The movie studios recently launched a new download service via Movielink, a site that I believe has existed for quite some time. The movies are a lower quality than DVD, take 4-6 hours to download (or so, depending on your connection), can’t be burned to DVD, are protected with DRM so you can’t do anything with them, can’t be bought using anything but Windows and Internet Explorer, and best of all, cost more than DVDs – up to $30 a pop.
And somehow this is supposed to work?
The movie industry is screwed, frankly. The only thing that will save them is gobs of money and throwing it at lawsuits at this point. Movielink completely misses the point of downloading movies. Give people high-quality, HD or DVD-level downloads and charge them fairly… and kill off the totalitarian copy protection… then we’ll talk.
I also thought models like iTunes demonstrated that people were okay with a lower-quality product so long as it was reasonably priced and had DRM that seemed to actually favor people, instead of companies. Maybe the movie industry doesn’t know what’s going on? Yeah… that sounds about right.
Posted in Miscellaneous