CinemaNow's Botched DVD Burning System'Irresponsibly defective', according to an engineer ( old news - 06:44PM Thursday Aug 03 2006) tags: Video · contentThe film industry's attempts to offer legit broadband film downloads have been troubled, largely due to heavy restrictions and DRM. CinemaNow recently decided to allow users to burn downloaded films to DVD, but as Boing Boing notes, the new system is "irresponsibly defective," according to an engineer that writes in to the 'zine. "The engineer tried burning Burn-to-DVD discs with a variety of test-bench equipment and found that many of his burners failed entirely, and of those that succeeded, many produced unplayable, error-ridden discs. For the "successful," marginally playable discs, the news is still bad, since those discs will already be at the limit of their players' error-correction threshold, so that minor scratches and dust would render them useless." Not only that, the report claims the system in question violates several patents.
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swintec
Premium
join:2003-12-19
Alfred, ME | Cinema Now isn't that bad.. I used CinemaNow a few times to try it out and for those who enjoy renting movies, the price is right and surely beats going to the video store. Couple this service with VOD and Pay per view from your cable company, it can't be beat. | |
|  | pnosker
Premium
join:2003-03-26
Stockton, NJ
clubs: | Re: Cinema Now isn't that bad.. but... this doesn't work...
it might be good by itself, but the DVD-burning system is obviously pretty crippled. | |
| 
Unregistered User
@69.244.x.x
 from:
banditws6 
damonlab
| It's like they want this to fail Is anyone really surprised by this? The big media companies have botched the online market to the point of making it a great wasteland. We have burnable DVDs that won't burn, multiple DRM standards that are not only overly restrictive but that are also incompatible with each other's players, and we have companies pricing downloads almost on par with what the physical media would cost in a store, when their cost is only the bandwidth required to serve the download, and the quality is below that of a CD or DVD.
It makes one wonder whether these companies are trying to fail. Then, they could say, "See, we tried online delivery, but it doesn't work. No matter what we offer, people still keep downloading pirated copies. So, we desperately need laws to protect us from those evil terrorist-funding, drug-smuggling, child-exploiting, un-American, commie pirates." | |
| | pabster
join:2001-12-09
Waterloo, IA | Re: It's like they want this to fail Of course they do!
"Oh we tried legal DVD downloads and it didn't work!!!" | |
| | | HMS1
join:2006-01-14
Austin, TX
| Re: It's like they want this to fail That may be the hidden agenda with the download service as a whole - "pay the same and get less". Same goes for the online DRM music shops: less quality, less packaging and more restrictions than CDs, but about the same price.
With the DVD burning in particular, tho, I wonder whether it's more incompetence than evil. I suspect that the movie people have no clue about technology and get suckered by snake-oil DRM vendors. "We can make it so they can burn only one DVD!" - "OK, here's a pile of money!"
Anyone who knows how the tech works could see this was going to be a travesty one way or another. If it will play reliably in a standard player, it's copyable; if uncopyable it won't work reliably in a standard player. So they introduce a lot of errors to make it barely play? It's amazing that something so dumb would even be sold. If the company cared about customers they'd sue the DRM hucksters for a refund.
Maybe after exhausting all other alternatives, they'll finally just lower prices and find that they make more money. | |
| 
viperpa33s
Why Me?
Premium
join:2002-12-20
Bradenton, FL | Irresponsible It amazes me about some companies. Did CinemaNow test this software out to match the real life situations or did they just rush it out the door? I am wondering if other customers are having similar problems and how is CinemaNow correcting it. | |
| | Joe12345678
join:2003-07-22
Des Plaines, IL
| Re: Irresponsible said by viperpa33s :It amazes me about some companies. Did CinemaNow test this software out to match the real life situations or did they just rush it out the door? I am wondering if other customers are having similar problems and how is CinemaNow correcting it. Did some test the sony root kit?
CinemaNow must of used the same testers. | |
| 
snipper_cr
join:2002-01-22
Wheaton, IL
clubs: | protections? Was it defective because they tried to laiden it with so many protection schemes or was it just script kiddie programming?
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Serenity Day - June 23rd 2006. You Can't Stop the Signal | |
| SD6
join:2005-03-26
| sounds fishy to me sorry, but I don't like anonymous reviews that totally lambast a product. just too many possible people out there with axes to grind.
also, I've never seen the "plus it's covered by patents" remark in a technical review. a technical person is usually not qualified to say such a thing, and usually doesn't care anyway. the one patent they did point to is not a patent, just a pending application
if the bad review is truly warranted, the next one will reach the same conclusion. | |
| | 
Goober
join:2000-12-17
Naperville, IL
 ·WOW Internet and C..
·Comcast
edit:
August 3rd, @09:08PM
| Re: sounds fishy to me said by SD6 :sorry, but I don't like anonymous reviews that totally lambast a product. just too many possible people out there with axes to grind. also, I've never seen the "plus it's covered by patents" remark in a technical review. a technical person is usually not qualified to say such a thing, and usually doesn't care anyway. the one patent they did point to is not a patent, just a pending application if the bad review is truly warranted, the next one will reach the same conclusion. I suppose if the engineer is a patent agent, they could speak to it. At any rate, did anyone look at the claims. Yes, 54 and 55 are broad. But the first independant claim (claim 30 I think) is really quite funny.
It seems to me that that claim completely covers the situation where DVDs burnt with DSV can't be read back properly in a DVD player. And if you can't read it back properly, how the heck can you play the movie?
So, they have a patent application out there on unreadable disks using DSV copy protection. Claims 54 and 55 are normal and claim DVDs with DSV riddled files. | |
| peerimpact
join:2005-11-07
Londonderry, VT
| FluxDVD has been cracked ......easily One Major flaw with flux DVD is that you can copy the one allowable Burnt DVD with DVD Decrypter or any other DVD ripping software so it defeats the purpose of the studios only allowing you to burn one copy .
The Studios should just go with DivX (not the Circuit City DIVX)who has sold 50 million DivX certified DivX devices worldwide the majority of those being DivX certifed DVD players from Sony ,Phillips and Samsung .
DivX has a working DRM solution for the studios and they offer XviD interoperability for you open source proponents . | |
| | Kearnstd
Elf Wizard
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ
| Re: FluxDVD has been cracked ......easily DRM should just be abandoned its a lost cause. it allways gets hacked and the real pirates are never slowed by DRM while the legit customer has their ability to view the media impaired by over-protecting DRM.
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[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports | |
| 
Fatal Vector
join:2005-11-26
| Of course
They know that the burning scheme is bad. They dont WANT you to burn disks, ESPECIALLY if the copy can be copied. They want you to have to keep downloading and paying. WHY does this surprise any of you?
The whole point of this scam is to make you pay and if you go for it you deserve the screwing you eventually get. I dont understand why it seems to be so hard (other than just plain laziness) to go and rent an actual DVD and then copy it if you can.
Never mind that the DVD seems to allways be better quality than any of the downlaod schemes out there. WHY would you pay for lower quality, just to be lazy?
Sooner or later, the audio and video has to be turned into plain old analog audio and video. That means no DRM. WHAT is so damn hard about recording it in one format or another and then burning it? | |
| | | TheInsider3
join:2006-08-04
Antioch, TN
| FluxDVD is a ripoff If you look around you will find a program called RatDVD. It is a GPL opensource project. The community that had been supporting this project just found out that the New version is FluxDVD. Now the big difference between the two is the codec. Rat uses XEB and Flux uses H.264 with DRM. The actual Burning to a DVD is also a problem within the NON-DRM RatDVD. So I would lay off the DRM attacks ( I Hate DRM too). The real flaw here is the designer who calls himself ACE. Who tricked a whole community into being his GiniPigs (Rats) in this project and then selling out.
Oh and another note on DIVX. The RatDVD produces an Exact DVD, with Menus, Subtitles, Special Features, and Even stores the DVD cover in the file that is viewed as a Thumbnail when you look at the file in a folder. Can Divx do that. and it's has better picture quality and can be reverted back to the original DVD with a click of a button.
With an average file size around 1GB
I have also heard that Sony, Toshiba, and other are working on DVD players that can play these files directly without conversion and that the future IP TVs will also support this format. | |
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