MusicGiants launches VideoGiants, with HD movies from Paramount

The HD digital distribution club just got a little bigger, as lossless audio distributor MusicGiants is launching its VideoGiants service with 250 movies from Paramount, and additional content from HDNet. Available in 1080p or 1080i WMV format, users can purchase the movies in 10-packs for $159 delivered via Seagate hard drives or, in a few months, one at a time via direct download to a home media server. After that, it can be viewed via the media PC or Media Extender (including Xbox 360). MusicGiants has been selling HD audio tracks to high end home theater owners via its network of dealers and installers for about two years, with plans to make this type of service available to the mass market soon. Still think the future of HD content is on shiny discs?

[Erwos @ Jan 9th 2008 3:21PM]

That's a fairly compelling service, but they obviously need more studios. Any word on the audio format that's coming with it? I'd assume WMA10-5.1, something like that.

[Juice @ Jan 9th 2008 3:25PM]

Just not as exciting without a Belmont pic...

[Ethan Fahy @ Jan 9th 2008 3:32PM]

I know this isn't going to happen but I wish you could just buy the rights to own a movie regardless of format and every time there was a format change you would automatically be entitled to the new material. I refuse to collect movies only because I refuse to rebuy anything and am waiting for some sort of definitive ultimate format, at least for the next 15-20 years. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

[nin @ Jan 9th 2008 3:33PM]

Considering I don't want to trust that a hard drive full of movies will never crap out on me. Yes I do think disc based is still the way to go.

[BigD @ Jan 9th 2008 3:34PM]

It's called RAID....

[nin @ Jan 9th 2008 4:09PM]

Cause everyday people know what RAID is

[Junior @ Jan 9th 2008 4:42PM]

Panty RAID

[Troels N @ Jan 13th 2008 10:47AM]

No no no.. It's called zfs - Remember what Jonathan told us?!

[BigD @ Jan 9th 2008 3:33PM]

I like this idea, too. You get 10 HD movies on a harddrive for $159. That's like 15.99 per movie with a free Seagate HDD. It's cool to see studios moving above and beyond the whole format war.

[e_rocm @ Jan 9th 2008 3:43PM]

Exactly what I was thinking. $15.99 per movie plus the hard drive is awesome. The only problem is backing the data up. Buying an extra HD for backup or burning the data to disc would be a pain.

[Jonathan Bergeron @ Jan 9th 2008 3:47PM]

haha Sony. They finally win a format war, and it was all for nothing.

[Jonathan Bergeron @ Jan 9th 2008 3:47PM]

haha Sony. They finally win a format war, and it was all for nothing.

[Ozzy @ Jan 9th 2008 4:09PM]

AMAZING! Just yesterday at 5:00pm in New York i was telling my coworkers that this storage war will come to an end with flash drives of memory. Maybe not the USB flash drives we have today but possible a similar type of connection that will achieve high transfer rates and be cost effective. Realistically prices for flash based products have come down dramatically, and are continuing to drop rapidly.

In my honest opinion flash memory is going to fall to an all time low shortly and we will be introduced with this new storage format known to us as flash memory just rebranded and renamed.

Just picture this you go to your nearest cd/dvd/hddvd/bluray disk retailer and you flip through a catalog of movies you intend to buy, you locate the little cigarette sized packaging and take it to the register. When arriving at home you unpack it, to discover a little flash drive inside. This flash drive gets plugged in directly to your TV, eliminating the need for another clumsy "Disk" player.

Once you finished viewing your movie if the "Disk" lovers will have something to comment about you simply plug your flash based drive in to your favorite computer and burn a "Disk". Upon completion the flash drive can be set to auto destruct so you can have only one copy at a time... ok maybe I am getting a little carried away with the self destruct add-on, but you can defiantly burn your self a copy of the movie.

My 2cents =]`

[socalreinvestor @ Jan 9th 2008 4:55PM]

How is this a really good deal when you can get 10 PPV HD movies for $40? I guess it will depend on selection.

[qatoknow @ Jan 10th 2008 3:13AM]

it's the difference b/n rental (nvod) and owning.

[cduran01 @ Jan 9th 2008 4:59PM]

Disk based media isn't going anywhere any time soon. Even with a RAID theres possibility of failure and loss of data. Not to mention that a RAID needs to be upgraded every time you run out of space. And what do people do to backup their drives so that they dont loose all their movies? Thats right, they burn them onto a disk.

The best thing, I think, is to have a mix. I would buy movies on disks, but download TV shows. Disk media can't be taken out of the equation yet, not until FLASH based drives are available cheaply and in large sizes (1T and up) and everyone has access to blazing fast internet access.

And lets not forget downloaded videos are never as good a quality as disk media, even if its 1080p. You cant compare a 2GB video with a 10GB video (keeping resolution and framerate the same).

[qatoknow @ Jan 10th 2008 3:36AM]

and disks never fail? can't be scratched or lost? or just plain ugly on the shelf? i agree that drive sizes and bandwidth needs to increase for digital downloads to take-off, but it is not true that just because a movie file is bigger it must be better quality. better codecs can give u better quality at smaller sizes. e.g. a small 2.5Mbps WMV file can exceed the quality of a larger 5-6Mbps MPEG2 (DVD quality) file.

[qatoknow @ Jan 10th 2008 3:36AM]

and disks never fail? can't be scratched or lost? or just plain ugly on the shelf? i agree that drive sizes and bandwidth needs to increase for digital downloads to take-off, but it is not true that just because a movie file is bigger it must be better quality. better codecs can give u better quality at smaller sizes. e.g. a small 2.5Mbps WMV file can exceed the quality of a larger 5-6Mbps MPEG2 (DVD quality) file.

[bobbykaufmann @ Jan 9th 2008 6:12PM]

I bet Sony loves this news. LMAO!! Love the last sentence in this post :)

[Jake @ Jan 9th 2008 6:56PM]

Yawn...

Wake me when its got TrueHD or DTS-HD MA audio. Until then, not interested.

[Ed @ Jan 10th 2008 3:54AM]

It still has DRM. You can't purchase anything with DRM, and have any reasonable level of confidence that you could watch it in 10 years.

It's really simple.

NON-DRM material can be continually transferred to different storage mediums. It can also be played on any device that can decode it. More importantly, it can be converted to any other type of format.

DRM limits you both in how and where you can watch it, and it requires you to maintain hardware that has the DRM algorithm supported. DRM also requires you to constantly maintain your digital licenses, and makes you liable for losing them. Of course, there also the obligatory discussion about privacy and anonymity.

DRM will always fail both technically and in the marketplace. Not one digital download service for Movies has been without DRM, and not one of them has succeeded.

[James H @ Jan 10th 2008 6:17PM]

The most important question is how large the movie files are. Seems like ten movies on a hard drive (200GB? 300GB?) would be an appropriate size for an HD movie. The problem with many of these services is that they purport to be HD, but the massive amount of compression (in loss of detail and color down sampling) they do on the file cuts the detail to a small percentage of what you get on either HD disc format.

[Lachlan Hunt @ Jan 11th 2008 9:20AM]

It's crap, DRM-encumbered WMV format with a web site that only works in IE. Sorry, I'll take my business elswhere.