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from the the-internet-treats-DRM-as-damage-and-routes-around-it? dept.
The Invisible Man, Emma, and The Hunt Hit Pirate Sites After Rushed VOD Releases
A decision by Universal Pictures to quickly make movies available on [video on demand (VOD)] services due to the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the inevitable. Titles including The Invisible Man, Emma, and The Hunt, which are still in their theatrical windows, are now all available for download on pirate sites, just hours after release.
[...] In common with hundreds of business sectors and individuals around the world, the spread of the virus is having a profound effect on cinemas. As preventative measures are put in place, revenues are reportedly down to the lowest levels in twenty-five years. On the other hand, services that can be accessed at home – Netflix for example – are enjoying a boom in usage.
In an effort to cushion the blow, earlier this week Universal Pictures announced that it would be releasing some of its newest movies, that are technically still in their theatrical windows, on digital platforms for rental. As a result, The Invisible Man, The Hunt, and Emma all went on sale Friday at around the $20 mark.
How well these movies will be received and in what volumes consumed remains to be seen but within hours of them appearing on official platforms, the inevitable happened. At the time of writing, all are available for free downloading and streaming on dozens of pirate sites.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 24 2020, @01:58AM
8 TB HDDs [slickdeals.net] are coming in at about $100 now, which is what I paid for a 3 TB HDD... 9 years ago? That should be enough to store 100-300 giant rips, let's call it 200. $0.50 a movie, comparing well to Red Box or $10 theater price. And of course you can delete them or store something else on it at any time.
On the opposite end of the size spectrum, people complain about the heavy compression used on streaming services (which has been degraded further [forbes.com] in light of the virus!). That may have a negative impact on color/HDR/etc.
As far as benefits go, having "uncompressed" (lightly compressed) right now means having a better source for compression or other uses later. Maybe it can run better on older HTPC machines, although it might not matter any longer with new, cheap devices like Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K and RPi4 supporting 4K H.265 decode.
https://old.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/9en0n1/where_can_i_buy_uncompressed_or_less_compressed/e6098of/ [reddit.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Cinema_Package [wikipedia.org]
It looks like films as presented in the theater are roughly 200 GB, using 4K resolution JPEG 2000 frames (sometimes only 2K resolution, although that might have changed).
There could be a final push to sell 8K resolution films since 8K TVs are available now. There are supposedly consumer-oriented 128 GB BDXL discs [soylentnews.org], and discs at 200 GB, 300 GB, or even 1 TB [wikipedia.org] could be sold without too much trouble.
I prefer small. I like that a decent quality 720p H.265 movie can now fit onto a single CD-ROM instead of a DVD, meaning over 10,000 of those could fit on an 8 TB HDD.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]