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posted by janrinok on Friday February 23 2018, @09:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the live-by-the-sword,-die-by-the-sword dept.

Disney's attempt to prevent Redbox from buying its discs for rental and resale may have blown up in the House of Mouse's face. The Hollywood Reporter describes how District Court Judge Dean Pregerson sided with Redbox to shoot down a Disney-mandated injunction. In addition, Pregerson contended that Disney may itself be misusing copyright law to protect its interests and its own forthcoming streaming service.

If you're unfamiliar with the backstory, Redbox didn't have a deal in place to procure Disney DVDs and Blu-rays for its disc rental kiosks. So, the company simply bought the discs at retail, often snagging combo packs that include a DVD, Blu-ray and a download code for the movie as well. Redbox would then offer up the discs for rental, and sell on the codes at its kiosks for between $8 and $15.

Such a move enraged Disney, which includes language in its packaging and on the website demanding that users must own the disc if they download a copy. But this is where Pregerson began to disagree, saying that Disney cannot dictate what people do with copyrighted media after they have bought it. Specifically, that there's no law, or explicit contract term, that prevents folks from doing what Redbox did with Disney discs.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/22/disney-redbox-lawsuit/


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by fyngyrz on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:51AM (1 child)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:51AM (#642784) Journal

    What's the bandwidth needed to stream 4K HDR?

    Here you go:

    To stream in 4K Ultra HD with HDR, Netflix recommends you have a consistent minimum download speed of at least 25 megabits per second. That multiplies out to roughly 11.25 gigabytes per hour. With the average Netflix user now streaming two hours of video per day, according to one third-party estimate, HDR TV owners would consume 675GB of bandwidth to watch just one Netflix stream.

    Then there's non-streaming direct from media:

    The specification allows for three disc capacities, each with their own data rate: 50 GB with 82 Mbit/s, 66 GB with 108 Mbit/s, and 100 GB with 128 Mbit/s.[2] Ultra HD Blu-ray technology was licensed in mid 2015, and players had an expected release date of Christmas 2015.[2] Ultra HD Blu-ray uses a new revision of AACS DRM, AACS 2.

    As you can see, streaming cuts the data rate significantly. So when Netflix says you need 25 Gb/s, they're also (not) saying (but should be saying) "to view a highly compressed and lossy version of the content."

    If you consume 4k video content critically, you'll almost certainly want hard media — not a stream. That's assuming there's anything worth that kind of detail in whatever you're watching. Most non-CGI scenes are mostly some level of soft blur outside one or two characters who are in focus. Movie producers love to use focus to guide your attention (and, I suspect, make backdrops less expensive.) CGI scenes, however, can have very high levels of detail and be worth looking at: rendered cities, dragons, space stations / ships, etc. Consider the scene in Starship Troopers where the ships are being hammered by bug plasma; the ships break open, you can see the decks, people falling out, etc. Detail in a scene like that is very compelling.

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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday February 24 2018, @02:40AM

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday February 24 2018, @02:40AM (#642835) Journal

    HDR TV owners would consume 675GB of bandwidth to watch just one Netflix stream.

    According to https://dataplan.xfinity.com/faq/ [xfinity.com]

    The Terabyte Internet Data Usage Plan is a new data usage plan for XFINITY Internet service that provides you with a terabyte (1 TB or 1024 GB) of Internet data usage each month as part of your monthly service.

    If you choose to use more than 1 TB in a month, we will automatically add blocks of 50 GB to your account for an additional fee of $10 each. Your charges, however, will not exceed $200 each month,

    So watching just one sporting event in 4K Ultra HDR or a movie per Month MIGHT fit withing the 1TB Netflix is offering most customers right now.
    But its unlikely two or three would.

    Xfinity Unlimited Data Option costs an additional fee of $50 per calendar month.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.