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Are movie studios warming up to "managed copy"?
Published: March 14, 2008
In early 2006, when Blu-ray and HD-DVD were just about to hit the market, I wrote an article looking at whether movie studios would include a feature on the discs known as “managed copy.”
With managed copy, you’d be able to easily and legally copy the movie to your computer’s hard drive or to a portable video player.
The idea is that movie buyers would finally get the convenience that music listeners had been enjoying for years with rippable music CDs.
Well, it looks like managed copy is finally, slowly starting to appear on Blu-ray discs.
High-Def Digest sends word that Lionsgate’s upcoming Blu-ray version of the latest Rambo movie will include a second disc with a standard-def version of the film that you can download onto your PC, iPod, iPhone and possibly other devices.
Lionsgate joins Fox as the first studios to embrace what’s now being called “digital copy” (Fox offered its first digital copy movie with the March 11 Blu-ray release of Hitman).
It’s too bad that consumers are only getting standard definition digital copy versions of these movies, rather than the awesome HD prints. On the other hand, 1080p Blu-ray movies can run up to 50-gigabytes or so, and that’s a lot of data even for the current crop of mammoth hard drives, much less the relatively puny memory of most portable devices.
And it’s definitely nice to see studios following through on a promise that a lot of people never thought they’d keep.
UPDATE: While I’m complaining about my lack of HD movie copies, though, things could be a lot worse. For example, Cuba has just lifted its ban on buying DVD movie players. But air conditioners remain prohibido until next year, and toasters (yes, toasters) are off limits until 2010, due to “limited power supplies.” Hooray for communism!
