Kingston, Paramount to deliver movies on flash drives

[JMMD]

Interesting idea but the cost is crazy unless you happen to need a 4GB usb drive and want the movie. I'd like to know how the video quality is since they must have compressed it to fit on the drive.

 

[salbar1981]

It's Transformers on the go ! obviously it's no Blu-ray quality but at least it has to have a decent definition ... plus you get to keep the USB

 

[aceofspaids222]

This is an interesting concept. The only way I would get one of these is if you can move the movie off the USB drive.

 

[supportme]

This a really good idea and good news for people who travel..

But how are they going to combat the piracy as we know our intelligent techs here will find a way to somehow Rip it and create copies for everybody.

 

[taimuraly]

In my opinion, I think this idea will be a flop and is useless. The reasons;

1. The price is way too much for the quality - I do not think that 4GB of storage is enough to save a video of the same quality as a normal dual layer DVD. DVDs are much cheaper and their quality is great. In addition, they also include extra features as well as great sound.

2. People buy DVDS to play them on their home theatre systems and besides that they can be used on a Pc or Laptop as well. With this, you can only watch it on your Pc or Laptop. The only way to watch these on your TV would be buying a new player that has USB support.

3. Though I am not sure, but there are chances that the drive will be write-protected thus making the USB useless. Image the clutter you will have when you buy many movies.

4. As for being portable, a DVD is also portable. Sure you can’t put it in your pocket but then again how many of these will you keep in your pocket. It makes more sense to download or copy a movie and save it on your hard-drive than to carry around a USB.

The only plus I can see is that it will be easier to share movies on the internet. However if it is not write-protected, only people who need a USB Memory will buy this - they would copy the movie on their hard-drive and use it as a normal USB.

 

[RickD]

swilllx2p said:
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.

All good points, but I'd need a way to save that movie before I'd re-use the flash drive. I'd rather have a way to copy any movie to flash drives when I travel, not just these few releases. Otherwise, I'll stick with Netflix movies on demand.

 

[fref]

Not a bad idea, but users will need to burn the movie to a DVD anyway if they want to use the flash drive for something else. With 4GB flash drives costing around 10$ these days, you end up paying around 20$ for your movie... I'd rather buy a standard 4GB drive and the movie separately.

 

[Concorde]

A few months ago i contacted Sony on this very subject but suggested they marketed their films on a flash drive that would only work on a Sony flat panel tv..It just seemed logical to me because Sony do have a very large library of films and they are also one of the leading produces of Flat panel tv's . My thinking on this subject was for sony to have complete control of content on their products.Sony f/p tv's do now come with usb ports so I suppose they will allow any flash drive with a movie on it to play. I believe they missed a very lucrative boat somewhere along the line.

 

[alberthuang]

I believe it's a great idea, but a terrible price.
These flash drives are usually $6-8 a piece ($3-5 before recession).
Basically, it's charging more ($24/movie max instead of $20) for the movie.

It's really portable - but the thing that's unclear is whether they DRM it or not.

 

[Ju1iet]

I remember Sony did this once, but as a gift. The 4 gig memory sticks had preloaded UMD quality (480 x 272 px.) Spiderman 2 movie that you can watch on PSPs.

 

[orondf]

I've always waited for the day when movies will ship on flash drives, they are much more reliable than DVDs; only I could get four DVDs for that price!

 

[Guest]

Purchased this last week at office max and it looks fantastic on my netbook. Plenty of space left on the USB as well to fully utilize it.

 

[SNGX1275]

I agree it is a superior medium, but there are a couple of issues.
...

The second reason is waste. I don't have any numbers, but polycarbonate and aluminum is abundant. Germanium, silicon, gallium etc.. that's used in flash drives is used like crazy already. Can we expect to keep up with demand? Flash prices sometimes go up because of 'shortages' and I wonder if replacing every new potential optical disc in the world with flash devices is a reasonable goal.

I was going to say something like that too. People already get their panties in a bunch when Apple places a large order for their iPhones/iPods and creates a global shortage. Imagine if this actually caught on, people would probably buy more movies than they do iPhones.

 

[Nirkon]

A 4GB movie isn't that bad for HDRips, it wont be full HD, but by no means will it be SD, but the problem is, can you later erase it, and if you do, how can you get it back?

 

[Flannelwarrior]

It's much easier to download the movie and stick it on your own flash drive, saving about $30

For people who aren't pirates, I still don't see the use. It's not like a DVD is especially cumbersome (though it is SLIGHTLY more cumbersome than a flash drive). Also, with the amount of free or close to free streaming services, the only real use for having hard data is for watching on a plane or somewhere else where you can't connect to the internet. And again, who's too weighed down to bring a DVD on a plane?

Target demographic for this product: the wealthy technically unsavvy. The rest of us will continue to rip DVD's and stream movies.