SELF-ERASING DISCS

By SARAH MCBRIDE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Page B1

When a movie goes direct to DVD or TV, it's often Hollywood shorthand for a film so bad it can't get onto the big screen. But today, the DVD release of a new holiday movie starring Penelope Cruz and Susan Sarandon will be part of an experiment that may provide clues about how movies will be distributed in the future.

Nov. 12 marks the release date for producer Howard Rosenman's new independent film "Noel" on about 100 movie-theater screens throughout the country. But around the same time, it also will be available on disposable DVDs sold on Amazon.com. Later, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, "Noel" will air on Time Warner Inc.'s TNT cable channel.

The DVD release comes with a hitch: The $4.99 disc will be coated with a chemical that makes the movie unplayable 48 hours after the package has been opened.

The point of the self-destructing discs? Producers of "Noel" hope they will help whip up preliminary buzz for the film, while preserving sales of a permanent DVD that will be released later.

Walt Disney Co. is using the same technology, known as Flexplay, on a trial basis in certain markets around the country, offering disposable versions of already-released movies for consumers who don't want the hassle of returning a rental DVD.

The multipronged release strategy for "Noel" is a small-scale test of a big idea that most of the Hollywood studios are mulling. Hoping to minimize piracy and maximize revenue, the studios are contemplating ways to release movies to theaters and homes simultaneously, perhaps at different price points. Several studios have actively pondered such a strategy, though no one has yet tried an experiment. And many players in the Hollywood ecosystem, such as theater owners, are worried about such an approach.

Such a move is a far cry from the traditional setup, in which studios try to squeeze as much money as they can from theatrical releases before sending a movie to other revenue-generating "windows." Videotape and DVD comes next in line, then pay-per-view television, premium TV channels and, finally, network TV. Moviemakers have long assumed that if a film goes to DVD right away, nobody would bother going to theaters to catch it.

That logic is shifting, especially as the industry confronts a rise in bootleg DVDs and illicit online movie trading. "We are looking at ways to get content into the home much sooner," says Mitch Singer, executive vice president for the digital policy group at Sony Pictures Entertainment, a unit of Japan's Sony Corp. "When we figure out a way to get content into the home securely, we'll consider new business models."

Selling a movie into the home on a pay-per-view basis around the same time it hits theaters is the most likely first change, once studios find a piracy-proof way to do it. The idea is to appeal to those who like to see new movies but can't make it to the theaters -- say, parents with young children. To maximize revenue and avoid cannibalizing box-office sales, studios would likely sell such movies at a high price -- perhaps the cost of six to eight adult movie tickets. But at that price, the movie would need to deliver the value of a big Hollywood blockbuster like "Spider-Man," not a modest independent film such as "Noel."

more at

Link: http://pf.channel.aol.com/moneytoday/wsj/humaninterest/noeldvd.adp

So basically they're giving the hackers and crackers more accessible versions of the film on DVD around the same time they enter the theaters, and then assume they can't rip and decode it in 48 hours.

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant! Man if we recruited these people for rocket science we almost might break the sound barrier.

well it takes ony dvddecrypter then toss the fucker
a perminaent dvd for 5 buck
if the stop suing people id bnuy them, but not anymore

hehe.. $4.99 + dvd+r DL disks/drives = nonpermanent dvd for.. when all costs are tallied.. about $6?

tell me if i'm a little off.. it could be as high as $8 .

err.. (nonpermanent = permanent)

"The $4.99 disc will be coated with a chemical that makes the movie unplayable 48 hours after the package has been opened."

Did someone open a hole in the movie studio CEO's brains to get them to figure this one out. I don't know about you but I am not paying for the likes of such as this. I can get a rental much cheaper than something I can only watch a limited number of times before it is gone.

Since this is a trial bases if it floats like they think it might, did anyone consider the idea it won't be $4.99 forever? Great guns; this seems to me to be the height of stupidty. I used to wait for them to just come to the video rental and take it home to watch that way. Why on earth would I pay more for less? Just because it is new, isn't of value to me.

Fiscal terrorism indeed...

This is old - the discs have been in shops for some time. And not selling.

DVDDecryptor or another CSS breaker still makes the protection ineffective, of course. Through with the release of HD-DVD or blu-ray and their non-CSS encryption, that could change. Perhaps they too will be broken.

To maximize revenue and avoid cannibalizing box-office sales, studios would likely sell such movies at a high price -- perhaps the cost of six to eight adult movie tickets

So... they will be releasing these discs. But to ensure they dont compete with the cinemas, the discs will be so expensive very few people will buy them.

Now, what does this mean for us? Oh, of course - no more badly-filmed cam movies on the p2p networks. Now those friendly pirates in the US can produce DVD-rip quality files much sooner. And there is also the problem: When the studios realise that, they may not like the self-destructing disc so much.

Where are the enivornmentalist types to raise a stink about all these useless DVDs going into the garbage (not to mention whatever packaging they come in)?

I thought Hollywood were those touchy-feely liberal types (except when it comes to their pocketbooks...)

The enviromentalists are still counting the revenues from "The Day After Tomorrow" so they can't be disturbed.

"I thought Hollywood were those touchy-feely liberal types (except when it comes to their pocketbooks...)"

They are touchy-feely.... about getting the Terminator elected as President in 2008.

They are also touchy-feely... about how much MONEY they can get into their grubby hands.

Greed rules.

Don't we have a garbage problem already? Do we need to be throwing away disks? Uhg, see this is why other countries hate america, its almost like we are being gluttons on purpose.

"Uhg, see this is why other countries hate america, its almost like we are being gluttons on purpose"

This is one of the reasonS

True - with your SUVs, america is now the symbol of enviromental distruction, waste and excession.

The discs havn't attracted any attention from enviromentalists because there arn't enough discs yet, and they are no worse than any other disposable item - think how many cheap biros must be thrown every year?

Remind me to hug the MPAA. This is gonna backfire so much, they wont know what to do. I know if i tryed I could hack one of those DVDs in a few mins. If i have to I'll just look through the friggin file system. Copy the files on the disk, and put it on a new DVD, that way, you have an unlimited amout of playing time. Also, you can then spend the time cracking their encrption, which will take what another 10 mins? This isn't gonna work for them, but it sure will for us.

These DVDs are the same as normal DVDs except they destroy themselves after 48 hours. DVD Decrypter can easily rip them in 10-30 minutes just like any normal DVD as long as it is ripped before 48 hours are up.

These movie studios should look and put up a better fence in their own backyard because their backyard is infested with moles.

Like Divx, this will fail.

Limefan - its almost that simple, but not quite. If you just copy the files off, they will not play - the copy-prevention technology prevents it. Use DVDdecrypter to copy them, and it works. This is still no help for those people lacking computers through.

If the format is DVD-D then DVD Decrypter will work even after 48 hours as DVD-D only destroys the CSS keyblocks not the entire movie. Fortunately, DVD Decrypter (in brute force mode), AnyDVD, and Free DVD players like mplayer and xine can break the CSS encryption without needing to read the CSS keyblocks.

True - but this is flexplay/ez-d. That destroys everything in 48 hours, plus some margin for error.

Well think about it like this. If buying these dvd, ripping them to a PC and sharing them
(at a better quality then now) hurts the movie industry like it supposedly hurt the music industry it will make it a hell of a lot easier of the th MPAA to sue.