Hard Drives Shipping with Star Trek 271
crimeandpunishment writes "Paramount Pictures is trying to live long and prosper by selling Seagate Technology hard drives with the latest Star Trek movie on board ... along with 20 other films. The 500GB hard drive will sell for a special promotional price of $100. It's the latest way for Hollywood to combat falling DVD sales due to piracy."
Ummm (Score:4, Informative)
Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title (Score:5, Informative)
Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title (Score:4, Informative)
Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title (Score:5, Informative)
I noticed something similar when I picked up a copy of Gran Torino a few months ago. It came with a little insert that had a code I could allegedly use to download a digital copy of the movie. I thought, "That's cool, I can put it on my laptop and watch it on my next trip." Then I got to the website and was eventually prompted for a credit card number. They wanted more money for the privilege of obtaining a DRM'ed copy of the movie I already paid for.
Yeah, that was going to happen.....
More information (Score:2, Informative)
Seagate has a press release [seagate.com] with more information about this.
The drive is an external drive, which Newegg is selling for $100.
Re:$100 ... PLUS $10-$15 Charger PER Title (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Fixed that for ya. (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention the state of the economy.
I'm not making as much as I use to, so money is tighter and I'm thankful to just have a damn job. We've budgeted to have a NetFlix subscription and go out to a movie once every three months. That budget is considered luxurious by some people I know.
Quoting piracy as a reason for dwindling sales is a cop-out IMHO. Anti-Piracy groups need to focus on the people selling pirated DVDs as legitimate ones; they're really taking traceable sales away. Is it possible to download a pirated copy of a movie for free? Yes. Will it always be in high quality, not require you to go find some new or obscure codec,and can be had in a matter of minutes? Hell no. My time is worth something and all that dicking around just isn't worth it for me and I may not even end up with what I was downloading not to mention the legal ramifications and possibilities of a fun lawsuit.
NetFlix is a good deal for me. I have the patience to wait for the disc in the mail and Watch Now (on demand) is great. It's a little annoying that they're cutting deals with the studios to hold off for 28 days, more so for the wife than me, but it means more content that can be streamed to the TV and not take up a slot in the mail queue.
MOVIE STUDIOS, I have some advice for you:
1. Stop making a lot of crappy movies just to see if they'll stick to the wall.
2. Make better movies and it doesn't always require $100+ million budget.
3. Understand that your low sales isn't a 100% result of piracy.
4. Understand that spending a lot of money on a movie doesn't mean it's going to net a lot of profit.
5. Appreciate that piracy in the US isn't as bad as it is in other countries.
6. Invest most of your anti-piracy efforts in the groups that are mass producing pirated DVDs for profit. They're taking significant profit away from you.
7. It's fine to educate people within reason that pirating is illegal.
8. Stop with all the DRM and DMCA. All it does is hurt your legitimately purchasing consumer and can potentially cost you money in the long run with refunds when shit doesn't work right or the authorizing servers go offline (e.g. Yahoo music).
9. Understand that fair use isn't costing you much money. I have the right to make a copy for my personal use and I'm going to do that so the original doesn't get damaged. If it did get damaged and I didn't have a copy of it, that doesn't mean I'm going to go and buy a new one. I'm not going to dick around with re-encoding it so it fits on a single-layer (dual-layer is too much and you might as well go legit for the cost) that I'm going to give to my friend, plus he can go out and pirate it himself or go down the street and rent it from RedBox for $1.
10. Understand that if people don't have a lot of disposable income, they aren't going to spend money on your product that they don't need to live. If you have a problem with that, either do something positive to get the economy rolling so people have disposable income to trade with you or change your business to something that involves basic needs like food, clothing, and/or shelter.
"due to piracy" (Score:4, Informative)
OMFG!! Why is hollywood so fixated on this ridiculous lie. Piracy isn't the reason no one buys DVDs. They don't buy DVDs because the movies suck.
They were saying the same stupid nonsense about why no one goes to the movies anymore, then what happened? Good movies came out, and look! People went to the movies in record numbers (and it wasn't the god damn 3D that was just icing - the movies were good!!).
Hollywood is run by morons.
Re:Fixed that for ya. (Score:5, Informative)
2 and 4: studios constantly post net losses from films. They do this by spreading the profit to other companies, owned by the same people. They do this in order to screw people whose contracts guarantee a perfect of net profits; the creators of the IP they're exploiting and then aggressively defending. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting [wikipedia.org]
from the link;
The guy who wrote Forrest Gump got $0.
The guy who wrote The Last Unicorn $0.
B5, despite the series pulling in >$1B, is supposed to be $80M in debt, screwing Stracynski out of a lot of money.
Studios are not losing money. They are swimming in it. Their hilarious accounting allows them to claim that they're losing money, and being able to blame pirates (and so turn the Government of Canada into their bag man [wikipedia.org]) is just gravy.
Re:Added bonus (Score:3, Informative)
So, it ["joke" about included malware] is not as funny as you thought.
Actually I read it as straight (except for the flip line at the end) - and was just cruising to see if anybody had raised this point before raising it myself.
Studios have a track record of shipping DRM that acts as malware. (Remember the one on the audio CDs that caused so much flap?)
No way in the world I'm running any software that comes "included" on a hard disk - built into a movie or otherwise. And when I install a new disk on one of my machines the first thing that happens to it is a surface analysis - run from a linux live CD boot - to wipe out anything that might have been installed at the factory or in the market channel.
Re:Ummm (Score:2, Informative)
I just bought a 1TB Western Digital Black Edition hard drive from Best Buy for $99. I don't what the MPAA is thinking....