THX Chief Scientist: ...it's too late for Blu-ray

[jamotto]

Could be a SSD or even a usb flash drive the latter could be done now.

[F9zDark]

Could be a SSD or even a usb flash drive the latter could be done now.

The problem I see with this is that people have come to accept that buying a movie or album on a CD, DVD, or Blu-ray means that said disc will never be used for anything else. As well, these discs are now cheap enough to produce (except Blu-ray) that the companies can basically give these discs away and only factor in the burning of the movie, the retail box, and the "movie itself" as part of the pricing.

USB Flash Drives, Flash Memory cards, and SSDs are not in this realm yet of High Space, Very Low Cost. So consumers buying movies on this medium, will essentially pay for the medium itself, on top of the movie.

If the companies offer Movies on USB Flash Drives, chances are, they will write protect the drives so we cannot use them for anything else, but consumers will WANT to use these drives for other things since the consumers DID pay for them.

I suppose the same could be said for DVDs and Blu-Rays when they first came out, but writers were in upwards of 1000s of dollars when these mediums first arrived, as well the market was used to CDs which didn't allow this functionality with games or music that we purchased in the store.

USB Flash Drives on the other hand do not require any extra, expensive technology to use to write to them, and Memory Card readers are very cheap as well, not to mention some cards come with an enclosed USB Card reader for that specific type of memory.

I just don't think it will fly, even if USB Flash Drives were a penny a gigabye. Because people will look at it as "Hey I need a flashdrive, if I buy this movie I'll get one with it" and be sadly mistaken when they can't use the flash drive for their own purposes.

[jamotto]

I just don't think it will fly, even if USB Flash Drives were a penny a gigabyte. Because people will look at it as "Hey I need a flashdrive, if I buy this movie I'll get one with it" and be sadly mistaken when they can't use the flash drive for their own purposes.

Well perhaps then the people like that would be more inclined to accept a DRM that allows the movie to be played though once or so and then is deleted, after a format the drive then could be used as a normal flash drive. Microsoft already has a DRM that works this way.