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CinemaNow DVD burning "irresponsibly defective"
If we sounded a little skeptical about CinemaNow's DRM-free DVD burning plans, there's good reason. One one side you have the content industry, which absolutely abhors the idea of allowing download-to-burn movies; on the other side, you've got CinemaNow trying to broker a deal to appease consumers without getting themselves sued, tarred, feathered, and caned. That deal they reached was to use fluxDVD's technology to take care of the magical DRM-less DRM that would allow customers to take their secure CinemaNow content and move it to a DVD which would play back in any old device Unfortunately, that vision may have been a little sanguine, since the reality is apparently turning out to be an "irresponsibly defective" solution, according to the report of an anonymous engineer. Apparently the burning technology deliberately introduces disc checksum errors when writing the disc, thus making the DVD both very difficult to copy, as well as making it nigh unplayable in most consumer DVD devices. And why are we not surprised this kind of solution is the compromise, hm?[Via Ars Technica]
CinemaNow launches "Burn to DVD" service for select films
Just days after MovieLink announced that it has licensed technology for burning flicks to DVD, rival download service CinemaNow has stepped up to the plate and begun actually offering consumers this very option. Starting today, about 100 titles are available for download through the "Burn to DVD" beta service, complete with all the interactive menus and bonus features you'd find on a store-bought DVD. Burnable titles start at $8.99, though if you're looking for the latest releases, you won't find them here -- Disney, Sony, Universal, and friends have only provided older films for the initial roll-out. While MovieLink partnered with Sonic Solutions for its presumed entrant into this space, CinemaNow decided to go with technology based on fluxDVD from Germany's ACE GmbH. Even though there may not be a lot of demand for the current crop of titles, assuming that the encryption scheme is able to ward off pirates and at least a few folks show some interest in "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" and "About a Boy," among others, it's likely that newer and more popular films will be added to the library in the near future.[Thanks, Michael]
