Digital Copies With Movies

12th August 2009 • 0 Comments

A few years ago, there was a development for Blu-ray which would allow the disc to store a iPod/PSP resolution video to transfer on your portable device. This sounded like a great idea and a great incentive to stop people ripping their DVD's via other methods. 

A few years later and the idea has kind of been implemented on Blu-rays and some DVD's, you'll notice this on some films where they state "Digital Copy" on the front. So at first I was very much looking forward to transferring a film to my PSP. I recently purchased Watchmen on Blu-ray which says on the cover you get a Digital Copy, however upon opening the case I noticed that there was an extra disc inside. 

It turns out that the digital copy does not come on the blu-ray but a separate disc. Personally I think this defeats the point of having a digital copy if you have to put another disc in the box. One advantage of putting this on a bonus DVD is that it allows more people to transfer their films to their computer as Blu-ray drives in PC's are still pretty uncommon.

The next question you're bound to ask is, if the Digital Copy comes on a disc surely that means you can copy the video as much as you like? The movie companies are one step ahead of you in this respect though, as supplied with the DVD is a leaflet containing a serial number you have to enter in. What could be seen as annoying is that this serial number has an expiry date, I don't know if this is the movie company covering their backs in case their servers go down, or they're just not being generous I don't know. In this case the serial number runs out next year which seems a bit close. 

Where do you enter the number? Well if you're on a PC you can use Windows Media Player or iTunes to transfer the file. This file then can be transferred to iPhone/iPods or PlayForSure devices on Windows. As you need a code you also require an internet connection to validate the digital copy.

Once you've entered in all the serial codes required and logged into your iTunes account (in this instance), the 2GB file is transferred to your library. To stop you sharing the film around it is linked to you account with the power of DRM. As its transferring from a disc the good thing is it doesn't take long, I believe some Digital Copies maybe downloaded from the site, which might be annoying if you have to download a 2GB file, which is still pretty big in this age of fast broadband.

Now the movie is finally transferred, you can play it in iTunes or transfer it to your iPod. The good thing about this method is that the resolution is designed for these screens so the film whilst low res on a large HD screen, looks very nice on an iPod screen.

So now the video has been transferred, why blog about it? Well whilst I really like the idea of getting a portable version along with the home version, I still think the way it has been implemented so far is a bit cumbersome. The original idea was for the copy to come on the Blu-ray, having another DVD in the package not only wastes space but it only needs to be used once. The other problem is that the amount of devices Digital Copies supports seems to vary.

For instance, Watchmen does not work on a PSP due to the fact it's not an iPod or a PlayForSure device, however some films do support the PSP. So for the idea to really take they need to make sure there is a standard set of devices which will work with the digital copy as this will make it easier for the consumers. Perhaps a solution would be to put the movie on a memory stick or try and get the film on the blu-ray itself. It would also be nice if there was no serial numbers or expiry dates involved as well, but I understand that movie companies want to stop these digital copies spreading around.

So all in all, I really like the idea and it rewards the consumer for purchasing the film which should be encouraged, there just needs to be some improvements to really make the idea to take off.

It's better than selling UMD movies that's for sure.