CinemaNow claims 94% of download-to-burn DVDs work

Somehow we had a feeling CinemaNow wouldn't take the news sitting down with regard to the claims espoused by an anonymous engineer who claims their new pseudo-DRMed download-to-burn DVD service is horribly, fatally flawed, and won't play but in any but the most robust standalone DVD boxes. CinemaNow shot back stating that the service has been "well received by our customers and studios alike," (ah, isn't that the trick?) and that tests had the burned DVDs working on "94 percent of DVD players." Which tests and using what DVD players we don't know, but somehow we don't expect to have that data readily divulged. Guess there's only one way to find out though, right? Download a marginally overpriced flick for about ten bucks, get yourself a spindle of DVD-Rs, and go to town. And while you're at it, howsabout letting us know how it worked out for ya by shouting it out in the comments, yeah?

[Matt @ Aug 6th 2006 2:48PM]

Cinemanow uses Flux DVD for its Download to Burn Service.You can use Flexidvd Test file to test.
But it takes forever to burn the DVD.

http://www.fluxdvd.com/

And if your a content owner you may not be impressed with the fact that the resulting burnt DVD from Cinemanow can be copied with a multitude of DVD ripping tools like DVD Decrypter .

[srw985 @ Aug 6th 2006 2:54PM]

does it work with xbox 360?

[Philip Spicer @ Aug 6th 2006 4:42PM]

When I burned their free download of trailers, the first attempt failed to burn, but the second time it worked fine and played without incident in my Pioneer DVD player.

[Justin @ Aug 6th 2006 4:54PM]

How has the MPA not stopped this yet? Even if you ignore the tech reasons why this wont work, the legal reasons will still be overwelling.

[Chris @ Aug 6th 2006 6:05PM]

because the MPA is still making the same amount of money, if not more. it costs a fair amount to press dvd's and cases and print the sleeve's and booklets, far less than bandwidth costs, and yet these downloads go for about the same rate and have no more copy issues than store bought dvd's.

[shirizaki @ Aug 6th 2006 6:22PM]

I think I'll continue to don my cannon fuses in my beard and sail the high seas thank you very much.

I kid. But when you service claimes things like "now fixed, 94%, almost any player". Not to mention their precious DRM doesn't even work on the disc. A strategy rethink comes to mind when I think of this service. It sounds like they want people to think "For $5 more, maybe I should just buy it at the store so I know it's going to play."

[Eric @ Aug 6th 2006 6:39PM]

Heh. Gotta love how the title of this story states that 94% of the DVD's work when in the story it is 94% of the players. I'd hope that 100% percent of the DVDs themselves work correctly...

[Fred @ Aug 6th 2006 8:00PM]

Why on earth bother with anything other than standard DVD DRM (CSS etc) if these things have the same vulnrability to DVD Decryptor as any store brought DVD?

[Seth @ Aug 6th 2006 8:53PM]

I went ahead and bought a movie. When I tried to burn my first DVD, my wife left me, the can of of gas I keep in the garage for my lawn mower exploded, and I got bit by a tarantula. I think it's safe to say that CinemaNow still isn't working.

[MadScientist @ Aug 6th 2006 9:21PM]

Moronic imbicils! I said to burn the evidence, not allow the evidence to be burned to DVD! Now the whole world knows about my secret trove of movies arrrrgh!

[RaAusar @ Aug 6th 2006 9:37PM]

I purchased a CinemaNow flick and burned to my DVD-R and played it fine in all 4 DVD players I own. This is a great option versus driving 5 miles to the nearest store and paying $16-$20 for a DVD.

[Matt @ Aug 6th 2006 9:42PM]

What I cant understand is that the Studios go with a DVD system that takes 4 hours to Transcode from H.264 to DVD whos only protection is CSS.

The movie studios could distrubute thier Movies in DivX that play on a Multiude of DivX Certifed DVD players and have the DivX DRM system that has not been broken and is accont based . Problem solved .

[shirizaki @ Aug 6th 2006 10:54PM]

@ Matt

That would be too easy and it would make the movie industry admit that they've been stubborn mules for the past years and that they've tried to swindle money :)


They honestly want to design a foolproof system that will make them money and will allow them to say "We have made a system/method that fools those damn dirty pirates!"

Of course it will never happen. As someone said on here: "As long as their video output on a monitor, someone will copy it." The only foolproof DRM is something that doesn't show video or audio.

So...yeah, the Cinemanow distribution platform works!

[William @ Aug 6th 2006 11:07PM]

Went to CinemaNow's site. Browsed a couple of movie titles. Keep getting pages telling me it is only compatible with IE 6. Tried to contact their customer service to tell them I only use FireFox, and I got a page telling me they only support IE 6. So much for customer service...

[chelftn @ Aug 7th 2006 12:16AM]

94% work... that means 6% of their product fails, and what's more, it fails in the hands of the user, not in the factory where failures can be tested for and rectified before pissing off your customers. Sounds like a business model headed for failure to me.

[Blog The Internet @ Aug 7th 2006 12:22AM]

94% Chance

Even at that... 94% is too low! I can only imagine what the real percentage is when you add in all the people that are using the program. I am guessing this program is definatley NOT worth the money to purchase."

Do you have any links to software that works?

[g3n3tix @ Aug 7th 2006 3:54AM]

The 1% of readable DVDs work on 94% of the players !
Wow !
I love statistics, if you are not careful and forget something, you make a fool of yourself.

[Daniel Udrea @ Aug 7th 2006 8:59AM]

CinemaNow loaded up these DVD's with a bunch of checksum errors all over to make it a pain in the petunia to copy. They have a test DVD you can try. So far the test DVD works in all of my players. 5 laptops, 1 desktop, Sony Standalone (about 3.5 years old), and a Coby Portable DvD Player. It actually plays quite nicely.

[treetrunk @ Aug 7th 2006 9:04AM]

The problem with DRM is that it inherently hits the wrong target market. While the intention may be to prevent piracy, the "real" large-scale pirates who might actually be a problem to the industry will always find a workaround. DRM is only a problem to the non tech-savvy consumer, who can't figure out why his DVD will play on his PC but not the DVD player in the lounge, or why the music he bought from itunes won't work on his non-ipod. Those who know what they're doing will simply follow the pirates, and either remove the DRM or use a different and possibly illegal source which doesn't have it in the first place.

[Jeff @ Aug 7th 2006 7:46PM]

Good call treetrunk, and this is what pisses me off about DRM, THERE IS NO POINT. The average consumer doesn't want to distribute illegal DVD's, and if he wants to get them there are a multitude of places where he/she can. All this does is makes it harder for everyone to use their legal content in the way they want.

[Evan @ Aug 8th 2006 12:16PM]

I could buy a dual-layer DVD from a store, complete with special features and box-art. Or I can burn my own single-layer DVD, which means I get lower quality (in order to squeeze it onto the disk), no 1-hour making-of documentary, and no case. And it might not even play on my DVD player. Which do you think most people would do?

[Aaron @ Nov 19th 2007 9:03PM]

Too funny,
since i saw so many people blasting it and the only 3 people that actually tried it had success playing it, i decided to give it a true test.
I work for one of the major post houses that do dvd authoring and compatability testing for the studios. I downloaded a studio movie (took a while) and burned it to dvd (also took a while), then i took it to our compatability lab and put it in every one of the almost 200 dvd players we have. It played successfully on 96% of them (more than they said).
Contrary to what was said in the above posts, the dvd had all the added value and menus and navigation that the DVD purchased in the store had.
I wish all you haters actually knew what you were talking about before you rant on stuff!
seems to do everything they claim and more... oh yeah, i tried to rip the burned DVD with DVD decryptor and it wouldn't rip (seems it's more secure than the CSS everyone loves to hate)