The news
A new initiative by Sonic Solutions and Macrovision could soon see consumers being offered a far wider range of movies on DVD. The two companies are working together to allow retailers and e-tailers to custom-burn DVDs on demand. As well as reducing the expense and risk of holding stocks of movies that don't sell, the inititiative should increase the selection offered for sale, making it cost-effective for the first time to sell niche titles and older films and TV programmes.
By integrating Macrovision’s RipGuard and ACP technologies with Sonic’s new DVD On Demand technology, it becomes possible, the companies say, for titles encrypted with the Content Scramble System (CSS) to be recorded directly to writable DVD media, as they are currently with pressed DVDs.
Movies burned to disc this way are said to offer the same audio and video quality and features - and protection - as today’s commercially mass-produced pressed titles and to maintain "the highest possible playback compatibility with set-top DVD players".
One example of how the system might be implemented is for supermarkets to offer a service where you choose the DVD you want burned before you start your weekly shopping and pick it up afterwards - much like happens today with prints from film and digital media.
Presumably, though, stores would charge a premium for a one-hour service - as they do with prints - and expect you to pay in advance, since you're not leaving anything with them to act as a deposit.
An alternative would be to browse a catalogue online and have your selection of DVDs burned and posted out to you in a similar timescale to current online DVD sales.
Sonic will license the new combined solution to "video publishers and distributors" and there's little doubt that the new on-demand system has the potential - if it's taken up by studios, TV stations and retailers and e-tailers - to make available on DVD for the first time a whole bunch of non-blockbuster movies and TV programmes. And that's something that has to be very welcome.
Or are we missing something here? Check out the joint press release from Sonic and Macrovision on page two and let us hear your ideas in this thread in the HEXUS.lifestyle.news forum.
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Sonic Solutions - home pageMacrovision Corp - home page
