Hollywood's Piracy Fears Turn Potentially Useful Product Into A $4,000 Brick

from the the-original-tin-foil-hat-brigade dept

Thu, Mar 13th 2014 9:46am — Tim Cushing

Hollywood's inability to see any new technology as anything other than a piracy enabler continues to cripple potentially great products. David Pogue has a review of a "set top" box that has the potential (remember that word) to make your home movie viewing instant and seamless.

You feed it all your movies and music on disc: CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs. The Cinema One copies each disc to its 4-terabyte hard drive. 25 minutes for a DVD; two hours for a Blu-ray.

And I mean it copies everything. Every deleted scene, director’s commentary, alternate ending. Every DVD extra. And it doesn’t touch the video — there’s no compression or anything; it copies every pixel of quality that’s on the disc.

Once these movies are stored on the drive, you can call them up instantly using the remote or the iPad app.

When you hit Play on the remote, the movie begins playing instantly.

Read that again. The movie begins playing. Not the FBI warning, not the MPAA screen, not the previews, not the DVD menu — the movie itself. You cannot imagine how delightful that is compared with what we’re used to now: Downloading or streaming movies is handy, but you don’t get anything like the quality of Blu-ray, and you generally don’t get any of the bonus features. And discs give you the quality and the extras but require you to sit there staring at stupid FBI and MPAA screens that you’re not allowed to skip. The Kaleidescape box offers the best of both worlds.

This convenience of not being told you're a thief by your purchased product comes at a price. One is the retail price, which is an astounding $4,000. The other is a tax (of sorts) borne out of Hollywood's stupidity and paranoia.

When you want to play a Blu-ray movie off the Cinema One, you have to hunt down the original disc you own, insert it into the Cinema One’s slot, and wait for it to load. You’re not playing the disc; you’re just confirming that you own it.

But you’re also losing 80 percent of the value of having a Cinema One! What happened to “any movie in your collection, instantly”?

That's Hollywood crippling a device to ensure the $4,000 product never lives up to its potential. This is what happens when execs see nothing in the technology but a new way to pirate movies. Instead of a seamless, instant experience, you're back in the position of hunting for the purchased discs you already "conveniently" stored on the hard drive. For whatever reason, you don't have to do this with regular DVDs. (Presumably because that market isn't where the money is anymore, although at one time, that ridiculous stipluation was forced on Kaleidescape by Hollywood lawyers -- and that's when the box ran about $10,000.)

You can also purchase movies through Kaleidescape, but at this point, the selection is woefully limited. For only $2, you can purchase what amounts to a digital license to play your purchased Blu-rays without having to load the original disc, but even that is hampered by a lack of upstream licensing.

That’d be a reasonably priced solution if it were available for any Blu-ray movie you own. But it’s not. In fact, it’s available for relatively few movies: only those from Lionsgate and Warner Bros. Kaleidescape says it’s working on reaching similar deals with other movie companies, but for now, it’s only a fractional solution.

So, the studios are more than happy to cripple the device, but not so interested in providing affordable licensing of their productions. It's certainly had time to work these details out. It's been fighting Kaleidescape since 2004, tenanciously combating every technological advance the company made. Along the way, it forced the company to require the insertion of every disc before playing (including regular DVDs) and dragged it to court on multiple occasions to claim its "circumvention" of disc-based copyright protection was infringement (even if people were "burning" movies they owned to the drive).

Now, Hollywood has been forced to accept this device, nearly a decade since it first began its attack. The number of licensed movies available for download barely clears 2,000 titles. There may be more to come, but it seems unlikely to be fully embraced by the same studios who spent 10 years fighting it. And who's to say that any licenses obtained won't be rescinded in the future, punching holes in your digital collection and putting you back in the position of hunting down Blu-ray discs you stashed away after burning them to Kaleidescape's drive? It's not as though that sort of "you don't really own your digital purchases" bullshit has never occurred before.

As Pogue points out, the studios' tampering makes this product almost completely useless.

But that copy-protection business is going to kill a lot of potential sales. It’s like having a TiVo that can’t record anything on a timer, or hiring a tax preparer who hands you the blank 1040 form and a pen. It just defeats the purpose.

That's copyright protection for you. All the promise in the world negated by fearful Hollywood execs who see pirates hiding under every new technological advance.

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Filed Under: blu ray, copyright, david pogue, drm, dvd jukebox, hollywood
Companies: kaleidescape, mpaa

91 Comments

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Reader Comments

The First Word

“

Lots of comments around this point - that the Kaleidoscope costs too much.

I agree, but that is completely irrelevant. Bear in mind that early versions of successful products often cost too much, then they get economies of scale, then competitors take note of the market and build competing products, and prices normalize.

The iPhone first cost the full unsubsidized $600. It did OK. The first VCRs and DVD players were over a thousand dollars. Now they are $35ea. Laptops? $2,000 plus. Garmin Streetpilot GPS? $1,200.

That's how it goes...unless some douchebaggery stops it cold, such as the MPAA is doing here. THEN what happens is it NEVER gets affordable, market tested, scale economies, improved, etc. And then so few customers notice or care, that John Q. Public doesn't even know they've been screwed out of a good product category, even to the point of saying something like "What do I care. Darn thing costs $4k, who wants it anyway?"

Sound familiar?

—Derek Kerton

”

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silverscarcat (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 7:52am

Hey, Hollywood, I got an idea!
Pay me 4,000 dollars so I can slash the tires of all your CEO's cars, steal the dogs and only let you wear a business suit after I've left them in the park for a couple of days.

Same thing, really.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Mega1987 (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 8:00am

aw man!
Such a useful product....
and yet with so much limitation slap into it by the studios...

that seemingly 4k US dollar that can save more in the future seems adds more pains in the pocket....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- JEDIDIAH, 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:02am
  
  Artistic megalomania.
  The only real advantage kscape ever really had was that it was a legitimate ripper. Take that away and any $300 PC can do what a $4K kscape can.
  
  Once content is "just files". It's trivial to present it in user friendly ways and there are no shortage of programs on every platform to do this with.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - The Mighty Buzzard (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 4:50pm
    
    Re: Artistic megalomania.
    Plus you have all that money you saved to spend on spinning rust to hold all your hours of new-found entertainment.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ninja (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 8:58am

Or you can be a pirate, get everything digital AND DRM free, build a XBMC box with one hell lot of HDD space for 1/4 of that price and enjoy the titles.

I could compare the MAFIAA to a soccer team trying to score against its own mark but at this point I'd say it's a soccer team that is actively trying to murder the players, the owner and burn its HQ down into nothing. The only thing preventing it from happening is the Government.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 9:57am
  
  Re:
  Yep, I used to be a pirate because I was too poor to afford much. Now despite the fact that I make more than enough money I am considering returning to piracy as a matter of principal.
  
  I no longer feel sorry for the artists... they keep signing their rights away and not making a penny they deserve their losses.
  
  I do however try to fun every Indie thing I can that interests me. I believe in people being able to get rich off of their works, but I do not believe that Legal Conglomerate Thug middlemen should be able to as well!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Chris-Mouse (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:00am
  
  Re:
  They're working on bribing the government to get out of the way.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
scotts13 (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:00am

You have to see the studios perspective
There's no advantage for them in having this device exist, and the slight theoretical possibility that it could be tweaked for "piracy." Why WOULDN'T they try to destroy it? It's not like they have any interest in what's convenient for, or benefits consumers.

Sort of like when a thief smashed my car window to take 35� in change - why should HE care what it cost me, he's got the 35�.

You'll play your movie from a disk, like your father did, and like it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- JEDIDIAH, 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:05am
  
  Re: You have to see the studios perspective
  A device like this makes physical media more valuable. It improves the utility and user interface surrounding use of that media. It may very well encourage MORE media purchases.
  
  Although they're too busy thinking it's a good idea to put unskippable ads on that media.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - That One Guy (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 2:00pm
    
    Re: Re: You have to see the studios perspective
    Ah but you see, the studios don't like physical media, for the very simple reason that a sale is a sale, rather than digital, where a sale is not a sale, but a license.
    
    Customer buys a DVD, they can re-sell it, they can lend it, they can watch it on different devices without hassle, any number of things, and the studio gets nothing after the original sale.
    
    With digital on the other hand, there is no resell, there is no loaning, there is no using it on different devices, none of that is possible without giving them more money, forcing the customer to 'buy' the movie multiple times to get the same results as a DVD gives you.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- PaulT (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:57am
  
  Re: You have to see the studios perspective
  But even from that perspective, it's nonsense. There's nothing on this box thats not easily obtained by other means far more cheaply, except perhaps the easy and automatic ripping of bonus features - and pirates are traditionally far less likely to download those anyway. Add to the fact that you have to have access to an original disc from somewhere, making it far less convenient than downloading and this is really just the studio being scared of their own paying customers.
  
  They're literally refusing the chance to make discs more valuable because people who already build dirt cheap media boxes for downloads might use them. They're idiots.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- anon, 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:02pm
  
  Re: You have to see the studios perspective
  If I could afford one of these devices I would probably go out and purchase a hell of a lot more dvd's and blu rays when on sale though, so they are losing money, in fact, they are destroying an income stream that if the device got a lot cheaper would be encouraging even pirates to purchase discs again, but then again they make it so useless it is still easier to share dvd rips with friends online.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- techflaws (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:49pm
  
  Re: You have to see the studios perspective
  There's absolutely NO REASON why Hollywood should have ANY SAY EVER in what hardware is being produced. Period.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
TJ, 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:06am

The only other problem with DYI streaming to every device is that its not always user friendly. The Kaleidescape makes it user friendly.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- JEDIDIAH, 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:52am
  
  Meh!
  If you are talking about PCs, DYI streaming is almost ALWAYS very user friendly. This is not a hard problem and various PC applications have had this licked for pretty much as long as kscape has been around.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- John Fenderson (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:24pm
  
  Re:
  "The only other problem with DYI streaming to every device is that its not always user friendly"
  
  This is simply incorrect.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
pegr, 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:10am

DIY Solution
Plex, Chromecast, and Drobo. Done.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Rex (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:20am
  
  Re: DIY Solution
  DVDFAB (which you can still get), Plex, and a a house full of ROKU boxes. I'm slowly converting an entire bookshelf full of DVD's to instant access.
  
  I'd love to support Kaleidescape if they had stuck to their guns, but their device is now crippled and pointless.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - JEDIDIAH, 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:56am
    
    Re: DIY Solution
    Even if you don't like the Roku version of Plex at $100, you can still get a real PC and run the full version of XBMC on it for $300 or $600 and that's still a tremendous bargain when measured against $4000.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:49pm
  
  Re: DIY Solution
  an HTPC and MediaPortal
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
John Fenderson (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:11am

DIY
If you're willing to devote an old computer and a Saturday to the task, you can set up your own system to do everything this box can do at no cost (aside from the old computer and your time).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 1:58pm
  
  Re: DIY
  Even at a nominal cost, most NAS devices now support DNLA for local viewing and many offer applications for iPhones/Android/iPads for remote viewing. Really the only thing this does is rip DVDs and BluRays, which is easy to do and free. (I did purchase a BluRay ripper, but the developer put some nice effort into the GUI and it works well with different titles.)
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:19am

Stupid design decision
They could have easily bought off the shelf Blueray players with all the licensing & decoding chips and stuck those inside their player. At probably ~$20 wholesale, it would not cut into their margins much. Given that they already had to include disc player hardware, it's probably even less than that. Just image the disc, then on playback route the stream back through the decoding chip. Yeah, you might still have to sit through the pre-roll BS, but it would have been much closer to the play on demand promise. And you might have even been able to get around that through some clever firmware (e.g. go to root menu, or whatever the command is).

Instead, since they decided to engineer the whole thing themselves, they have to license the Blueray codecs and adhere to whatever the terms are.

Either way, this is largely the fault of the entertainment industry. Their stupid rules & geo restrictions push people to piracy and then they wonder why they are loosing so many sales...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- John Fenderson (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:36am
  
  Re: Stupid design decision
  "Just image the disc, then on playback route the stream back through the decoding chip. Yeah, you might still have to sit through the pre-roll BS, but it would have been much closer to the play on demand promise. And you might have even been able to get around that through some clever firmware (e.g. go to root menu, or whatever the command is)."
  
  All of which would violate the license and render the product just as illegal.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:10am
    
    Re: Re: Stupid design decision
    Nope, not if you just use the transport. You're not decoding streams or doing anything different, not thing in the licensing says that that the stream to X chip has to come from an optical drive.....
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - John Fenderson (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:29pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Stupid design decision
      It violates the license because you are, in effect, an OEM reselling the codec hardware. In order to do that, you have to have your own license, or adhere to the terms of the license the hardware was made under. Those terms specifically disallow the actions being described. I'm not sure about whether or not the stream source is covered, but things like bypassing region encoding or not honoring use restrictions (like being able to skip the piracy warning) are certainly against the license terms.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:23am

I'm pretty sure the ps3 I bought for $50 and some free software on a PC can do all this and more
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Geno0wl (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:25am

This is exactly why I am a "pirate".
Built my own NAS and XBMC media box to stream to for less than half the cost of this machine. Then just DL ripped versions of all the physical media and throw them on the NAS.
No disc switching, access to any device that can touch the NAS.
Why the hell would I pay more(an obscene amount more) for less features just because opening it up might enable piracy?
HELLO! PIRATES ALREADY CAN DO ALL THOSE THINGS AND MORE!

*sigh*
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
bshock, 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:26am

please explain
Even if Hollywood hadn't lobotomized this device, why would anybody even want it?

If you own the media, just buy your own 4T HD and rip the media to it. There is a ridiculous amount of free software out there that does that for you, and is easy and intuitive to use.

For that matter, why even bother with the media? UseNet is your friend.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- PaulT (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:24am
  
  Re: please explain
  If they've done work on the UI, it may be easier for the average user than some free software, many don't want the effort if searching and many trust a prebuilt unit with warranty more than their own handywork. At a reasonable price with no silly restrictions this could be a winner for a certain market, even if more technically minded folk could do it much cheaper.
  
  Alas, it's dead in the water
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - John Fenderson (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:34pm
    
    Re: Re: please explain
    "If they've done work on the UI, it may be easier for the average user than some free software, "
    
    There's a ton of extremely easy-to-use open source front ends for this.
    
    You hit on the real explanation -- convenience. But $4,000 is incredibly overpriced for this system. It should be in the $500 range at most.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:46pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: please explain
      4000$ isn't that exceptional for an "early adopter" price, really.
      
      The problem is however, that the type of enthusiast that is willing to pays that, generally already has hacked together a vastly superior setup. If this device would have come out much earlier, when Blu rays started to become popular, it might have had a chance with these people. Yet still, the more money than brains crowd could still be a valid target audience.
      
      quite frankly, right now the real value in this device is in highlighting the infuriating meddling of the movie studios. And that is invaluable.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
spitefulgod, 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:27am

errr
I have a WMC PC with the amulet voice remote and DVDfab, put your disc in, say "copy dvd movie" and the movie is copied in about 9 minutes. Same thing, less 4 grand, oh and then you can say "Play movie Thor" and it'll play it instantly none of this searching through menus bullshit
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
jupiterkansas (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:38am

Wow, I can't believe Kaleidescape is still around. How are they making any money at all with this thing?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Frank, 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:42am

80% of the value?
Try 100%. The whole point of this would be to have all your movies instantly available. But honestly, who is going to buy this? You'd have to have 500 movies minimum to make this worthwhile. They would have sold a few thousand without this crazy restriction. With it, I don't see how they'll sell any.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
OPXYZ, 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:43am

The ridiculous insert the disc every time is really just the cherry on top of this awful thing. What really cripples it is the price tag. $4,000? A couple hundred bucks in hard drives and a free piece of ripping software does the exact same thing as this and I never have to insert any discs.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Derek Kerton (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:22am
  
  Re:
  Lots of comments around this point - that the Kaleidoscope costs too much.
  
  I agree, but that is completely irrelevant. Bear in mind that early versions of successful products often cost too much, then they get economies of scale, then competitors take note of the market and build competing products, and prices normalize.
  
  The iPhone first cost the full unsubsidized $600. It did OK. The first VCRs and DVD players were over a thousand dollars. Now they are $35ea. Laptops? $2,000 plus. Garmin Streetpilot GPS? $1,200.
  
  That's how it goes...unless some douchebaggery stops it cold, such as the MPAA is doing here. THEN what happens is it NEVER gets affordable, market tested, scale economies, improved, etc. And then so few customers notice or care, that John Q. Public doesn't even know they've been screwed out of a good product category, even to the point of saying something like "What do I care. Darn thing costs $4k, who wants it anyway?"
  
  Sound familiar?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - John Fenderson (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:41pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Even taking into account the high cost of short product runs, this thing is incredibly overpriced. Excluding fancy injection-molded cases, you could easily piece this together with all new off-the-shelf equipment as a one-off for about $400 in hardware costs. That's to make one, paying retail prices for the components.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - John Fenderson (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:41pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      I did my math wrong. Make that around $600.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
      - Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:49pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        you forget the engineering and legal costs that have to be financed by a low product run. Without mass production this is a huge chunk, especially when you have to deal with the movie and music industry.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Derek Kerton (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:54pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      "this thing is incredibly overpriced"
      
      Doesn't matter.
      
      Early product runs prove a technology and attract competitors. Like expensive PCs attracted Wozniak and thousands of other assemblers. Some of those turn into businesses and sell better and cheaper products.
      
      They're not yet searching for customers like you or me, who can cobble together our own solution with NAS and software like Catalyst or Handbrake. They're looking specifically for people who can't, or don't want to.
      
      Early product runs start at high prices because THEY CAN. They seek rich customers, or customers that are specifically seeking the solution they provide, and then they seek to extract all the consumer surplus from these high demand customers, before lowering the price to sell to the larger mass market. It's just basic price discrimination, and makes perfect sense when you don't even have the ability to produce high volumes yet.
      
      Elon Musk is doing just that with the Model S. First, a car with a high price, the next model will be cheaper and higher volume, and the third model is expected to compete with a BMW 3 series on price. I've been to the factory. They are barely using any of its capacity.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - JEDIDIAH, 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:47pm
    
    Lame excuse is still lame.
    ...except this is no "early version".
    
    You're late to the party here. Very late. This company has been around for a long time and this is just the latest generation of their devices.
    
    You're trying to defend this 4K price tag but you clearly don't realize that this 4K price tag is just the "dip your toe in the water" price. A complete system is going to be considerably more expensive.
    
    This is an old product that's just obscure because it's priced for billionaires.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Derek Kerton (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:56pm
      
      Re: Lame excuse is still lame.
      You probably don't know this, but I should thank you for making my point.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Derek Kerton (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 1:05pm
      
      Re: Lame excuse is still lame.
      Listen. I don't love the product. I don't even know jack about it. But poking fun at the price is irrelevant. If the progress has been hobbled by the MPAA, and thus the only market the vendor could address is the Billionaire market, it just leaves me to wonder where this product might have gone if it were unhindered.
      
      If the MPAA lawsuit against the VCR had succeeded, we still would have have had crippled functionality VCRs available to the Billionaires for thousands of dollars. And we'd have you telling us how stupid VCR makers are for their overpriced junk. Instead, Sony won, and the product underwent a common evolution.
      
      Ten years later, this product is still $4k. Ten years after the MPAA-Sony lawsuit, VCRs were $50. See the point?
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - jupiterkansas (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:53pm
    
    Re: Re:
    If it did something that nothing else could do the price might be justified, but the only thing new this might have going for it is an easy-to-use software interface.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Derek Kerton (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 1:03pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      "the only thing new this might have going for it is an easy-to-use software interface"
      
      Oh. Is that all?
      
      Did you really just write that? Do you want to post a retraction?
      
      Cuz that's all the iPhone did when it came out in 2007. And now anybody knows that "just adding easy to use software interface" can make a radical difference.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
      - jupiterkansas (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 2:38pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        The iPhone married the iPod with a cell phone, allowing people to stop carrying around two gadgets. That was new and worthwhile.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        Derek Kerton (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 3:02pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        No, sir. The Motorola Rokr (built in a partnership with Apple and Verizon) or any of some other devices, like the Nokia N95 had already married music with an 8GB smartphone. Heck, mine even had a removable memory card slot to add more music. When I worked for Korean telco SK Telecom in 2001, we had mp3 feature phones.
        
        So, how did that work out for Nokia versus Apple, I ask?
        
        Once again, "an easy to use software interface" makes a radical difference.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        techflaws (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:53pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Which was available in XBMC as the first *overpriced* Kaleidoscope hit the market. Early adopters turned a blind I cause they'd already build there own HTPCs for far less money.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        jupiterkansas (profile), 14 Mar 2014 @ 8:06am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        An mp3 playing phone is not the same as the iPhone, which had a touch screen and compatibility with iTunes.
        
        I'll agree that software design played a big role in its success, but it's not the only thing that made the iPhone successful.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        nasch (profile), 14 Mar 2014 @ 11:10am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        An mp3 playing phone is not the same as the iPhone, which had a touch screen and compatibility with iTunes.
        
        Well, compatibility with iTunes is software. I'm actually having trouble finding out if there was a touchscreen smartphone with an mp3 player before 2007 (when the iPhone was released). I think there were others that came out about the same time, but I don't know if there were any substantially earlier. Anybody know?
        
        I had phones that played mp3s before then but not touchscreen, and I had a touchscreen device that played music, but it wasn't a phone.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        jupiterkansas (profile), 14 Mar 2014 @ 12:56pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        I'll add that marketing probably played into the iPhone's success as much as the technology. Even if something did the same exact thing before it, most people were blinded by marketing and Apple brand recognition - something else Kalidescape hasn't got.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        Derek Kerton (profile), 14 Mar 2014 @ 3:02pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        " I'm actually having trouble finding out if there was a touchscreen smartphone with an mp3 player before 2007."
        
        As I mentioned to jupiterkansas, my Nokia N95 is just one example of that. Resistive touchscreen, not capacitive.
        
        The Windows phones of the early century also played music. PalmOS added media, and could also play tunes, making the Treo line another answer to your question. There were many.
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        nasch (profile), 14 Mar 2014 @ 5:38pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        As I mentioned to jupiterkansas, my Nokia N95 is just one example of that.
        
        Got it. I saw that, but it looked like it might not be a touch screen. Do you know if all the N series were touchscreen, like the N90 and N70?
        
        The Windows phones of the early century also played music.
        
        They weren't all touchscreen though.
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        Derek Kerton (profile), 15 Mar 2014 @ 11:21am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Wow. I'm so sorry. My memory failed me, and I even had an N95 (wasn't my daily driver, but was my travel phone). It was not a touch screen, you are correct.
        
        So that just leaves the PalmOS phones, all the Windows mobile phones that were resistive touch and played music, as well as a number of Asian feature phones, the Motorola Rokr, etc.
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        Derek Kerton (profile), 14 Mar 2014 @ 2:59pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        "An mp3 playing phone is not the same as the iPhone, which had a touch screen and compatibility with iTunes."
        
        um...so you're now saying that the iPhone played songs like other phones did, but had an easy to user interface.
        
        Are you arguing my side, or yours?
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        jupiterkansas (profile), 14 Mar 2014 @ 9:32pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        I'm arguing that the touchscreen (technology) set it apart from most phones of that time, and while iTunes compatibility is software, the iPhone's success had to do with a lot of things including marketing and being part of an established ecosystem that people were familiar with.
        
        And that's not to say the software wasn't important either. I've used music players besides Apple's and the've all failed on the software side of things.
        
        But since Kaliedescape does everything a computer can do at a 1/10th of the price, the only thing it has to justify that expense is a clean user interface. Even the iPhone would have failed if it cost over $2000.
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Rikuo (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 10:43am

*Sigh*
And people wonder why I'm so deadset against copyright in any form? Because in order to enforce, you ultimately end up in today's crazy world, where you deliberately retard technological progress? The price tag of this particular device is insane, but it does everything you would want in a blu-ray player. It not just plays them but stores them too in a local copy.
I can already do that. My PC has a blu-ray burner and I have about 4 times the storage space as this gadget does total, but I have heard in the past quotes from copyright thugs that no-one has a legitimate use for large hard drives. In other words, the rest of you guys can't enjoy shiny things because my business model revolves around restricting what you can do with your shiny things backed up by government force.
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- Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:22am
  
  Re:
  Gigabyte micro SD cards can't be that far away. A matchbox size device, with USB3 and slots for up to a dozen micro SD cards would store a lot of content. As it is used write rarely, flash write life is not critical. Just thing all you films and music in a pocketable device, easy to carry when visiting friends, and Hollywood's nightmare.
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  - Derek Kerton (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:26am
    
    Re: Re:
    Gigabyte micro SD cards "not that far away". Hey, Rip Van Winkel, where have you been?
    
    At MWC last week in Barcelona, Sandisk showed a 128GB micro SD card. It's on Amazon now for $109.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:39am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      My mistake, I meant Terrabyte. ;-) Comes from growing in the days when a 1+ megabyte floppy was a dream.
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      - John Fenderson (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:43pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Oh, my bad. Ignore my comment below -- I didn't see your correction. :)
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      - Derek Kerton (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:46pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Ah. I'm with you, then.
        
        Meanwhile, that Sandisk is a pretty good price/MB.
        
        Kryder's law is in full effect.
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  - John Fenderson (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:42pm
    
    Re: Re:
    "Gigabyte micro SD cards can't be that far away"
    
    They're not that far away at all. I have a 64 GB micro SD card inside of my smart phone right now.
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:03am

iPod 6 - Now with a built-in CD drive!
Where would Apple's iPod be today if you couldn't play your ripped music without also inserting the original disc into a built-in slot? Such a requirement would surely have killed the iPod, inconvenienced customers, and ultimately harmed the music industry as a whole.
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- Derek Kerton (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:27am
  
  Re: iPod 6 - Now with a built-in CD drive!
  ...And we probably would not have the iPhone, which flowed from the iPod business.
  
  And that means we probably would not have Android, which exists because carriers like Verizon needed a device to competite against the exclusive iPhone carriers like AT&T.
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:32am

what is worse is Congress building into law exactly what the industries wanted, so that you apparently never own what media you've bought, cant break DRM but can back up your media disks, somehow, God knows how and cant share what you've paid hard earned cash for! this is the sort of thing that happens when lobbying at politicians who are allowed to take 'unlimited campaign donations' and then do anything and everything that their previous political colleague asks after changing hat and becoming the head of one of the entertainment industries!! and dont forget the bull shit reasoning of thousands of non-existing jobs being lost and no new movies being made if these industries dont get what they demand, not want, demand!! and screw the customers along the way!!
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zip, 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:52am

Cinavia
A key issue not mentioned in the article (or so far in the comments) is Cinavia, which is a DRM embedded in the movie's audio, that when detected in a non-original disk or ripped copy, will cause the Cinavia-enabled player to red-card the (presumably pirated) movie being played.

All Blu-ray disk players made in the last year are required to support Cinavia DRM. This includes all multi-functional BD players with streaming or file-playing abilities, and these streams and files being played are also detected and blocked.

It's this lack of Cinavia DRM that makes a media center pc -of any kind- greatly superior to any hardware-based Blu-ray player or combo device.
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- John Fenderson (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:44pm
  
  Re: Cinavia
  That's why you rip the bluray. Then you don't need to go through the player at all.
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  - zip, 13 Mar 2014 @ 1:28pm
    
    Re: Re: Cinavia
    The Cinavia issue affects much more than just copied disks. Ripping does not remove Cinavia. It's still going to be embedded in the media's audio stream, since no one so far has found a way to remove it. For instance, every .MKV or .MP4 file ripped from a Cinavia-infected blu-ray won't play on a PC running Cyberlink PowerDVD software, (unless it's played at half-speed or whatever).
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    - Geno0wl (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 1:44pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Cinavia
      Who the hell runs Cyberlink PowerDVD?
      unless they start forcing VLC or something to incorporate that Cinavia, it really isn't a big deal.
      Even then if they did start that, I would bet people would just stop using it and find a new player.
      People would just rather break the law than be inconvenienced.
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      - Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 2:10pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Cinavia
        Biggest issue I've heard about it was streaming to a Playstation 3, since that recognizes the watermark. There are companies that can remove the watermark, though with minor audio distortions. (I do believe they just had their domain registration pulled by ICE, though it's a Chinese company.)
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        zip, 13 Mar 2014 @ 2:52pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Cinavia
        I think DVDFab had a workaround for PS3, by re-encoding its own copy of Cinavia onto a file ripped from a Cinavia-embedded disk. Or something like that. No wonder Hollywood is out for blood.
        
        https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140310/16392526519/ridiculously-broad-ruling-against-dvd-r ipper-software-has-court-allow-seizure-domains-social-media-more.shtml
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        techflaws (profile), 14 Mar 2014 @ 12:04am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Cinavia
        Or something. The ripped files still had Cinavia they just bypassed the PS3's detection which has been fixed by Sony in later firmwares.
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    - techflaws (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:56pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Cinavia
      Doesn't matter at all cause there'll always be hardware like the WDTV and software that will ignore it completely which makes it quite fun to see the clueless executives view it as the silver bullet.
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      - zip, 14 Mar 2014 @ 4:16am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Cinavia
        It's only a matter of time before WDTV and all other manufactured media players sold in the USA will be forced to enable Cinavia and other DRM protections. Then the only way to play "pirate" videos will be to build your own box or illegally 'mod-ship' one.
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        techflaws (profile), 15 Mar 2014 @ 3:58am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Cinavia
        Given all the trouble they had to get through the DMCA and how SOPA failed badly, you really think they gonna get this approved?
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John85851 (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 11:58am

Brainwashing...
On a related note, my wife and I watched a musical from the 1940's on DVD recently.
The disc started with a "commercial" from the MPAA saying "Piracy is stealing". How did we get to the point where the MPAA is brainwashing people like this?

First, how is downloading or copying a movie related to hijacking ships in the ocean. The events in the movie "Captain Phillips" show piracy, and it's not about how a crew of Somalis downloaded a movie.

Second, how do we (as TechDirt) readers spread the word that downloading movies is not "stealing" and should not be likened to stealing a car, as the "commercial" shows.

Yet when everyone watches this DVD that they purchased, they'll be treated to an unskippable message about how downloading movies is as bad as stealing a car.
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- Baron von Robber, 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:20pm
  
  Re: Brainwashing...
  If you repeat a lie often enough...
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- Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:26pm
  
  Re: Brainwashing...
  Yet when everyone watches this DVD that they purchased, they'll be treated to an unskippable message about how downloading movies is as bad as stealing a car.
  
  It also reminds them that they can download movies, and if Hollywood is going to treat them as thieves they might as well download their next movie if they can find it on-line.
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 12:32pm

This isn't about piracy; this is about control.
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 1:03pm

That was a ridiculously unrealistic price for something that i'm currently handling with a hundred dollar 3 tb external, a 50 dollar roku box, and plex running off my pc, for free.

What's the market? people who can't manage to search for a streaming site and yet have 4 grand laying around?
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- Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 1:58pm
  
  Re:
  What's the market? people who can't manage to search for a streaming site and yet have 4 grand laying around?
  
  Easy: Fat, bloated movie studio CEOs
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 2:34pm

Until an uncrippled network media device becomes available that requires no disks I will continue to use a NAS with xbmc setup to stream pirated videos from a central location to any room in my house. Once you have such a brilliant setup you won't settle for anything less.

Such a product would decrease piracy for those who have no other choice at present. Those that want quality will happily pay for that convenience although the device should be sub $600 as that is all it currently costs for such a setup.

Some of us on the other hand refuse to pay for media ever again due to the actions of the media corporations and their control techniques.
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TheGuy, 13 Mar 2014 @ 4:08pm

Water-Powered Cars
Its like water-powered cars. They invented water-powered cars years ago, and they work well, but we cannot buy them because the gasoline industry has the world by the balls.
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Mar 2014 @ 4:21pm

I don't give a shit!
I don't give a shit about what Hollywood has done here. Why? Because I do it anyway! All my DVD's go via my computer's hard drive. My computer is connected to a 50" HDTV. And you know what? A damn YOUTUBE VIDEO from my computer often times looks better than an upscaled DVD on my bluray player. It's as if my computer knows how to upscale stuff properly. Plus I only copy the feature plus any extras that I decide are worth watching (which, quite frankly, is almost none of them!). It plays instantly, too. How instantly? I can have a PLAYLIST of movies or TV shows and the break between "features" is about two seconds - and that's counting the built in fade-to-black on the actual video! So screw you Hollywood. Limit new devices til the cows come home. It will hurt those businesses but it ain't gonna hurt me! And even if it does for new releases, I already own enough discs to keep me happy for years to come!
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JMT (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 5:05pm

"A damn YOUTUBE VIDEO from my computer often times looks better than an upscaled DVD on my bluray player. It's as if my computer knows how to upscale stuff properly."

Lots of YouTube videos are 1080p resolution, so its no surprise that they can look better than an upscaled DVD.
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- Derek Kerton (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 5:27pm
  
  Re:
  Heck, Youtube even has more and more 4k content, with 4x the pixels of HDTV 1080p.
  
  http://mashable.com/2014/01/03/youtube-4k-ces/
  
  Netflix is carrying some 4k streaming content, and ESPN has said they will shoot 100% of their content in 4K.
  
  A DVD is a relic from the awful past. From scratches and slow load times, to "no skip" flags and copious advertisements put *before* the film. And who can forget the fun of region locking? There is a place in my heart for VHS, but I curse and dance on DVD's grave.
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nasch (profile), 14 Mar 2014 @ 11:22am

4TB?
Aren't Blu-rays 25GB? So with 4TB you could rip 160 movies? That's not that many for the sort of movie enthusiast who would be most interested in this, is it?
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ELT, 14 Mar 2014 @ 4:38pm

Four Grand????
A basic HTPC with DVD-Fab and XBMC will do the job for around a grand, with 4 Tb and a decent video card. Four grand is out of hand...
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hipcos, 14 Mar 2014 @ 5:14pm

Modest proposal
Kaleidescape should integrate a disk shredder with their machine. This way it becomes unnecessary to check if the user still owns the disk, and it eliminates the threat of people reselling the medium. Of course the HD copies must also expire after a number of views, just as disks can develop scratches and break.
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