Movie downloading kiosks may be coming soon

[NG]

Movie downloading kiosks may be coming soon

Posted Jun 4th 2006 3:15PM by Evan Blass
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video
In what could turn into a preemptive strike against the further decline of DVD sales in the face of competition from digital downloads as well as Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs, major retailers may soon be installing kiosks in their stores that give customers access to on-demand, feature-length films on DVD or their portable devices. According to Reuters, the major movie studios are reportedly in talks with retail heavyweights like Wal-mart to theoretically offer their complete archives for downloading to in-store terminals with high-speed connections, where they would either be burned onto DVD or transferred to unspecified devices, a la that proposed DVD Station service we saw awhile back (which seemingly never materialized). While the prospect of having immediate access to almost every movie ever made is admittedly appealing, we're not really sure that we want to drive all the way over to Best Buy just to stand around waiting uncomfortably with our fellow patrons as we all clutch our iPods, nervously tap our feet, and wish we'd all just stayed at home and settled for whatever was on Moviebeam. http://portablevideo.engadget.com/2006/06/04/movie-downloading-kiosks-may-be-coming-soon/#comments

Well check this out...nice stuff.

[guns1inger]

Let me count the ways this is likely to fail . .

1. Many movies will not fit on a single layer disc without extra compression, reducing quality. Unless this is priced substantially lower than boxed DVDs, why buy a substandard product. This does not include ipod users, who obviously are not concerned with quality as they are happy with a postage stamp sized screen.

2. There is no universally playable writeable disc. Anyone who has done a large run of writable discs will have had at least some returns for discs that either did not play at all, or did not play well. This problem becomes worse for dual layer discs.

3. Most people don't know their + from their -, so there is little point giving them a choice to try to ease the problems raised in point 2

4. Similar schemes have been tried (and failed) before. A few years back we had machines turn up at petrol (gas) stations. They offered both rental and retail services. They lasted about 3 months. And these were commercial discs, not writables.

5. These will only suit the "movie only" crowd, as there will be no room for extras on most discs without further sacrificing quality. Personally, I hate "movie only" releases.