VIDEO DOWNLOAD SERVICES Master Thread - Page 8

Well assuming I bought the box I would own it but that really doesn't answer those questions since a service may require periodic license verifications for the downloaded content.

Well don't beat around the bush - come out and say what is on your mind.

Oh good. The next format battle.

Will we see Sony opposing download DRM to maintain a monopoly on solidware movie distribution?

Can I get my HD movies at a lower cost by eliminating BB, and never be concerned they haven't stocked it?

well, we have seen downloadable music, even illegally be more consumer friendly and take off significantly faster than would even be possible for downloadable video, let alone HD video......thus, the best we can hope for realistically is a nice supplemental type of service to go with our regular retail movies. best buy, CC, wal mart all carry the same amount of CD's as ever even with downloadable music skyrocketing for the last 4 years.....id hardly consider exponentially larger files and a less user friendly way (portable mps player) to view said large files given retail HDM or even just regular DVD much of a fight seeing as how there is NO WAY the means to access, download an dview the files are even remotely close to the ease of use of music is even possible withing the next 3 years on a large scale.

Its a pipedream to put this in the same thought of retail media given the variables and the actual proof through the EASILY more user friendly music downloads not really altering how CD's are sold in the large scale. Just my opinion i guess, but i fail to see how anyone sees differently on the matter to be honest.

What about the fact that for the last 7 years - sales of CD's have dropped every year larger than the year before?

...But wait, I thought HD-DVD wasnt dead yet...why are you guys pushing digital downloads all of a sudden??

720p (if that) and an hour to download?


yeah, sounds totally fun.

Thanks. From what I saw, seems like it's mostly about purchasing new boxes to get the download services which I imagine will be a tough sell compared to console makers and cable/sattelite services that can work wiith the boxes they already have in place.

I'd be interested in service plans from XBLM, PSN and FiOS since I have those boxes.

I took my Xbox 360 to my brothers house last night so we could play Guitar Hero. After we finished playing, i told him i had the HD Version of a South Park episode on the hard drive, if he wanted to see it. He was very excited to see it, so i scroll through the 360 and i find the video, click on play and... Get an error code. Refused to play. Tried everything, same thing. Guess what? Since i downloaded it the first time using my old Xbox 360 which is now dead and has been replaced by microsoft, the VIDEO i have is now tied to that 360 that is long gone, and without being ONLINE, it refused to play the video.

So, because of DRM so insanely horrible, i could not watch a movie that was already on my hard drive. You guys are in for a SHOCK if you think you can own a real collection of Digitally Downloaded movies and do what you want with them. DRM on these makes BD+ look like the Easter Bunny.

Sony's system allows you move videos around from PS3 to PS3 freely for what I believe is up to 5 times. I like that better but perhaps MS has a system that content owners like better since they do have a lot more content than Sony who hasn't really even launched a movie service yet.

I imagine MS rules have to make the content owners happy but I hear that you can contact Xbox support and get your content authorized for new box...

I never mentioned Sony or the PS3 in my post. Why even bring them up?

I tried calling Microsoft, they refused to authorize my PAID content to my 360 i own now. Flat out refused. Spoke to a manager who said they cannot do it for me. That is some excellent customer service. Fat chance i ever purchase another XBL Arcade Game. And i own 15 of them. Well, semi-own, since if im not online, ALL THE GAMES BECOME TRIAL GAMES! Awesome. DRM that really screws you so hard, and its not even close how bad it is going to get.

I took a look at all the above links but couldn't find any online rental HD movies. I have a 10mb pipe and would like to find a service that offers OnDemand or buffered HD viewing on the PC. Did I misread the posts or is there not a service out there for this yet?

I just brought them up as a reference point for different way that a company can handle movement of protected content. I also wanted to suggest why MS may handle theirs the way they do, to satisfy their content partners.




Wow. That seems unreasonable. If you have paid for a piece of content and your original machine craps out (which may in fact be MS's fault) then logic would say they have find a way to authorize your content or refund you.

I own quite a bit of content from XBLM myself. That's something worth looking into...

I haven't read all 200 posts of this thread yet so bear with me if i'm repeating some other ideas. Im not to sure yet on the whole HD download service yet but, I don't think the technology is going to be there for atleast 5-7 years. I would like to see a service similar to Comcasts On-Demand but purchasing the movie not just renting it. The key difference being that Comcast could keep their thousands of movies on one central server/HDD, and once you purchase the movie from them you would have access to it whenever you wanted by way of an IP address or sim card type of device. That's probably the only realistic way that a consumer could have access to movie collections the size some people on this site have. It would cost a fortune to have enough HDD space for every movie I own and will buy in the future.

Not to mention subscribe to Comcast for the rest of your life or say bye bye to all those movies you bought.

Your experience is definetly not typical since the way Live works is once you've purchased a video once under your Gamertag you can download it again for free under the same gamertag. I've done it between my two 20GB hard drives a couple times now since I was trying to decide which one I wanted to save demos too and which I wanted to save XBLA games.

Something is definetely amiss with the experience you've had.

Here is an idea for those thinking of video downloads.

Separate the service or provider from the users license for the content.

By doing that, I am able to leave provider X and go to provider Y with my licenses and in effect change services without any risk of losing what I already paid for.

Would also eliminate any hesitancy folks may have if they are worried about their provider surviving long enough for it to actually seem like owning the content rather than an expensive short term rental ;-).

In effect you buy the license to view the movie from the studio either directly or through the provider, but in effect your contract is with the studio so no matter what they know you own it and anywhere that its available you have the rights to it.

You then pay the provider for... Well... for providing the service. If you buy your own box or use an HTPC with licensed player then you can download from the studio. Some who want large media servers may opt for them and maybe the studios charge a download fee after the first or second as the actually storage and convenience of "hosting" your movies would be something that the Service Providers would do and what their value add is for Joe Everybody.

In any case, from what I am seeing as the most common issue/concern/worry about this is the loss of your content or access to it. Having the ownership contract for the movies licence or DRM be between the consumer and the studio eliminates this barrier to adoption.

There could even be a central body that manages all that for the studios and providers. Like a wholesale distributor works between retail and the manufacturers in many industries. This way not every provider needs to manage relationships with every studio etc.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

Cheers,

Richard

PS. Reading on another thread how some guy wrote about the BR / HD DVD war and the coming evolution of Downloads which partly lead me to start reading this thread and these ideas. One thing for sure is that I don't see it taking off in HD if the content is compressed enough to get 16 HiDef movies on a 32GB drive lol. Hopefully that's a typo.

Cheers,

Richard

The only video downloads I would be interested in paying for would be burnable ISO files or equivalents of HD movies, with quality identical to HD DVD or Blu-ray releases. (It would be OK if the burned disc had full AACS or whatever.) These downloads would need to be discounted in comparison to street prices of the retail discs by at least the cost of the media and box I would have to provide. Obviously, such downloads are years away from being available, if ever.

+1

I would call again (for the first time)

With the 360 as long as you are logged in with the Gamertag( I have two Gamertags I use, one gold and one Silver) you downloaded the item with you can view it. I have four Xbox 360's. I have TV shows I downloaded when they first started the download service. When I got my last 360, in November, all I had to do was log into Xbox live with the Gamertag I used when I downloaded the show. Then I was able to download it again. This is the way it works with Xbox Live which is excellent. I have had no problems doing it this way.
It's just a simple matter of plugging in an Ethernet cable or using the wireless access and you can log into Xbox Live. This system works out very well for me in my usage of the systems I own.

Now of course if you go somewhere without INterent access you would have a problem, but I can't say I've been anywhere without access. The closeest I came was when we went to a resort in Williamsburg, VA at Christmas. They didn't have wireless access throughout the whole complex but luckily I was just able to access the wireless at sub 50K speeds(basically dialup speeds) because I was so far away from the closest access point. But that was enough to log into Xbox Live to be able to play the content that I had on the box.

Oh I can see where this is going.

My buddy "Hey! I heard you just downloaded the new action flick awesomeness!"
Me "Yeah, it was sweet to watch."
My buddy "Cool, why don't you pack up your XBOX and bring it to my place so I can watch it?"
My buddy "Oh btw give my you user name and password. "

That's what the Memory units are for. My Gamertags are only on the MUs. That way I can move them from 360 to 360 as I need it. I don't keep them locally on the box.
I also have a 360 I use for travel. It's in one of those hard breifcases and has room for everything(even the power brick) inside including some game discs and a couple of contollers. It's padded inside to portect everything and has worked very well.
It's called the "Xbox 360 Pro Gamers Case" by Intec.

Also you can't just enter a password to access your gamertag. The Gamertag has more to it than just a password which is why it's located on an MU or a hard drive. You can recover it but If you recover it they require some more info. Plus if you start recovering it at multiple locations they will suspend your account becasue they will know what you are doing.

Tried xbox live over christmas, refused to let me play anything "incompatible device" error, apart from the risky business trailer (which i guess was cached from when i played around with the service a few weeks earlier)

At least with a disc you're guaranteed (apart from a tiny percentage of bad discs) to be able to watch when you want when you want and are not dependant on how many other people want to watch at the same time as you or if an engineer put his donut down on the wrong switch

i'll maybe try again in a few years when all the problems are ironed out and you're not going to lose money and spend hours arguing with india about whether the 10 minutes of film you did manage to watch before the service died counts as a complete watch or not

Why should i be forced to have a internet connection at all locations to use the content I PAID FOR? My brother moved into a new place and didnt have internet, so i was LOCKED OUT of my PAID content due to that. That is DRM to the 100th power, yet so many here are ok with it.

I use the MU to keep my profiles as well since I have 3 360s and sometimes work with other 360s. Now that I've looked in this a bit I see that using a Memory Unit is one reason I haven't run into as many problems.

I thought this worth looking into a bit since I haven't thought much about the cotent usage on XBLM. I inquired with a few of my gaming industry sources a bit to clarify and I was pointed to read the "Media Usage Rights" that is attached to the video purchases when you browse thru you content list on the 360. (some of the free "does not expire" content doesn't display the license entry and can be viewed any time)


I was also directed to check out the Xbox Live Terms of Use.

Who reads those licenses? (doh!)


JackBee, I notice that you said you used your harddrive on your brother's 360. Something you may want to try is moving your profile to a memory unit and then you can re-download again from accounts history list to another Xbox.

From what I'm told when you use a memory unit on a different console you are then establishing the roaming Xbox 360 console. Now you should have the right to download any content you purchased under the xbox live retained rights concept. I believe this is content is that you "own" so to speak such as television shows. For movies you are under a strict rental model license.

But then that still leaves the other issue which is the fact that content usage requires a connection to Xbox Live. As I understand you do not have to be actually logged in to Xbox live on the original console that you download on but the console needs to be connected and able to reach the service. All any other consoles you download to you have to be logged in to view the content.

So this is XBLM version of "space shifting". If you use the "roaming console" model you can spaceshift your content as much as you want by redownloading and logging in.

Recently the online requirement has lead to this little issue with a lawsuit:

Microsoft sued over Xbox outage


Downloadable content and the ownership model still apparently have a few brdiges to cross. If the service is down then what is the liability? Then if they did not have the internet connection requirement or decided one day to relax that requirement they would probably be in violation of agreements with the original content holders who rely on the license enforcement.

No doubt requiring an internet connection for a license check makes content providers happy but for users it definitely a loooong way from the convenience and reliability being able to walk over to your shelf and pick up a shiny disk.

Packaged media is going to be around a long time yet I'd wager.

I don't think anyone wants optical to go away. I think that some people just want to have media deliverd in every way possible.

I just looked at my netflix que last night to make sure I get something DECENT sent out this time, and the first 14 movies are either very long wait or long wait.

Why do you think netflix is getting on board of the download service as well?

I hardly rent more than 10 movies a month at this rate.

I have always rented about 95% of movies that I watch. I am not going to blind buy all movies. I cant afford too.

Rental is what I am looking for and if I could download a movie in even 1 or 2 days would be better than waiting a month before it become avaible.

chipvideo.... agreed.

netflix has gone way downhill lately to me (as has blockbuster online) both have every single hd-dvd and bluray with atleast a long wait.... to a point where ive been renting alot more from xbox.

For a rental service it works well.... i think too many people want it to replace physical media which it was never designed to do but what it can do relatively easily is replace the rent/netflix market (which is where all of the growth is anyways).

I did, and personally speaking I wouldn't consider a movie download service unless I could continue to watch the movies even if the service goes out of business. That is why I am curious to know if that is true for the new download services that were announced at CES.

No way would I want a service like that through Comcast, I was just comparing it to thier On-Demand system. I would want the movies purchased to belong to me after I purchased them. Maybe the purchases could be directly from the movie studios with a service fee to a provider of some sort.

http://www.wimax.com/education/faq/faq38

Theoretical limit of 75 Mbps but more practical limit is 45 Mbps with a 30 km radius. This appears to offer a viable alternative for VOD applications in your city. Note: country folks will have to rely on satellites to get their VOD.

If it takes an hour to download a two hour movie, you can start playing it back pretty much immediately, or just stream it. The download-and-play model is only required when download speed is lower than the clip's data rate.

XBLM offers to let you start playing your download as soon as the time remaining in the download is less than the duraiton of the clip. That can be pretty much immediately if you have enough bandwidth compared to the bitrate of the clip.


I wish people would remember how much better end-user bandwidth and codec efficiency is compared to a decade ago. A few more years of those trends, and real-time 1080p streaming is going to be practical for tens of million of people in this country.

A decade ago, we barely had 352x240 downloads...