Kingston, Paramount to deliver movies on flash drives

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Kingston has signed an agreement with Paramount Digital Entertainment to deliver full-length motion picture films on flash devices. The movies will be stored on Kingston's SD and USB flash memory products, and will be available to consumers for a reasonable price -- all things considered. To boot, the companies are offering Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen on a 4GB Kingston DataTraveler USB drive for $29.99

Assuming the flash drive is reusable, that's not too bad of a deal for $30. That said, being crammed on a 4GB drive naturally means that the films will be in standard definition -- a deal breaker for many, I'm sure. Perhaps HD-friendly films will be offered on larger drives at a later date, but there are few details about the companies' future plans.

It seems to me that the people who would be most interested in this offer, probably already own a Blu-ray player. Would you pay $30 for a film stored on flash memory?

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/36804-kingston-paramount-to-deliver-movies-on-flash-drives.html

 

[treeski]

For a non-HD movie, $30 is too much. I would consider paying $30 for an HD quality movie on a larger flash drive. But honestly, even that is iffy.

 

[Eddie_42]

Awesome. I had a discussion with a friend many months ago about this very topic. The conclusion we can to for why this didn't exist is the cost of the drive, plus the rights to the movie. But now a 4gb drive is dirt cheap. I would definitely consider this as an option. The only thing I would want in extra is a DVD player with a USB slot on it. Maybe the newer ones do, mine is a dinosaur. I also am not on the blue ray band-wagon, just to expensive to get a drive, an HD tv, and re-buy all the movies. DVD till I have to upgrade

 

[TomSEA]

I think this is a great idea for travelers who are stuck at an airport, or have kids in the car on a long road trip and are trying to figure out how to entertain them. They'll probably sell a million of these Transformer movie flash drives for stocking stuffers this Christmas. Kids will lose their minds over these. And once you're done with it, transfer the movie to a backup hard drive and now you have a 4GB jump drive. This is obviously not meant for the serious blu-ray movie aficionado's, but I can definitely see a market for this.

 

[Eddie_42]

TomSEA, you make good points, i didnt think about the travel side of it. More durable packaging. No scratches that a Disc can suffer from. Pocket size. Good stuff

 

[swilllx2p]

I personally think its an amazing idea. Especially if the flash drive is reusable. As TomSEA said it would be pretty awesome for people that travel. And instead of sitting on the shelf unused after you get bored of the movie..you always have a 4GB flash drive you can now use.

 

[CrisisDog]

I've been able to rip Blu-Ray discs to 720p HD in under 4GB. That would be a decent option for the price they're offering this at, but not for standard definition. I also wonder if this has some sort of DRM, otherwise what would be stopping the general public from copying this right off the flash drive and sharing it?

 

[Vrmithrax]

Great idea in theory, but probably not practical in most respects, unless you can transfer that movie off your drive and onto another medium. I'm not going to pay big bucks for a limited movie stuck on a USB drive that I now have to keep track of and store somewhere... And the mobile idea is great, until you consider that to watch the movie you'll always have that USB drive sticking out of your laptop, just begging for someone or something to hit it and break the drive, the USB connector, or both...

There's not really any "convenience" factor to it if it's trapped on the drive, and there's no benefit of having a USB drive if it's clogged full of an unmovable video file. Now, if it's transferable I'd consider it. But honestly, it would be better packaged on an SD card, much easier to store and less sticking out to get damaged during playback.

 

[buttus]

I think this is a great concept marketing wise (as everyone loves collector memoribillia)....but the price is just too much. Unless they can get the price down I would think this idea would go the way of the mini DVD (or UMD for that matter).

 

[nyred]

30 bucks for a standard definition movie? No way.

 

[ET3D]

I agree with Vrmithrax, SD card would have been much better. It's supported by a lot of devices, and when it doesn't, you can always use a USB adapter. That would have been easier to store and carry. I had the N-Gage game phone, whose games came on MMC cards, and with small plastic boxes that could store 4 cards. It was all pretty professional and convenient. (The device itself had some design issues, but I think the game package was nicely done.)

$30 is a bit too much, IMO, but I do think that flash cards are a good way to distribute content.

 

[Kibaruk]

Reading the comments along the way...

It does sound like a good idea to have things on the go, but not a long term movie keeping/collection type of deal, for the price you can get a HD movie, and what would you do after you get like 10 or 20 of these movies? would you have 20 4gb flashdrives for "later use" if you get really really bored of the movies?

IF! and only IF, this is an asumption... you could store this with some sort of special ID online software to verify you are the true owner of the movie and then you could go with the flashdrive itself with some sort of blockbuster deal to only buy the movie and not the hardware itself making it somewhat cheaper would be AWESOME.

Because, where would you store 10-20 or more of these flashdrives?

 

[Aolish]

Great idea but like others have already said its to expensive considering its in SD. Great idea tho.

 

[kodrutz]

Not really, no. Storing them would really be silly, especially since I think a living room with some shelves with your movie collection looks much better than... however you decide to store a bunch of flash drives!

 

[Clrabbit]

.... why would it have to be SD?

I mean more and more DVD players and pretty much ANY new PC can handle a good video codec.

infect I have a video file sitting right in front of me here.

Width 1280
Height 720
Bitrate 955
Length: 1:14:54
Size: 511MB

So now amusing this video was Twice the quality it is and twice as long.
Then we'd have a 4GB video.

Now given this is a Home video made on a nice HD camera visual quality wise, I nor any body I know can tell the difference watching it vs a Blu-ray movie. It's only 720 and my Tv is only 720, However sense it would need to be twice the quality to take up the 4GB of space it would be 1440 which would make 1080p look sad.

Video compressing has come along ways, and keeps getting more impressive by the year. Seems pointless to me to own a DVD/Blu-ray player when you can have a PC.

 

[Kibaruk]

But the idea of a DVD-player or something player is not stick in a chair in front of the PC to watch a movie, instead of a couch in the living room, or a movie room, or something room but a lot more comfortable and where you can see a movie in a big tv with a good sound system.

 

[tonylukac]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't flash drives battery powered constantly to keep their memory? Wouldn't the movie be lost in, say, 10 years of storage? Perhaps I'm confused.

 

[Rick]

That said, being crammed on a 4GB drive naturally means that the films will be in standard definition -- a deal breaker for many

4GB can hold a pretty good quality HD movie using the appropriate codec (xvid, divx etc..). In fact, Bluray players *must* support Mpeg4 and now some of them are including MKV support.

With industry support behind some of these formats for codecs and containers, it is conceivable that the video contained on these flash drives will actually be 720p+. That may also be wishful thinking too...

 

[Rick]

tonylukac said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't flash drives battery powered constantly to keep their memory?

No, they are not.

 

[Tekkaraiden]

I'm curious what kind of copy guard it will have to prevent you from copying it.

 

[pioneerx01]

FINALY. You would nor believe how long I awaited for movies to be released on Flash drives. Think about it... Flash drives are reaching speeds of 30MB/s or more (faster than needed for blu-ray), Sizes are ever increasing, and the chance of data corruption is lover that getting your disk scratched. Plus 0 seek time. I think that is the future of movies.

 

[JieMan]

Well its a start! I would much rather be able to get a Digital download in better quality and put it on what ever media I want.
Is it worth buying, probably not.

The thing is that the industry needs to push to a better format that doesn't involve disks, this should have happened with BlueRay( remember its just a container for the media itself). As everyone knows disks get ruined quick. I hope they can bring the costs down and the storage up to be able to get better quality.

I feel this is just a speck that we are seeing of the future of media shifting to digital distribution, the only ones holding the transition back are the companies in control of the current industry, as they have no place in the digital world. There old time practices of production and supply are obsolete in the world today and they know it. Same thing with the music Industry they are clawing at anyone willing to change the industry as they wont have all the pie anymore. Might be

why they are so inept to understanding the use of a bittorrent system for legal digital distro needs to change fast.

 

[Xclusiveitalian]

Love the idea, hate the price! $30 is way to much for a movie which isn't either on par or better than blu ray anyway, id rather just buy the blue ray copy. If they could make it the same price as a blu ray, and same quality or greater than maybe we got ourselves a deal..I think i still just love the dvds to much.

 

[Timonius]

I think this is just a marketing gimmick either for fanatics or a 'fool and his money'. What is the 'physical' size of drive? My 8b verbatim tuff n tiny is the size of a thumbnail. Portability, memory density, and manufacturing costs are a big factor if usb movies are to survive beyond the 'neat idea' phase. Other than that everything else has been said.

 

[Colonel Lance]

I've been wondering when someone was going to start doing this. I imagined this happening pretty much as soon as the USB drive came out and it's taken this long for it to happen.

We'll just have to wait and see if it's any good.