Paramount and Kingston team up for movies on flash memory
By Donald Melanson 
posted Nov 2nd 2009 6:43PM
posted Nov 2nd 2009 6:43PM
Movies delivered on memory cards isn't an entirely new development (Sony did it back in the early days of the PSP), but it looks like Paramount and Kingston think the idea is prime for a comeback, and have today announced a partnership that'll see some of the studio's movies delivered on SD cards and USB drives. That gets started with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen on a (presumably reusable) 4GB Kingston DataTraveler I USB drive that's available right now for $29.99, and will apparently continue with additional movies offered across Kingston's full line of memory cards and USB drives, although both parties are staying mum on any further specifics. There's also no word from any other studios or memory companies just yet, but we can only presume this means slotMovies are right around the corner.
so that's what they're doing with their huge stockpile of (now) tiny USB drives! LOL - creative thinking though. . .
Oh Shit! I just deleted my movie...
Not something you worry about with a finalized DVD!
Oh Shit Yeah! I just deleted my movie...
Transformers sucked.
On some USB drives there's a little tab to make the drive write-protected. I hope they are releasing these movies on such drives. To "accidentally" delete the movie you have to "deliberately" make the drive writable.
well, they can always lock it off permanently
Seriously who would put their hands anywhere near a delete button on something like that. Do you worry about deleting your photos the same way?
Yeah cool way to get rid of flash memory no one wants to buy I guess...
But the packaging and organizing of flash sticks seems like a pain. Pull out the movie tote guys! I think transformers is somewhere near the bottom!
Stuuuuupid idea, and besides, are they not worries about DRM issues with this? That'd be the first time ever.
no they are not worries. the flash drives doubtlessly have built-in drm
I think this is awesome- Here's why:
1. Easier to build in DRM
2. USB drives are (well... can be) faster than CDs
3. I've never scratched a USB drive (I steal a tonne of games I already own due to scratched disks)
4. USB drives can have massively more memory than disks
5. Games on computers without drives!!! (Think mini-ITX, or laptop)
6. No more BS CD-Keys or CD-s locked to online accounts
7. Save games on a sector of a USB drive instead of HDD (portable profiles!)
I'd be willing to pay $5 on top of a $60 or $40 game to get a nicer gaming experience.
People who play by the rules should be super stoked about this! This is one of the few times where Game companies can protect their product from freeloaders without punishing legitimate consumers.
PS... I'm an idiot, I wrote this about games not movies.... but points apply both ways.
The quality of games doesn't rely on compression the way the quality of picture does..
Compressing a movie to fit on a 4GB flash drive...makes me shutter.
you are more of an idiot for admitting to stealing a ton of games
Uhm Jordan.. what were dvd's? Hm? 4.4 gb? Hm? Hm? And since when are flash drives limited to 4 gb?
And yes I am aware that it's 4gb... FOR the stuff mentioned above. Think of it as a test :P
Dude. Idiot. Crappy dvds were 4.7, good movies were dual layer, 8.5gb. Take out the extra crap on a DVD and a movie was still around 6GB. Compress that even more, put it on a flash drive, and you've got yourself a nice crappy movie to watch
@Jordan
Dont forget there are larger USB drives than 4GB
a 64GB one can store blueray quality films just wait to that or larger than 64GB gets cheaper with films preinstalled
You do realize that a disc will ALWAYS be cheaper than a flash drive, right? If they're going to charge that much for a flash drive based movie, how many people are going to say f that and get the disc? Not only are there dvd drives EVERYWHERE, but blu-ray is picking up pace and I do believe will continue to replace DVD as it gets cheaper.
In theory flash drive sounds cool, as we all picture in high-tech and future-esque, but in practice, not so much.
As mechachu said:
"And since when are flash drives limited to 4 gb?"
You can get up to 128GB on a thumb drive from Fry's. For thumb drives, the issue isn't size/space, it's cost. An 8GB thumb drive costs $15. I'm sure that the cost for them to make a DVD is a lot cheaper than that, probably a few cents. They need to bring the $/GB price down for thumb drives to make them a practical competitor to DVDs.
Also dont forget about 64GB SDXC, 32GB SDHC, 32GB SDHC, 32GB Micro SD,
They maybe more expensive now, in the future when cheaper to produce they could easily over take blueray as a format for storing movies (leagal or illeagally), lots of devices including mobile phones, PDAs, MIDs, Netbooks, laptops, smartbooks, PMPs, DVD players, Blu-ray players, TVs are currently compatable with either SD/ SDmicro/ USB/ SDXC standards
Plus SDHC / SDXC / SDmicro are all smaller than optical disks
@ nintendo fanboy hater
I'm sure by steal he meant download. Which technically is not stealing since in most cases you pay for the licenses to play the game. As long as you have the proof of purchase or product key it doesn't matter where you get the installer from.
Encode with H.264 and you can get 720p looking very reasonable at 4GB. 1080p at 8GB/12GB looks brilliant with DTS audio.
No one says we're limited to shitty MPEG-2.
@Jordan:
I agree with your overall assessment that this isn't all that viable right now... but at one point you said,
>>"You do realize that a disc will ALWAYS be cheaper than a flash drive, right?"
Stupid thing cut off 80% of my post.
The short version is that piracy is built into the cost of media. So, if piracy didn't exist, DVDs could be, in theory, as much as 30% cheaper at retail. If this new media diminishes piracy, they may be able to put this out for LESS than a comparable optical disc.
Any idea if these movies will have DRM, if they don't this will be sweet.
They will undoubtedly have built-in DRM
DVDs also have DRM... it's just that freeware DVD-rippers can defeat it so easily...
No way in hell will they not have DRM.
But what does it really matter anyway? Since they are 4GB they won't even be DVD quality. And since DVD's DRM is easy to remove why not just buy the cheap DVD and rip your own digital copy at whatever quality you like?
This is just stupid. Its got all the inconvenience of physical media with none of the quality. Either give me instant access and convenience or give me the best available quality. If you can do neither you'll never make it.
Min:
4GB of H.264 or equiv can produce a much better picture than 8GB of MPEG-2 used in a DL DVD.
It all depends.
"4GB of H.264 or equiv can produce a much better picture than 8GB of MPEG-2 used in a DL DVD."
Even if it was the same quality of DVD, you still have to go to the store to buy these things so there goes the convenience factor. What's the difference between hauling a packet of USB drives around these things and a box of DVD's? At least DVD copy protection is easily broken which makes it more flexible as a digital file. And Flash RAM isn't nearly as cheap as optical media so someone going to have to eat the extra cost and my guess is it won't be Paramount. I just don't see how any sane business person could give this the green light.
Any new format that is going to stand a chance in the marketplace has to have a compelling advantage over the status quo: either quality, convenience, or price. And it has to have CE industry wide agreement and all the studios on board. This has none of those things. Its just a slightly different form factor... a novelty and a gimmick. A few studios might agree to put a limited selection of titles out little things like this every so often to dip their toes in the water but I doubt any of them think these formats will ever gain any traction. Over the years micro-cassettes, Minidisc, DVD Audio, SACD, UMD have all come and gone without any real impact in the US market even though they all had tiny little sections devoted to them in stores for a while (and I mean tiny, like 3 feet or so).
Completely stupidity. I dont know how this idea went into their brains if they have one. Dont they know people download everything nowadays.
4GB? That's smaller than a single-layer DVD!
So we're paying more, for worse quality. Pass.
What do you think the iTunes store is? Worse Quality
>> "4GB? That's smaller than a single-layer DVD!"
It depends... DVDs still use old MPEG2 compression... developed in the mid 90s.
Maybe they are using a more efficient compression scheme... who knows?
They are definitely using H.264 or VC-1 (WMV) which are both far more efficient than MPEG2; so if the image quality really is worse than DVD it's not because of the disk space.
You won't be able to copy the movie off the drive. They are hoping you'll lose a few over the years and have to buy them again. You're still going to have to buy it again if you want it on your iPhone, etc. (devices that can't access SD cards or whatever they are using this week).
This makes no sense...
Optical discs are practically free to manufacture after the equipment has been purchased and those prices still haven't come down from $25-30 per BD or $15-25 per DVD...so now we want to throw flash memory to push the cost up more?
Hello!! Netbooks don't have optical drives... makes since to me.
You're really going to spend $30+ on a movie just so it will play on your netbook but none of the installed base of DVD players?
Transformers 2 was a terrible movie.
Your comment makes me sad.
Meagan fox's acting made me sad.
your comments are action packed with win!
***EXPLOSION***
Is this the movie with the robots? I went to watch this movie just as an excuse to see Megan Fox... and the girl at the university :)
Baysplosions!!!
Crappy or not, Transformers 2 made over $400,000,000.
For every person that says it sucks, 3 people went and saw it.
And frankly, the movie was what is was. A brainless action CGI flick. What did people expect? it was based off a toy line. Same with Speed Racer and G.I. Joe. The original content was nothing to write home about in the first place.
Shut up, enjoy the pretty fires and boom boom's eat your $30 popcorn and have a coke and a smile.
meggan fox's acting cant make you sad.
meggan fox didnt act in that movie at all,
she just, well. i dont know what she did
but i liked it.
I paid to go see it, and it sucked. That's why it made $400,000,000,000,000,0000,,00000,0, dollars. Money doesn't prevent things from sucking.
I would get on board with movies on flash drives in the following scenario.
Steps
1. Buy your own flash drive of your choosing
2. Go to a kiosk similar to Redbox
3. Select movie(s) to rent that will fit on said flashdrive (bigger drives hold more movies)
4. Take home movies to watch on PC or DVD with a USB port
I would be perfectly OK if the movies are DRMed and expire after a few days or a week or so in this scenario. A scenario like this could make for a feasible local rental model that if affordable enough might be faster and more convenient than torrent, and have a wider selection of new releases than streaming services. It would also offer a potential solution to bandwidth caps.
There is no way I am going to purchase an over-priced DRM locked down thumb drive that can only ever be used to store a single movie. I'd rather buy the full higher quality movie on an optical disc at a lower price.
i like your idea.
one downside of having a digital copy of a movie is, you don't get all the special features that comes with a DVD/BD. such as behind the scenes, commentaries and maybe alternate endings. of course, we can get those on another digital file, if possible - but i haven't been able to find/download any extra features of any movies yet.
I've been promoting this for nearly ten years, mostly for music and video stores. Makes sense for the tens of millions of US citizens with no broadband or who simply prefer a physical buying experience (still a very large minority from what I've seen). Media kiosks in music and video stores would be linked to on-site servers containing every new release and most of the older stuff. When a new title was added to company's selection it would only need to be downloaded once to each store's server. Older titles would take much less space thanks to their lower resolutions and simpler sound, so every store could have the majority of content available. This makes a lot more sense than devoting precious shelf space to classics and twenty copies of this week's new release. You would browse the inventory via touchscreens, loading tunes/films right onto your media player by attaching it to a port on the kiosk. Naturally your hardware would have to support whatever DRM scheme the renter came up with, but hey, PlaysForSure and Rhapsody were widely adopted..why should this be any different? You know the industry would be all for it. (You'd even have a clerk on hand to assist with technical issues - something you can't say for iTunes and its ilk.) If you wanted to watch the film on a big screen you'd either need video-out capability on your device or the same DRM system on whatever HMPC you transfer the file to. Again, it would have to be either an industry standard or just a de facto one. The bottom line is that its a way to get your media without tying up a computer or internet connection and for retail stores to stay in the media game. Call me weird but I really don't want to see FYE or the Wal-Mart media section go the way of the horse and carriage. Even if they finally get broadband to the 25% of America that currently lacks service, some people aren't gong to jive with having to mess with a computer for their music and movies. Not only that, but the more we tie up the cable and DSL pipes with high-def video the more likely they are to start throttling bandwidth..and that raises the dark specter of "net neutrality". Until we get fiber to every home, I say the local neighborhood media hub makes a heck of a lot of sense for all concerned.
As for distribution via flash drive, that should be reserved for *collections* of albums or films, not individual titles. That makes far more sense than making me buy another drive to watch a single movie. Give me a huge time and space saver like an 8gb drive stuffed with every video, album and special feature from a particular band, for example - then we're talking. I wouldn't have to devote bandwidth or storage space to it - physical or digital - and it would be preserved in the safest form you could hope for. You could go a step further, allowing me to use the internet to update my flash archives with director's cuts or new music singles (as long as there was room, of course). iTunes and similar software would be ideal for this.
You've been promoting it for over 10 years? 10 years ago I was just discovering CD-R's
They're going to fast to try harder if they want to beat the pirates...which should be about as possible as surpassing the speed of light.
I agree the idea is stupid. For $30 I'm assuming the movies will be in HD but just think how compressed they'll be with only 4GB to work with.
The reason the USB drive is silly is because Dreamworks apparently sees it as its primary distribution model for digital media. They don't have their movies available right away in the iTunes Store!
Personally, unless I can both transfer a movie to my iPhone and watch it on my Apple TV, I'm not interested in it being in digital format.
Something tells me Kingston and Dreamworks are going for the double-whammy of pain-in-the-a** and using their own player software too. Not cool.
PIRACY?
If this was a single write 32GB SDHC with a perfect digital copy for $10 I'd never download a movie again. We can all dream right? heh.
Uh, every flash drive i've ever owned lasted like 2 weeks before the USB plug got loose/broke or the disk "magically" became unreadable.
So, that'd be a big "NO THANKS" from me on this one.
someone call PETSSD (People for the Ethical Treatment of Solid State Drives), we have an abuser here.
Can we please just not do this?
For $29.99, i can buy the DVD and the flash drive seperately, rip the dvd and then put it back on my flash drive if i wanted to.
My school bookstore has $20 8GB drives. I can compress an average length movie down to around 500MB with very good quality (AVC, though not HD), so 16 movies on a flash drive would certainly be good for the netbookers among us.
I think while the idea is cool but lack in the realization.
For example, a couple of years ago, i purchased a (used) harddisk with some movies inside it. The movies was just a free plus for the purchase.
This is nothing new. I just bought a 4GB stick with a copy of M.I.B. on it. The Stick was $9.99 And The movie was just a tiny incentive to get me to buy it vs. another brand that did not have as flashy a package.
I never watched the movie on the stick... yet. But its kinda cool I think. This WONT in anyway replace movie distribution. Not that I can foresee anyway. But its just the icing on the cake for something you buy.
On a side note. The day after MJ dies Frys Electronics had a bajillion MJ Flash sticks with about 50% of his music and videos on them for $30.
hey if they made the flash disk shaped like a character in the movie, it would be cool. optimus prime flash disk, kate beckinsale flash disk, ben affleck.... nvm ...
The distributers seem to miss that the whole great point of physical media is being able to browse and manipulate. How do you easily browse a collection of flash drives?
And a person would spend $30 on a crappy 4GB version of a movie instead of buying the Blu-Ray for $20...why?
Maybe this is a sly move to make Blu-Ray seem more appealing. As in "Look honey, the Blu-Ray is only $25, and the picture quality is better than on the flash drive!"
I stick with my Bluray movies thanks.
Now you can pay twice the price of the dvd, and $5 more than the blu-ray, to get a movie in worse quality than the DVD! It's brilliant!
I like the idea of putting movies on flash drives. I really don't like optical media. It's big, gets scratched, relys on drives with moving parts prone to breaking, can be worn out in heat or the sun, and generally slow as well. Some companies are selling software on USB drives as well, and I think it's brilliant. At least for the software the USB version is the same software at the same price, paying twice the price for a shitty DRM's quality version of a horrible movie isn't exactly a good buy.
Great, a $10 premium to watch the movie..... on my computer only. Heck, if I have to use the computer anyways, might as well just download illegally.
p.s. Paramount and Kingston: make this as cheap or cheaper than DVD or immediate failure.
Totally my idea!!
It’s all about distributing to more audience; it’s a good ideal for the studios, cheap way to target more people, make more money. Not everybody has bought into Blu-Ray, probably due to economy issues, lots of people totally fine with DVD’s, plus DVD’s are cheaper then ever. They figured more people have more computers then Blu-Ray drives or Blu-Ray players, for the people that can watch a movie at work, in the home, on a laptop on the plane, train or bus, school can just pop in USB key and start watching.
My girlfriend's grandfather has a company that is pushing this same crap. It's all DRM'd and more expensive than you'd want to pay for a movie. He was really impressed that his company could make their own stand-alone movie player on an SD card. He wasn't impressed when I showed him TCMP for my palm Centro doing the exact same thing, but for free.
OMG!.!. remember that in star trek tng holomovies were on those transparent chips.. more or less like our USB pens... OMG!! THE FUTURE IS HERE!!!
About time. I hope this will replace Blu-ray and DVDs.
There would never be a format war again if everything was USB.or flash memory based. Netflix could send out their movies on 32gb SD cards.
what about when USB 3.0 becomes the standard...? ;)
A few thoughts to add to my previous post about retail media hubs:
* Retail media hub concept could free up employees to pay more attention to customers that need personal attention, like ATMs do at banks.
* Opens the door to new partnerships. If Blockbuster has on-site digital distribution, why shouldn't they sell Ziis, Zunes, even media-enabled phones? Blockbuster in particular has been open to these sorts of deals - the media hub idea could be the glue that binds it together. It would be much easier to have "Blockbuster at Circuit City" for example, if all the movies were on hard drives, ready for people to pull down to their players. It would also help if Circuit City still existed, except as a Tiger Direct brand, but you get the idea.
* More on flash drives: they could still be used to ferry rented & purchased media back home. Media stores could even sell their own branded units, but they'd have to resist the temptation to make them proprietary..we know how that always turns out. Even if a customer had filled his Wal-Mart flash drive with stuff from a competitor, that branded drive would be free advertising. Flash might actually become the preferred way to obtain purchased movies: its more pocketable than an Archos, that's for sure.
* Retail media hub still allows retailers massive savings on inventory, with a relatively small expense for the kiosk system. They would make back the investment within months at most locations, probably weeks at higher traffic stores. Imagine if you only had to stock TWO copies of GI Joe II: Serpentor Boogaloo instead of twenty. I know DVDs are relatively cheap in quantity but time spent dealing with physical inventory is a big expense (lost and stolen discs, damaged and unpopular titles, etc).
* It would give self-conscious people like me a reason to be seen with a media player in public. I know I'm not alone!
Sounds genius to me. As long as it could print worthy artwork to go along with that purchase I think you've got a winner... have you taken this idea to anyone? More importantly, have you any sort of legal claim to it before you posted it online? :-)
Question. What will hb more success this$30 or iPhone iTunes movie fir $12,,?????
Anyone. Anyone??
kind of cool... not everyone has something that has a usb drive that is hooked up to their TV tho, which might make it hard to catch on with a lot of people...
Walk into your local officemax and you can pick one of these over priced POSes up today.
I wasn't aware this was tech news or I would have tipped you guys.
Slight problem with this is that flash cells lose their data after about 10 years if they don't get some power before that time.. the charges in the cells start to degrade.
Flash memory is pretty crummy as archival media, which is what movies on physical media are, to some extent.
Not the brightest of ideas unless it's coupled with a password you can add to your online movie download account that remembers what you've bought and lets you download as many copies of a "1080p, DRM-free" version of it as you like, thereby keeping access to your movie safe and secured.
Yeah, I'm talking about that movie download service that doesn't actually exist yet, but bloody well should do.
I'd buy this.
Some of you seem to forget about the existence of devices without optical drives. This is a decent alternative for netbooks and other small form factors that have slimmed down by dropping optical drives all together.
Also, less moving parts are advantageous for certain situations where there's a lot of motion/vibration: say you go to the gym and want to plug this in to watch a movie while you jog for an hour or so (and that will likely never happen with a semi-public screen and the possibility of pornos and whatever taboo material being shown on said screen...) that movie would skip like crazy judging by how much it moves under 150lbs of me running on it.
Sure, it's a "decent alternative for netbooks and other small form factors that have slimmed down by dropping optical drives all together," but an even better alternative is ripping your DVD to your netbook with the usb drive you have at home.
With all the nightmares about copy-protect dongles back in the 90s, I think I'll pass on this one. It's not that they are difficult to use, but because when you have a lot of them around, it gets much harder to find the specific one you need, and they are not quite fit in your shelf, and books like optical discs do.
Two things: 1 - The quality will be fine and what do you really expect from dvd quality anyways? 2 - You can't get that package open. Ever seen Curb? Just put some perforations or something so we can tear it open.
Who remembers MiniDisc albums?
Anyone?