It's been months since the
DVD Download DL logo surfaced, offering little info for anyone trying to figure out how this might play into Toshiba's post-HD DVD
anything-but-Blu-ray plans, but now that it's available to licensees we got a peek at the details behind the spec. Approved by the DVD Forum, it's a standard for content providers to send deliver movies as a disk image that can be burned onto a DVD complete with
CSS encryption,
Qflix-style. That includes print to order service providers like
CustomFlix CreateSpace or even home users downloading a legitimate flick over the Internet. The net benefit? It's guaranteed to play on any standard DVD player, although given the ease with which nearly anyone can download and burn less-legitimate copies nowadays, the biggest potential plus we see would be an in store kiosk that burns discs while you wait, saving SKUs and packaging costs for suckers who bought the special edition. Check out the conformance guideline PDF straight from the Forum for more details, we'll let the
BDA know they can stop holding their breath, if they ever were.
[Via
Format War Central]
posted Feb 4th 2009 7:49AM
"the biggest potential plus we see would be an in store kiosk that burns discs while you wait, saving SKUs and packaging costs for suckers who bought the special edition"
The problem with that is studios like suckers buying the special editions. They know they can slap a huge mark-up on a title which has an extra DVD, a metal box and handful of collectable cards. It might cost them a $1 extra in trinkets yet retail for $10 more.
Aside from that, I doubt a kiosk system will result in cheaper titles than standard disks. More likely it will just allow stores to say to customers - "we don't have title BLAH in stock, but you (or I) can use that device in the corner to cut you a copy, print a sleeve and the liner notes". I very much doubt such disks will be any cheaper though than regular editions.
I also question if there is much benefit to home users of such a system. The home user not only incurs a 9Gb download for a regular DVD, but also the expense of DL discs and printing for themselves. That's a huge download and hassle just for a SD movie when the tools are not *that* complex for somebody to just rent a DVD and copy that instead.
This isn't news, it was just Engadget HD was at the height of its anti-Toshiba trip when the Download/DL logo was announced, and so decided to interpret it as a ridiculous HD DVD by the back door technology rather than taking it at face value. It's not as if the DVD Forum hadn't already announced the technology (I remember reading about it on Slashdot two years ago), or that the brand was anything other than obviously associated with the technology.
DrXym - yeah, special editions are a great money making tool but not when you're only going to sell two of them. The major advantage of the Kiosk system, whether it's for this or for SD cards, is that you can have a library far in excess of what any store can reasonably hold, and you don't have to press thousands of discs just to get the cost to something reasonable.
People will still want, and pay through the nose, for titles like "Star Wars 7: Han and Leia get married. Special Edition Director's Cut with Free Laserdisc and DIVX (the dead Circuit City format)", but the kiosk will be there to give them the option of buying more obscure material, be it a Goldie Hawn comedy from 1982 that nobody likes, or a classic art film that might get shelf space in a specialist store in the center of a large city, but would never turn up at Blockbuster.
Spot on.
Kiosks and downloading were foreign ten plus years ago, but now we can download music from Amazon and rent movies at Red Box. What's to stop someone like Best Buy or Blockbuster from doing a DVD DL kiosk for titles that have no churn?
I for one wouldn't mind if they replaced one row of DVDs with a row of DVD DL Kiosks and the remaining rows with a larger Blu-Ray selection. If a kiosk could burn a full TV series boxed set, print a full color cover for the case and decent light scribe label on the disc, that would be pretty cool.
My only concern would be longevity. Burned discs degrade at a faster rate than pressed, but so long as I could rip the DVD DL in question and place it on a media server, I'd feel a bit more comfortable.
"in store kiosk that burns discs while you wait"
They tried that with music CDs, and it fizzled. Why would DVDs do any better?
"home users downloading a legitimate flick over the Internet"
DVD images are large. A home user could stream a movie quicker and with a lot less bandwidth.
How is this HD news??
It's not, it's just more unnecessary Toshiba bashing at every opportunity from people who call themselves journalists.
NICE.... but it ain't HD... I didn't spend $15,000 on a HD home entertainment system to spend more money on SD content...
Thanks but NO Thanks... Heard that song lately? I want my MTV?
New song.... I want my HD-TV!
If it ain't in HD, it isn't worth my time, or my money.
TGC
Who cares? Still no managed copy...
So the studios want me to buy a disk downloaded while I wait at a kiosk- instead of a nice retail packages product- and they still wont let me legitimately rip my dvds to my Mymovies server? They save money in costs, and they will probably charge the same price- they can piss off as far as I am concerned. I will just continue to buy my dvds legitimately and then burn them to my server any damn way I please.
Kiosks would charge the same amount as if the DVDs were on the shelf. There is a better way to burn any DVD (at a kiosk or online i.e. CreateSpace) and sell them at cheaper prices.
www.made2rent.com
I wonder what will happen to Qflix?
Most of you are missing the point of a DVD DL kiosk: Availability of niche/indie/for.lang. films at no inventory cost to the vendor. No one's going to wait 10 minutes for a kiosk to burn Pirates of the Carribean XVI -- but if you're looking for a movie thats over two years old and is in Chinese, you're not gonna find at BB or Target. How many copies of Cool Hand Luke you think are on the shelves at your typical retailer? 2? 0? Most retailers cannot afford to stock older titles or obscure pictures, but if it doesn't cost anything to "virtually stock" the film, then why not? Suppose Tom Cruise (heaven forbid) dies in car crash next week. How many of his movies are on the shelves to meet that next weekend's Cruise demand? With a few kiosks taking up very little precious floor space stores can meet the demand. That's the biz case for DVD DL.