Warner Bros. partners with BitTorrent, offers downloadable movies

Iria · May 9, 2006, 09:16 PM

Source: Ars Technica
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Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group today announced a partnership with BitTorrent (the company, not the technology) that will make Warner movies and television shows available for rental or purchase using peer-to-peer technology. The move makes Warner the first major studio to embrace BitTorrent technology, which has long been associated with the illicit swapping of video content.

Though Warner is certainly to be commended for their embrace of the technology (which is value-neutral, after all), it's not clear that the new initiative will make converts out of anyone already used to using BitTorrent to download and watch episodes of Babylon 5. The studio plans to roll out the program sometime this summer, but pricing has not yet been disclosed, and that crucial detail could make or break this particular experiment.

The reason that price is so important is that the other major benefit of Internet downloads—convenience—is largely absent from the planned service. Downloads will be wrapped in DRM (natch) which will only allow the files to the played on a single computer. Backups will apparently be an option, but they will still be computer-formatted files; they won't play in your DVD player. Media Center PCs aren't commonplace yet, and most people still want to sit back on the couch and pop a movie into their DVD player. The fact that Warner won't let them do this is mystifying. After all, Warner is selling the actual DVDs, which can be watched without problems both on PCs and DVD players (unless you're using Linux). Why make Internet downloads less convenient than the technology they are designed to replace?

May 9, 2006, 09:16 PM	#1
Iria DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 7,275 Rep Power: 87	Warner Bros. partners with BitTorrent, offers downloadable movies Source: Ars Technica ___________ Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group today announced a partnership with BitTorrent (the company, not the technology) that will make Warner movies and television shows available for rental or purchase using peer-to-peer technology. The move makes Warner the first major studio to embrace BitTorrent technology, which has long been associated with the illicit swapping of video content. Though Warner is certainly to be commended for their embrace of the technology (which is value-neutral, after all), it's not clear that the new initiative will make converts out of anyone already used to using BitTorrent to download and watch episodes of Babylon 5. The studio plans to roll out the program sometime this summer, but pricing has not yet been disclosed, and that crucial detail could make or break this particular experiment. The reason that price is so important is that the other major benefit of Internet downloads—convenience—is largely absent from the planned service. Downloads will be wrapped in DRM (natch) which will only allow the files to the played on a single computer. Backups will apparently be an option, but they will still be computer-formatted files; they won't play in your DVD player. Media Center PCs aren't commonplace yet, and most people still want to sit back on the couch and pop a movie into their DVD player. The fact that Warner won't let them do this is mystifying. After all, Warner is selling the actual DVDs, which can be watched without problems both on PCs and DVD players (unless you're using Linux). Why make Internet downloads less convenient than the technology they are designed to replace?