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Yahoo Putting Movies Online 133

Posted by CmdrTaco from the its-about-time dept.
limpdawg writes, "Yahoo anounced a deal to put Hong Kong movies on the Internet in order to keep pirates from selling them in alleys. " Of course I'm still living for the day when every piece of video and film is online and available for me to watch whenever I choose... if the first step is some Bruce Lee movies, I'm cool with that.
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Yahoo Putting Movies Online More

Yahoo Putting Movies Online

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  • Multicast baby! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Multicast deals with all your bandwidth congestion problems - they don't exist if your pipe is big enough. The other end only has to stream one copy of the movies, and you "surf" their stream. :-)

    So a single T1, which is fast enough to stream at VCD quality, would do for as many clients as can handle the stream.

    If your net provider doesn't support multicast, maybe it's time you gave 'em a call!

  • Just what we've been waiting for... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Lately I've seen people around the web preaching their solution for intellectual property of motion pictures, for problems like the CSS issue and the RIAA vs. Napster. They've said that companies will eventually have to give everyone access to their creative works by making them available to the public for a nominal monthly fee. This may work, but I have a few doubts about it. Serioulsy, that is probably what will end up happening. It will probably force you to delete the file after viewing it, and also be encrypted so that the media is only playable from Yahoo's web site. Why do we continue to deal with this bullshit? I'm telling you, the more I live in the USA, the more I grow to dislike capitalism. I mean, why the fuck am I paying taxes to criminalize some loser that has a truck full of marijuana? He or she can be imprisoned for several decades. Why should I pay for his sorry ass? I wish I could just take a trip to some other planet in the galaxy and get away from all this crap... That would make me happy.

  • Re:I like this Guy's Attitude (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    certainly not advertiser supported movies. It's a pipe dream!

    All movies released on the big screen *are* advertiser supported movies. Notice those previews before your rentals, those *are* advertisers supporting movies. Notice the product placement in the movie? Notice the toy tie-ins at MacDonald's & Burger King? Notice the advertisements on broadcast/cable television while you watch a movie? Sorry, each PC costs a lot to make. Once a movie has been made (with the incentive of box-office sales), each copy of the movie costs almost NOTHING. I strongly believe we will see advertiser supported full-length cinema films on the Internet soon. Maybe you smoke something different in that pipe.
  • :-) Never noticed that before!
  • You obviously consume a lot of HK crap. Like any culture, they have their good stuff, and they have their junk.



    I'm a big fan of the one-time HK group "Beyond", who are very good and incidentally not knockoffs of anyone.


    Also, corny as they are, I love Jackie Chan flicks (The US is still several years behind in his releases). Let Li Action films, the Chinese Ghost Story series, and the Gambler series are also excellent and 100% original.

  • That should be Jet Li. Whoopsie.
  • There's some amazing techno coming out of HK as well, specifically the Technasia label, but others too.

  • This is a good solution -- as any networks student can tell you. But, with the goal of any movie, anywhere, anytime, multicast isn't necessarily the right answer. Say I want to see Episode 23 of X-Files at 2:13 am -- there may be someone else who wants a similiar offering, but I'll wager that there will be fairly few. Now -- maybe a combination of unicast and multicast would be interesting. But then you also need to talk about network congestion, and security, etc.... Not to mention codecs. Will mpeg-2 be the future of streaming video? Probably not -- Microsoft ASF? Wavelet based encoding? It's a very interesting research area.
  • We (American's) are already well trained to spend $3-$5on movie rentals.. No one's going to push the price down for us... If anything, if there were a sufficient way that the industry could be assured that it wouldn't be easily copiable (intel's video adapter to digital monitor encyption springs to mind), then that, coupled with "higher quality" HDTV sets would mean they could charge an equal amount AT LEAST, and more if they felt like it...

    "No need to pick up the movie"
    "no need to return it either"
    "HDTV quality picture"
    "Better than CD quality sound"

    "Only $6 a viewing session"...

    It's more equatable with pay per view... so people would think it's cheap, not a ripoff. I'd like it, though... I see no need why i should have to go return videos if there's an altenrative available.
  • Grow up!

    Unless a website is selling something, then it's only means of paying for itself is through advertisements... It's funny that you complain about Yahoo using up your bandwidth to display a tiny banner, yet you don't mention slashdot, freshmeat, user sigs, or any other news website in the world...

    They need to make a living... Just like you... And just because they make more than you doesn't mean you have to resent them for it.

    If you want better movies online, why not start your own *legit* company. Get a site. Make it look GREAT... And then try to talk with the business... I'm quite positive that if you were in it for real (appeared plausible to them) they'ed give serious consideration...

    But they still need a way to get paid... That's either a credit card payment or an advertisement. You're choice!
  • Just a few stories ago (the free PC story) everyone was saying "when will advertisers learn?" and "I just zone out the ads"... Well, with the downfall of FreePC, maybe they are learning! Imagine that... Banners are too easily ignored, and the more intrusive ones aren't well tolerated.

    I highly doubt we'll be seeing advertiser supported full-length cinema films on the internet any day soon... Maybe a pay by credit card type situation wth closed source binaries so it's no easily circumvented... But certainly not advertiser supported movies. It's a pipe dream!

  • wow (Score:1)

    by mcc ( 14761 )
    this is really cool.. i don't think anything like this has ever been done before, really.
    so the important question is, what are the prices? they're going to have to price low enough that they make it worth it to buy from them instead of the VCD piraters.. esp. since if you buy from a bootlegger, you get a nice physical copy of it on a CD and it doesn't take up hard drive space or whatever. but they should be able to do that, since they will have almost no operating expenses.. just pay for bandwidth, and give the people who made the movie their money and, um, that's it.
    Hell, if you wind up with some system where you can pay a small fee to get the movie and appears that most of the money is going to the actual people who made the movie and not to some big theater-owning corporation.. you may get a good bit of money back from some of the rampant over-the-internet VCD pirating. Although you won't get to that point until you're doing something except hong kong films.. And it will only happen with movies that are good. :)

    How's the chineese government feel about this? Exactly how much strict control are they exerting over Hong Kong now that they control it? any?

    anyway if the prices are good enough to make it worth it.. oh God, i hope they don't stop with hong kong. i hope they move on to anime.

  • Irony (Score:1)

    by mlc ( 16290 )
    Surely I'm not the only one to notice, but, isn't it odd that even though we usually see a lot of links to Reuters stories on news.yahoo.com, this link leads to excite?
  • New movies would be available on the Website after they had played out in cinemas, on cable television and been released on video compact discs (VCD).

    Waitaminnit...

    A good movie never plays out! Look at Casablanca. I saw it on Showtime just a few weeks ago. Gone with the Wind was re-released in theatre just a few years ago. I saw Enter The Dragon a little while ago, too.

    Any movie with Guys, Babes, Weekend, or Party will probably be seen on Yahoo in a few years. So, I'm formulating a list of movies that will make it on.

    Weekend At Bernie's
    Ghostbusters II
    Halloween > II
    Nightmare On Elm Street
    Howard The Duck
    And that Micheal Jackson flick... what was that? Moonwalker?

    And what's the list going to look like once a few recently released movies die out?

    Godzilla
    Speed 2
    End Of Days
    Scream
    Scream II
    Scream III: Asscrackers and Cheese
    Scream VI: Even Louder
    Scream V: Look Behind The Door, Dammit
    Scream IV: Director's Cut

    Oh yeah, and anything with Leonardo DiCapro in it.

    Doesn't it feel good to release some venom sometimes?

  • Re:Yep (Score:1)

    by noom ( 22944 )
    Wow, that must have secured years of admiration from your friends. They probably think you're the shit.
  • Uh, dude, calm down.

    I'd rather stream videos (if they are high-enough quality) then shlep all the way to block-buster.

    Anyway, its not like Yahoo really had a choice in all of this, it's not like they can just stream any movie they want, only ones that are made by this one production company. Perhaps in the future, they can make more deals, but untill then, you really can't bitch.

    [ c h a d o k e r e ] [dhs.org]
  • - Hong Kong is (was?) the world's third largest movie-producing country (city?) after the US & Hollywood.

    Huh? Hollywood is in the US.

    [ c h a d o k e r e ] [dhs.org]
  • What I wonder is what's the problem with, say, Fox, posting each weeks X-Files episode in MPG format. To get access to the file you have to trade your demographic info and enter your Fox password. Now they get some (closer to) concrete number about who is watching (at least this version) and they get more people hanging out on thier site. It's not about getting one or two ad impressions, it's about creating devoted fans for life.

    --
  • That's a good point, and I agree as far as new movies are concerned. I think initially this will work the best with older films, classics and stuff, and could do for independent file makers what MP3.com did for independent muscians (eventually, even current broadband offerings aren't quite fast enough for streaming video at a decent quality)
    What I really see for the future of movies on demmand is some type of union between broadband 'net access and digital cable. What I'd like to see is a situation like a few years down the road. You jump on the web and start searching movie on demand databases, you find what your looking for and purchase it for some really low price, like say $.50 for a "classic" flick and $1 for a new release. You then type in some sort of digital ID number for your digital cable box, plug in your password and bam 10 seconds later Casablanca (in B&W of course ;-) is playing on your big screen HDTV set. The $.50 shows up on your cable bill, but you see you didn't order the movie from you cable co, they only served as an access provider ya see, they maybe get a cut of the $.50 from the content provider, most likely they survive off of selling access to the consumer. Once the bandwidth (and the encoding technology) exists in a few years this could very well be a reality, with a few modifications I'm sure. What we're seeing here is the first tenetive steps in that direction.
  • Who the hell has streaming MPEG video for Linux? I'm not huge into webcasts and the like but I was under the impression that real video was our only option for this at the moment.
  • I see you're point (tho I don't agree with Jackie Chan ;-) I'm also a hugh fan of Beyond, too bad I missed their concert on x-mas!

    I was just trying to make the point that most of Hong Kong industry either copies from other entertainment industries (america, and Japan, as you pointed out), or have their idiotis singer/actor "stars" idolized by the population.

    Take a look at (but don't listen to ;-) Leon, Kelly, Andy(s), Sammi, Nichalas, Wong Fei, to name a few... They are all very popular celebrities, and yet they don't possess any real talent.

    (Beyond, on the other hand, _is_ Hong Kong culture! :-)

    America, even with its BackStreets and 36 2/3 degrees celcius, does have an incredible amount of original music.

  • I think you may have deliberately misunderstood me when I used BackStreet Boys. I hate the BackStreets, I used them to show even though there are crap like BackStreets, there exists a log of _other_ original music in america.

    Maybe I shouldn't have put Faye on "the list", but I just can't accept the fact that an "artist" in her own words copies music from groups like the Cranberries (though its done legally).

    (My definition of talent in _this_ context creativity is based on , but you are right that she has a nice voice, so I am wrong to put here there.)

    "The Hong Kong music industry rarely licenses songs from abroad anymore"

    Well, they don't "license" it anymore, but copy 75% of the song to claim to be Artists instead of singers. Take a look at the recent press in Ming Pao Entertainment when they ripped music from Singapore. I think it has become better tho, because this time the press actually exposed them.

    Sorry for sounding rude, but I am not spreading FUD, only my opinion.

  • people's desire to watch movies on their computer screen. How convenient is it to watch a movie with a bunch of friends huddled around a monitor? I realize some people ie college students may prefer this due to space constraints, but what other advantages are there? I'd rather kick back on a couch with a bag of chips and the surround sound cranking than sitting in a chair watching a movie in horrible resolution. Spend $15-20 and buy the DVD if you like the movie, don't settle for low resolution streaming media.
  • I really wish that you hadn't posted anonymously because I would LOVE to give you some of my karma points for that. I am kind of stingy with my karma points (I guess) in that I have never moderated a post down, but when I find a post that really makes me think about something in a light that I hadn't seen before, that is usually where I put my karma. So here is a Karma IOU to this AC for when they decide to post with a login and I have some karma.
    ------------------------------------------ --
  • Am I the only one who finds it very strange reading information about Yahoo! on excite? hmm....
  • You are absolutely correct that there need to be more Akira Kurosawas, but he is Japanese, not Chinese.
  • Finally, I can get to see all of my favorite movies by Jet Lee.

  • perhaps "Fist of Legend" will get released after all these damn DVD delays...

  • I'm not sure, as I haven't managed to convince my superiors to pay for a trip to Hong Kong, but are Bruce Lee movies really what the pirates are making thier money on? I suppose that for Chinese Star Ent. this might be a good deal, but I don't know how much revenue they are really losing...
  • i'm just glad that more movies are coming to the united states. the current selection that we have over here is extremely weak. several of my friends have started a cult of hong kong cinema freaks. we gather on tuesday nights and watch films ranging from early bruce lee, jackie chan, and gordon liu all the way up to the more recent ones by jet li and jackie.

    they're extremely entertaining, so whether they come to the united states in vhs, vcd, dvd, laserdisc, or streamed, i'm happy they're coming in at all.
  • To me an integral part of renting or buying a video is having the disk. I can watch it twice if I want. I can stop half way and start up again after lunch. I can go back and see the really cool scene, only in slo-mo this time. I can go back and turn the director's commentary on.

    This is what bothers me about streaming RealAudio. I can't do any of this stuff because it won't save it to my hard drive. If I want to see it again I have to download it again. This is not the optimal situation. And what if they stop offering it? Then I won't be able to see it. With a video store they'll keep it on the shelf because they've already paid for it. But will Yahoo reserve HD space for seldom watched movies?

    What I'd love to see is an online service that would (for a small fee if necessary) allow me to download large mpeg files. I've got a bootleg TPM on my hard drive that looks good. Obviously they'd have to have different versions of the file for people with different connections and hard-drive space. But I think once it got rolling something like that would be better then Netflix. The streaming aspect of these things is just trouble.
  • It will be a while before they put up all historical content online, because of the work involved. I do think that TV shows made for syndication and cable networks (such as my fav "Cleopatra 2525") will begin to show their current episodes up on their websites. I say it will start within the year (in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there are some already).

    I suppose the historical archives will be next -- anybody know how successful xoom.com has been with their streaming classic movies? (BTW, check out "Killer Bats", its really cool).

    As for network TV, that probably won't go for quite some time, before there has been an "Internet TV" hit. I suppose it depends on bandwidth, they probably would want a 300kb+ stream. 80 or 120k is okay, but it's still no substitute for "the real thing"

  • Why is it everytime I turn my back on Slashdot, one of the posters have to make some stupid comment on other cultures. "can't wait for those bruce lee movies". Yeah, I forget, everything from Hong Kong is a Bruce Lee-esque action flick. Grow up.
  • But that's the problem - it isn't a viable profit making approach at the moment. How can looking at one or two banner ads equal $20??

    Well, it doesn't equal $20, and I see your point. However, there are a few other things to remember. First, the banner ads don't have to get all the way up to $20, because the cost of duplicating the media (tapes, cds, whatever) is eliminated. Second, free media will likely result in a much larger audience than pay-media would - thus, the reduced price per person is offset partially by a much larger number of people 'paying'.

    Despite this, I agree that free-beer'ing all media probably won't work - that's why I gave mp3.com as an example. They combine limited free media with a sales venture in a way which I think both greatly reduces the chances of an artists work being pirated, and yet greatly increases their profits and audience.

  • Now if only the entire media industry could begin to see this as a viable profit-making marketing approach for larger-scale ventures.

    But that's the problem - it isn't a viable profit making approach at the moment. How can looking at one or two banner ads equal $20?? Just yesterday we had a discussion on /. about why advertising-funded schemes just don't work - and now we have this. I fail to see how the following works : A studio makes a film costing, say, $100m. They give people the option of either spending $5 at the cinema to watch it (plus popcorn, drinks etc which is where the real money is), or $3-5 to rent it from the video store, OR (and here's the big one) stream it for free, in exchange for casting their eyes over a couple of $.01 per view ads. Which are probably blocked through their DSL firewall 'cos they're so leet anyway. In a couple of years when the bandwidth is less of an issue and broadband is more common - who's gonna pay the money??

    I agree that it's impossible to just bury your head in the sand and ignore the digital distribution possibilities, but it's also just not practical to say "hey guys - why not give it away - that will stop people stealing it!!". Until movie production becomes free (beer) then someone somewhere has to pay the bill. Or you get no films...

  • Somehow, I think this move actually has nothing to do with pirates at all. People just love to say "pirates" and "Hong Kong" next to each other, since Hong Kong is, after all, the crime capital of the world (or maybe that's just my impression since the only Chinese movies I get to see were made there).

    This is about squeezing just a liiiiil bit more out of a dusty pile of near-dead media. I think within 2 years, the average joe will have the bandwidth to watch these, though (at least in my neighborhood).

    Unfortunately for Yahoo, two years is plenty of time for a not-ready-for-prime-time technology to tick off and kill off the customer population. So I guess, on the balance, I'm agreeing with you.

  • That money comes from me loading that banner, and me seeing it, which takes both *my* bandwith and *my* time...Maybe I have no problem with them draining away my life to fill the coporate coffers. Maybe I enjoy being screwed by ``new media'' conglomerates.

    Yeah, damn it! How dare they force you to go to their site and look at their content, seeing banner ads in the process.

    Don't want to waste time and bandwidth seeing Yahoo's banner ads? Don't visit www.yahoo.com. Sheesh.

  • I know I'm nit-picking, but this always bothers me.

    China will probably get Most Favored Nation status, but this doesn't make them special in any way. All it means is we don't impose as heavy tariffs on their goods.

    Almost every country in the world has Most Favored Nation Status. The few exceptions are our avowed enemies like Cuba and North Korea (although one can certainly argue that China belongs in that category).

  • I commented on this a few weeks back in another post.

    This is a reality. I just hope the big video media people will embrace the technology rather then that of the music biz. Hopefully they have/are learning their lesson that information/media on the internet WANTS to be free and widely distributed.

    Vidster anyone? That would kick ass, I need to find tapes of all the Liquid Television epsiodes. I lost all 3 seasons I taped off of tv when my house burned down.

    Damn I loved that show.. I wonder why beavis and butthead made it instead of bobby and billy.. bobby and billy was so much funnier..

    uh, im rambling so ill stop now :)

  • Also if it's streaming, don't you have to contend with Net congestion? It'll make movies unwatchable, just as it renders anything over a few minutes long useless.
  • This is an excellent opportunity for any fans of these awesome movies. If I had the bandwidth, I'd actively watch all of them but as it stands, I'll only dream of the day i can watch Bruce Lee kick some ass over the internet. Of course if they're all in Chinese, it's even more entertaining. Try making up your own lines to go with the scene.

  • > Not to mention the interface sucks ass (no rewind? wtf?)

    In normal view the little left arrow next to the progress meter is rewind. Or ctrl-left arrow.

    Yep, I installed realpoor and can't get rid of the bugger either. Oh well if you can't beat 'em...

  • If this is the first step to real online movie selection and viewing more power to 'em! Almost like the perfect choice of films to kick this off too. How many of us grew up watching Samuri Sunday and Kung-Fu Theater?

    Soon to follow (crossing fingers here): real interactive movies and television where you could select your own content level (not that any of us would ever watch Jerry...) Click to watch yer favorite.

    The only question remaining : when they gonna stike a deal with the folks at Troma?

  • Me: Dude...enter the dragon rocks on streaming video

    Friend: Yah...who's kicking who's ass right now?

    Me: I think that grey pixel on the left is Bruce Lee.

    Friend:Yah, it should have some sound tho...this is the third time in a row we've played The Wall

    BTW - that Dark Side of the Moon and Wizard of Oz trick only works if you're stoned...i highly recommend it.

    FluX


    -FluX
    -------------------------
    Your Ad Here!
    -------------------------
  • the best way for yahoo or whatever to make it work is NOT to stream the movies... WMA would be a good example. it's available for download, but will only play if your computer is able to contact the server for the correct key. no doubt people will find ways around this, but in this way people don't have to worry about having to rebuffer, etc...

    this way advertisers can also slap their banner ads on the top of letterboxed movies to sponsor the movies, etc. or, every time you watch a movie your tab would be added up or whatnot...

    anyway, my point is that it *can* work without streaming, i'm actually interested in how yahoo is planning on pulling this off.

    -barton
  • and i read yesterday that christina agrilola (or however u spell it!) ripped off a french pop song, so what? just because some songs are ripped off it doesn't mean every one is. considering HK artists are *very* prolific (the heavenly kings typically release 2-3 albums a year) thats 1000s songs a year maybe, theres gonna be a few copies slipped in i guess!
  • The thing with the Hong Kong entertainment industry in general is that it does not produce quality productions. Much of its ideas are not original and were "copied" from the West.

    in your opinion, in mine they produce some of the best films in the world and the best music in the world (except for, perhaps indonesia). but thats just my opinion. however i take offence with you saying much of it is not original... when was the last time u listened to cantopop? 1989? nowadays its a very vibrant and rich scene, yeah they do cover a lot of songs but as the number of songs released every year is very high (the top stars usually release 2-3 new albums a year) then i guess they got to throw a few covers in here and there. but thats a cover version, same as madonna's current fiasco with american pie, some like covers others don't

    In the music Industry, most of their singers/actors are just "good looking idols"

    ask a girl, they'll tell u most of those "good looking idols" are ugly anyway! so how come they are so popular still? how can andy lau (for example) sell so many albums and have sold-out concerts? could it be because, actually, hes pretty good? naaa surely not. in any case HK music fans differentiate between the good looking and the ones who can actually sing. they are not as blind as you think. they know if a singer is popular just for their looks or not. an example is gigi leung, even some of her fans admit she can't sing too well but shes a great star all the same.

    If one's work is of high quality, many people will not pirate it, but actually buy it.

    dude, go into one of the many shops in HK selling pirate CDs and VCDs, they'll sell anyone. not just artists you think are not very good.

  • and the immortal HK dance track "we want some pussy"
  • maybe he meant Bollywood
  • I just signed on MeTV ..that's a Bruce Li movie not Bruce Lee ! Big difference.
    In any case YUV should be fine, the problem I noticed is the MPEG2 compression that tends to use very lower resolution on moving sections of the picture.
    When you compare VCD quality to Internet streaming you have to consider that VCD is actually playing back less than 200K/sec.
    Infact you have 650MB for about 60 minutes of MPEG1. That's 650MB / (60min * 60sec) = ~185KB/sec .
    Considering a factor 2 compression improvement in MPEG4 you should be fine with a 100KB/sec bandwidth. ..So, VCD quality if you have DSL.

    ciaox
  • For some reason I believe every Hong Kongian out there that still has 56k connection is going prefer paying a couple of yen to some street kid who has a real copy of the movie than spending like a week downloading a VCD.
  • What i'm saying is, at 450K, heck even 300k a sec or less, movies are MORE than watchable. Since my tv-out is running at 640x480 anyway, stretching a movie that was designed at half-that with a little hardware compensation (present in most modern video cards) results in a delightful picture. The larger pixels of a TV and the inherent blurriness actually make the picture look BETTER because the artifacts blend in. I still think watching old honk kong movies in chinese is not for me, but then again i am saying that streaming is mroe than possible with todays technology. If you have the bandwidth. I often watch a movie while bulletproff is downloading it If I can get good enough speed from the site (around 40K a sec)

  • Is this basicly going to be the same thing as broadcast.com where a bunch of movies i'd never want to watch and still more "shows" that i wou;d never watch, are available for me to stream at up to 1 megabit per second? I personally think this is a step towards massive video on demand, but then again, the quality probably can't touch the VCD rips of real movies people with the connections to take advantage of this kind of thing are already doing. Besides, do tons of people in Hong Kong really have the speedy access necessary to do this? Aren't people buying pirated movies because they are BROK to begin with? There surely can't be the people who can afford to pay fopr broadband access in Hong Kong.

  • Are they talking about streaming video? Because I don't know about you, but I think films lose some of their impact when shown on a 3 inch by 3 inch window pasted over a browser window...
  • Well it's the resolution, not the screen size. With few exceptions, most streaming video I've seen has such poor resolution that making the window any bigger makes it so blurry it's unwatchable. VCDs are different; the bandwidth between your CD player and computer is a lot wider than broadband. But, I'm jumping to conclusions..the smart move would be just to make them downloadable, but the media seems to have an unwholesome obsession with webcasts. I just don't think the infrastructure can support it well enough right now.
  • having these movies online is a Good Idea (tm) but i agree with what most ppl have been saying, the net effect on piracy will be zero... as for the format, it would be much better if they posted them as .mpgs rather than some propriatary format (FakeVideo eg) but not likely - after all they'll get sponsored like everyone else... perhaps they just should upload them to a few select DCC-bots :P


    ------------------------------------------
    Cheo ps' law: Nothing ever gets built on time or within budget.
  • Of course, I would rather download movies down a nice fat fiber optic pipe instead of having to rent from the store - taking them back on time is such a drag! BUT check out http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/02/cyber/cy berlaw/18law.html. Yahoo/Broadcast.com is a Stalker! And they are being sued for it in Fort Worth, Texas ...... I beinging to think that cookies are not worth it. Sure, it is damn near impossible to surf with cookies turn off but maybe it is time to create an open source browser that just toss them all way .... I dunno. I'm just sooo sick of this corporate pigs who think that have the right to stalk me and whore for my eyeballs yet want to make reselling old software illegal (UCITA), reverse engineering illegal (MPAA vs. DeCSS/UCITA again), sharing music with porn comeons and a sea of dead links illegal (RIAA vs. Napster) and again reverse engineering a sin (Napster vs. David Weekly, the hypocritcs!), bully some artists domain (The etoy.WAR!) and on and on and on....I'm in danger of turning into a latter Lenny Bruce - after he lost his sense of humor....The recent DOS attacks are lame sure. But it's being to be understandable ....... sheesh "can't we all get along? Can't we people?" ....... Well maybe (with apologies to Thomas Jefferson) the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with packets of cyberfreedom fighters and capitalistpigs.com. The coolest moment in all of this so far is when the etoy.WAR forced eToys.com's stock way down. No violence - just (in the spirit of Xena, the account) "BANKRUPT THEM ALL!!!!" ....
  • Wahooo! I'm all for Hong Kong movies on-line. I need some more Michelle Yeoh movies! She hot.... ok...I'm done now.... Tiefling My karma ate your dogma....

  • Hong Kong reality check! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Access:
    Honk Kong has a reasonable high availablitity of ADSL modems, with cable modems on line in the next few months. - We already have interactive TV - eg. pick your movie and play it. - and a household penetration of about 60% (available, not neccessary subscribed).

    Piracy:
    Yes, I can wander around hong kong and find these movies for about US$4, but pirated VCD quality is hit and miss - often the new releases are a camcorder in the back of the cinema!
    More interestingly, across the border (yes hong kong still has one), I can pick up DVD's of all of this stuff for US$10-20 which are usually laserdiscs burnt onto DVDs
    Software is more difficult to get in Hong Kong now, although still available if you try hard.

    Will it work:
    If it is available at higher resolutions, then it will get some usage, but if you look at 1-2 years down the road, then there will be alot more set-top boxes that double as internet access so that is what they are aiming at.

    Nice to see Hong Kong on the /. again

  • HK citizens already have streaming video (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    HK has huge high rise apartments which is great for streaming video. HKTel puts in high bandwith fiber to one appartment complex, it's already wired with ethernet, and boom HKTel can stream video. HKTel currently handles the fiber and streaming video servers, yahoo wants to jump on the bandwagon. Nothing wrong with that, but let's not pretend that this is new for Hong Kong.

  • Who likes Kung-fu movies anyway? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If I go to Yahoo, their ad banners load, and they get money, right? That money comes from me loading that banner, and me seeing it, which takes both *my* bandwith and *my* time. Ergo, Yahoo, everytime I visit, is making a profit off of me.

    Let's just say that maybe I don't object to this. Maybe I have no problem with them draining away my life to fill the coporate coffers. Maybe I enjoy being screwed by ``new media'' conglomerates.

    But what I *do* object to is their choice of films. Bruce Lee? Jackie Chan? Why Hong Kong? Why not, oh, say, MAINLAND CHINA? What does Yahoo have to hide?

    So, they want you to watch brainless action flicks. Great. Why don't the do a real service to the community by showing Chinese movies with a message, such as Farewell, My Concubine or The Blue Kite? Surely, we have more to fear from totalitarianism than from whatever nonesense enemies Jackie Chan dreams up to fight on film? C'mon. Anyone can see those movies simply by going to Blockbuster. But the sort of movies I'm interested in seeing are the ones that the PRC gov't doesn't want us to see, the ones that not only are suppressed at home, but which they attepmt to destroy in order to prevent the outside world from knowing what's going down.

    With China headed on the path to become the U.S.'s ``Most favored nation'', I think that it is of utmost importance for us to know the sort of abuses that occur regularly there. I don't know if any Chinese money is tied up in Yahoo, but I would sure be glad to see them presenting films with a message.

    For my money, it's the better bargain, by FAR.
  • I'd rather spend the $24 on a DVD than spend 3 hours doing the streaming media dance in Reboot NT. It's far cheaper to have them burn a DVD of the Bruce Lee movie and mail it than it is to lease an internet connection fast enough to download a decent quality movie.
  • MeTV.Com already has Bruce Lee movies online.

    I'd rather watch a camcorder'd version taped off a television, dragged through mud, and dubbed thrice by Bob The Clowny Boy.

    MP3 is the real thing. Streaming video is just...awful. I mean, there are people out there not impressed with DVD, and I see where they're coming from(could we please have a mathematical algorithm that pays a little more attention to the human visual system than YUV?), but it's nothing like streaming video.

    *LOL* If anything, streaming video will *increase* the market for Hong Kong movies that don't suck in encoding quality...so the pirates get to sell more content.

    Greaaaaaat....

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • Think they'll keep it friendly and free when they've weakened the demand for VCD's? My bet is that the whole idea is to own both format and content by providing the movies through a web interface of some kind.

    I wonder if the main selling point of VCD's is the content, or is it the ability to play it on demand with ordinary players? If it's the content, the the movie companies might have a chance of pulling it off. If it's the accessability, then I think it's another format war brewing.

    Business as usual in the woods, no? :)

  • Lets see, Golden Harvest Entertainment is responsible at least some of the movies by and starring...

    Bruce Lee
    Jackie Chan
    Jet Li

    I think a MPAA boycott could be more than tolerable, it could be downright fun! Time to crank up the bandwith to my home!

    IS the begining of the end or the end of the begining? Hopefully this will be a huge success and set a precedent. I might even buy brands I see in the adverts if they don't suck.(I rarely do that)

  • I really wonder what the picture quality will be like, though. I mean, typical VCDs now are two-VCDs per movie, which is over a gig. I doubt Yahoo will want tons of people grabbing gigs of data from them, so it'll probably be lower resolution than VCDs.

    Not to mention that VCDs can be viewed on a TV with the tons of VCD players people have in Asia. (And many DVD players play VCDs as well.)

    I don't think pirate VCDs will die. Well, at least not until pirate DVDs take off...

    Still, I like this guy's attitude toward dealing with the problem. I do think this could definitely bite into pirate sales.. and in a way that doesn't piss off legit consumers, too!
  • Try dropping the middle of an MPEG frame on the wire... try running a network level adaptation on the protocol. You can't, not without serious horsepower in the middle. If you'd like to be able to handle network congestion control and adaptation at the router level, MPEG is less than optimal.
  • What lesson has the music industry learned? I don't recall them learning or being taught any lessons... Face it: yes, MP3's deprive big time execs of money... But they also hurt the smaller smaller and midsized artists... Probably the midsized ones the most.

    I mean, really small acts know that they need a real job to support themselves. Large acts know they'll never need jobs again. It's the midsized ones that are hoping to break into the big time that really get squeezed by MP3's...

    I'll stand by that, until the day that bands like Sebadoh, Shellac, Unsane and even Sonic Youth (bands that don't quite come close to selling millions of records) come forward and say that MP3's actually HELP them... Until then, I'll think that all the lines being made up that say tha MP3 distribution really helps the artists because then they don't need to deal with studio's is just a bunch of justification lines...

    And what... Vidster? I'm sure everyone here will be able to justify the idea that they own such and such movie and what not... Face it... You hate industry but they love what they give you... If you hurt them, they won't be able to provide anymore.. Think NO STAR WARS III...

  • Why?! (Score:2)

    by jabber ( 13196 )
    So now the alternative to cheaply buying a badly copied DVD or VHS cassette is a choppy, blurry, jerky and most of all time-consuming download. Great!!

    You can watch it the old way, for $5, fuzzy, with the occasional scan-line mangle, on a TV, at your leisure, repeatedly, fast-forwarding, rewinding, frame-freezing..

    Or, you can log into a site which tracks who you are and where you come from, sit and wait for a stable connection (which you won't get), squint at a 320x200 (at best!) box on your monitor, watch in stream-time without the option of jumping past the boring part (maybe you can pause the stream to take a leak or get a beer - without dropping the connection and starting over), raise your blood-pressure at the dropped frames and jerky playback, and should you want to see the film again, you get to rinse-lather-repeat the whole process.

    Someone should introduce the people responsible for this to the folks behind content-filtering software and CSS. They'd have a lot in common.

    Aren't there dual-bay VCR's out in the far east? I mean, how many times can you watch a movie in the first place, to make rental charges excessive? How many movies can you own to need to buy pirate copies? If you're that poor, you should worry about food, not getting a deal on Titanic, ferchrisakes!

  • No! (Score:2)

    by Pope ( 17780 )
    Maggie Cheung! *biff bam pow*

    Pope
  • Actually, IIRC india has the worlds largest movie industrie (the movies are hardly never exported though).
  • God, I don't want to install that POS RealPlayer on my computer. I don't 'enjoy' having all of my file association taken away, only to find out that realplayer reassociates itself, even after you remove them, every time you reboot, or log off your computer.

    Not to mention the interface sucks ass (no rewind? wtf?)

    God, I hope real dies. what's the matter with streaming MPEG?

    We should push for a non-propritary streaming format (mpeg, or mpeg4 like windows media player), as opposed to begging apple and real to port there propritary s*** to linux

    [ c h a d o k e r e ] [dhs.org]
  • I think you may have deliberately misunderstood me when I used BackStreet Boys. I hate the BackStreets, I used them to show even though there are crap like BackStreets, there exists a log of _other_ original music in america.

    No, I didn't deliberately misundertand you. Using anything other than BackStreet Boys wouldn't be a fair apples to apples comparison, since there's a high degree of similarity across the board for pop music in ANY country.

    Maybe I shouldn't have put Faye on "the list", but I just can't accept the fact that an "artist" in her own words copies music from groups like the Cranberries (though its done legally)

    Again, I don't know why you're bringing up a situation that ceased to exist 6 whole years ago, but it was very common thing to license music back then, simply because there was a lack of talent of that sort in Hong Kong back then (please be reminded that Hong Kong has a total population of 6 million people - they don't have a niche for everything back then). Of course, like I said this point is nil, since almost no artists do that now.

    Well, they don't "license" it anymore, but copy 75% of the song to claim to be Artists instead of singers. Take a look at the recent press in Ming Pao Entertainment when they ripped music from Singapore. I think it has become better tho, because this time the press actually exposed them.

    You're right, but you missed the point. The very act of newspapers exposing them shows that the public doesn't condones such action, and we find it very intolerable as well. In fact, another artist was recently accused of copying (almost note for note) a Thai song of 2 years ago. He was placed in under public scrutiny, ranging from enraged music fans, to music directors, and awards were even considered to be evoked.

    Your example not only proves my point that Hong Kong doesn't show a "it's ok" attitude towards copycat artists. Please don't insult the Hong Kong entertainment industry anymore. Thanks.

  • So when was the last time YOU were in Hong Kong?

    Much of its ideas are not original and were "copied" from the West.

    I see. So where did John Woo copy his ideas from? I'm surprised to see a copycat like him do so well in Hollywood. The reason that there's a talentdrain in the Hong Kong entertainment industry is because there's more money to be made from Hollywood movies. They get funded better, because a movie made in English would have better sales compared to a movie made in Cantonese. Their leaving is certainly not linked to the lack of quality productions as you mislead it to be.

    but the worst part is that there are practically no "artists" anymore who actually come up with their own music (one exception is Beyond, a band in HK.)

    You're outdated by at least six years. Beyond isn't the only band producing original music (but they sure are one band producing originall shoddy music that doesn't sell). Most of the artists don't license songs from abroad anymore. Faye Wong? She has been singing original songs for a since 1994.

    A Hong Kong-nese mentality is that "if I can get it for less, then I will get it for less". They lack an understanding for intellectual property, and it has nothing to do with the fact if the work is "high quality" or not. Of course, you fail to mention that American movies made on VCDs sell like hotcakes in Hong Kong.

    Sorry for sounding so harsh, but I have to counter-argue Hong Kong FUD when I see it.

  • Take a look at (but don't listen to ;-) Leon, Kelly, Andy(s), Sammi, Nichalas, Wong Fei, to name a few... They are all very popular celebrities, and yet they don't possess any real talent.

    By what measure do you assess "talent"? Faye Wong possess a very beautiful voice (which is already a "real talent" for ANYONE that listens to music).

    (Beyond, on the other hand, _is_ Hong Kong culture! :-)

    Beyond announced a month ago they are "breaking up" temporarily. Surely I don't believe a group that _is_ the Hong Kong culture is eager to break up.

    America, even with its BackStreets and 36 2/3 degrees celcius, does have an incredible amount of original music.

    what do you define as "orginal"? The Hong Kong music industry rarely licenses songs from abroad anymore (as I have mentioned in another post). If you include "non-inspired music" as "orginal", then it's total bs, since every BackStreet boys song sound exactly the same.

  • The recent boom in pirate VCDs seem to point to the fact that people don't care as much if the quality is poor, they just want to watch the film. I've seen pirate VCDs with a row of dark blobs at the bottom of the screen (the audience's heads at the cinema), "live" laughter/clapping/cheering, mono sound, fuzzy/blur images, start/ending chopped off. Yet, people watch movies like Toy Story 2 on VCD, where the hard work of renderer farms goes down the gurgler. I think I understand where this guy is coming from.

    Also, original VCDs aren't expensive, nor are the players. I picked up an el cheapo no-name one for USD$60 that was VCD v3.0 compliant! :)

    Besides, on the low budget HK movies survive on, who can pay for expensive effects? So there's no diff watching it at low bandwidth!

    I don't know if there's going to be an English version, but watch out for Tokyo Raiders. There's heaps of spectacular fight scenes. Stylised fighting, but good! :)
  • I really hope that Yahoo! decides to webcast these movies via something fairly cross platform like RealVideo (until an open source streaming video codec is released of course ;-> ) to stream Bruce Lee to the masses. It would be a pretty big setback to Linux and other alt OS's (in the desktop market) if the first experiment in webcasting to a mass market audience is supported only on a single platform. In all fairness I'd like for Yahoo! to webcast in multiple formats, hopefully when this goes live we'll have the option of viewing in RealVideo, Netmeetings, Quicktime and Vivo (they still around?) the upside to that would be if RealVideo's numbers are higher than other formats the Linux community could that as one more peice of ammo to get Apple to port/open source quicktime to linux: "Look at usage numbers on RealVideo, check out the number of Linux clients that connected, wouldn't you like to tap into that?" ;->
  • The thing with the Hong Kong entertainment industry in general is that it does not produce quality productions. Much of its ideas are not original and were "copied" from the West. Much of their talent have already left (ie. John Woo, Chow Yun Fat, Jet Li) for the western industry. Listen to their "hit" music, much of it is copied from Western Music (I can name many, for example, Wong Fei and the Cranberries...)

    In the music Industry, most of their singers/actors are just "good looking idols" popularized by studios (like 98 degrees in the west), but the worst part is that there are practically no "artists" anymore who actually come up with their own music (one exception is Beyond, a band in HK.)

    If one's work is of high quality, many people will not pirate it, but actually buy it. I know I wouldn't pirate The Matrix after I have seen it on the big screen. Many people actually download an MP3, listen to it, and if they like it, they will buy the CD. If the Hong Kong industry does not inspire creativity and originality, no one will respect its work and will keep on producing VCD's.

  • Or perhaps he just really likes Bruce Lee movies, which are also in the package, as it says in the article.

    //rdj
  • Those are art films. To most of the world, art films are boring. That's why most of them don't do stellar business.

    People love action films. Hollywood knows this, and that's why every summer is stuffed to the gills with action films. Action films make the money that the movie industry needs to keep the business rolling. Art films are what they make to keep the snobs happy.

    The real acme of skill in filmaking isn't to make some bloody boring art film. It's to make one badass action film that's so good that only the worst snobs refuse to acknowledge the legitimate dramatic (or comedic) genius within the top-knotch action/adventure sequences.

    Put another way, the world needs more John Woos, Akira Kurosawas, Hayao Miyazakis, Sam Peckinpahs, and Sergio Leones- not another boring Merchant Ivory joint.
  • Aren't all movies more or less online right now?

    I've got a great copy of Star Wars on my drive, plus a bunch of crappy copies of other movies.
    But I have found out that if you want something bad enough, eventually you'll be able to track it down.

    I guess it all comes down to a persons want/expenditure ratio. I really wanted Austin Powers 2, so I spent 3 days piecing it together. I really don't want any HK movies, so I probably won't even bother clicking on them off of Yahoo.

    I just hope that watching these movies isn't such a pain that nobody will do it. Go Yahoo!


  • Everyone I know who watches any tv to speak of loves TiVo. After they dominate that market, how long will it be before you can upgrade and get on-demand programming with your bandwidth? Instead of saying, "record at time X", just tell it "download X". If you're fast, watch it live, if not, come back and it will be there.

  • I really wanted Austin Powers 2, so I spent 3 days piecing it together.

    You don't think 3 days of your time are worth the $15 it would take to buy the movie?!

  • It's a nice way for Yahoo to try out movies over the Internet as a business area. Maybe they have more aggressive plans. Imagine a push by Yahoo to have copyright terms shortened so they can provide more free content. With a "write your congressman" button on Yahoo. Now that would drive the MPAA nuts.
  • Karma points? How about a dope slap? Here's some facts:

    - Hong Kong is (was?) the world's third largest movie-producing country (city?) after the US & Hollywood. This may have changed in recent years because of reduced production due to money problems.

    - While Hong Kong is a source of action movies it is also a great source of art movies, dramas, comedies.

    Here's some quick recommendations:

    Art:
    - Anything directed by Wong Kar-Wai (Chungking Express, Happy Together)
    - Anything directed by Fruit Chan (Made in Hong Kong)
    - Anna Magdalena
    - Four Faces of Eve

    Drama:
    - Lost and Found
    - Kitchen
    - Peking Opera Blues (also comedy and action)
    - The Killer (also action)
    - Twenty Something
    - Fly Me to Polaris.

    Comedy:
    - Most Stephen Chow movies (Forbidden City Copy)
    - He's a Woman, She's a Man
    - Yesterme, Yesteryou, Yesterday

    Watch a few those and maybe you'll understand why Yahoo might be interested in Hong Kong. And BTW, some of those action movies are works of art in and of themselves (Peking Opera Blues, The Killer, Fist of Legend, Fong Sai Yuk, Beyong Hypothermia, and many more).

    quick plug: db.hkmdb.com is a great source of info on HK films (I coded a lot of it).
  • well if you are smart you get a video card with TV out and watch movies from your computer on your 46" tv. i've had friends over to watch VCDs (legit ones) and people who didn't know didn't say anything. Though they did comment on the quality, "looking better than vhs" even modest streams, say 450K a sec can look darn good.

  • i'm from hongkong and i think i should put in my 2 cents here. you'll be surprised that the VCDs of Hong Kong movies come out not long after the movie's been taken down. (genuine ones i mean.) and the illegal (i prefer not to use pirated. it sounds worse than stealing. instead i use illegal becasue this only implies it's governed by law.) ones...well, let's just say that the people who make the illegal copies are extremely efficient. they tape them in the cinema, and then release them as VCDs. we all know that the movie industry would like p0ut the films up on the cinema as long as possible coz they can make money but this is not very good for the consumer. it's nice to see them (reluctantly) sign an agreement with Yahoo. oh ..and illegal copies of software/movie's down ..there used to be a lot more several years ago..

  • I like this Guy's Attitude (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21, 2000 @06:47PM (#1254848)

    "If it gets very well received...there won't be pirate VCDs anymore," he said with a laugh.


    Now, if they talked corporations who buy product placement into sponsoring the servers, ie: showing their products off indefinately, this could be an even more win-win situation.

    -- Ender, Duke_of_URL

  • Re:Why?! (Score:3)

    by redled ( 10595 ) on Monday February 21, 2000 @07:46PM (#1254849)
    I'm not even going to comment on the first paranoid too-good-to-be-true part of your comment. However, I will comment on the latter part.

    "If you're that poor, you should worry about food, not getting a deal on Titanic, ferchrisakes!"

    I know several people who are quite well-off but still quite happy to pirate a movie. There are several reasons one might want to:

    The cost of one legit movie is the same as several pirate ones.

    Some would rathar not support movie companies, or even the entertainment industry in general.

    Often, pirate movies are available earlier than legit ones.

    It's an act of defiance.

    Admittedly, that last argument was really weak. Nonetheless, it helps illustrate my point that poor people are not the only people who pirate. Think about cd's and tapes...if everyone who owned a copy of a cd or tape was poor, then well, a hell of a lot more people would be poor. :)

    --

  • Re:first relevant post (Score:3)

    by Wah ( 30840 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2000 @07:18AM (#1254850) Homepage Journal
    Supply and Demand. You have basically an infinite supply (dgital media reproduced), you need to create an infinite demand. Fans who "love" what they watch, and can never get enough, i.e. infinite demand. This is done by creating and nurturing devoted fans. Not by sueing devoted fans.

    Open access to media only makes it more valuable, not value based on scarcity, but value based on brand equity. Comanies in general, and media companies specifically, should be moving more towards a beneficial one to one relationship with their customers. Rather than the turnip squeezing we have today.

    Of course, all of this only makes sense if you really grok what the Internet is and can do. If you want to control media like it was done from the 1st to the 20th centuries, good luck, it's not gonna work.

    --

  • Some Bruce Lee clips are already online (Score:3)

    by / ( 33804 ) on Monday February 21, 2000 @07:16PM (#1254851)
    Like this southpark parody [wholesale-marine.com] that's just begging to get slashdotted.

  • first relevant post (Score:3)

    by HarveyNeon ( 106183 ) on Monday February 21, 2000 @06:39PM (#1254852) Homepage
    How long do you think it will be before we will be able to go on to the internet and watch any peice of visual media ever created (sesame street episode 65- canadian version of course)??
    i say 5 years.
    and you can quote me on that.

  • Snow crash (Score:3)

    by Augury ( 112816 ) on Monday February 21, 2000 @06:56PM (#1254853)
    Anyone who has read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson will be familiar with the concept of the great library.. a gigantic database that is the store of every little piece of information you can imagine.

    People pay to access the information, and a part of that payment goes to whomever provided it in the first place, making it a very nice system indeed :)

    Of course, it also spawns a series of 'gargoyles' who strap video cameras and sensors and other input devices to themselves so that they can transmit everything they experience back to the library.. in the hope that by sheer volume, someone will access their information, and they'll be paid for it :)

    Perhaps an online movie database is a first step.. would you pay a small amount to view those movies?

    B.

  • The solution to the piracy problem ... (Score:4)

    by P_Simm ( 97858 ) on Monday February 21, 2000 @07:30PM (#1254854)
    Now if only the entire media industry could begin to see this as a viable profit-making marketing approach for larger-scale ventures.

    The most effective solution to piracy (and coincidentally, the way to beat any competitor in a capitalist market) is to offer better access to the same product. Glancing at advertising is an easier, cheaper payment than paying for a $15-20 VHS tape, or $15 for a cd, or $20 for a hardcover book ...

    Just as open-source software is creating a new market model for corporations (RedHat, etc), open-access media has been spawning new marketing models for corporations. So far, however, open-access media ventures are largely based in webpage content rather than extending into traditional media. The established media giants don't grok that freeing their traditional media forms can be beneficial and profitable if done correctly. There are a few companies that are putting this into action - mp3.com comes to mind. However, until the current media giants either wake up to the revolution or get overthrown (by enlightened companies, not by piracy), we will have to continue dealing with a barrage of political noise and interference.

    Let's put some support behind this newest baby step - next time you want to watch an action movie, download one legitimately! Piracy only leads to political sympathy for the media giants - the support of legitimate open media will truly revolutionize the industry.

  • Why this might not work.. (Score:5)

    by Bullschmidt ( 69408 ) on Monday February 21, 2000 @06:51PM (#1254855)
    New movies would be available on the Website after they had played out in cinemas, on cable television and been released on video compact discs (VCD).

    This seems to be the problem here.. pirates don't just get the buyer the product, but they get it before the buyer can go to the video store, rent it and copy it. They are proposing to wait until the movies have become old and out on video (and thus copiable). The movie pirates will still be providing new movies before they are release on rental (or even for sale). I have seen movies posted on the net (as well as seen them on others computers) that weren't even on sale at video stores. This is the pirate niche.

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