Time once again for The Audio Edition
On today’s show we quickly review Serenity and A History Of Violence. Also, I chat with professional blogger Sam Sugar who has done a lot of research into the new DVD format battle. The conversaiton is actually a little scary and very informative. You really MUST listen to it. We also touch on the new films opening this weekend that we’re looking forward to. All this and a few things more.
You can download this installment of The Audio Edition here
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SHOW NOTES: Running Time: 35:13 File Size: 8.0 megs
– Sam Sugar Article on new DVD formats
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John,
I think you’re refering to the comment Sam Sugar made about having to buy one copy for your laptop and another for home use. I’ve never seen any evidence that this is the case. From what I’ve seen you just have to activate your copy of the disc via the internet every so often. That’s how the current Microsoft WMVHD DVD’s work. You have to activate your copy every 10 days or so. It doesn’t mean you can’t have one copy of the disc to use in several different players. AFAIK, the number of players that you can activate with one disc is limited but that’s no different than music you get from the iTunes Music store or the way your cable box works.
Nothing stops you from watching your movie anytime you want as long as you’ve activated it.
First off, I enjoyed you comments in reply to my rambling on animation. I know see we agree much more than I suspected.
Now, A History of Violence…I had the pleasure of seeing this at Cannes and went to the first screening in my hometown last Friday. Friday was one of the best audience reactions I’ve witnessed in years (and this is coming from a college town with some extremely poor theatre etiquette). There were several audience gasps, mostly from older grown men and when the credits began to roll absolutely no one moved. They all stayed to talk about the film. I’ve never witnessed this outside premieres, special screenings, so forth. I don’t recall seeing an audience engaged in some time.
A couple of your points I have a beef with…
The point of the 2 dimensional characters exactly what the film calls for. It is to point out the “ideal” family and the “ideal” lifestyle. It’s meant to deconstruct our notions of the ideal American family, how we observe, react, suffer, and become involved in all forms of violence. Using the arc types of the white picket fence, station wagon, nuclear family is completely intentional. This is obvious from the second scene in which the WHOLE family rushes to the little girl’s aide after she’s awakened from a nightmare.
I didn’t find the sex scenes gratuitous at all. In fact, I found them much more real than anything Hollywood has produced. They have meaning, they have life, and ultimately they are believable.
In reference to Harris and Hurt barely being in the…well…the story isn’t about them. I agree that the marketing or the film distorts this greatly but as for the film, it is about a specific family and more importantly one man. However, I think Hurt steals the show in his one scene.
Personally, I believe there are many levels running through this film and enjoyed seeing it a second time. I found that the film is fairly polarizing when it comes down to the average viewer. As you said the other day “The most beautiful thing about film is the pure subjectivity of it” and I respect your opinion. I believe A History of Violence is a brilliant film and is one of my top runners for film of the year but I won’t argue that it’s certainly not an easy film to like.
Lastly, I enjoyed the audio interview. Keep up the good work!
Hey Brandon,
You’re missing the point. Here. that’s like saying “the clothing company that made your shirt should have the right to tell you where you should be allowed to wear it.” It’s perposterous.
Also, the studios are showing nothing but backwards thinking. All industries (including the music one… well it did eventually), strive to find more usefull and convienient ways for consumers to use and enjoy their products. For some reason, the movie industry is trying to move everything backwards.
I bought the movie. Paid my money… no, I shouldn’t be allowed to make 1000 copies and distribute it. I never said that. But I should be allowed to watch it whereever the hell I want. On my TV, my laptop, my portable media player. This is like the industry saying “You bought our car… but you can only drive it in New York. If you want to drive anywhere else you need to buy another copy of the car”. That’s absurd.
I have ZERO problems with advancements in copy protection. But there are other ways besides stripping consumers of thier rights in personal use of the products they purchase.
I hope the mass market will reject this push.
I disagree with your comments… but they were well presented and well thought out.
Cheers.
~John
John,
You’re exaggerating the situation. Even with a Blu-ray disc you will have the option of selling the disc on ebay to someone else. After all you are giving someone else the right to “lease” (as you put it) the content while relinquishing your own rights to it. That’s how used CD and DVD shops work and that isn’t going to change. What they are stopping you from doing is making a copy and illegally dupilcating your “lease” to the content for the purpose of giving it to someone else. It’s not different from letting your neighbors use the cable signal comming into your house. The content is not yours but the right to view it is, that is what you can not duplicate.
Your Ford analogy is way off as well. They aren’t saying you can’t modify the content for your own purpose if you have the means to do so. They’re saying you can’t make a copy of it and give it to someone else. So it would be like you buying a Ford truck, taking it apart, figuring out exactly how it’s built then using your welding torch in your garage to make an exact copy (or slightly modified copy) and selling that. That’s illegal and it should be. The big thing is they are taking away your abilty to make copy of the disc so you phyiscally can’t produce a modified version even if you have no intention on selling it. You don’t have the phyiscal ability to make a copy of your truck either but no one complains about that because it’s never been within the realm of practicality anyway. If DVD’s never became practical to copy then no one would be complaining now either.
If you want to make a copy of the disc so you can modify the music or video content then you can ask the record company or movie studio for that permission and they’ll most likely grant it (for the right price). That’s what us content creators do today when we have a piece of music we want to use in our work, people call it “sampling” or “licensing” and that’s the legality of it. The only issue here is that it’s very very easy to just copy the disc to get around the law (instead o getting a copy from the content providers). Because it’s so easy to break the law people are beginning to think they have to the right to do so. They don’t. No one questions your “right” (or lack thereof) to make a copy of a Ford Ranger in your garage because of how difficult it is to do. Now that people can actually easily make illegal copies of discs they feel they have the right to do so… that’s garbage.
And all that stuff about not being able to take your disc and play it wherever you want is another case of thinking a privilage is a right. You don’t have the right to use something in a place where it can not be used. People are just so used to having these small portable copies of media so they think the studios should be burdened with the *requirement* to provide one. They could just tell you to go to the theater if you want to see a movie. That’s what people did before they could buy these little portable copies of movies on VHS tapes and DVD’s.
They could just tell you to catch the movie on cable tv if you want to watch it. The ability to carry your own personal copy of a movie is just a luxury that people take for granted these days so they think they have the right to them.
Again, if you don’t like it then don’t buy it. If you want to call that “killing home entertainment” then so be it. Lord knows, you wouldn’t want to go back to interactioning with other human beings (possibly outside the house *gasp*) instead of an inanimate electrical device sitting in your living room. Damn that would be fucked up, huh?
Home entertainment might start to take on a different meaning then
The movie studios *created* the “Home Entertainment” industry. they don’t have to allow you to purchase copies that you can use anywhere but somehow people think they now have the right to “Home Entertainment” created by the studios. That’s absurd on so many levels.
Interesting conversation about HD type of technology. I do think however you glossed right over the one idea that would drive most ‘common’ users (like my tech phobic mother) nuts is that they could turn off a key for a whole set of DVDs if just one of the DVDs made in that ‘print’ is hacked. What’s the average user, who just plugs the stuff together to do when one day Fantasia just won’t play anymore because someone hacked a disk with the same key as theirs. More research is required to see how many of the concerns have a realistic basis.
I don’t think anyone should worry.
This will never fly for a simple reason, it is inconvinient.
No one is going to pay for inconvienience. If this is the best plan they can come up with, it is destined to fail.
As to the next gen movie format – any future technology that requires a phone line connection will never fly.
Doug don’t listen to John. Go see Serenity. I’ll take it over the whole prequel trilogy! Awesomely fun flick with great characters and dialogue.
Welcome back Richard! *winks*
And to George, stay put! ;-)
Sky Satellite Boxes connect to the phone line and dial up Sky often without your acceptance of any warning.
The XBox does this over the Internet, so much so if you have copied games or a chipped box it passes this information to Microsoft and stops you playing Live.
Anybody sure that their computer system doesn’t pass information to the Internet that you’re not happy about? Update managers, registering, problem reports?
Just a few things to think about.
I’m not so sure I agree with everything that was highlighted here, and I’m going to go and do some research of my own, but I think there’s a lot of paranoia mixed up with fact. We already have a lot of these issues with existing formats and other devices and systems. In the end it comes down to consumer choice, and for a good while we will still have choices in this arena. Stay with current technology, or sign up for the new.
Interestingly, and slightly aside, UK terrestial analogue TV signals are being switched off by the Government. Within five years certainly Scotland will have no analogue TV transmitters, and England will follow suit. This means that people who do not have Satellite or Digital receivers will have no TV signal to watch.
This means that there’s a big push to move to digital broadcasts, and in turn it means that the consumers are being sold a range of TV’s integrating digital receivers, including a larger number of HDTV’s.
That’s a huge deal, we’re being forced to move regardless.
No so Brandon G. The idea is that you as a consumer, purchase a product, be – CD, DVD, car, phone or home – it’s your’s. Your greenbacks have been put down. A bill of sale in your possession. That item is now your’s. You should have the right to do with it any way you please, as long as you don’t make substantial profit from it… EBay.
Remember some years back artists were bitching about used CD sales? They wanted money from those transactions. That uproar died real quick they they discovered people weren’t gonna have that. It’s mine, I can sell it if I so choose.
It would be the equivalent if you bought a Ford truck changed the paint job, insert in better motor, different tires and redid the interior. The Ford company threatens to sue you for making changes to an automobile you now own. Them claming that, that car is a moving advertistment; promoting their vehicles. That YOU as owner have NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to the car, even though you have legal ownership. Get it?
The point here is that movie studios have in their money grubbing wisdom decided that we as the consumer have no right to ownership. It’s not your’s, in effect your just leasing it. Dude, that’s communism or in this case, corporatism. It’s bad enough that businesses are so wrongfully using eminent domain to shadily acquire property (if this gets any worse people should stop paying property tax – they don’t own their land). That now, my DVD (Blu-Ray/HD) isn’t mine anymore.
As for not buying content… man, look about you. They are planning to kill DVD, period. This next format will be IT. If you want movies you will have to buy the system. There is no real alternative. What you’re advocating is stopping home entertainment. The flimsily alternatives are peas to pumkins. In catalog volume and quality, the big studios have the independants beat.
What is needed is for the studios to understand that I want to own my movies, as long as I don’t make substantial profit from it. I can do anything I damn well please. If I don’t like it, I can trash it or cut it up. But then again they might draft a law making it illegal to destroy DVDs. Something to the effect that doing would be disrespectful to the movie makers and unpatriotic since the film industry is America’s main export.
This is wrong. Don’t try Brandon G. Many horrendous things can be rationalized if you put a spin on it. This issue, this subject is a black and white as it gets.
This isn’t so simple as them chaining our rights to own movies (hell even my own player), it’s far bigger than this. It sets a dangerous precedent. Go talk to the people of Finland. They have lots to say on this subject. To quote Veronica Quaife: “Be afraid. Be very afraid”.
Oh yeah, you might wanna turn down the gain a bit on your mics. If you’re using Audition then you should compress the sound a bit more and add a De-sser to remove the excess “ess” sound from your speech.
READ THIS COMMENT!!! READ THIS COMMENT!!!
NEW READER/LISTENER
You guys are awsome!!!! I have been listening to you guys everyday…since the video game editoin where u talked about The Halo Movie.=) But I have been downloading your old audio editions because you guys crack me up.
I mean, I’m hella interested in the new movies out and the upcoming movies. I too am a movie buff and i love to go watch movies everyweek ends with my friends. I understand how u guys feel about movies. You guys know whats a good movie and whats not.
Seriously you guys shouldn’t ever close down this site and your audio edittion. I Told my friends about you’r audio edittion and they love it.
I almost use all your resorces like IMDB, Rotten Tomato, Gregs Previews, etc. I use it all to rescreach my movie needs.
– Fan boy George (rock on)
You guys keep saying that Steve jobs saved the music industry but that’s a gross misrepresentation. In the first half of this year, online Music sales accounted for 790 million dollars of the 13.2 billion dollars for recorded music sales. That’s 6 percent (rounding up). Last year music downloads were les than 2% of sales during the same period.
If you want to protest the new high-def DVD protection schemes then don’t buy their content. It’s their content and they can protect it anyway they want to. With today’s technologies it’s quite easy for anyone to be a content creator and easily distrubute their own work. You produce an audio product and a new age version of a newsletter or magazine so you should know this quite well. The RIAA and MPAA aren’t the only sources for music and movie content so you have the choice to buy something else. No one forces you to buy their stuff.
What you should be doing is trying to get artists to realize that they can distrubute their own content via the internet without the use of a record company or movie studio. Until artists and content creators stop relying on these large monopolistic corporations to distribute their content then they’ll always have monopolistic control over what you listen to and watch.
Get people to take back music and movie distribution like we have begun to take back news publication (with blogs) and your problem is solved.