Not that DIV-X,this Divx . I’ve never been able to figure out why they game the two things nearly identical names, especially considering how ill-fated a marketing skeme the older of the two turned out to be.
elf, the compression format is mocking the name of the other one. sort of a “they won’t be useing it!” sort of take on the name it was so hated.
Ahh ok, you learn somehting every day. Never knew about that divx. 
Anybody besides me see this as a precursor to a world where “permanent copies” of movies (and music) will be outlawed for private ownership?
You want to watch it, you buy it. Want to watch it again? Buy it again. More money for them. I wouldn’t be surprised if the RIAA is all for this development.
Umm, let me get this straight. $7.50 for a window of ‘a few days’ compared to $4.29 at blockbuster for a window of 5 days. And they expect this to sell… how? Or am I just missing something?
I can see if they priced it cheaply as a incentive. $1.50 (not above regular rental rate but only) per movie might work. Then again, I sure hope they don’t figure out a way to make this work. My trash is already stuffed with those damn AOL cds.
DivX the MPEG-4 compression format was a play on the Circuit City DIVX format: The name of the original codec was DivX;-)3.11Alpha. Note the smily face.
At TLA video rentals in Philly I get three videos for $7.50 – one new release and two catalog releases. Always good movies in stock, including foreign and art-house movies. No way I’m gonna switch.
Look at all these replies! Did I put my thread in the wrong forum or don’t I warrant this much attention? 
Another vote for Netflix–I get several DVDs in the mail a week (depends on how quickly I watch them and send them back), and all for $20 a month. Postage is free, no late fees.
This EZ-CD sounds like a complete dud.
Oh, and Jeff–they didn’t respond to your thread because you smell funny. So there.
I finally got around to watching the 25th Hour ez-D over the weekend. It was opened on Sat. 9/13 at 10:17 p.m. (CDT). As of Mon. morning, it still appeared to be red (readable) but I’ll post an estimated auto-destruct time when it occurs (I doubt it’ll make an announcement and instantly turn black).
No menu!
No features! I’m one of those people who occasionally listens to the director’s commentaries or watches a behind-the-scenes feature.
No audio options! English is the only track.
No w i d e s c r e e n !
Just stick it in and the movie starts…might as well have been a VHS tape with Dolby 5.1 sound.
Don’t you mean “Dobly?”
I mean DOLBY . A google search for “dobly” turned up quite a few references to “Dobly Digital.” It must be a commonly misspelled word.
I blew my little experiment by forgetting to test the disc last night at the 48 hour mark. This morning (approx. 57 hrs. after breaking the seal) my DVD player returned an error and ejected the disc. The inner-most data areas of the disc are a few shades darker than the rest of it. The area that shows through the “freshness” window of the packaging is still red, suggesting the disc is viewable!! So much for the accuracy of that indicator.
No kidding. While I don’t know exactly how many groups are protesting it, stories about this technology have been on NPR for a couple of weeks now, in varying depth. It’s already receiving a lot of very vocal protest, and I’m glad of it.
Fortunately, I don’t think the economics behind it are reasonable, in that I would rather spend less to rent a movie for a longer period of time. I’m no more interested in throwing away a book I’ve finished reading just to save myself a trip to the library, anyway – the inconvenience is trifling, and I can’t bear the thought of all those useless things winding up in landfills. This whole idea sends a shiver down my little environmentalist spine.
I’m pretty sure I heard about some rip-off noise reduction system or something that was marketed as ‘Dobly’, but was withdrawn after a flurry of legal threats.
Sheesh, hasn’t anybody here seen This Is Spinal Tap?
Only if they outlawed books, too. The copyright laws that govern electronic media are merely extensions of the laws covering printed matter, which have been around for a very long time now. I agree the RIAA is all for this development, but hey, they were all for the big switch from analog to digital anyway, and look how THAT has turned out for them. If they ever did manage to bring about the state of affairs you describe, piracy would grow exponentially until copyright law became essentially meaningless. It would be a similar situation to what the government faced during Prohibition: so many people flouted the law that enforcing it in any meaningful way was impossible. We’ve already more or less reached that point with MP3 sharing now, even though the recording industry would rather dash itself on the rocks of the issue with its ridiculous (and futile) lawsuits.
Besides, if permanent copies are done away with, the industry is basically just shooting itself in the foot. What you are talking about is essentially the same as what you get when you go into a movie theater: the right to view the show once. Except a movie theater is, well. . . a theater. There’s better sound, a bigger picture, etc. And even with tickets costing $8-9, theater chains still make as much or more money from their own concession stands.
For one-time delivery of enterainment products to be worth it in my own home, with no big picture and no surround sound, it had better be REALLY cheap, like $2. Will Sony (or Miramax, et. al.) recoup their costs charging $2 a showing? I doubt it. Add in that certain types of technology (like cable television) are necessary to even deliver product this way that not everyone has, and you’re reducing the potential market even further.
No, there is no easy way out of this mess for the enterainment giants. They created the digital revolution in media to begin with, never imagining they would completely lose control of both the means of reproduction (CD/DVD burners) and distribution (file sharing via the Internet).
What they are finding out is that without that level of control, the market value of their product is quite a bit lower, which is reflected in the price of one song off from Apple’s iTunes service: 99 cents. I predict it will go even further down, to 50 cents or less, before all is said and done. The market was redefined in a way totally beyond the control of the companies that thought they ran it. It makes my closet anarchist all warm inside.
End of mini-rant.
I think they will have to reduce the price a little to around 5 dollars to make it work. And of course they will have to get the technology to actually work reliably. But it’s not a bad idea. I think the best market is for new releases which are only available for a couple of days anyway. Not only do they avoid the hassle of a return trip but they can be made available in many more places; perhaps even vending machines.
Another possibility that would strengthen this medium’s viability would be coupon’s and/or freebies for repeat customers. There is talk (sorry, no cite; it was in the newspaper) of rewarding recycling and repeat customers by earning a free disc for every 5 or so discs returned.
Something I forgot to mention as an existing and better alternative is digital cable’s video-on-demand. Now that I’ve seen how featureless ez-D is, cable makes even more sense.
One of the best features for DVDs being DVDs is that you can replay them a million times with no degradation of quality. Why have DVDs that you are expected to only play once? It makes no sense.
The whole idea makes no sense. Greedy corporations, I suppose.
What I like is the “self-destructing” label also applies to the company itself. Much like Circuit City’s DIVX, it will self-destruct in a couple years.
There is a very limited niche market for these kinds of things. E.g., promo giveaways. Let you see the next wonder video/software for a little bit, then try to get you to buy the real thing. But with DVD recorders becoming commonplace, guess what’s going to happen?
Again, note how cheaply they are planning on selling these. They make plenty of money on $6 DVDs. $15 CDs are an outrage.