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Live Free or Die Hard DVD Will Contain Free Digital Copy
Die Hard 4.0 or Live Free or Die Hard as the studios insist on calling it is taking its geeky computer media friendly themes one step farther. They will include a digital file on the DVD suitable for playing on computers and portable media players.
Yahoo says:
In an industry first, 20th Century Fox is expected to announce Tuesday that the special-edition DVD of “Live Free or Die Hard” will come with an electronic copy of the complete movie that can be played on a computer and select portable video players.“This may be the killer app, where you have physical media that allows you to have a big-screen experience and at the same time move the file around to other devices and have a great experience there as well,” said Mike Dunn, worldwide president of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, the studio’s home-video division.
This is a pretty bold move and might just force the industry into deciding on a way to deliver digital media to the masses without killing their DVD sales market.
It isn’t an easy transition to make from physical collections to digital ones, but it is also the most common sense approach. You literally get to have your cake and eat it too. By purchasing the movie, you will get a digital copy. Not only do you not have to worry about losing your digital media, but you can have your dvd collection without spending more on a digital download to make it suitable for your media players.
And since the flavour of the day seems to be Piracy, my question is, how do you keep this digital file from being distributed freely the instant the movie hits the shelves? Will the pirates wait for the movie to come out and then search for some fool who posts this quality digital file online somewhere and distribute it?
Do you think this is a step in the right direction, or is this just going to create more piracy with a convenient professionally created file?
The article also states that it’ll be DRM protected, only playable on playsforsure windows supported hardware. There will be a code, on the package, to type in, to unlock it.
The new Harry Potter movie is also doing this, seems to be a trend. I’m for it. :P
I think this is a great idea and I’m happy about the code too. Hopefully it will be compatible across a variety of devices…. (iPod, Blackberry?)
I say this is definitely a mistake that won’t last long. No matter what kind of code they implement on it, there will always be people that will be able to crack it. And if it is a simple code, then they can just distribute teh movie with the code in order to let everyone crack it. Unless they have another protective system, this simply won’t work.
Well, without the code, right now, there are programs to burn dvds into avi and wmv and mp4’s. So, even if they do break the code, not much will have changed. I think they’re just trying to see if they can curb the tide, or something. Funny, though, cuz you’d think they’d lose money on the deal, since, now, the people that actually buy their digital files won’t be buying Harry Potter or Die Hard via amazon unboxed (or whatever they’re calling their digital download service) or xbox live or any of those other services, instead they’ll get the dvd and get the file with their purchase.
It’ll be interesting to see how long they continue this.
John, lets be honest now. Regardless of whether they include an official digital copy of the movie or not, the second it hits the shelves (probably before) an unofficial one will hit the net anyway. This move will do nothing to increase piracy. However, for those people who want to legitimately watch movies on their portable players(ipods, creatives etc) it takes away the hassle of converting a dvd into a usable format, something which probably takes longer than illegally downloading the film.
I think this is a very smart move as it MIGHT get people who would otherwise grab a movie off a file-sharing site buying the dvd (although people who don’t want to pay for a copy, probably still won’t), or at least stop those who have already bought the dvd from increasing the number of users on such sites.
If it causes the disc to cost more then I am not interested in its inclusion.
They should give a free ticket instead which says that “thank you for buying, feel free to download this movie from your favourite bittorrent site” ;)
Ill bet that the quality of the digital version is not very good, especially compared to the piracy scene versions, but i think that this is a very good move from studio. Id rather browse movies from digital storage than hassling with dvd packages.
@Perkle:
Seeing how the studio itself is doing it, it most likely will be the opposite. Otherwise, why bother at all? That’s almost like saying that they will put out an inferior DVD intentionally.
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I for one don’t see a price increase. I see it as a ‘bonus feature’. It should be said that as of this moment, there are most likely pirated versions of Die Hard 4 (and Harry Potter) already out there of varied quality. Nothing can truly beat the best quality (in picture) the studios themselves can offer. Nothing.
I see this as a good step to combat piracy. You offer the consumer something like this…they are less likely to get it illegally. As for trying to hack through the codes… what a waste of time. When one buys the DVD, they get the code or have information on how to unlock it. Why bother sending it out over the internet if a)everyone buys a DVD with the feature in it or b) already has the inferior download
Is this move going to stop piracy? Not entirely. But it does put a good chink in piracy’s armor.
A underground pirating website that I occasionally go to had Die Hard 2 1/2 weeks ago. Transformers was up the day it was released for IMAX. 3:10 to Yuma when up last Friday. Did I mention these where all DVD Rips?
Like the record industry’s introduction to Napster the movie industries approach is way too late. In two years they will be in the position the record industry is in right now. These types of moves are last ditch efforts before the explosion. What they need to do is come up with a acceptable monthly subscription based service.