Hollywood (and RIAA) seem to be behind the times when it comes to technology and potential new business opportunities. For years now PocketPCs are able to decode mpeg, divx and wmv videos full speed and yet we can’t buy movies in SD/CF format to watch while we waiting on that bus stop.Here are a few facts:
– There are over 30 million 300 Mhz+ PocketPC PDA users out there (and about 10-15 more million PalmOS ones with 300+ Mhz Tungstens).
– Any PDA over 300 Mhz is able to easily decode any Mpeg, DivX or WMV video at QVGA resolution (320×240). A carefully encoded h.264 video could also do wonders (smaller bandwidth needed, higher quality) as it scales very well from mobile phone CPUs to workstations and anywhere in between (PDAs).
– Using mp3 audio at 64kbps, stereo, 22khz and medium quality video encoding, DivX and WMV can easily fit a two hour movie on a 256 MB CF or SD card while h.264 video can support full quality for the same storage space!
– Medium quality video is more than enough on a 3.5″ screen, it looks very good in fact. It doesn’t look as sharp on a real desktop monitor, but on a 3.5″ LCD you can’t tell the difference.
– Using 32kbps, stereo mp3 audio and lower quality video, you can fit the same movie on a 128 MB card (however this wouldn’t sell as well even if the result is actually watchable).
– A cheap 256 MB read-only CF card costs $7 to OEMs today. A similar 256 MB SD card costs about $10. This means that Hollywood can sell its movies in SD or CF at around $19.99 and at $24.99 for newer titles. These are totally acceptable prices.
– Windows Media Player is included on most of these PPCs since 2002, but custom solution players could be developed, included in the same media as the movie itself with DRM support for both PalmOS and PPCs.
– ‘Pocket DVD Wizard 2005’ and ‘Pocket DVD Studio’ for PocketPC are ones of the *most-bought* applications on the PocketPC world (MMPlayer for PalmOS is in No13, mostly because most PalmOS users don’t have powerful models). And this doesn’t even count the users who rip & encode their DVDs manually. All this is the best proof that there IS a market, at least in the PocketPC world.
– Dedicated multimedia viewers (e.g. Archos) are too expensive (over $400) and require manual encoding of your DVDs too. Most of them don’t allow third party players to run, they are too incompatible between brands, they don’t support DRM (so Hollywood wouldn’t touch them), or don’t even have SD/CF slots! Very capable PocketPCs on the other hand can be obtained for less than $180 and have their full PDA functionality too, adding value.
Making the case for the idea:
Ripping a DVD at home manually takes 15 minutes. But encoding it back to DivX takes anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours depending the desktop PC’s speed that’s used. I don’t know about you guys, but in these 2 hours I could just sit on my couch and watch the movie on my 55″ TV instead of waiting for the encoder to get done.
But there are people who don’t have that kind of time, there are people who travel all the time, they spend time in airplanes, airports, trains and there are people who have no clue how to rip and encode movies, or don’t want to spend time and money on the ripping solutions mentioned above. These people are potential customers for movie titles on PDAs.
I was seriously thinking of using my new Axim X5 as a multimedia viewer for some of my DVD movies from my growing collection. But waiting and waiting and waiting for the encoder to finish on my 3 GHz P4-630 this afternoon (‘The Settlement‘, just 95 minutes of playback time took over 15+30 minutes to encode in low quality resulting in a 95 MB avi file), I now feel that it doesn’t worth my time. But if I was able to buy such a movie in a flash format, I wouldn’t hesitate and I am sure others wouldn’t either. The market is not huge but it has potential and I wonder if distributors have ever thought of the possibility, especially now that flash cards are so cheap to manufacture and h.264 becomes the new standard.
*shrug*
Maybe for the same reason eBooks didn’t take off.
I don’t think so. Personally, I get strained eyes trying to read ebooks on a pda screen (I don’t even have the patience reading PDFs on a real desktop screen). But videos are not so difficult to watch, you don’t have to focus so much, you just sit back and enjoy.
You can buy a MMC card with The Shawshank Redemption on it in the UK from http://store.rokplayer.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&product…
My brother purchased a domain years ago called handheldporn.com but never used it.
Interesting… but these are still pretty expensive (MMC is not as cheap as CF/SD), and they are in the MMC format only. Also, these seems to be movies for Nokia phones running on Symbian, not for PDAs and/or phones. I understand that if you want to go after the Nokia smartphone market MMCs is the way to go, but these phones will deliver worse experience than a powerful PDA with a bigger screen and faster CPU.
I don’t know about you, but I’d never pay $20 or $25 for a movie that can only be played on a handheld, similar the PSP’s movie playing scheme. H.264 may yield videos of good enough quality to play on a larger screen, but what kind of processing power would that take to decode? Seems like H.264 is really demanding on hardware.
For years now PocketPCs are able to decode mpeg, divx and wmv videos full speed and yet we can’t buy movies in SD/CF format to watch while we waiting on that bus stop.
Read a book at the bus stop instaed – you’ll be much better off that way, or even ebooks or audiobooks. If you can find ebooks in pdf, html, text, etc, then you can convert them to HTML and run them through Opera (text-to-speech) or similar program, and record the output in mp3 format. This works great, assuming you don’t mind being read to by Stephen Hawking.
As for movies and music, if the studios don’t sell them in the format you want, don’t buy them. If enough people do that, you will eventually get them in the format you want.
>Seems like H.264 is really demanding on hardware.
It is designed that way that it scales from phones to workstations.
Why would anyone want to buy compressed music anyway? Buy the damn CD and ripthe music any damn way you want.
Do you always buy CDs, even if you’re only after one particular song on the disc? Or do you pay $7.99 for the CD single? On http://www.mp3search.ru, I can get entire albums for $.99, who’s files play on damn-near any device, and the quality isn’t that much worse than CD, unless you’re playing it on a $5,000 stereo. Me personally, I have bought maybe 5 CDs since the mid-90’s, and with CD prices as high as they are, I don’t intend to start buying them anytime soon. Even if they were only $5.00, most of what is out there isn’t even worth paying that much.
For that 96mb video you would need a 128mb sd/cf card. At a local Walmart, BestBuy, <insert electronics store here>, they average around $30 for just the SD card. For the MPAA to distribute them on cards, the movie would end up costing more than that. I would definitely not want to pay $40+ dollars for a movie whose quality is only watchable on a portable screen. Also, there are many different resolution screens available so it is hard to determine what resolution/quality it should be encoded at. I think instead of selling cards with movies on them, it would make more sense to do an iTunes-like download service. It would still be faster to download than rip the movies (unless you are on dialup) and you could put many movies on one big card instead of taking a lot of little (easily losable) cards with you. Another alternative is to include a low-res version on the DVD for mobile use so you don’t have to download another version of the movie — similar to what Bandai is doing with their anime — they come with both a DVD and UMD in the same package, only slightly more expensive.
Personally I think the best thing to do is to rip all the dvd’s and then batch encode them overnight while you are asleep.
> they average around $30 for just the SD card.
You missed my remark about $7 for OEM usage.
>Also, there are many different resolution screens available
No. 95% of the PocketPC users out there have QVGA screens (there are only 4-5 models with VGA, but on just 3.7″ or 4″ screens) and the high-end PalmOS are either on 320×320 or on 320×480. QVGA would work on them as well just fine.
Well my friend, you just touched the magic barrier.. I get my CDs for only 5.99 to the door. Check out yourmusic.com..
Here the breakdown… as long as you remain a member, you will pay 5.99 a month whether you have a CD in your queue or not. If it’s in there, the CD comes… if you didn’t pick something, they just charge you the 5.99
What’s the upside? Well, you will have to buy that one CD a month (and you’ll want to), you can always order more… they’re all 5.99 a CD.. (unless it’s a 2cd set).
This is what I did, I queued up 6 CDs that I know I’ll want for sure. For the next six months, I’ll recieve a CD on my anniversary date just like I should.. for 5.99 including shipping.
During the month, I buy CDs as I normally would, using the checkout button. It’s kind of like having two shopping carts on the website.
Perhaps you could justify the 5.99 a month? I stopped using the .ru mp3 sites about 4 months ago.. I’m COMPLETELY legit…
Don’t even rant about the legalities of purchasing music from .ru without DRM. I realize it is still a grey area when it comes to importing music from overseas but is technically legal. It won’t be soon.
When you’re done with yourmusic.com, it’s a cinch to cancel the subscription. No catches.
But don’t take my word for it, check it out!
Even so, I can’t justify it to myself to buy 2 copies of the same movie the second copy is very cheap ($2 or less) or the new version has a must have feature (ie. Star Wars on DVD while I already have VHS – 5.1 surround, higher quality, extra features, cleaned up video/color correction, etc…). I think many of us are in the same boat and that is why the industry hasn’t really taken this up — there really isn’t a market for it.
“A cheap 256 MB read-only CF card costs $7 to OEMs today. A similar 256 MB SD card costs about $10. This means that Hollywood can sell its movies in SD or CF at around $19.99 and at $24.99 for newer titles. These are totally acceptable prices.”
Whether this is true or not (as others have argued) is irrelevant. To make a DVD costs pennies. You could claim that $20 for a DVD is artificially set, but if Kingdom of Heaven costs $150 million, they gotta make up the difference somewhere. So, what incentive is there for movie studios to spend $7 per CF card when DVDs cost pennies to stamp?
Should read: “Even, so I can’t justify it to myself to buy 2 copies of the same movie unless the second movie….”
What about UMD? This is exactly the same sort of thing your talking about. Movies are coming out at a fast pace and are easy to find. Mabye in the future we will see UMD enabled PDA/Pocket PC’s.
>So, what incentive is there for movie studios to spend $7 per
> CF card when DVDs cost pennies to stamp?
You add $7 more to the price. Then, it’s the same profit for them.
Actually, MMC and SD are essentially the same… They use the same slots and anything which takes SD is MMC-compatible. I also don’t know of any price differential, since they use almost the exact same technology… If anything SD would probably be more expensive, as I think it’s got added security technology or something.
I always thought such memories are short-lived (in my head something like 10 year span), while a DVD potentionally could live longer.
Then again, I think BUSH, or some other signed a new law which would enforce for some new media formats ways to “edit” the content (probably like select which parts of the movie to be not-played at all) – this might require some kind of storage for that data (it might as well be on the device, but then you have to edit it N times, if N is the number of devices you are having – and more likely your child would have separate system) – anyway… somehow this, or laws like this might produce ways for such types of media to exists.
Does it make any sense to watch a movie at the airport? (Or in any other crowded public place, for that matter?)
I mean, unless the movie is pure garbage (but I must admit that this applies to a lot of them!) how can you appreciate a piece of art sitting uncomfortably on a plastic chair, and having people going around you and announcements yelled through the airport loudspeakers?
From my standpoint, in an airport there are many much more interesting things to do.
For instance, in airports it’s very easy to start a conversation with perfect strangers, because basically everyone’s getting bored and talking with someone is much more fun!
So, my personal advice is: at the airport, instead of burying your head in a small piece of plastic and silicon, give a look around and try to start a conversation with the pretty girl (or the strange-looking indian guy) sitting next to you… you’ll have much more fun!
Bye
Eugenia is right. The eBooks will take off as soon as electronic paper gadgets gets easy/flexible/cheap enough for the general consumer, just like in Japan.
IMHO better idea would be to have something like “extended DVDs” – which would contain the same movie encoded for different devices. For example: DVD / VGA (640×480) PDA / 320×240 PDA / small res. mobile phone.
Because then people would have to manually have to copy the movie on a flash card and that potentially make it easier to pirate it too.
I guess copying would be made automatic if structure of such DVD would be standard.
Watching movies in a PDA is one of those ideas that look good in theory but not it practice..just like e-Books. It would be boring to hold the device in a comfortable position for 2+ hours, for a start, and then it would be hard to concentrate.
My advice for one bored in the airport is to either 1) get a portable gaming device, such as PSP and GBA, or 2) load your portable mp3 player with loads of podcasts.
By the way, when in OSNews podcast starting, Eugenia?
The idea is nice, but I’m afraid the market is simply too small. Due to the fact that stealing of music and movies has taken off, companies are far more reluctant to make any new ventures. The amount of PDAs is neglicable compared to the amount of computers and DVD-players/recorders on the planet. I see no reason why ‘movie companies’ are goign to take such a huge gamble in the current industry climate.
Also, portable DVD players are so cheap here (I believe they go for €199,- now). And even if the mem. card is a better medium, that doesn’t mean it automatically will make it. Let me remind you odf the suporior Minidisc thhat didn’t overtake CDs, and now the superior Hi-MD (also does MP3 now) that doesn’t overtake HDD/Flash-based MP3-players.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like the idea. If something like this were to take off, I’d definitely consider getting a
Crap pressed “submit comment” by accident. Let me finish that last sentence:
“That doesn’t mean I don’t like the idea. If something like this were to take off, I’d definitely consider getting a PDA. I have been considering it for a longer while now, and adding this functionality could deffo help me cross the line.”
A. The PDA market is too small.
B. MMC manufacturing cost is too high.
C. No ROI.
A DVD costs under a buck to manufacture and ship to a store. Compare that to doing the same thing using SD/MMC for a smaller market with a smaller distribution chain. Nevermind that the distribution chain is completely different (blockbuster is unlikely to sell any SD/MMC cards unless you *pay them* to seed your market).
SD/MMC manufacturing requires a 3rd party or a new manufacturing facility. The userbase doesn’t justify it. Therefore the most likely thing we will see is DRM’d content transmission to phones or PDAs via a mobile service.
Maybe you should speak to the people that work at the studios before you write these uninformed articles…
Actually i would say that movies for portable devices will be more successfull than eBooks out of two reasons:
1) Convenience. A lot of people find reading demanding. Movies don’t have this problem, standard Hollywood fare actually improves the less you think.
2) No editing required. I use public transportation a lot and the readers among the customers are few, but those who read often, edit the books they read. Underlining, taking notes, etc. You can’t do that with eBooks and thus they are unsuited for a common task related to reading. Movies on the other hand just require presentation, no editing, like music.
@Thom Holwerda: are you talking about the Sony Minidisc? If so, what on earth made you think that the MD was/is superior to CDs?
For starters, MD’s don’t get scratched, are smaller (although admittedly a bit thicker), are recordable (directly from microphones or other devices; through digital optical in there’s no quality loss), and can optionally use various levels of mp3-like (ATRAC) compression to store up to 8 or so albums per disc. Compared to using an MP3 CD player, Sony’s software rips CDs to MidiDiscs far faster than the time it takes to rip CDs to your hard drive and then burn them onto an MP3 CD (and the player is much smaller). And that’s just comparing the original MD… The new NetMD players let you play your MP3’s too, and the Hi-MD format holds 1 GB of data. So yes, MD was and is superior to CD in just about every way.
2) No editing required. I use public transportation a lot and the readers among the customers are few, but those who read often, edit the books they read. Underlining, taking notes, etc. You can’t do that with eBooks and thus they are unsuited for a common task related to reading. Movies on the other hand just require presentation, no editing, like music.
Since people usually don’t spend 2+ hours commuting from and to work, it would take a whole week to watch a movie, doesn’t sound very appealing for me to watch a movie by “gulps”.
Minidisc is superior because:
– They don’t get scratched;
– Strong and durable due to thick plastic casing;
– MDs are small: 6.8×7.2×0.5cm
– The players aren’t much bigger;
– Can record from any source, whether it’s analog or digital;
– The new Hi-MD stores 1GB of data on one 7€ disc, so price per mb is very low, and Sony says that each 1GBHi-MD can save 40hrs of music;
– Can store any form of data;
– Very long battery life;
– Far less vulnerable to shock than any HDD player (damn, my MD player fell into a glass of Cola and it still work, it fell of the stairs many times, and it still works).
– Also does MP3 now, no need for conversion to Sony’s format.
Just to name a few
.
And in addition:
– Doesn’t require proriatery software: plug in via USB and it simply works as an USB stick, so Linux and other alternative OS’s should work fine with it.
>>Maybe for the same reason eBooks didn’t take off.
actually that’s false. eBooks are still around as well as audible.com form. They fill a niche market. My Sony Clie blows the text up large enough that even my partly blind friend can read eBooks on it with ease.
As for movies, Sony has had the technology using their MagicGate SD sticks to record tv programs to watch on their Clie’s or your computer for several years useing a very inexpensive device. Today they’ve taken that technology the next step with their movies for the PSP.
Sony’s problem of course is they have a habit of developing a system and then keeping it all to themselves which has always backfired so I predict their movies on PSP will be an even bigger bust than Betamax was. Leaving MSFT to pick up the pieces.
As far as mp3s go,
CF/SD/MMC = $40+ CAD
MD = 7€ = $11.20 CAD?
CD-R = $0.05 CAD
mp3 cd players are usually cheaper hardware than the other tech too
Looks like mp3 cd’s win.
Why buy a movie on an SD or CF, with the inherent lack of quality compared to the DVD, when for the same price you can get a DVD?
What would be optimal would be this: Enough storage on your machine to create “mini” versions of your movies or TV shows on yoru PC/Mac/Linux machine, and a PDA/Smartphone with a hard drive (samsung, palmOne, nokia) or a PDA/Smartphone with a microdrive CF card, and *dynamically* update your content based on your needs. It shouldnt take that long to copy over a few movies, or shows for that matter (missed Law & Order last night? no prob! watch it on your way to work – err if you are not driving)
As far as eBooks, Yes it was a bit hard to read, and I still only put them on my PDA for *reference* purposes only, usually read them on my mac, or print out a copy (printing is cheap for me, and I only print out relevent sections). The thing that I DETEST about ebooks is the retarded DRM (and non-standard one at that). I recently bought a textbook ebook (all my other ebooks were free ones). I can only use this textbook ebook on the same computer I downloaded it from, with the same user profile that I downloaded it from, on the same hard-drive that I downloaded it from. So if I change computers, or if my hard drive f*cks up and I need to replace it, well there go $40 wasted dollars! This book I printed out and bound it – no chances taken.
If you want things to succeed you need to unleash them
Minidisc is superior because:
– They don’t get scratched;
They can if you aren’t careful. I used to listen to minidiscs whilst cycling and I initially kept the player in my trouser pocket, this not only led to playback stopping occasional due to too much movement but some of my minidiscs got scratched, evidenced by them always skipping the same part of a song.
Hum… What about a portable DVD player ? It’s a little bit heavier, but a much better screen, and it fits in any business case
this is so ridiculous.
If the industry keeps churning out ideas like this every new idea will fail, consumers don’t want to buy a new copy of the movie for every fricken format and place they want to use it.
A perfect example of this that just came out is the PSP. If you already own the LOTR trilogy would you rebuy it so you could watch it on the go? Of course not, you don’t have to rebuy music to listen to audio on the PSP (of course this is “not yet” situation) so why should one have to repurchase a movie?
and it’s only going to get worse, a version for the CF devices (palm, nintendo DS, etc.) a version for PSP, a version for home use, a HD-DVD version, a blu ray version, a mini-dvd version for god knows what.
If instead consumers were given our fair use rights and allowed to use the dvd movie on whatever format we desired to, this would be a non issue. You could just copy your movie to CF format and watch it on your palm. (or whatever device you own)
Well, they could do it, but while SD and CF cards are cheaper than say a memory stick card, they cost a lot more to make than other things. The base price of a 1GB card is going to make things costly enough, and then you’d have to tack on the price of a movie.
Much cheaper to just get a DVD, rip it to the size you want, and then carry around just the one you want to watch when you want it (on your memory card of choice).
But people do buy the stuff…that’s how the industry makes money. Repackage a product, and shake the shiny beads at the brain dead consumer. They wont realise that they’re being shafted over-and-over again.
And so it goes on…
‘Pocket DVD Wizard 2005’ and ‘Pocket DVD Studio’ for PocketPC are ones of the *most-bought* applications
should be
‘Pocket DVD Wizard 2005’ and ‘Pocket DVD Studio’ for PocketPC are two of the *most-bought* applications
Just a small correction, but worth mentioning. Sorry if anyone minds me being a stickler for good grammar.
I don’t feel there is enough market appeal in something like this to warrent the production costs.
Maybe if movies on the PSP take off it might be something to look at, but if that never materializes then it seems like a waste.
>> they average around $30 for just the SD card.
>
>You missed my remark about $7 for OEM usage.
>
>
But *YOU* as a *CONSUMER* won’t get to buy that
SD card containing a movie for $7 under *ANY*
circumstances.
On the other hand you can buy DVD’s of real old movies
and TV shows for $1 in department stores in the U.S.
Get a grip on reality,Eugenia
This is a stupid idea, cf/sd costs about £50 for something thats big enough to put a movie on, dvds with 10x the storage cost a lot less. Its simple economics.
Ignoring the issue of watching a feature-length film on that tiny screen, it’s just not economical.
The unit media cost of a DVD for the industry is about $0.10. The other $19.90 is basically profit and covers the distribution and packaging. The unit media cost for a 128M CF card would be in the ball-park of $15.00. So, ask yourself if people are going to pay $35.00 to watch Sex in the City on their PDA while the Special Edition DVD with “multi-angle” sex only costs $20.
The industry consensus is “no”.
(Incidentally, the typical PDA will drain it’s batteries streaming video off a CF card long before 90 minutes is up).
i fully agree that selling them on cf/sd i too expensive (even at 7$ per card)
but it would be a great addition to include a ready encoded 320×240, mono divx version on the disc.
yes, these files will end up on the net, but no customers would be lost (those who download these files would never buy a dvd).
>>The thing that I DETEST about ebooks is the retarded DRM
Exactly! DRM has GOT to go away because it turns the consumer into a renter instead of an owner. A normal paperback, music cd or program even can be resold on a garage sale at least when you don’t use it anymore.
I don’t even think cost is an issue. Let’s say that it sells for $15.00/movie but:
a)How long will a typical pda battery last if it is pulling a movie off of sd/cf media and playing both audio and video. Unless you can plug in right away and recharge after you’ve reached your destination, you will have likely depleted at least 80% of your battery power.
b)Why bother watching it on a screen that small?
c)How large a market is there for movies that can be watched on a pda?
While it sounds like a good idea for someone’s personal project, I wonder if this hasn’t already been thought of and discarded for both power and viewability’s sake.
If I’m going to be sitting down for a long enough time for watching video to make sense, I’d rather use a laptop. For about $400-500, I could get a used thinkpad on ebay that could easily handle full res divx/xvid files, or be able to play DVDs themselves.
This one is a great laptop purchase for $350: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=IBM600X-12B&cat=NBB (it has no ethernet though)
Hunh? I for one just don’t get the idea of watching a movie (or anything else for that matter) on screens of that size. What the hell’s the point? Is it just because it can be done? “Hey, look at this cool new decoder ring I got – you can play movies on it!” I wouldn’t use one if they handed me the device and the movies for free. Take me to a movie theater or sit me down in front of my television and let me like, enjoy the film. If it’s worth watching at all, it’s worth NOT watching on a teensy screen. <elitist-angle>If I were a film director and saw someone watching my movie on a PDA or a phone, I’d want to whack the thing out of their hand.</elitist-angle>
swing and a miss.
not all movies are a monet, a work of art. some times they are just fun.
if you dont see that, well i really pity you.