Sep

29

Qflix hopes to bring download to own to the masses

Posted by Todd

September 29, 2007 |

Hollywood has been dreaming of the following scenario: A customer walks up to a kiosk in a local store, picks a movie, swipes a credit card and walks away with an actual disc containing the movie they ordered.   A DVD vending machine if you will.The problem is, certain restrictions of the use of CSS (DVD copy protection) have limited this to smaller indie films.  Sonic Solutions has recently announced that their copy protection called Qflix has been approved by the DVD Copy Control Association and could allow this technology to finally become a reality.

A few posts ago I talked about Hollywood allowing people to legally download and burn movies at home.  I am guessing that Qflix is the technology that would allow this.  The problem is, it requires the following for home use:

1) An approved burner

2) Approved media

3) Approved means of playback.  They claim it will work in standard DVD players as well as Qflix approved media players on the PC.

Yea, not going to catch on.  Ever.  For home use it’s just dumb.  Nobody is going to bother with this when they can just rent a movie or better yet catch the movie on OnDemand.

The kiosk thing is really cool, if it were about 5 or 6 years ago.  Sorry.  Hollywood missed the boat on this.  This is something that would have been wonderful if people actually cared about owning movies.  The decline in DVD sales shows that they would much rather rent than own.  Unless of course these movies will be sold at a crazy discount, say, $4.99 per disc.  In that case I could see it catching on a bit.  Somehow I don’t think that will be the case.

The stores love the idea because it means they will be keeping less stock on hand.  That will save them a ton of money.  Why?  Nobody is buying their stock as it is.  That’s a lot of room that could be used for products that sell at a reasonable clip.

I am totally in favor of electronic sell through.  I just don’t think it needs to be this complicated.  I don’t think people need to have a physical medium.  The movie still has to be compressed and available.  It still has to flow down a data connection.  Why bother burning the media?  Why not just have a non complicated way to get the movie from your computer to your television?  Oh I forgot.  Because the consumer can’t be trusted.

I’m not bitter really.  I just read about a technology such as this and all kinds of red flags start popping up.  I have been around technology long enough to get a sense of what will work and what won’t.

FluxDVD is another technology that works along the same lines.  It has been around for almost two year.  It does not require special media.  Have you ever heard of it or used it?  Nope.  Didn’t think so.  I just don’t think these types of content distribution are smart.

Frankly, they just require a bit too much work on the part of the consumer.  Oh sure, the kiosks are easier than doing it at home, but why bother with that when you can just rent the movie.  It doesn’t make sense.


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