DVD Releases and News

Movielink Purchases Burn-to-DVD Capability

The fine folks at ZDnet have the skinny on a new technology purchased by Movielink that would enable consumers to burn movies that have been bought from the Movielink download store to DVD. Currently, customers are stuck watching the downloaded movies on their PCs, tied there with restrictive DRM mechanisms. With the help of software company Sonic Solutions, Movielink may have just stopped the last nail from being hammered in their coffin.

In the past, we scoffed at the short-sightedness of companies such as Movielink and CinemaNow, who appeared to be so out of touch with what consumers wanted that they may as well have launched their services in a vacuum. Who in their right mind would spend countless hours downloading a movie that was not even DVD quality, and then discover they are chained to a PC to view it? Consumers want adaptability. They want to be able to watch their media when and where they want it, whether that is on a laptop, a home theatre DVD set-top box, or even an iPod video. The giant dragons of the movie studios have fallen asleep in their caves, while technology finds a way to sneak into the lair and steal their hoard.

Is that changing? Will we soon find ourselves in a modern age of media independence? Not likely. We're stifled immediately upon entrance to the Movielink website by the fact that they don't support Firefox. Upon further discovery, they don't support Linux or Mac OS either, a fact that is once again tied to the DRM technology they are using. As long as this Windows-centric DRM continues, services such as Movielink will forever be crippled by their reliance on the sleeping dragons.

Burning movie downloads to DVDs is a step in the right direction, but will we have to wait for Apple to, yet again, implement a painless (and cool) method of doing so?

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Posted by on July 17, 2006 10:42 PM
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