A New York-based company has begun touting disposable DVDs that could radically change the way consumers acquire movies for domestic viewing.

If Flexplay has its way, rental and retail DVDs will be offered on a new type of disc the company plans to launch next month. The disc, dubbed EZ-D, is built of special plastics that become opaque when exposed to the air. Sold in air-tight packages, consumers have 48 hours to watch the movie before the DVD becomes a coaster.

The plastic in question is based Lexan, the Economist reports, a polycarbonate that was discovered in 1953 by General Electric. GE partnered with Flexplay in the development of EZ-D. Lexan is widely used in the plastics industry. What GE and Flexplay have done is modify the material slightly. They won't say how, but the effect is a plastic reacts with oxygen and changes colour.

The 48-hour time is arbitrary - just adjust the manufacturing process and you can extend or shorten the period.

But the effect is the same: content companies are able to offer DVDs with a limited lifespan.

Flexplay's focus is the video rental market, which it reckons will love product that doesn't need to be returned to the store. Rental inventories can be managed without having to factor in the need for discs to be returned, which also means they can afford to offer customers much longer rental periods. Staff can spend more time taking customers money than processing returned discs and putting tatty cases back on shelves.

Customers, it argues, will like it to. With EZ-D, you never need pay a late-return fine ever again. Until the customer opens the pack, the disc can be kept and watched whenever preferred. Longer decay periods permit customers more time to give movies multiple viewings.

Rental companies may disagree. EZ-D potentially changes the economics of retail too. If a disc is being sold for a single viewing, say, the movie industry may choose to offer films for a few dollars or pounds to encourage impulse buys. That breaks down the wall between the renter and the retailer, since both companies are now doing the same thing: offering cheap, single-view movies.

Flexplay sees low-cost DVDs being sold through kiosks, newsagents even pizza delivery companies.

The same applies to music. If the music industry wants a low-cost way of allowing punters to try music without having to download it, EZ-D provides a way to do so. More worry is role in 'educating' consumers that they don't need to 'own' music - they just buy it cheap every time they feel like a listen. Collectors and audiophiles might not approve, but we'd reckon the majority of album buyers are less concerned about storing huge collections of CDs.

Flexplay's first trials are firmly in the movie arena, however. It is partnering with Buena Vista to offer EZ-D versions of The Recruit, The Hot Chick, Rabbit Proof Fence, 25th Hour, Heaven, Equilibrium, Frida and Signs in August. ®


Link

Here's a previous 4-page thread about it....

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=292755

The real question is will this mean that at a cheaper price you can buy the disposable dvd and then just burn the material on it.. in effect, creating more pirating since you are feeding the masses the same material for cheaper on the idea that the person wont be able to have the material for long.. only to find out the persons are just copying the film from the dispoasble dvd to another format.

Seems like it's benefits really don't add up to much more then what is going on right now. Blockbuster wouldn't like it much since late fee's are an extra incentive that they have to feed the copany.

They ain't getting my DVD collection I paid for it for life not 48 hours. Bologna with their Mission Impossible smoke in your face discs, I trade and I buy for life.



I have watched THEM made in 1954 over 250 times, What would that cost be if I had to buy these self destruct DVD.


Someone call the Environment Protection Agency quick, it takes plastic 50 years to decompose in the dumps.

I offer a different opinion on this, Blockbuster would of course be interested, because it would give them another option for people not to consider Netflix, plus it would allow more copies of the New movies to be instock, and allow them to stop with the pre-viewed crap.

In reguards to copying, what would be the difference between what is out now and these discs? They can still be rented and copied as they are.

I would not rule this out just yet, it has potential, and think about the Domino's promo tie in with something like this, get a movie for a buck with a large pizza.

It really doesn't allow more copies of a certain film to be around. Imagen how many copies you would have to go through in a week? I worked at blockbuster before and trust me, they wouldn't have the inventory space to place all those copies. You can't have 100+ copies of every film. Hell, we bearly had 5 copies of some films. So though it might be cheaper to buy, they really don't want to have a lot of copies sitting on the shelf like that. Also, the after market (PVT) chance goes away if you already got rid of the video. After some rental time they just sell the copies away for extra profit. this would require stores to have to much to handle.

also about the copying.. If you told me that a certain item was going to be void or not work tomorrow, you know I will think about making a back up of it fast to perserve the item.

Aren't the Landfills of this country already over flowing with AOL Free Trial discs? This just sounds incredibly wasteful to me.

This seems like a good idea for areas that do not have a BBV or Hollywood on every corner. Within 2 miles of where I live there are 3 BBV's and 1 Hollywood Video. I know that they will try these out at supermarkets whenever they first go to market, but it would never work in my neighborhood. This might be better where video stores are not as convenient considering traffic and location.

1st off, if they were disposable, they would probably be in cardboard sleeves, not plastic cases, so they would take up much less room.
2nd, the PVT market is dying, when you consider you can get most of these movies brand new for 14.99 or less when they first come out, instead of 9.99-16.99 for used 3 months after.

Yawn.