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?
