Well, we’ve had to send two movies back recently to netflix because we thought they were defective. (Man of the Year and Rat Race) It turns out that they were not. They were manufactured by Sony and apparently in an effort to defend the copyright and keep people from burning copies, they won’t play on a lot of players except Sony. How convenient. They’ll play on our older player in the bedroom, but we rent movies to watch in the living room with the HD TV and surround sound and our JVC DVD player.
Yeah, I know, Sony DRM is the absolute worst. There are ways to hack it if you are technically inclined, but personally I find it easier to just get a pirated version. Ironically, they would have had a lot of my money if they didn’t pull that crap.
Then there’s the way that we’re getting all these new divergent high-capacity DVD technologies that are completely incompatible with each other. All these companies are busy trying to flood the market with as many of their version as they can, rather than working together to make a common format. In a few years, we may be needing four different DVD players just to be able to watch any reasonable selection of movies.
Was Sony also the company that was making music CDs that couldn’t be played on computers because of their hyper-sensitive anti-copying systems?
Regarding the format war, I am doing what most people who do not have an unlimited budget are doing: wait and see.
Sony and Phillips will probably prevail in this one, as lonely Toshiba is the only promoter of the rival format.
But, you know, the larger issue, piracy, has the potential to kill the entire industry by cutting its money off. It is already changing musical recordings, but the amount of money to put out a musical CD is paltry compared to the cost of a movie.
Obviously, if the chance of making a profit on a movie is virtually non-existent, the form will die.
Now, some may say, ‘So what!‘ and perhaps they are right, and movies are certainly not a necessity, but nevertheless, piracy is still theft, and these guys have the right to try and figure out how to protect their investments.
Dan, always championing the underdog for some ungodly reason or another
Was Sony also the company that was making music CDs that couldn’t be played on computers because of their hyper-sensitive anti-copying systems?
Yes. Sort of.
Sony CDs were actually auto-installing a copyright /anti-pirating program on computers. Without user consent. And without notifying the user.
This “thing” caused huge security issues and opened huge back doors through security settings, apparently. When it was discovered and people tried to remove it it caused computer crashes and wiped out hard drives.
Sony eventually apologized and offered a “fix”. The initial fix wasn’t very good and caused lots of problems, too. I believe it eventually got cleaned up, but I’m not sure.
Just like when the masses said, “TV will kill the radio!“, I don’t believe the movie or music industry will die because of piracy. Somehow, someone will come up with a killer idea that will revive the entertainment industry. It usually involves some sort crisis, though, for these ideas to appear.
Was Sony also the company that was making music CDs that couldn’t be played on computers because of their hyper-sensitive anti-copying systems?
Yes. Sort of.
Sony CDs were actually auto-installing a copyright /anti-pirating program on computers. Without user consent. And without notifying the user.
This “thing” caused huge security issues and opened huge back doors through security settings, apparently. When it was discovered and people tried to remove it it caused computer crashes and wiped out hard drives.
Sony eventually apologized and offered a “fix”. The initial fix wasn’t very good and caused lots of problems, too. I believe it eventually got cleaned up, but I’m not sure.
Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine was one of those ‘unrippable’ CDs which p***ed me off somewhat as I listen to mostly to MP3s (at work) and rarely to CDs. It was even more annoying that I couldn’t even have taken the CD into work to listen to as I doubt they’d be overly happy about me installing rootkits on their computer.
So I bought the DVD version and ripped that instead.
Just like when the masses said, “TV will kill the radio!“, I don’t believe the movie or music industry will die because of piracy. Somehow, someone will come up with a killer idea that will revive the entertainment industry. It usually involves some sort crisis, though, for these ideas to appear.
Well, in a way, they have done one thing: movies now have thunderous majestic explosions and such, which are hard to duplicate at home without spending 20k or more on speakers alone, and another 10k on electronics.
They are trying to make the theater experience as unique as possible.
It would not surprise me if a format beyond DVD comes out, using a technique too complicated to duplicate; making a CD will perhaps give a passable facsimile, but for the genuine full rich experience, one must purchase the disc from a real store. Perhaps something where an advanced holographic system is used.
Remember when making our own cassettes was the way to go? But, alas, each copy was inferior to the source it copied from; the only way to get a good recording was to buy it (this was when vinyl records ruled the market). The cassette was so we could hear our music in cars.
CD’s quickly killed vinyl, but they had a marketing gaffe: we could make perfect copies very inexpensively, and thus began their downfall.
But the fact remains, if the talent and the technical people cannot make a decent return on their time and efforts, they will stop doing it, be it music or movies.
(Wouldn’t that be just so funny: all them perpetually-pissed-off multi-millionaire rap stars, actually having to go out and get a real job. Oh, the horror!)
Dan, trying to figure out a way to make a few quick millions off this stuff
Somehow, someone will come up with a killer idea that will revive the entertainment industry.
Oooo, maybe some executive in the movie industry will suddenly get a flash of inspiration and realise, “Hey! Wait a minute! If we made more good movies, we’d make more money and would save the industry!“
You know, there are a lot of very good movies out there, but no one pays money to see them.
Examples:
Million Dollar Baby
A Prairie Home Companion
And other movies that are actually pretty well done, that did catch on,
Devil Wears Prada
All the Spiderman movies
Batman Returns
And I am sure lots of other examples, if I was not too lazy to dig them out from wherever one digs such things out from.
You know, before TV, there were a lot of pretty darned crummy movies (they called them ‘B’ movies, signifying very low budget).
A lot of W C Field’s movies were B
An awful lot of very pathetic movies starring Ronald Reagan and Francis the Talking Mule and Red Ryder and so on; Buck Rogers vs Ming, over and over, with his rocket travelling along on a visible string
A whole string of ridiculous pathetic Elvis movies, except I thought ‘Jailhouse Rock’ was great, i was maybe 8, and I was so confused, whether it was a documentary or a movie
All those horrible Frankenstein and Dracula movies, the budget for each must have been $ 100.00
Abbot and Costello Meet Wolfman and Dracula at the Center of the Earth
There was no other place to go and watch something, unless it were a live play, and the theaters were air-conditioned!
Dan, remembering when Dad would give us all a quarter each, and that would pay for a soda and a bag of popcorn apiece, and trying to make the popcorn last through two movies, the newsreel, the prevues, and the color cartoon
Everything from the popular Farting Santa to fake Lottery Ticket stocking stuffers.
