The newest videodisc format promises sound and pictures to die for, no movie returns, and no late fees. But the player you buy today may be dead tech tomorrow.
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In the print world, this pay-per-view proposition definitely wouldn't fly. But for movies on disc, expiring media is apparently an idea whose time has come. Welcome to Digital Video Express, the company behind Divx, a new digital videodisc system. Dreamed up by the money hounds at Circuit City and the LA-based entertainment law firm Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca & Fischer, the platform is designed to keep the unlikely partnership dipping into your wallet until kingdom come.
Divx, a version of the high-resolution, great-sounding digital videodisc (DVD), rolled out nationally this fall amid a US$100 million advertising extravaganza. Available at Circuit City, the good guys!, and likely to arrive at such nontraditional channels as convenience stores and supermarkets for $4.49, Divx films are viewable for just 48 hours once you hit the play button. No driving to the store for rental returns, no late fees. If you want to view a film again after it expires, or decide to buy it outright for at most 20 bucks, your player's built-in modem can dial in to the centralized Divx computer, which processes the transaction and charges your credit card. (Yes, that means you're obligated to periodically hook up the player to a phone line, just like you would a DSS receiver if you wanted pay-per-view movies delivered by satellite.) DVD rental is cheaper (about $3), but only Divx offers the convenience of no returns. Of course, at $4.49 you might say the late fee is built in.
Divx players cost about $500, a hundred bucks more than DVD machines (blame it on that internal modem), but they can handle both types of discs, as well as CDs. DVD, on the other hand, can play CDs but not Divx. Understandably, this lack of backward compatibility has many early DVD adopters showing signs of rabies. Eyes fiery and fists clenched, they've banded together on the Net, forming impromptu consumer groups that call for a boycott of Divx (see www.geocities.com/televisioncity/studio/8884/divx.htm). They view the format's core pay-for-play feature as hostile to movie collectors. They lament the absence of alternate languages, outtakes, and other DVD extras. And they charge that, worst of all, consumer confusion over DVD and Divx could sink the entire digital videodisc market.
Of course, more daunting obstacles stand between Divx and success. An unofficial coalition of premier consumer electronics companies, including Toshiba and Sony, codevelopers of DVD, refuse to manufacture the players. Most video rental stores, which rely on store traffic and late fees, won't touch Divx with a barge pole. And Tinseltown is showing only tentative support. Paramount, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Disney's Buena Vista, and MGM will release some films on both Divx and DVD. Warner and Sony retain an exclusive commitment to DVD. At present, fewer than 400 titles are on Divx, versus almost 2,000 on DVD.
Circuit City's backing guarantees a presence in its own stores, but not necessarily anywhere else. "Support from competing chains such as Best Buy will be negligible," predicts Brent Butterworth, editor of Home Theater magazine. "I don't have much faith in Circuit City training the monkeys on the sales floor to explain Divx intelligently and convincingly." Butterworth also notes that the cost difference between renting Divx and buying DVD discs is shrinking. Warner has already dropped some DVD prices to less than $14. "Other studios are sure to follow suit," Butterworth says. "Divx won't survive if price is supposed to drive the format."
Others have more, well, philosophical objections to Divx. "It's a bit sad that someone had to launch a format that accommodates people too fat and lazy to get off the couch and return a movie to the store," scoffs Blaine Graboyes, creative and technical director of Zuma Digital in New York, a DVD services and authoring facility.
Indeed, it's hard not to be flummoxed - and annoyed - by Divx. The introduction of the format seems to have less to do with market demand than with old-fashioned greed. Circuit City and its lawyer cohorts are evidently bent on raking in the bucks regardless of what's best for the industry or consumers.
But that'll be an irrelevant point sooner than you might think. The consumer electronics market is changing at an ever faster pace. In less than 10 years, we may have remotely stored movies-on-demand that start at the touch of a button. Recordable DVD players will likely arrive. And those swelling data pipes into our homes will perhaps enable us to download thousands of pay-TV movies onto a high-capacity home storage device. When any one of these scenarios plays out, today's digital video players will be over.
We could draw a parallel with personal computers. Millions of consumers spend two grand on a new PC every few years. That economic model has begun to apply to consumer electronics too (think cell phones and electronic organizers - digital totems often retired early in favor of smaller, niftier versions). Given the pace of innovation, devices that serve us for 10 or 15 years (the way a good VCR or nice stereo amp did) are becoming a thing of the past.
So buy a DVD or Divx player if you're so inclined, and enjoy it until it's made old news. A $500 hardware investment over five years means it cost 27 cents a day (versus $1.83 for a $2,000 PC you replace after three years). Just don't forget to renew your Wired subscription. Until we're bought by Circuit City, multiple readings are still free of charge.
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