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Starz, RealNetworks Offer Movie Download Service 289

Posted by simoniker from the leechin-leechin-leechin dept.
Mz6 writes "The New York Times and others are reporting that RealNetworks and the Starz Encore Group will introduce an online service today that will let high-speed Internet users download and watch many of the movies shown on the Starz cable channel. This report is just on the heels of TiVo's announcement to stream from the Web. This move is another early attempt by Hollywood to build a business out of downloadable movies and head off the sort of piracy that has hurt the music industry. The new service, called Starz Ticket on Real Movies, will cost $12.95 a month, and subscribers will be able to download and watch 100 or more movies each month, using Real's media player software, but only if you have a 600Kbps connection or higher."
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Starz, RealNetworks Offer Movie Download Service More

Starz, RealNetworks Offer Movie Download Service

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  • 100 movies saying... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Robert Hayden ( 58313 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:12PM (#9421319) Homepage
    Buffering ... please wait ...
    • You do know that this has never been a problem with Real any more than other platforms.

      It's just that Real was trying to do real-time streaming back in the modem era. None of the modern formats* should have significant numbers of buffering errors with well-encoded content between current versions of the server and player.

      *I'm not counting QuickTime here, since it doesn't have a functional scalability system.

  • It's what you don't see that can get ya (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Grrr ( 16449 ) <cgrrrNO@SPAMgrrr.net> on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:13PM (#9421325) Homepage Journal
    From Real.com [real.com] (a web page which doesn't load in Mozilla, because it checks my connection rate (without asking)! Rrrrrrr...)

    Access over 100 movies for one low monthly fee -- 25 new titles added weekly
    Download movies on up to three computers -- take them on the go with your laptop

    That's about all the info Real has made available, other than movie titles.

    I'm intrigued - now if only it weren't for the "possibility" of DRM sys-crap coming down the pipe, along with the movie . . .

    <grrr>
  • That was supposed to be a hot, up-to-the-minute broadband movie-on-demand service, but that didn't pan out. They still have Spiderman 1 trailers on there, for goodness sake! I don't think the film industry is really taking piracy enough to actually get off its arse and do something.

  • Agony of choices (Score:5, Funny)

    by bloxnet ( 637785 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:13PM (#9421336)
    So torn....like the step in the right direction to newer distribution methods, but can never get over my absolute hatred of Real.

    • Re:Agony of choices (Score:3, Insightful)

      by JaffaKREE ( 766802 )
      Real is an absolute joke. These big-time websites still insist on using it, and the only reason must be because of the damn built-in DRM. I'm sick of watching 320x240 ~500kbps, noisy movies and clips when I'm paying for them. Please, use Divx or xvid, I BEG you.

    • Re:Agony of choices (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mutewinter ( 688449 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:41PM (#9421681)
      Same here. Its not so much DRM that bothers me, but Real. I used to love them when I first was able to listen to streaming radio stations on the internet with a 28k modem. Last time I had it installed there was so much shit it did I didn't like, I've avoided it like the plauge since. Besides, does Real even look good at 600k? Give me HDTV movies for $12 and I'll sign up.

  • Wooo (Score:2, Funny)

    by sarah_kerrigan ( 764949 )
    Hello,

    • The new service, called Starz Ticket on Real Movies, will cost $12.95 a month, and subscribers will be able to download and watch 100 or more movies each month, using Real's media player software, but only if you have a 600Kbps connection or higher

    What am I waiting for? It's a bargain!!!

    Kisses (muaaaaaaaaks)
    --

    • Re:Wooo (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      It's only a bargain if your bandwidth is free, if the picture quality is watchable, if you can cease the service at any time, if you can watch a movie at a time of your choosing (from a cache), if you happen to use MS Windows, if the movies are recent and if the movies are actually worth watching.

      If the answer to any of these things is "not bloody likely", it seems a rather pointless thing to me. Why subscribe to kill your bandwidth watching crappy movies in crappy quality?

  • I see dead people (Score:4, Funny)

    by osho_gg ( 652984 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:14PM (#9421349)
    The little boy is saying..

    "I see.... dead.."

    Oops sorry network congestion, oh no!!!

    Osho

  • 600kbps?? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Grell ( 9450 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:14PM (#9421352) Homepage
    The wide availability of 600k to coincide with Realplay finally not having buffer issues eh?

    Neat trick.

    Or is 600k just the streamspeed they've been aiming for the whole time.

    G

  • great... (Score:5, Funny)

    by 455 ( 718431 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:15PM (#9421357)
    ... in order to download songs that you've purchased, please click on our sponsors first, then listen to the following ads before your song, then please let us install our software on your machine and bog it down. Enjoy our Free advertising at the end of every song! Also... please do not try to remove the song from your hard drive, as it may cause major lock-ups and really doesn't go away anyway. Thank you RealNetworks.

  • Viva capitalism! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Len Budney ( 787422 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:15PM (#9421359)
    From one article:
    "In the cable and satellite world the 'all you can eat' subscription business model has proven to be much more popular than the transactional pay-per-view model," said Starz chairman, founder and CEO, John J. Sie.

    Going from $8 per view to $13 per month certainly looks like a step in the right direction. Maybe market forces will drive things toward a workable model after all. This is almost something I'd consider subscribing to.

    • Re:Viva capitalism! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheSpoom ( 715771 ) * <slashdot&uberm00,net> on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:43PM (#9421702) Homepage Journal
      I've been saying this for a while, the subscription model (all you can eat, no per-item fees) is the ONLY way that the media industry is going to battle things like Kazaa and Suprnova (without resorting to lawsuits and battling with customers). People who are going online to download all they want now aren't going to move to a service that doesn't let them do legally what they already are doing for free.

      I'm going to do some more research on this, see if it's DRM'd, what movies they have on there. Kudos to Real for listening to customers!

      • Re:Viva capitalism! (Score:5, Informative)

        by Didion Sprague ( 615213 ) * on Monday June 14, 2004 @03:55PM (#9423056)
        I'm going to do some more research on this, see if it's DRM'd, what movies they have on there. Kudos to Real for listening to customers!

        It's protected by HELIX DRM (will google later for info on Helix).

        I just subscribed today -- see my thread below -- but after downloading the Real 10 player, you go to the Starz video page, and you're asked to wait while Helix DRM is downloaded. It's tiny -- a couple seconds worth of downloading -- and you can immediately start downloading movies.

        Folks here think the 'Buffering' joke is funny (it seems to be the most common comment here), but there's no buffering with this. You simply download the protected REAL video file. It defaults to be saved in your 'My Music' folder.

        The films have to be watched in a couple weeks -- each one has an expiration date -- but apparently they can be watched as many times as you want -- and can even be watched offline.

        My first download was 'Night of the Living Dead' (before folks pointed out that it was available for free anyway), but I also downloaded 'Welcome to Sarajevo'. Anyway, DotD was around 450 megs. (I had to leave before WtS started downloading, so I didn't catch the file size.)

        I've got 6.0/768 DSL, so the download was really speedy. Took about 15 minutes to download. (It wasn't maxing out my connection.)

        You can also schedule your downloads -- so if your bandwidth is a little more limited, your connection doesn't max out all of a sudden.

        No streaming. Very painless, actually. Not a superb selection -- around 100 or so at the moment -- but there was a mix of stuff -- blockbusters, small films, etc. etc. I was hoping for a lot more recent stuff, but this is okay.

        14 day free trial. Don't know yet if once my time is up, I'll start paying. It might be worth it to see some stuff that's currently in my Netflix queue -- especially flicks that I know aren't that great but that I'm curious about (i.e. guilty pleasures).

        I gotta say, though: despite the limited selection, this is definitely the way to do it. I'm willing to put up with the DRM and the expiration dates if I'm able to snag stuff spur-of-the-moment -- especially, as I say, stuff I'm curious about but can't bring myself to put in my Netflix queue and go through the whole order-wait-watch-return cycle for Netflix (which is my case is about 3-4 days.)

    • Re:Viva capitalism! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      Maybe market forces will drive things toward a workable model after all.

      If it drives them to $13 per month view on demand subscription model for digital cable television, spiffy.

      It it drives them to Real or WMP -- they can piss off.

      KFG

  • Why not just sign up for Starz (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ajiva ( 156759 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:15PM (#9421361)
    Ok so if I'm paying $13/month for this service, why not pay $13/month for Starz (and HBO for that matter). Not only do I get to watch movies on my MUCH larger TV but everyone in the family can watch. Along with my TIVO or Dish PVR I can record shows and watch them ANY time I want. While I'm sure there is a market for this, it seems like a very small market
    • Because it's "on demand", whereas on TV you have to wait for something to come on. Granted, having 12 HBOs and 7 Starzez makes it more likely that something you like will be on, but you still can't decide "I want to watch Ghostbusters right NOW" and hope that it will be on.

      • Re:Why not just sign up for Starz (Score:5, Interesting)

        by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:30PM (#9421556)
        " Because it's "on demand", whereas on TV you have to wait for something to come on."

        actually, no you don't. I don't know how widespread it is, and what the exact requirements are, but on my digital cable I have HBO on Demand. It's "free" for HBO subscribers, and gives you access to a whole load of on demand programming. Most of the big hits HBO is showing that month, usually the current + past season of HBO's original series, all their specials, etc. I haven't used it for watching anything other than a comedy special, but it's fairly slick. Nice menu driven, downloads fairly rapidly, and you can play/pause/ff/rew just like it were a vcr/dvd. granted, it'll never be as extensive to have random movie from 3 years ago you want to watch, but it's still a nice step in the right direction. I imagine all of the big premium cable channels are going to go this way...

        • I imagine all of the big premium cable channels are going to go this way...

          Actually, they already have. Comcast has On Demand for all the major premium channels (Starz, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc.). The system rocks and is replacing pay per view. Basically you've got on demand movies that are pay for 24 hours, then free content from all the major premium channels that you happen to subscribe to, plus other added content like on demand anime. The service actually makes is worth paying for my digital cable

    • Re:Why not just sign up for Starz (Score:4, Interesting)

      by override11 ( 516715 ) <cpeterson@gts.gaineycorp.com> on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:19PM (#9421435) Homepage
      Lets see, either get a 50 dollar TV out card (which admittadly isnt perfect) or get a 1200 dollar projector (which is awesome, and way larger than your TV). find a nice blank wall, or put a cheap white sheet on the wall, and you have an awesome 8' screen.

      I would MUCH rather download what I want, when I want, rather than wait for it to show up on TV, surrounded by brain-rot commercials. (unless its the one with christina agulara in it singing "dirty", then I will watch it)
    • Maybe for people who don't want to pay the >$50 a month for cable in the first place?

  • real (Score:5, Funny)

    by isaac338 ( 705434 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:15PM (#9421367)
    wow, what a good id..... buffering....ea! finally i can stop pirat......buffering....ing all my mo....buffering.....vies and get them legal.....buffering.....ly!

    thank you, starz,.......buffering.....for making it easy for me to sl....buffering....eep at night.
    • you can indeed redirect output stream to file as mplayer handles real. From mplayer manual:

      -dumpstream (MPLAYER only)
      Dumps the raw stream to ./stream.dump. Useful when ripping from DVD or network.

      In fact I used this option once or twice to record movies from internet to my hdd.

  • a numbers game (Score:2, Insightful)

    by leviathanap ( 783802 )
    download and watch 100 or more movies each month

    I was about to put this on par with an AOL CD that offered more hours per month than there were existant...

  • Yep. They're hurting. Lots. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by XaXXon ( 202882 ) <xaxxon.gmail@com> on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:16PM (#9421377) Homepage
    This move is another early attempt by Hollywood to build a business out of downloadable movies and head off the sort of piracy that has hurt the music industry.

    Yep. The music business is doing so poorly. Those record label executives are going to be on welfare pretty soon. Actors, directors, and those prop guys are going to be on there next.

    Wait.. didn't Harry Potter just make $90M in the US alone in its first weekend?
    • And don't forget that the second installment of the ever so popular Shrek series was the fastest animated movie to break $300 million (and it is also the highest grossing one after beating out Nemo)

      Shrek 2 has broken the record for the highest grossing animated film of all time and has beaten its predecessor to do so.

      Shrek 2 earned a not too shabby $346.5 million as of June 12, passing Finding Nemo which has made $339.8 million to date. Shrek 2 did it just 25 days after release. Shrek 1 made $267 million
    • Harry potter (and whoever his involved in the process) isn't the one that pays the price of piracy.

      Big movies will always make money, less but still large enough to make one rich several times over.

      Music is in the same boat. Madonna, Limp Bizkit, Garth Brooks, Metallica (name 'em) aren't THAT hurted by piracy. While I don't have records of their actual losses due to piracy, I'm damn well sure they still get some good dough for their albums.

      Economics is a good teacher to teach us anything that involves mo
      • Small bands get a lot of exposure through piracy. If you happen to play avant-garde industrial music, or neofolk, or one of a million other genres, your stuff is never going to get played on the radio. When people have never heard of you, they don't buy your CDs, attend your concerts, or purchase other merchandise. Some word-of-mouth advertising takes care of that, but sending someone an mp3 over the internet is just about the best word-of-mouth advertising you can get, because it lets people actually ge

  • ISP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pvt_medic ( 715692 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:16PM (#9421382)
    I cant wait for the letter I will be getting from my ISP about how I am abusing my internet connection and using more than I should be.
  • I have tried cinemanow before and I think this would be the same, keep trying to download the same movie 5 times before you watch it just because you keep losing connection with the service or the download speed just sucks.

  • Streaming or not? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sockonafish ( 228678 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:17PM (#9421403)
    but only if you have a 600Kbps connection or higher

    The post says download and watch - this is Real Networks, though, so what they really mean is use up all your bandwidth to watch stuttering video with horribly out of sync audio.

    Really, how does streaming help anyone? I can handle the minor inconvenience of waiting a bit to view what I'm downloading, and once I've downloaded it I won't be stressing the servers of whoever I got it from if I want to watch it a second time.

  • When will piracy begin ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jokach ( 462761 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:17PM (#9421404) Homepage
    So it states ....

    "Each film will have an expiration date that coincides with its last showing on the cable station. The movies will be encoded so that they cannot be played after the expiration date."

    Any estimates of how long it will take to crack this encoding?
    • About long as it takes someone to take the video and audio out and plug those back in to their video/audio in ports. Play once (pray for no buffering errors) and record.

      To paraphrase an earlier poster: viva la analog hole!

  • I wouldn't trust Real with anything on my PC (Score:3, Insightful)

    by magefile ( 776388 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:17PM (#9421407)
    And I still can't get the friggin gxine/Mozilla plugin to work for *any* codec, much less Real (which should work automagically, once gxine works).
  • Who would watch 100 movies in a month? Assuming a movie is 90min long, a reasonable estimate for the total length is 9000min or 150hours. Split over 30 days, that's 5hours of films a day. If people have 9 to 5 jobs and are out of the house from, say, 8AM to 6PM, that would leave 14hours in which to sleep (approx. 7hours), eat (2 meals, say 90min total), get ready for work (say, 30min to 1hour), read the newspaper, etc..., so the only way I can see it working is if people spend the entire weekend watching fi

  • Not a good deal at all (Score:5, Informative)

    by Patik ( 584959 ) * <.cpatik. .at. .gmail.com.> on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:18PM (#9421417) Homepage Journal
    Considering how many movies one can actually watch in a month, Netflix [netflix.com] seems like a much better deal. They have a huge selection and you get the actual DVD so you can watch it on your TV, not the computer.

    How many people:

    • Can watch 100 movies a month
    • Only want to see what's on Starz
    • Have a 600kbps connection, and
    • Like watching movies on their PC
    ???

  • Good luck (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Warlok ( 89470 ) <jfincher42@gmail.com> on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:18PM (#9421419) Journal
    My cable service (Comcast) offers On Demand viewing of movies via the set top box they provide. I have yet to sit through a 90 minute movie without having some decompression artifact appear on the screen because they can't maintain the throughput, and they're on a dedicated network. I don't see how Real can guarantee quality via the 'Net without buffering the whole damn movie first...



    For the price and quality, I'm thinking Netflix is a better deal...

    • Re:Good luck (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Warlok ( 89470 ) <jfincher42@gmail.com> on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:27PM (#9421520) Journal
      Forgot to add - I think a more compelling business would be the flip-side of this. Rather than DL movies to my PC, how about letting me upload my own content from my PC to my cable provider for listing in the On Demand style service? With the proliferation of digital video cameras (especially on cell phone) and movie editting software for various platforms, I'd be willing to bet there's a market in every city for this, similar to the public access channels without the lottery or weekly trip to the studio. Sell the movies for a dime a piece and take a few cents off the submitter's bill everytime someone watches it. There's some details about content rating, categorization, backend capabilities, and other things to be worked out, but I'd like to see it done.

    • I'm also on Comcast and have been using On Demand without any problems for some time. It actually sounds like either you have a bad box or a bad connection somewhere.

      Call Comcast. I've been amazed with their service. We had a similar problem with one of our two boxes on several digital channels. The guy that came out spent a few hours going through all potential sources of the interference until is was fixed. Actually it was kind of funny as the first thing he did was switched out the box. The problem was

  • Hellooo, maximum bandwidth! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tar-Palantir ( 590548 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:19PM (#9421428)
    subscribers will be able to download and watch 100 or more movies each month.

    A movie in compressed divx form is what, 600MB, x100 = 60000MB, or ~60GB in one month. Perhaps they can compress it more, but even so that's a hell of a lot of data. It'll be interesting to see how the broadband ISPs react to this, since multimedia is one of the big pros of broadband, but the providers nonetheless tend to rely on folks not actually using their full bandwidth much of the time (that's why they hate big P2P sharers).
    • A movie in compressed divx form is what, 600MB, x100 = 60000MB, or ~60GB in one month.

      I like looking at it this way... because then you can compare it (yet again) to NetFlix, which sends me almost 100GB* of better-than-Divx-quality movies per month. With extras. And a way better selection. Etc. etc. etc.

      *(8GB/disc X 3 discs/wk X 4 wks/mo)

    • I got a traffic abuse letter from comcast and after calling many people I got someone to tell me that I could download 90GB/mo. That leaves 30GB/mo for websurfing and webcamming, it's probably plenty.
  • I must say, this sounds like a tempting proposal. However, it seems to me that it would be hindered by the quality of Real's Video format. While it sreams well, I have had almost nothing but disappointing results when using Real for pretty much anything. It's video is blocky, full of artifacts, and low in both colour fidelity and contrast.

    I'd love to see a DivX/Xvid mpeg4 stream service, like this start up. I wouldn't be surprised if one was in the works.

    Too bad though, really, that pricing sounds pretty
    • I think comparing Divx/Xvid to Real is like comparing apples to oranges.

      Divx/Xvid looks better since it is usually encoded at a higher bitrate (about 0.2bits per pixel or 1200 Kbps) versus a typical real clip encoded at 128kbps. Obviously it is going to look like crap

      If you follow video compression (look at the forums in doom9.org (http://forum.doom9.org) and you will realize that real is quite comparable with any other MPEG4 compression.

      I have quite a few of my home videos compressed with DIVX and la

  • "Nobody will ever need more than 100 movies a month."

    -Bill Gates

  • the downside... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by m2bord ( 781676 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:20PM (#9421440) Homepage Journal
    the downside to this program is that you have to use the all-intrusive real player.

  • Piracy hurts bad movies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by XaXXon ( 202882 ) <xaxxon.gmail@com> on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:20PM (#9421446) Homepage
    I believe that piracy hurts bad movies (and albums). There have been plenty of movies that I haven't gone to see in the theater because I've watched a copy I downloaded and hated it. Not so much recently, but Hulk and MiB 2 both come to mind. If i hadn't downloaded them, I probably would have wasted $7 in a theater to go see them. Other movies, however, that I've seen first on my computer, I have gone to see multiple times in the theater.

    Same thing goes for music. If a band I normally like releases a followup album, I'd likely go buy it -- except now I'm being smart and checking online first. If it sucks, then I don't buy it.
    • There have been plenty of movies that I haven't gone to see in the theater because I've watched a copy I downloaded and hated it.

      How many times have you been tricked into going to see a movie because of the trailer, only to sit through a horrible film. I think the movie studio's should have an obligation not to sell junk and lie about it with misleading trailers. So if a movie is good enough to see on a small computer monitor at a low resolution, and it is good, chances are you will want to see it on a b

    • There have been plenty of movies that I haven't gone to see in the theater because I've watched a copy I downloaded and hated it. Not so much recently, but Hulk and MiB 2 both come to mind.

      Which is really, really sad - I can truly understand that watching a low-resolution, grainy copy of Hulk would make you think the movie wasn't worth it - and yet it was one of the more original and interesting 'toon movies I've seen.

      Don't think, even for a moment, that your mono 320x200 divx holds the barest hint of a

  • 100??? (Score:3, Funny)

    by vdoogs ( 765125 ) <justin DOT vieira AT asu DOT edu> on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:21PM (#9421448) Homepage Journal
    100 movies a month??? Who has the time to watch 100 movies? Solution: Get a subscription for your neighborhood.
  • And now, the proliferation of accidental performance art pieces, whereby viewers are greeted with 2.5 hours of "silence". (i.e. "Connecting..." "Buffering...")

  • What quality? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:23PM (#9421473) Journal
    Offered in RealVideo® 10 and through RealPlayer®, movies will take as little as 20 minutes to download depending on the speed of the subscriber's broadband service.

    If most DVD's are 4 gigs, what quality will there be in a 20 minute download. At 200 k/second, can you even get a full gig in 20 minutes? I wonder if these movies will be at low resolutions. And at 12 bucks a month, I would like to be able to use the computer to play it on my 36" TV. But I know how much worse a movie can look just by doubling the window size on my 17" monitor. I can't imagine it would look good on a TV.

    RealPlayer 10 and Helix DRM Provide Highest Quality and Security

    What kind of DRM will be included in this? Can I download the movie and watch it on my laptop while away from a network connection. And what will stop someone from recording what is on their screen. I can't help but think this product/service is going to suck. Plus, ever since RealPlayer invaded my privacy years ago I have never trusted them. I do not like a company where I have to search and search and search for a setting that will disable sending reports back to the company about how I use my PC.

    How about getting back to where people can buy and own stuff? Like back when VCR's came out and if I taped something, I could watch it anytime and anywhere. I hear iTunes lets people download their product and use it as they wish. Why dosen't the movie companies do the same thing?

  • Windows only (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geek ( 5680 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:23PM (#9421480)
    When will companies learn that people want choices? The only reason iTunes is working out for Apple is because they put it on windows too.

    I love STARZ and watch for the saturday night movies all the time. I might have subscribed had they supported the mac, I mean we have real player, why not just support it? Stupid move Real.

    • Re:Windows only (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Chanc_Gorkon ( 94133 )
      I mean really....I have had web pages say they do not support the mac, yet when I try it on my PC, it just looks like a shockwave program. Now adays it looks like, to me, they try so hard to restrict the mac rather then just go buy a e-mac and test their code or just let mac users in anyway..that is unles sthey use some stupid activex junk.

  • Movielink for the rest of us (Score:3, Informative)

    by prostoalex ( 308614 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:24PM (#9421485) Homepage Journal
    MovieLink currently runs a promotion where any movie costs 99 cents [fatwallet.com].

    They have all the MPAA stuff [movielink.com], like Matrices and stuff available on DVD right now.

    Requires Windows DRM client, and once you start watching, you have to finish within 24 hours.

  • Downloads hurt the music industry? (Score:5, Informative)

    by usurper_ii ( 306966 ) <<eyes0nly> <at> <quest4.org>> on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:28PM (#9421529) Homepage
    I think we do ourselves a disservice when we perpetuate this line. Didn't Slashdot cover this issue just a while back on CD sales actually increasing but the RIAA using the numbers that made it look like sales had dramatically dropped.

    Well, yeah, if people are buying music like crazy but it is from Apple, the sales of physical CDs is going to decline eventually (but I think using the right numbers they haven't even declined yet).

    Usurper_ii

  • This IS NOT streaming... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kelmenson ( 592104 ) <kelmenson.yahoo@com> on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:28PM (#9421534)
    So many people are commenting about how awful Real's player is and the dreaded "Buffering..." that always pops up.

    But if they read the article they would see that this model does not use streaming, but rather just downloading. If they are downloaded onto your local drive, you aren't going to have buffering issues!

    Indeed, it almost sounds like the model doesn't even support buffering, because if it did then quotes like

    downloading a movie takes 10 to 30 minutes, depending on connection speeds.

    "You can sit down before dinner and say, 'What movie do we want to watch tonight?' " he said. "And after dinner the movie is ready."

    would make no sense, since a movie that takes 30 minutes to download would definitely get the data before it was needed...

    So I'd give it a chance. For the new generation of portable video devices, (like the iRiver on Slashdot last week), this looks like a great source of content. Of course tech geeks like us can already just record our cable feeds and process the content ourselves, but 99% of the people out there can't. And that's a pretty good market!

    • Re:This IS NOT streaming... (Score:4, Funny)

      by JonMartin ( 123209 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @02:09PM (#9421987) Homepage
      So many people are commenting about how awful Real's player is and the dreaded "Buffering..." that always pops up.
      But if they read the article they would see that this model does not use streaming, but rather just downloading. If they are downloaded onto your local drive, you aren't going to have buffering issues!

      This is Real we're talking about. They will find a way.

    • You're not familiar with Real, are you? If they're saying it's 600 kbps, then each frame will consist of one frame plus (600 Kb - one frame) worth of DRM, ads, spyware, viruses, just-plain-crappy-broken-software and error messages.
  • I don't know what the availability of high speed connections like that (600KB/s) around the world, but where I live those speeds run you about $120 a month unless you're lucky enough to have a cable broadband provider that doesn't have any other customers on your street.

    How much would you all pay for a 600KB/s pipe?

  • Subscription model? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by LincolnQ ( 648660 )
    Why not pay per movie like iTunes, and save to disk? Pay once, download once, take it with you places and enjoy.

    Of course, many people don't want to watch a movie too many times, whereas they will probably keep listening to the same song, so the reusability is of less value. Perhaps in that case a subscription model is better. But I always like small per-unit charges more -- it's the UNIX mindset I guess :-)

  • they don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xplosiv ( 129880 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:33PM (#9421592)
    While not directly commenting on the article (which I did read), I do have an issue with all these online video services which only seem to carry the older releases. If these people want to replace 'my' trip to the video store, that would mean they would have to carry the new releases. I understand that in this case, they are just putting the movies online they usually broadcast, which are in general older releases, but why is it that no company will put new releases online? If you want my money or replace my trip to the video store, offer new releases the day they are releases in the video stores, it's that easy!

  • Burn to disk? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by CdBee ( 742846 )
    Wake me up when you can burn it to DVD with reasonable quality to watch on a TV. I wouldnt expect it to make a clone of a genuine DVD - that would be a real incentive to piracy - but if it was at a resolution at least as high as a broadcast TV version I'd accept that.

  • Close, good try guys (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:40PM (#9421671)
    Ha ha! Too bad it's Real Media! I hate that thing... repeatedly crashed under Win 2K, couldn't turn off its auto start/integration/advertising, had trouble uninstalling it. It was fine when I first used it back in the Win 3.x days but since then it has bloated into, quite possibly, the ugliest media player I have ever seen.

    Show me a service that works with WinAmp [winamp.com] (and on other non-MS platforms too) and I would gladly open up my wallet. Seriously.
  • I got a connection speed test of 778kbs which they said FAILED their criteria for 600kbs.

    Who knows what they are thinking, a classic Real networks move.

  • Download Romero right now ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Didion Sprague ( 615213 ) * on Monday June 14, 2004 @01:59PM (#9421867)
    Well, I signed up for the free trial and am downloading 'Night of the Living Dead' and 'Welcome to Sarajavo.'

    Anyone know what the quality is? I notice that Night of the Living dead is around 450 megs or so. I realize it's black and white and not the greatest quality to begin with -- so I expect that to be small. But I'm curious if the newer films -- 'Punch Drunk Love' for example -- will have DD51 soundtracks. Doubt it. But we'll see.

    I'm a obsessive movie-watcher, so this -- combined with Netflix for the more obscure stuff -- really interests me. And, yes, Real is evil, but I noticed that their newest player just installed with a minimum of fuss and intrusiveness. So maybe they're trying to redeem themselves.

    Dunno. We'll see.

  • Finally! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Devil ( 16134 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @02:15PM (#9422073) Homepage

    About bloody time! Perhaps they're finally learning that if you make things easily available for a low price (like, say, the iTunes Music Store did), people will pirate less and pony up more. Everyone walks away happy.

  • Has anyone tried this on Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dowobeha ( 581813 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @02:25PM (#9422183)
    If you use User Agent Switcher [myacen.com] you can convince the website [real.com] that you're running IE on Windows. Has anyone used this technique, and then tried the demo service on Linux?

  • Their bandwidth meter is broken... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iiioxx ( 610652 ) <iiioxx@gmail.com> on Monday June 14, 2004 @04:27PM (#9423323)
    and they are turning away potential business because of it.

    I just went to their Starz! Ticket site to check it out, and was informed by Real, "sorry, but you can subscribe to our service, you don't have a minimum of 600k of bandwidth". Then it shows me a box that says I have 300k of bandwidth.

    Problem is, I've got a 3000k leased connection, so it looks like they are making a math error somewhere. Their scripting errors are going to cost them just the sort of customers they are trying to attract: people with fat net pipes and disposable income.

    What a galacticly stupid idea, putting a hokey bandwidth meter on your website to sort out your ideal customers from the unwashed masses. How typically Real.

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