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.