Warner Bros. has announced that they will make use of BitTorrent technology for selling movies and TV Shows online; the very same technology that is causing the entertainment industry serious problems with mass-piracy. Their service In2Movies will make use of Arvato, which is based on BitTorrent technology to efficiently transfer its content to its customers, which can use other customers as content sources and not just rely on centralised servers. However, the content will need to be authorised by a centralised system to play in order to prevent unauthorised viewing or distribution.
This service is set to launch in March, which will offer consumers a limited selection of Warner Bros. movies and TV shows. These will be released dubbed in the German language the very same day as their DVD release, with pricing expected to be similar to the DVD versions. Content made available on the initial version of their service will only be playable on PCs, however later on, Warner Bros. aims to allow the playback on suitable portable devices. They will also aim to widen it use of P2P networks and bring its service to other countries over time.
Warner Bros. claims that using P2P technology to distribute legal content will be one of the most effective means of fighting P2P piracy as these alternatives will be easy to use. They claim that 11.9 million movies were illegally downloaded between 1.7 million users in Germany in the first half of 2005 alone. Thanks to DamnedIfIknow for letting us know about the following news:
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Warner Bros. is working with Bertelsmann AG and its subsidiary Arvato to create a service called In2Movies, to launch in March. The service will feature movies dubbed into German, including "Batman Begins" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," for a fee that Warner says will be similar to the cost of a DVD. It will also offer television shows like "The O.C." and locally made programs and movies. Users, who will have to register for the service, will be able to keep the movie indefinitely. But instead of getting a movie from a central server, pieces of it could come from other people on the network who also bought that movie. Some further info can be read on this c|net article. |
In my opinion, this system is unlikely going to do very well unless the movies are priced a fair bit cheaper than their DVD versions. By pricing the online movies similar to their DVD version pricing means that consumers will sooner go for the 'trusty' physical version rather than go through the tedious process of obtaining the movie, only to find that these can only be played back on a PC (at least until later on). As this distribution method does not even require as high bandwidth servers as other Video-On-Demand online services, not to mention the lack of retail store costs, disc, case & artwork replication costs, transportation & storage costs, etc. they surely should be able to cut well back on the online pricing also!
DamnedIfIknow added: Hmm....so they put on their glasses and finally have seen the writing on the wall? Need to drop the price though.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
