all its related pollution altogether. Doubtless when that happens, illegal-vid sites will exist in the numbers illegal-mp3 sites do today. Until that time, I'll remain fairly happy not to have to fight traffic just so I can give something back.
And here is the absolute, hail-Eris best part: The video store will never, ever be out of what you're going there to rent.
Cheers
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Re:What's this useful for? (Score:4)
Throw away disc's? (Score:4)
Are We There Already? (Score:5)
So what is the half-life of a DVD anyhow? With its higher data density than CD plus the manufacturers corner cutting I wouldn't be surprised if it's only about 5 years at best. Just in time for them to sell you your whole movie collection all over again in whatever the new technology of the moment is.
(The MTBF for the players are only about 2 years anyhow.)
Might be wise to take the Hemos approach and occasionally have your house burn down.
(Anyone got any real figures on DVD life expectancy? Seriously.)
Regards, Ralph.
Price of media (Score:5)
There's no way DVD-R media's going to come down in price for those reasons.
Put it this way: right now, hard drive space is less that $30/GB. That's based on an 18 GB Ultra-2 Wide SCSI drive I bought a few months ago for about $600. It's probably less now, not to mention how much less it would be for bigger, slower IDE drives. I haven't been paying close attention to such things, but I imagine it might be half of that. Hence, storing a 4 GB DVD movie on my hard drive would cost me about $120 worth of disk space on the U2W, or maybe $60 if I bought a cheap IDE drive. If Moore's Law stays with us for another five years, we'll see a little over three more doublings, bringing that down to $6-12 per movie, which is less than buying the movie normally, even if the disposable disk costs ~$5. So, even if removable media prices fail to keep up, ordinary disk space will become cheap enough to make "backing up" of single-use DVDs practical within five years, which is soon enough to matter. If I understand this right, the idea would be for these to replace rental DVDs, so the price would have to be in the same range (though no doubt they'll try to use this as an excuse to jack up the rental prices by another buck or two "in order to serve you better".)
Of course, I love the idea of being able to store my movie collection on a hard drive for the same reason that I like MP3s: not for making bootleg copies (remember, don't call it "piracy" [fsf.org]), but for the convenience of having everything in a jukebox-like system, instantly available, without needing to flip disks around, plus track memory, playlist management, etc.
There's a certain almost poetic beauty to the way this idea juxtaposes with the "archival backup" provision of "fair use", isn't there? When I rent an ordinary disk, I clearly don't own it -- I just have possession of it for the period of the rental and I'm entitled to view it, but that's all. However, if I buy a self-destructing disk, then I do own the physical medium. They may be willing to sell it to me for a rental price on the theory that it will self-destruct, but barring some really fancy legal footwork on their part, I don't see how they could justify denying that I am entitled to use it according to "fair use", including the right to "make a backup copy, solely for archival purposes in the event of [must...keep...straight...face] the loss or destruction of the original".
Of course, what they should really do is just grow up and realize that they can't absolutely prevent bootlegging, and that they don't really need to do so, since it won't stop people from buying from them anyway, rather than continue to be such greedy bastards with their increasingly ridiculous attempts to control everything, which only serve to impede other desirable, and perfectly legitimate, uses (see above), but that's been said before.
David Gould
I can just see the bad jokes... (Score:5)
"The Star Wars movies have been degrading ever since the first ones were released on DVD."
"Rental porn on DVDs pulled from shelves in favor of new, more degrading materials."
Congratulations (Score:5)
It makes you wonder what will happen when DVD writers finally become commonplace: under fair use doctrine, it's ok to duplicate your media to guard against unintended distruction (ie backups). Just copy the self-destructing DVD to a normal DVD disc, and you're all set.
It will encourage piracy.... (Score:5)
Seems your buddy was wrong (Score:5)
On pioneer's site [upgradesolutions.com] they have DVD-R's for sale and describe them as having 100 year life expectancy.
The "coating" isn't the data layer (Score:5)
Then someone will come out with a "DVD Cleaning Liquid" which removes the ugly... uh... stain. Yeah, that's it, it's just stained. Yeah, I accidentally poured hot grits on my DVD. That's it, that's the ticket.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that optical discs have been degraded with a coating, just the first time for a "time-delay" coating. The original DiscoVision laserdiscs often used a "scrap" side for any title that used an odd number of sides. (Laserdisc is two layers bonded together, just like DVD.) These extra sides were coated with hairspray-like substance, which can be removed with isopropyl alcohol.
So what happens if the phone rings or you have to take a crap while watching a "this disc will self-destruct in ten minutes" DVD? And what kind of shelf life does the coating have? Will DVDs need a "freshness date" on them?
Besides, do people really want throwaway DVDs? Sure it can be a pain to return rentals, but you eventually have to go back to get more rentals anyhow. One big problem with DIVX was that you had to go all the way to Circus City, of which there might be one or two in any given city, rather than a local video rental place, of which there would likely be one within two miles of where you live.
Go outside and get some fresh air, already! The big room with the blue and/or gray and/or black ceiling won't hurt you.