Let me get this straight:

You've paid $20 for a HD DVD, and now you're happy about paying another $10 of storage space so you can have a "media" PC streaming it to the display unit?

Oh, were you planning on renting the HD DVD and then ripping it and then spending $10 on storage space for it?

Yeah, a real bargain...

No. He didn't/wouldn't buy the HD DVD at all in this scenario. The content is already out there for download.

Sorry to chime in, but I think the logic is:

Person A has the DVD/Rents the DVD and cracks it, and makes it available online.
Persons B - ZZZ download the file and save it to their HDs

How long does it take to download 30GB these days? For 2 hours of entertainment, no less?

Depends. I've downloaded 10gb HD versions of movies in a day or so depending on how many people are on the torrent.

It can be ridiculously fast.

People who steal are going to steal. Time and money are not important. I have the ability and skill to download music and movies, but I do not because I purchase them legally. I will go look for items not released or not available from time to time, but only because I can not just order the item up. People downloading items readily available to buy are just stealing so putting cost figures and analysis on it is only trying to justify theft IMHO. It is always cheaper to steal, duh.

Oh, and no offense to anyone and what they think about it, but why the hell would you want to keep a copy on a server. Are people so damn lazy they can't just put a disc in a drive.

There is no way to keep people from stealing. People will always download, people will always rent and and rip. The studios should focus more on the price of these discs. I never thought twice about collecting DVD's, but I almost choke when I am asked to pay $30 to $40 dollars for an HD DVD or Blu Ray. Prices like that will only encourage more people to pirate these things. Basically, lower prices abit and in the process you may deter some people from pirating.

Always makes me chuckle when I read posts like this.

I am reminded of a 16yo Digi saving up to buy the $235 Star Wars laserdisc boxed set.

My my how times have changed.

To sum up, I would think it's nuts to use $10 of disk space and 3 days to download a movie for 2 hours of entertainment, especially when the alternative is to spend $20-$25 on a disc with no time wasted on downloads.

Yeah they have changed. I got that set for $79.99 at Suncoast on clearance. I thought I struck gold.

I have a friend that rips and burns every movie he gets from Netflix. I guess that's neat and all but geeez. 90% of what I get from Netflix seeing it once is enough.

Personally. I have ripped a movie to see if I could do it. Yeah, I could. Never done it since. I've never downloaded a .iso from the net either. In the off chance that it was pristine and turned out fine, I now have a blank disc that I had to write the title on in marker. Yay.

I want the product. I want the cover, the back cover, inserts, nice case, extras, and color printing on the face of the DVD. I want it reasonably priced (which so far I feel they are, especially on sale days, Black Friday and DDD sale times.)

I just don't want to go thru the trouble of obtaining, downloading, ripping, burning a 'copy' of a disc. Screw it. It's a waste of my time. Fry's had "Clerks II HD-DVD" for $17.99 this past Friday.

Can't beat that.

I wonder what the picture quality will be like once they get these pirated HD movies burned onto a disc. I recall seeing the SDDVD of Batman Begins, Kill Bill 2, and some other movie burned onto DVD but saw lots of artifacting and macroblocking. I also remember the sound being a little weak.
Is it possible to even make a replicated disc playback at the same quality as the original in terms of audio and video?

Whether or not BD has an edge over HD-DVD in the near future will not likely hinge on this. I doubt Joe Six-Pack really keeps up with industry news regarding this issue. And even if he did, why would he care?

Early adopters and other interested well educated individuals seem to be the only real audience that will take note. And even these folks would not likely let this information sway their decision of which format to buy into. Now studio support may be another matter, however…

I have always presumed that the reason certain studios are Blu-ray exclusive is because of Sony’s boasting regarding its supposedly superior copyright protection. No surprise to me that it’s been hacked. Why the studios continue to live in a fantasy land regarding copyright control is beyond me. I agree that the best way to counter piracy is with price point.

What really baffles me is why the studios have been so antsy regarding 1080i via component outputs. They finally relented over the ICT flag issue (for time being), but of course, the HD-A1 will still not upconvert standard DVDs over component. (I do not have an HDMI connection.)

How exactly is a 1080i signal over component a threat? Who makes copies this way? Why penalize the consumer over something that really isn’t even an issue in the world of piracy?

That is a very naive viewpoint. Here's why:

There is absolutely no way that the studios can prevent well-funded organized gangs from duplicating their content. None whatsoever. They can lock it up with DRM that would make the NSA proud and the content would still be accessible. If eyeballs can see it, it can be duplicated one way or another. Period.

The studios know this. They are not stupid. They are, however, not above justifying unpopular and somewhat illegal actions with misrepresented reasons. DRM is not about organized large scale piracy.

DRM is about control. The studios are far more afraid of J6P with a Tivo or DVD burner than organized gangs of pirates. They want to be able to minutely control what you do in your own home with content you have purchased from them. They want to sell you the rights to perform certain actions on an a'la carte basis.

You want to watch a movie? Pay me.

You want to transfer it to an iPod? Pay me.

You want to watch the show again? Pay me.

You want to be able to pause it to run to the bathroom? Pay me.

Remember DIVX? Not the codec, but the aborted DVD rental scheme? That was a preview of where the studios would like to go. They would like nothing more than to get detailed information on what people watch and sell them viewing rights in a piecemeal fashion.

They also want to eliminate the secondary market in media. Did you know that at one point in the development of the PS3 Sony wanted to pair the each game with a specific console? When first inserted, the console would write a signature to the disc that linked them together. That way a person could not resell the game. There would be no used market. Sony realized that the market was not ready for this, not yet anyway.

Why do you think that region coding was included in the DVD standard? It was not combat pirates. It was to control the market. The studios wanted to be able to extract every last cent of revenue from a particular market by carefully controlling each stage of a movie release. The plan was to create artificial barriers to inter-region trade of DVDs. Well, the market did not agree and now almost all non-Region 1 areas use "universal" players.

Large-scale piracy is a very small part of the equation.

I agree, Pete. These schemes are designed to stop casual piracy. Only recently has copying a DVD become fairly simple for someone like paulringodaman (an admitted computer novice/non-"power-user) to do. These new schemes put casual piracy out of the reach of most, for now, and they hope until the next format shows up. Sure there are people with media servers, and the storage, contrary to what someone said, is cheap. Do MANY have media servers? Nah.

I completely 100% agree that the best weapon against piracy is pricing. DVDs are readily available on the internet for nothing. Most people have no problem buying up those new releases put on skids at WalMart every week because they can't be bothered to go to the hassle of making the DVD themselves.

Your theory is not bourn out by the facts. The AACSLA has not voted to revoke the player license for PowerDVD. If the studios were so concerned about individual cases of piracy as you claim then this would have likely been their first move.

The intricacies of ROM mark aren't something I'm currently copacetic with, but the basic technology relies on recognisable and individual code on each disc, based on the replication plant where it was created. This is precisely to undermine the efforts of organised gangs to set up their own replication facilities.

Sorry I wasn't clearer. I wasn't talking about J6P. I was talking about Bluray exclusive studios that many in the HD-DVD camp are hoping turn neutral.

I beg to disagree. The actions of the content companies over the last 40 years are the facts that I base my position on. They fought cable tv, VCRs, and DVRs in the courts. They implemented region coding and CSS for DVDs. They force the CE companies to include watermarking, reduce functionality, degrade the output, and limit innovation. Then they pay off politicians to extend copyrights and further erode our rights.

All these issues are about control. The "organized crime" pirates have not even been slowed down. The only group this affects are lowly consumers that want to simply view what they purchased.

For example I can't:

Watch a non-R1 dvd without hacking the player.
Use an upconverting DVD player to watch 1080i signals with my component-only HDTV.
Watch a DVD on my Linux PC.
Transfer HD shows between two Series 3 Tivos.
Convert my old VHS movies to DVD so my daughter can watch them in the car.
Cut out short sections of a movie for a church sermon (for my Father-in-law).
Transfer DVDs to a video iPod for a trip.

None of this affects "organized crime" pirates. It just affects end-users like me. The recent lack of action by whatever organizing committee is far out-weighed by 40 years of historical precedent.

Yes. Even with DTS sound.

It's not about being lazy. It's about using technology as a convenience.

You also don't need some supermachine as others would make it out to be to stream audio/video.

Here's some examples:

1) I have an Xbox 360. I rip some CDs for my portable media players and for the xbox. With the xbox, I can listen to any music I have stored on my computer as the soundtrack for the game. If I want to just listen to music through my home theater, I can also just stream that too. I can also watch tv and movies that I record with my media center pc and I don't have to bother burning a stuff from tv onto a disc.

2) I have a tivo. Like the xbox, I can stream music through it. I also own a bunch of vhs tapes. I mean a ton. A video store went out of business near me and I cleared out a large portion of the horror and sci-fi section because much of that isn't available on dvd. VHS also sucks and the quality degrades over time.

So I record them onto my computer. Unless there is a hard drive crash, the quality won't change. I could burn hundreds of dvds of these movies, or I could just not waste my time and money and keep it on my computer instead.

When I want to watch any of them, I can do it through my tivo.

3) I have a ps3. You can put linux on it and stream videos and music through it like it's a tivo, except it can play more filetypes than the tivo. Good for it.

4) Since I have a bunch of movies already on my computer, it's easy for me to put a copy of Turkish Dracula, but probably something else, on my Creative Zen and watch it on plane rides.

Why do you assume those actions are aimed primarily at the individual pirate, rather than organized piracy? And if earlier actions (such as Disney suing Sony over their Betamax recorders) was aimed in this direction why do you assume the same views are held today. It'll be the rare exception where the same exec is still in a position of authority, while data is actually available now with regards to the piracy of movies.


Distribution rights to various movies are owned by different studios in different regions. Hence region coding. Though it also allows staggered release of DVDs in line with theatrical releases.
You can watch DVDs on your PC as long as the software has paid for an MPEG2 license.
Studios don't want HD content in the clear. You can suspect it's because they fear you, but it's more likely to be organised piracy they're worried about.
Plenty of software exists to convert old VHS tapes to DVD, as well as several hardware solutions.
There's nothing to stop you cutting out clips from a movie (so long as you don't break the encription scheme). The issue comes with displaying matterial that isn't your intellectual property for gain, whether that gain is immediately financial in nature or not.


The effects don't neccessarily speak of the intention. Past measures proving ineffective against mass piracy does not mean the studios weren't attempting to prevent it.

He was referring to linux which makes it not as easy to do with clear-cut legality. The person that cracked the encryption had to do that in able to watch it on his linux pc.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6921

There's an enormous amount of difference between a product like bottled water and an intellectual property like a movie or music.

A key difference is if someone steals (shoplifts) the bottle of water the owner suffers a more tangible loss. However, someone can copy your intellectual property by copying it and you still have the original plus an exact copy of it.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with an owner of property trying to maximize profits in any way they see fit. Including rental schemes like the late DIVX. It is your right not to buy into it. If enough people agree the idea will die (like DIVX). There is a sweet spot where the product offered at a price will maximize profits and that's where companies try to get.

It's called a free market and it is the result of economic freedom. You seem to think that studios are somehow obligated to sell you product.

If you think an outside entity (i.e. the government) should be able to step in and price things the way you like simply because you want it you should consider that it would be no different than if they stepped in and put an hourly wage cap on YOU or ME.

Our "product" is our labor/time. Who's to say how much it is worth? The government? Or should you be able to take the highest paying job you can get?

If it means that we can make them rich so they can make more big budgeted movie for us, that's fine by me.

(as long as the movie is good, that is)

Pistol Pete is absolutely correct.

DRM has nothing to do with piracy. DRM is about control, period.

The content creators need to get paid for their content in some way or another, and the current model of movie distribution is a dinosaur.

They need to figure out new ways to get paid, and have not even tried to begin to do that.


Why do you think that Disney always lobbies Congress for a copyright extension whenever theirs is about to expire?

How about rentals?

So many people are renting and ripping DVD's from Netflix. The ability to rent and store HD DVD on a hard drive to watch at a more convenient time is a very gray area. It is the equivalent of Tivo for DVD. You don't need lots of hard drive space, since you can delete them after watching them.

Yes, netflix loses due to fast turnarounds with free shipping. A 20 disc renter costs Netflix more than a 10, even though they may have the same rate plan.

I didn't see this posted yet.

link