Some trailers linked to from ADT were choppy as heck (possibly because of high server load), and downloading the trailer to disk to watch it without skipping seems quite sensible to me.

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DenverDon

Edited by - DenverDon on 8/11/2004 4:09:19 PM

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That sounds like it's getting into the same sort of dicey area as the software that 321 was ordered to take off the market and drove them into bankruptcy.

I'm the one who notified Bill and Drew, so if I'm wrong I apologize, but IMHO if a site wanted to offer something as a dowload for permanent storage, they would do it instead of just streaming.

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High quality video on slow links, or during high server load as I mentioned, seems a valid enough reason.

As for the multiple streams or splitting and merging files, I would expect you could do that with any old editing software once the file was downloaded.

I expect the SW in question is for Windows. As I don't run Windows at all, I have no specific interest as such. I'm just curious as to what could be wrong with this type of software.

Is it something to do with content providers wanting to ensure that a stream can only be watched on-line as pay-per-view, and not be cached locally to be watched repeatedly? Are there still attempts at this?
IMHO that's a loosing battle, though of course ADT wouldn't want to get involved. Nor should it.
As I said, just curious.

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This is a huge issue here in America, and has been for quite some time.

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Personally I stay away from anything with DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology limiting the way I can use what I pay for. I wouldn't buy a DVD player with region coding enabled.

IMHO DRM intended to thwart pirates always ends up hurting legitimate users much more, as any DRM can and will be circumvented if the content is of interest to the pirates.

Play once streaming just reminds me too much of the ill fated DIVX ploy.

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don't think of it as that DIVX ploy.. think of it more like going to the movies. You paid for one ticket to see the movie once. It didnt' give you the right to record the movie in the theater so you wouldn't forget it.
They aren't charging you the full price of the movie. just a nice way to see it once. and most of these services allow you to see the movie as many times as you want for a few days before disabling your ability to stream from their site (unless you pay again).

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I still think it's a loosing battle though. Stream downloading software will always be here. But I agree with the decision to remove the link.

Actually when I first saw a link to an MMS-streamed trailer that I wanted to watch, none of the Linux based players supported the MMS protocol. I found a then new program that downloaded the stream to disc and watched it from there.

IMHO it was a mistake to stream the trailer with the MMS protocol in the first place. They should be as easy to download as possible. Low bandwidth modem users are potential DVD buyers also.

I still wont pay for anything that's been DRM crippled. But I may be in a minority there. I won't even buy a copy protected CD.

If studios are going to sell their movies as play-once streaming media on-line, that's fine by me.
I don't want to watch movies on my PC anyway so I'm not in the target group.

One thing I'd like to see a studio like Evil Angel try, is sell individual scenes from their movies as downloadable MPEG files ripped straight from their DVD's without extra compression. That way I could get the scenes I'm interested in and make my own compilation DVD's.
Of course I would expect to pay more for that download than the same scene in streamed format would have cost.
Six scenes + BTS seems about the average for a $20 DVD, so perhaps $3 per scene when downloading.
Server space and bandwidth aren't free but surely they're cheaper than pressing DVD's and shipping them. Stores make a profit as well.

There aren't many studios other than EA I'd trust with my credit card info though.
Perhaps studios could partner up with a well known on-line shop with a good reputation.

And congratulations on your marriage Evil_Rip.

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- Saki [faqs]

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Edited by - wilshire on 8/16/2004 1:37:22 PM

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The studios are pushing restrictions and protections which will never be palatable---unless they actually take advantage of the technology available to them and offer some kind of new benefits. What the benefits are is up to them, but they're always going to face resistance if they just restrict rights to use a purchased product. Otherwise, they'll just keep damaging their relationships with valued customers and wasting money on copy-protections that are going to get broken within days--every time. .

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Luckily I had a program for recovering badly scratched CD's. It made an error corrected copy that played correctly on any standard compliant CD player.
I that case the copy was better quality than the original.

The music wasn't my taste, but if it had been I doubt I would have resisted making a copy for myself.
And I wouldn't even have felt I was doing anything slightly wrong. I would have thought it served the buggers right for flogging a faulty product in the first place.

Those kinds of protection schemes do nothing to prevent piracy, but they cause problems for regular paying consumers.

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Either way, they're well-outside the redbook standard and technically cannot be labelled as a compact disc under the phillips logo deal. I buy a lot of music and invested in a linn-classik as a source-instead of being rewarded for choosing to keep them in business, I get intentionally bad mastering values and intentionally non-redbook discs. Goodwill isn't going to last forever for these guys and bandwith increases and lossless codecs like flac and monkey's mean they'll eventually alienate the people who aren't p2p users enough to lose them to piracy when the quality gets there. I hate everything about stealing and probably won't, but you don't want to give anything to companies practicing policies of abuse and deciept.

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