News Movie downloads coming to the UK in July

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/07/08/Movie_downloads_coming_to_the_UK_in_July/

 

I would still rather just buy mine from an actual shop or order it for even cheaper online.

Ice

 

Greedy F****rs.

Its a good idea but they seriously need to realise people wont pay the extra as those downloading are likley to be tech savvy and will rip/encode their own from their own DVD's for portable devices.

Perhaps however its a step in the right direction. Atleast they are willing to entertain the idea of legal movie downloads.

 

yeah I think I'll just continue to download for free thanks

 

its a good idea, a very good idea indead, but very badly assembled. if should be at the coustumer choice, you would chose the format you want and then pay for it, take out the phisical media production and transport cost and then sell it via internet for that price. i dont want them to send me it by mail, i just want to download it via internet.

DRM on the side.

 

Me too.

I like having the physical media - so in this instance it's a good idea; you have the 'instantly available' download (once it's completed) and the media coming through the post later. The price is a bit steep, but it's less, I think, than the MPAA/RIAA would prefer you do - which is pay full price for each copy you buy... whether disc or download (in however many formats you might want it...)

But even so, anyone who is remotely tech savvy is just going to buy it on disc and encode it themselves... that is, presuming that the TPM2 DRM in Conroe doesn't disable DVD encoding programs...

 

Hmmm, its a step in the right direction.
As someone said, at least they're entertaining the thought of legal online downloads.

Its a shame it so badly realised.

If you could select the movie you wanted, and which version(s) and then pay accordingly, that would be much better.

ie,
1. Select Film (Tokyo Drift etc)
2. Select versions (HD PC only, iPod, PSP, lo-res PC only etc)
3. Select Hard Copy (Yes/No)
4. Pay
5. Enjoy

If the costs were based on your options, ie, much cheaper for crappy versions like those for iPod/PSP and pricier for HD 5.1 audio versions, it would be much more successful.
And if the cost of your total number of selected options >= the cost of the DVD, you get the hard copy sent to you for the cost of postage if you wish.

And as for DRM, don't even get me started.
I'm just glad there's way more tech-savvy types then me willing to crack DRM and let us enjoy the content we've often paid for the way we want to.

 

Movie downloads have been in the UK for ages, title should read "overpriced movie downloads coming to the UK in July". Of course, anything is overpriced compared with free, but these are overpriced even in comparison to shop prices.

 

Sky has offered a free (to customers) movie download service for a while now, although there are a very limited number of titles and they are highly compressed so image quality is average at best.

 

Nothing worth watching anymore so it's a non-issue, but as I work at a video store, I've got all the free rentals that I need. I can usually take stuff home a few days before release, too.

I'll give them some credit - it's a step in the right direction. An overpriced (unless that's just ROB taking effect, I dunno what DVDs usually go for over there) and largely useless step, but a step nonetheless.

Once I can download stuff in my preferred "lossless XviD" setup, I'll be interested. Especially if/when they provide a foolproof way to burn it to a blank disc (I know Nero can do this to some extent, but often times you'll have to burn it to an iso and then dvdshrink the loaded iso to a DVD-5 sized output)

 

wayyy overpriced what costs are involved? hosting and bandwidth... can't be that much £5 for new releases would kill off illigal downloads more than 19.99

 

Between £12 and £16 for 'chart' DVDs in the supermarkets - in HMV and Virgin, they'll be £20 easy. Prices do drop pretty fast for 'unpopular' films, and once they're a year or so old, they'll drop like a rock. Still it's a lot more than the States.

...

Bandwidth issues raise a good question. If you want to download films legally (or illegally, whatever) then you really need a broadband ISP which either has a really high cap or an unlimited connection. For those people on BTs 'standard' 2GB per month deal, downloading movies is completely impractical.

 

Theres a reason why Bittorrent is so popular =D

 

Lol exactly, but I always buy DVD's, cant be assed to download them!

 

Sky's bybroadband offering is also heavily restricted. Which makes it useless for most people who'd probably want to download a movie on their PC and then watch it on their HTPC. You'd have to download it on your HTPC, which can be very inconvenient, as you can't transfer between your own PCs. It's pretty dumb.

 

Yeah, its a good idea, but sadly many companies that are releasing movie downloads have very little insight and all they understand is DRM and DRM does'nt allow for this long reaching download options....
Some examples of movie downloads ive seen, it won't even allow you to make a movie DVD, just a data DVD that will only work on a handful of computers and these are only in single figures and noboady will keep a PC forever....

Even though it might be a step in the right direction, its to little to late for the movie industry in terms of beating piracy, its a lot cheaper, simpler, faster and a lot less restricting than the industry's method....

 

I'd rather just buy the DVD cheaply off the interent from somewhere then rip it myself, although if I had the actual DVD then I probably wouldn't bother ripping it at all, I don't really mind digging out the disk and putting it in my drive that much really.

 

Yeah man, I'm happy with just buying the dvd from elsewhere cheaply and then converting it to a format that I want.

 

BT has a 2GB/month cap?! I go through that almost every day, and quite often with 100% legality. Or is that just your basic intro-level DSL package? I haven't heard of a capped package over here, even if they do try to throttle bit-torrent traffic and give service unreliable to the point where we really would have a legitimate reason to sue.

Surely they'd be much better off with a standard Amazon-esque preordering service. Over here at least, DVDs are always cheaper the first day they're out for sale, and very few people want to watch their movies on their computer (even if the displays are all massively higher-resolution) and most people are too stupid to know how to burn stuff to a DVD so in the long run they'd just end up paying more to have the movie posted to them instead of going out to the store.