online movie "rental" downloads

[altivec 2003]

I read yesterday in the Circuits section of the New York Times that a new type of movie rental service was starting. It is supposed to work like this: You "rent a movie" by clicking on some link and downloading a move to your computer. The movies are between 500 and 800 megabytes or something, and they would stay on your computer for about 3 days. After that, they would delet themselves from your harddrive. I was wondering how this was possible, and it sounds like it is pretty prone to piracy. I cant imagine that some people will soon find a way to burn a dvd from the downloaded movie file. Please try and explain this to me . Thanks

 

[mim]

Wasn't divx supposed to work along these lines?

 

[altivec 2003]

I really haven't heard much about divx. I have seen a lot of *not quite legal* movie servers haveing divx files.... but this seems different. Maybe it is some wierd format that they made up just for this purpose and you might have to use thier software to play the movie. If they used divx people could easily burn dvds and keep the movie. strange........

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by altivec 2003
I really haven't heard much about divx. I have seen a lot of *not quite legal* movie servers haveing divx files.... but this seems different. Maybe it is some wierd format that they made up just for this purpose and you might have to use thier software to play the movie. If they used divx people could easily burn dvds and keep the movie. strange........

Not divx the codec, DivX the movie format. It came out to challenge DVD back when DVD was brand new and it failed hardcore. Basically you "bought" the DivX DVD movies but you only had a select number of times you could watch before it turned into a pay-per-view device. The DivX player had to be plugged into a phone jack.

Needless to say no one bought it.


Lethal

 

[rfgecko33]

I think this is probably where movie rental is heading. More and more companies are starting to sell these "Multimedia" edition computers that can plug right into the living room TV, and I am betting that the technology to play downloaded movies has been considered for both the PS2 and XBox2.

With more and more people getting broadband it is becoming feasable for people to actually download entire movies. If you have watched what is being done with DivX (the codec) or even the new WMV stuff, the quality is pretty much there. It's not quite DVD, but certainly as good or better than a VHS copy.

I imagine that piracy is a concern, but let's be honest. A whole lot of those DivX encoded DVD rips floating around on IRC, Kazaa, etc. are coming from people renting DVD's at the local Hollybuster.

And you just can't beat the convenience.

Edit: Just a random thought that occurred after I hit the post button. What do you think about the possibility of I-Tunes for PS3 to give that customer base, which will be huge, access to the Apple Music Store?

 

[mim]

Originally posted by rfgecko33
Edit: Just a random thought that occurred after I hit the post button. What do you think about the possibility of I-Tunes for PS3 to give that customer base, which will be huge, access to the Apple Music Store?

We know that Stevey and Sony have been upto something. This seems like a really good explaination.

I was hoping for some kind of good integration between mac & ps3 - I don't really know how that might work...maybe it's a way of getting all those strategy type games onto the console, and giving some good reason for ps3 owners to buy a mac - complimentary digital hub type thing....

I don't know - just dreaming.

a