Walmart Entertainment’s Disc-to-Digital Service Powered by VUDU - Page 4

And they currently have don't have as much HD content. And what they have you need a PC to watch it with. VUDU is much better positioned for this service than CinemaNow is.

Yeah, I'm not sure what people aren't getting. You take a disc in, get it marked, pay, and you get an equivalent digital copy (or an upgrade to HD if you want to pay a bit more) accessed through whatever UV cloud service is being offered. THAT'S ALL IT IS.


CinemaNow has been having some growing pains. I know it was advertised as being available on some devices, but then pulled (my blu-ray player was like this.) Streaming is a tough business. You either have to be entrenched like Netflix or have lots of capital like WalMart/VUDU. I know CN has Best Buy behind it, but still...

The word "exclusive" appears in the official press release, with respect to the disc-to-digital process.

"The nation's largest home entertainment retailer is the first to announce an exclusive in-store disc-to-digital service"
http://www.vudu.com/disc_to_digital_press_release.html


Obviously, if a retailer already has their own UV compliant digital storefront that is how they will provide the service.

The point remains it appears there is some exclusivity to taking in discs to the store and acquiring the respective digital version. Otherwise, why wouldn't they co-launch "disc-to-digital" at Walmart and Best Buy to maximize the publicity of it? Why would Walmart announce it as exclusive?

Without inside info we can only guess. It may be just a PR concern, what if after many months UV is viewed as a failure, probably would not effect Walmart very much but could have a real negative impact on Best Buy. Or Best Buy did not want to invest the capital required to kick this off. Or...

Outside of the desire to make more money, I'm still trying to figure out why you can upload your formerly purchased music to a cloud service and access it free of charge (of course outside of purchasing "space"), but you cannot do the same with movies.

It's simply because the movie production companies will not allow it and the music industry will, correct? Copy-written media is copy-written media in this case, correct?


James

Who is "They"? (What's an Aluminum Falcon?)

Ultraviolet isn't a company, it's an authentication system. No one company is behind it. A consortium called Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) is the overseeing body, composed of five major studios, Lionsgate, and a bunch of computing and software companies.

Why WalMart says they're "exclusive"? Well, right now they are, no one else has plans to roll it out yet. No one else owns VUDU, so yes, the content is exclusive to WalMart and this deal. As to why Best Buy hasn't rolled it out, probably because they've been having some hiccups with CinemaNow and need to iron those out first.

Might not have all the legal issues hammered out yet. It's not like the music rights got squared away overnight.

Uploading a movie in watchable quality (much less 1080p) also requires considerably more space/bandwidth than music.

That, too.

Well that's fine I suppose but both movies and music were around long before this process so it would seem to me they have either resisted it or have been at the very least purposely, fantastically slow at making it a reality.

It's been what, over a decade now that we've been able to move our CDs to itunes and other means of playback?

James

Well, iTunes isn't a cloud service, at least it wasn't a decade ago. This new stuff is only been the past year or two.

Again, fine. But being able to rip movies into an itunes or similar account has been non-existent until just now . Don't know precisely how long it takes to rip a DVD into itunes without monekying around with other software, but you can be fully assured millions would have been doing it over the last ten years for playback on other devices.

I've attempted to understand why there is a chasm between the movie and music industry in this regard and all I've come to understand is that the film industry simply does not "like it" (why they don't seems rather obvious to me).

Perhaps that is finally changing, but I've yet to hear an argument to the contrary of the aforementioned that sounds terribly compelling.


James

My question isn't boxed-in by cloud services.

I'm speaking of purchasing a disc: CD, DVD, BD and being able to play it back in another form/on another device. Not necessarily from a cloud service, which, as you stated, didn't exist a matter of months ago.

It at least appears there will be a methodology to do this with movies now via a "streaming service"...at a cost of course. Ditto for paying extra for a "digital copy" version of a film. How and why music houses do not charge for a similar service (upload for streaming) has a lot of answers, most rather obvious. Unless what itunes offers IS a paid service...I thought it was just for the space beyond 5GBs though.


James

You're running into the same thing Jinjuku did in his arguments. The cloud isn't just another playback method. It's involving another party (the owner of the server farm and/or the service frontend owner.) So it has its own legal ramifications that has to be ironed out. If you owned the server farm, you'd probably be party to these negotiations before you could offer the cloudspace to others if you're offering a specific music and/or movie storage business and playback.

Chalk it up to yet another thing for the legal teams to have to argue about before it can go live. It's not like there has ever been a shortage.

I'm not running into anything. I'm not sure how many times I need to detail to you that I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT CLOUD SERVICE, but it seems three hasn't been enough.

one more time: why, until recently, have you been able to rip a CD into itunes for playback on another device, but have been unable to do the same (legally/easily/whatever) with movies for well over a decade since the tech has been available? Yes, laptops with video playback, video ipods, etc have been around for years and years now.

And re cloud playback: amazing how quickly we were able to load up our existing music for playback from the "cloud" free of charge (again except for paying to "rent" space), but somehow films require another payment. Listening to someone attempt to rationalize the difference has been nothing but humorous thus far.

music: ok! movies: no way! Sorry James, just the way it is. Just like how it was impossible to move your DVD collection to your itunes account for over a decade (and really still can't without a bona fide "digital copy"). 'Legal wranglings", you know?

Amazing how the music side got sorted nearly overnight in comparison.

Inclines one to believe ONE industry was MUCH more open to the idea than another.

Go figure.

James

I believe legally per copyright law the ripping of a CD is just as illegal as doing the same with a DVD/BD. Fair Use likely applies to both cases, but to rip a DVD/BD you have to actively circumvent an encryption scheme and that is likely where the difference is and why both media are not treated the same.

Ok, now we're getting somewhere- kinda- thanks.

So if either is withing the boundaries of "fair use" what's the reasonable explanation as to why you have to circumvent an encryption scheme on a video disc but not audio?

And if it is "illegal" to rip a CD, how on earth has apple got away with a program that is blatantly designed and marketed to do just that (amongst other things)?

James

That's easy. The music industry has elected not to fight the issue on a number of grounds including... from Wiki which I have no way of knowing how accurate it is to current law but more or less matches my beliefs...

U.S. copyright law (Title 17 of the United States Code) generally says that making a copy of an original work, if conducted without the consent of the copyright owner, is infringement. The law makes no explicit grant or denial of a right to make a "personal use" copy of another's copyrighted content on one's own digital media and devices. For example, space shifting, by making a copy of a personally-owned audio CD for transfer to an MP3 player for that person's personal use, is not explicitly allowed or forbidden.

Existing copyright statutes may apply to specific acts of personal copying, as determined in cases in the civil or criminal court systems, building up a body of case law. Consumer copyright infringement cases in this area, to date, have only focused on issues related to consumer rights and the applicability of the law to the sharing of ripped files, not to the act of ripping, per se.

Recording industry representatives have claimed (in the context of Atlantic v. Howell) that ripping may be regarded as copyright infringement.[2] However, there is no legal precedent for this and, even within the industry, this is the minority view. In oral arguments before the Supreme Court in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., Don Verrilli, representing MGM stated: "And let me clarify something I think is unclear from the amicus briefs. The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their Website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod. There is a very, very significant lawful commercial use for that device, going forward."[3]

Fair use

Although certain types of infringement scenarios are allowed as fair use and thus are effectively considered non-infringing, "personal use" copying is not explicitly mentioned as a type of fair use, and case law has not yet established otherwise.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping

Bottom line it's a can of worms they feel they can't win (so they grant you a license per se) and can eventually turn into a revenue stream. Now the studios feel the cat isn't out of the bag quite yet regarding video and would much prefer to proceed directly to the revenue stream.

Sorry, I didn't see your answer to Josh Z, which makes your position a lot more clear. I was focused on replying when I thought you were just interested in cloud stuff.

"They" is:



"Walmart and five major studios unveiled a major retail initiative March 13"
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/wal...-program-26664


Yes. I am aware of this very basic information. Thanks.

http://www.uvvu.com/partners.php


Usually exclusivity is a result of $$ or other perks. See HD DVD and bluray.

Quite simply, the OFFICIAL press release says the service is exclusive:
"exclusive in-store disc-to-digital service".

Exclusive is exclusive. I don't know what else to say. Did they lie in their press release?

Walmart owns 40% of the disc market. Best Buy 11%. That is likely why. Walmart has more pull. "They" aka the studios behind DECE and UV, likely made exclusivity concessions to Walmart because of their marketshare. In turn, Walmart gets to shine the light on Vudu, and doesn't have to worry about CinemaNow (for now).

Well, you didn't seem to be. Sorry.



And it can be the result of getting there first. WalMart can claim exclusivity if it's the only one doing it. If someone else gets in on it, WalMart will probably drop the "exclusivity" and work on "we're the best service for this."

"Fair enough", lol. Again, much as I suspected, thanks.

I'd ask for the philosophical explanation as to why we cannot duplicate content we've purchased so long as it remains "in house" (on our own cpus, phones, ipads, etc) but I don't need to (or intend) to turn this into an OT debate.

thanks,

James

It's ok, sorry if I jumped down your throat.

So then we pretty much reason that your music is free to be uploaded onto "space" you've purchased but movies cannot because the "the music industry has given up the fight" but the film industry hasn't?

sheesh.

James

I agree. I wish that issue would go to another thread (at best).

No biggie.


Basically yes. The Ultraviolet initiative has been a compromise, them basically saying, "Well, we know our encryption can be cracked and people want digital copies, so we're offering to provide you with a digital cloud copy for $2-$5 for your convenience and get us a bit more money."

The studios watched the music industry get basically gutted (it's still around, but a shell of itself from 15 years ago) and wanted to stave off a similar situation.

^ Reasonable, salient, explanation that...


sucks! ;p

The fact that we cannot pay $5-$25 for a digital 1080 copy of a movie is just mind-blowing to me, but I guess I've really been mostly over it for awhile now. Can't they just "DRM" them (the digital files you would buy online) and end the possibility of duplication? I thought the music version of DRM was pretty much impossible to hurdle?

thanks for appeasing someone who knows much less,

James

DRM for music has largely been abandoned. iTunes went DRM free in 2009, Amazon has always been DRM free. Blu-ray had its encryption cracked within a few weeks, despite assurances that it was unbreakable. It's still in place, but largely as a token anti-piracy measure.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

Oh, I thought it was solid (perhaps I was thinking of another version not already in place on the optical discs?) and would offer the studios a methodology that would be more difficult to circumvent than what currently exists on the optical discs: a win/win, then.

So seeing BDs and DVDs can (and do) already get "worked around" (and therefore readily open to piracy) where's the fear/loss with making the content avail for direct download...no case, disc, packaging, etc?


James

With most CD's there is just copyright concerns. With DVD there is CSS and Blu-ray has AACS. IIRC, both CSS and AACS is protected by DMCA. So for the present you can subscribe to a service (Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, etc.) or use PPV/VOD services (Vudu, Amazon, Blockbuster, CinemaNow, etc.) if you want your video via RJ45 (IPTV). The new kid on the block is UV.

Probably because they want to see if they can make a go at UV. The idea is to get everyone to accept controlled cloud services by touting its virtues (access your movies anywhere with a net connection!) while still having a handle on controlling the content. If UV is a disaster, they probably will try the music industry approach for lack of anything else.

But I suspect most people will get onboard the cloud at some point, since everything else is headed that direction. Convenience and price are the overriding concerns of the mass market (it's why mp3s got big), and the cloud is tailor made for that.