Disney DVD Player Recalled

Disney has recalled about 102,000 Disney-branded DVD player because of battery meltdown or combustion. Yes, these things explode. You can get a replacement battery from the company to remedy the issue. Link Link to Product

Netflix Will Sue Blockbuster

Netflix has acquired it's patent for renting DVD's online last Tuesday, and now it seems NetFlix will use this as it's leverage to try and shut down BlockBuster's attempt at an online DVD rental distribution which works identically to NetFlix. This new patent covers interaction with it's customer base where NetFlix's system automatically sends you the next available item in your Queue and decides how often you should get your DVD's. This does beg to question, how much can you patent? While I don't care for BlockBuster as a company, can NetFlix really own the online DVD rental business entirely? It gets a little gray when you think about NetFlix shutting down another site because of similar features like a queue which is a very generic idea. How else do you setup a future shipment schedule? Link Summary of Patent

Giant Pirate DVD Factory busted

In the UK, a woman and four men were arrested for running a pirate DVD factory. The article states that over 60,000 DVD's were being burned every day on its 500+ DVD burners. Among the DVD's being sold was Ice Age 2 which was recently released here in the US. Link

Buy Full-Length Movies Online

This week movie studios offered full-length movies to be downloaded. The downloads are movies being released at the same time the DVD is being released as well as a back catalog. The downloads will cost $20-30 per title, with no extras and no ability to watch it on your regular DVD player. The titles will also only be available on the Windows platform in WMF format. This is a first step in the digital market direction, but it's severely limiting in that you can only watch it on your computer. The price is also completely out of whack with what consumers are will to pay for movies, plus the standard DRM that comes with digital files these days which will not let you rip it to a DVD or play on other computers. The studios are selling it their own co-owned company MovieLink which is another mistake - does anyone use that site? They could have setup shop at iTunes, sold a decent quality (something sub-dvd) movie for $6.99 and sold the extras ala cart for $1.99 per clip or all together for a fee based on how much content. I have a feeling the studios aren't jumping on the iTunes bandwagon so fast, since Apple controls so much of the digital music market, they may not want to give their own control of their content. Link