CinemaNow Offers Download-to-Burn

By Nate Mook | Published July 19, 2006, 2:11 PM

Movielink may have been first out of the gate announcing plans to enable customers to burn copies of the movies they download, but Microsoft-backed CinemaNow actually rolled out such a feature on Wednesday. It says the technology has been in the works for over a year.

Initially, CinemaNow will provide customers with the ability to burn only 100 older films from its library, a sign that movie studios want to test the waters before diving in. The service has inked deals with Walt Disney, MGM, Sony Pictures, LionsGate and Universal for the DVD burning capability.

The CinemaNow DVD discs will feature similar functionality to actual DVDs, with deleted scenes, interviews and other extras. The company is providing its own software to handle the burning process, and the discs will be viewable in almost any DVD player, CinemaNow says.

Printable cover art and labels are also provided to customers to complete the experience. The burning process will take between 2 and 5 hours, but it can be minimized and will complete in the background.

"Of course, this is still a "beta" product, which is tech speak for "we're still working on it". Your DVD Burner software is designed to let you know when there are updates and in the next few months we will have new ways to make this process faster, easier, and just plain cooler," the company says.

For the time being, customers can only burn one copy of the movie they purchase. Users are allowed to keep one digital copy and one burned copy of their films. Windows XP is required to use the service.

Comments

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They "protect" the disc by inserting structural error (like CRCs). You can rip it with any good DVD ripper, such as the Tsunami MPEG editor. It's legal to rip it too since it is not encrypted. Some protection!

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Two to FIVE HOURS!!!!???!!!!

I don't think it's reasonable to tie up a computer for 5 hours when standard DVD-burns take about 8 minutes. What if there's a crash? What if you want to log in as someone else? Or just turn the damn thing off? 5 hours is insane, it's worse than the original 1x writing speeds of ANY optical media.

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Decrypting and re-encrypting a DVD on a modern machine will take around 2 hours. The burn process is short, for sure, but you can be sure that's not what is taking up all the time.

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they probably mean the time to d/l the movie and burn it. d/l a movie does take this long or longer if they are dvd quality.

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Or you can rent any movie you wnat through Netflix and burn it. I get my movies in 1 day and I can burn them in MUCH LESS THAN 5 HOURS!

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True, but some people prefer not to break the law.

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Break the law? I take it you never copied a CD, Cassette Tape or VHS tape in your life? Give me a break. If the DVD Encryption was made properly a 15 year old wouldnt have hacked it. The best way is netflix. Im getting 8 movies unlimited which is roughtly 150 movies a month. At 47.00 a month is roughly 33 cents per movie to rent and ... well you know the rest. I sell burners and media for a living ( CDNERDS.COM ) and I get my blanks very very cheap.

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Maybe so, but it's still illegal.

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Ok, so copying a CD, Cassette Tape, or VHS is not stealing? Even those formats had copyright protection before the DMCA of 1998 came into effect. If you copied a VHS or a cassette tape, it was still stealing.

Theft is theft is theft. Plain and simple.

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So is posting on this forum in China, but that doesn't mean it's right.

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Nobody said posting on this forum was right - let alone in China!

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Does it really matter though? If it's simply so they can re-watch it in their home, who cares? I bet half the time, it's never even watched for a 2nd time.

I know out of my DVD collection, I have maybe watch a handful of movies more than once.

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funny the same topic at another site said they are still waiting for approval from hollywood to do this. nice news reporting

http://www.tgdaily.com/2...elink_sonic_dvd_burning/

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Yes, Movielink and CinemaNow are different companies.

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