Don't throw away your VHS player yet!

[Guest MarvinisaLunatic]

Click here

 

Hollywood wants me to pay 20 bucks for a DVD that I can only watch a set # of times?

 

Let me remind them of DIVX at Circuit City.

 

I'll go back to watching VHS tapes, and if they stop making them, I'll stop buying movies before I'll pay 20 bucks to essentially RENT the movie.

 

Discuss..

[Guest Kingpk]

Oh come ON already. Piracy will always exist because there will always be people too cheap to shell out full price, or unwilling to wait for the movie to come out and buy bootleg copies. I don't know why these politicians want to punish everyone for what a minor percentage of the population does.

[Guest razazteca]

if it requires buying new equipment then it will fail just like Circuit City's Divx.

 

nothing is hacker proof or stop piracy.

[Guest Lethargic]

That's retarded and has no chance of ever being passed. How does that prevent bootlegging? If it does anything, it encourages it. If I get a DVD that I can only watch say 5 times, you can bet your ass that I'm gonna copy the son of a bitch on the first viewing. And then I can watch it all I want.

 

Besides, it's not illegal in the least to make a copy for personal use. It's ONLY illegal to make multiple copies and sell them.

 

It would also completely destroy the DVD market and there's no way in hell they're going to shoot themselves in the foot like that. Because nobody is gonna pay 20 dollars to basically rent a DVD when they can do the same thing at Blockbuster for 5.

 

This reminds me of that HDTV bullshit. Once HDTV goes into full effect in a few years, they are going to place a little code or whatever into the feed which will no longer allow you to record TV with a VCR. It'll be like everything on TV has macrovision on it. If you record it, it will come out scrambled.

 

I don't get that either. I mean, I don't see a big TV show bootleg community. You can't go down to the corner and buy bootlegs of Family Feud like you can with camcorder bootlegs of Spiderman.

[Guest C.H.U.D.]

Yawn. Nothing will ever come of this.

[Guest MarvinisaLunatic]

You say that now, but piracy and copyrights are the big ticket news right now, and while I hope that it doesn't pass, I can't say with 100% confidence that I think it won't.

[Guest Lethargic]

While I have no doubt that restrictions will become more strict in the years to come and better DVD copy protection will come around and turn my video clarifier into useless junk.....I don't think that there is the slightest chance in hell that the people in charge are actually stupid enough to shoot themselves in the foot by coming up with some bullshit like this.

 

Think about everything that this affects.

 

Like I said before, nobody would buy DVDs anymore. Why rent one for 20 dollars when you can rent one for 5 at Blockbuster?

 

Or if they pass the thing about it only works in one DVD player. Why would you spend hundreds of dollars to amass a gigantic DVD collection and then have your DVD player crap out? Then you have to get a new DVD player and uh oh....those 100s of DVDs are now your favorite beer coasters.

 

Bringing up blockbuster....would they even be able to rent DVDs anymore? All those places that have begun the transition to DVD would be ruined. Netflix would be dead. Mom and pop stores that sell used DVDs would be dead.

 

This "law" would ruin all kinds of crap and these people aren't stupid enough to do that. Stupid yes, but not THAT stupid.

[Guest El Satanico]

They never really took any major measures to stop piracy of VHS so this too will pass with no major affect on DVD.

[Guest J*ingus]

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what this is trying to prevent in the first place. If you've got a problem with piracy, just come up with a better unblockable version of Macrovision. This measure doesn't even make any sense.

[Guest jimmy no nose]

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what this is trying to prevent in the first place. If you've got a problem with piracy, just come up with a better unblockable version of Macrovision. This measure doesn't even make any sense.

I was thinking the same thing. How does only being able to watch it a certain number of times do anything? If they did that wouldn't you be able to burn it before you watch it then have another copy that you could watch the same number of times? And same with limiting it to one player. Couldn't you burn a new copy for another player? To me this encourages piracy. It's not like anything will come of this though.

[Guest El Satanico]

Well there has to be a way to cut back on piracy without affecting the movie or equipment. This current plan is one of the worse ways they could address piracy. It's just a stupid plan that will lose studios more money then they lose because of piracy.

[Guest Lethargic]

I have the perfect solution for them.

 

GIVE UP.

 

For every single trick they come up with, 2 or 3 months later somebody will defeat it. Pay Per View came out.....then descrambler's came out. Macrovision came out, it sucked for a while, then video clarifiers came out. They come up with this idea to copyblock CDs, it turns it it can be defeated simply by marking out the code with a sharpie.

 

Whatever they do, it will be defeated, because as smart as they are, the people that are working to make bootlegs are just as smart.

 

Look at DVD sales. They're not exactly hurting. I don't see what they're so worried about.

[Guest Karnage]

And DVD prices are going to get lower.

I'm not saying piracy will be gone, but then again, it will always be here even if they start making one dollar dvds.

[Guest cynicalprofit]

If a move grosses over 10 million dollars, Im not really concerned about the 2 million it losses in piracy, whats next, having to pay for the number of people watching the movie that you rented?

 

Anyone see the cable adds saying that they loose 10 million a year. Fact most ppl dont make that much in a life time, fact cable makes over a 100 million a year, fact in your busy still wasnt making money after losing 10 million, you wouldnt be in busy anymore...telling us that stealing cable raises prices is total bullshit. Look at it this way, if more ppl have more channles to choose from, advertisers and specifically target a specific audience, whick always makes me wonder why they dont try to make cable a standard thing, it will make for even better target marketing. The more ppl that see the adds, the more ppl will BUY the prodcut...god its that simple.

[Guest Madmartigan21]

if it requires buying new equipment then it will fail just like Circuit City's Divx.

 

nothing is hacker proof or stop piracy.

What is(was?) Circuit City's Divx?

[Guest MarvinisaLunatic]

When DVD started, Circuit City had this wonderful idea for a format based on the DVD called Divx (no relation to the Divx codecs for WMP..)The thought that people would pay (I think it was 3.99 or maybe 4.99) for a Divx disc with the latest greatest movies on them. The only catch was that once you put the disc into the player, you could only watch the movie for the next (I think it was 24 or 48 hours)At the end of the time, you had 3 options 1) Use the disc as a coaster 2)Pay the fee again for the same ammount of time or 3)Pay full price for the Divx disc, which was like 29.99 at circuit city. Now, this was before any Blockbusters had DVDs in them, so the idea wasn't totally bogus. But unfortunately, you had to buy a special Divx player, and most of them we're incompatible with DVDs. Combine that with the fact that Circuit City isn't everywhere and you get the idea why Divx failed. I actually feel sorry for people who paid 800 bucks for a Divx player, because unless they paid the full price for any of the movies back in 1997, there aren't any new divx discs coming out nor can they play DVDs on it, so it basically is a pile of junk..