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Kingston, Paramount to sell movies on flash memory
updated 02:20 pm EST, Mon November 2, 2009
Kingston USB, SD cards to carry movies
Kingston and Paramount unveiled an unusual deal today that will see the latter's movies made available on SD cards and USB flash drives. The partners haven't detailed the formats involved but say the movies will be available both in bundles as well as individually. Neither company has committed to a release date.
The gesture is one of the few commitments to providing movies on non-optical storage and is considered a means of spreading video to systems that don't have Blu-ray or DVD drives, such as netbooks or handhelds. Standard definition movies are most likely as these can usually fit into 2GB or less of storage.
this is
11/02, 03:12pm (1 reply) reply
dumb.
EternalGuest
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Mar 2009
Why dumb? please explain your opinion!
11/02, 04:12pm reply
If this turns out to be true, I think it will set a huge milestone for the studios. People want their content portable! The downside is that it will probably be a Windows only thing at first and will be so well locked down that the technology struggles to take off.
I am exited though!
MacAssemble
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jan 2008
Not Gonna Happen
11/02, 07:41pm reply
Two main problems will ensure that this goes nowhere:
1) Cost. The cost of a commercially pressed DVD is around $0.15 in orders of hundreds of thousands of units, and a BluRay is about $2-3 (and falling fast). Flash memory is about 15-30X that cost for the same capacity.
2) Format/Compatibility. This will be a DRM-encumbered format that will not play on existing devices. There would have to be very strong consumer demand for such a format in order to drive a mass-market shift to support it, and as BluRay backers have come to realize, there is not too much demand on the consumer side to abandon the DVD format. The next format after shiny discs will be electronic delivery, not more compact physical delivery, particularly since there will be no improvement in resolution or image/sound quality to encourage adoption.
WiseWeasel
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Apr 1999
managed copies
11/02, 07:58pm reply
Couldn't they just get managed copies to work? I could get the Blu-ray disc and copy it to SD card for my external device.
pt123
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Sep 2007