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Author Topic: Coming Soon to a PC near you Scott Hicks Film Handler Posts: 24 From: Portland, Oregon, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 11-21-2006 08:08 PM                        Morgan Freeman's "10 Items or Less" opens in theatres on December 15, and then two weeks later becomes available for download on cstar.com. This is just the first of many films from this new studio to follow an internet release pattern. Either this is the perfect solution for film piracy (why download a poor quality pirated copy, when you can get a good one for a reasonable price), or it's just another avenue to entice theatre goers to stay home. In any case, it could ultimately be the end of video stores. Read all about it: Really long link Watch out for popups. [ 11-21-2006, 11:10 PM: Message edited by: Adam Martin ]  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 11-24-2006 03:04 AM                        Retail sale of video content online was always going to happen when the Internet grew to the point of supporting the bandwidth to allow it to happen. This was the case with audio, and it's now starting to happen with video. In fact, I can see the studios and big corporate rights owners wanting online, streamed delivery wrapped up in all sorts of DRM technology to eventually replace offline media sales altogether. It's potentially a lot easier for them to keep control over their IP assets in this scenario. HD consumer video is going to keep the online wolf from the door for a while - the net is a very long way from being able to support hi def streaming in real time to consumers. But once we've bought a physical media and placed it on our shelves, the vendor has effectively lost control of it. We can play it as many times as we like, in as many places as we like, and also do illegal things with it (e.g. copy it or play it to a paying audience) which the rights owner is, in most cases, powerless to stop. But replace that with a model in which, instead of paying £6.99 for a DVD - which places the content under your control - you pay 50p every time you want to watch that film; say, for a one-week licence to watch it in streamed form, and are never able to save the content offline...  |  IP: Logged Joel N. Weber II Expert Film Handler Posts: 115 From: Somerville, MA, USA Registered: Dec 2005 posted 11-24-2006 04:03 PM                     DVDs have DRM technology too. I'm not sure I see the difference between DRM effectiveness on streaming media vs physical media. One also has to wonder if we'll see furthur increases in display resolution by the time the Internet gets fast enough for reliable real time delivery of 1080p video. Dell is selling their 30", 2560 x 1600 pixel monitor for about $1500 for now; if they manage to follow Moore's Law and make the price drop in half every 18 months, it should be under $400 three years from now.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 11-25-2006 08:14 AM                        quote: Joel N. Weber II DVDs have DRM technology too. I'm not sure I see the difference between DRM effectiveness on streaming media vs physical media. With an offline medium, all the DVD can effectively do is to prevent (or, let's be realistic, make it difficult to) copying the data. You can also attempt to crack DRM on an offline carrier without any live connection to the Internet, where the rights owner won't know a thing about it. If the content is streamed in real time in a way which is not saved permanently at the receiving end, that's impossible. A physical medium can also be physically transported and played anyhwhere: whereas online 'one viewing only' sales or limited length licences could potentially limit viewing to one location.  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 11-25-2006 12:09 PM                     quote: Leo Enticknap If the content is streamed in real time in a way which is not saved permanently at the receiving end, that's impossible. If a PC is receiving a data stream then it's never going to be that difficult to find a way of capturing it to a hard disk. Real Player doesn't allow you to save a stream to a file, I was told by somebody who worked for them that this was the reason that Real Audio was the format used by the BBC, but I don't know if this is true. However, it's not difficult to find software that can save a Real Audio stream. Even if you don't have such software you can always take analogue signals from the sound card, connect them to another PC, or a tape recorder, and record them.  |  IP: Logged

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