whaaaa?Apr 5th, 2006 - 21:08:13

your whole article is a freaking history lesson. i skipped to the end to find your summery and i still feel i wasted 3 minutes of my life.
This article presupposes there should only ever be ONE methode of distribution. thats just stupid, most of the movies i go see are tripple a list titles only. if there was a way to not have the hasles of waiting in line and other annoiances of going to movies i'd see more of them. Top title movies are only ever best seen on the silver screen so the download thig is just for films i wouldnt have seen otherwise. no lost revenue the way i see it.
its just like the music i download, i can get it for free and gain a fan(if i like it i will always buy) but most of the time its crap and if i puchased i'd just feel ripped off and be far less likly to do it again in the future.
same principal.

In the future can we PLEASE not have the history lesson ,.... yet again???



anon

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that reminds me of the time,....Apr 5th, 2006 - 21:21:25

Well this article was just ok, but i remember back in the BBS day when we had 300 baud and we where darn glad to have it. why the internet was just for tracking UFO's and my modem was unidirectional,... both ways,.. uphill,.. in the snow.

so why is it if i record a song from the radio im a hippie, if i record a song off the net i'm a theiving pirate? oh and both sound like crap by the way.

So if i ripp a movie i just downloaded its still just tv res right? who want to archive that?
if every sentance i string together was mine forever and no one could ever use them again or even make referance to them then am i entepenurial (sp?) or just greedy? so why can the media do it and its ok?



anon

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Eliot BernsteinApr 6th, 2006 - 05:00:02

Great article except it forgets that movie downloads would not be possible due to bandwidth constraits and time for full screen full frame to download over the Internet. The secret sauce to the success of even streaming video is due to inventions created by the Iviewit inventors. Learn more about how Iviewit technologies have enabled the studios to download and stream on low bandwidth and then how that opened up cell video, etc. The inventions have been stolen by patent attorneys from Proskauer Rose, LLP, Foley and Lardner and others who have monetized them through the anti-competitive monopolistic patent pool known as MPEGLA and its license scheme. The attorney Kenneth Rubenstein for MPEGLA, the overseer or overstealer of the patents, was Iviewit patent counsel and he and his partners are now under hosts of federal, state and international investigations. Amongst them, is Raymond Joao, Rubenstein's lackey, who now has 90+ patents applied for in his name, many stolen right from the Iviewit inventors and patented in his own name.

This is the greatest patent story of our time and if you really are interested in how movie-downloads happen, check it out with the studios, who all signed NDA's to use the scaling processes. Check out the letter below from Warner Bros Advanced Technology Department at about the time MovieLink was forming to use the Iviewit scaled download process.

We at Iviewit hope that the world enjoyies these technologies, except for those who attempted to steal them and will soon pay the price.

Eliot Bernstein
Inventor
iviewit@iviewit.tv
www.iviewit.tv

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Eliot BernsteinApr 6th, 2006 - 05:05:13

The letter to the above talkback regarding who really invented movie download processes for the Internet is exemplified in this letter by Warner Bros Advanced Technologists. Warner, Sony and others were working with Iviewit at the time to learn how the processes worked.

From: David.Colter@warnerbros.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 12:51 AM
To: John.calkins@warnerbros.com
Cc: CHuck.dages@warnerbros.com; Alan.Bell@warnerbros.com
Subject: iviewit
Page 1 of 2
3/26/2003
John,
In all the review we have done with ivieiwit it seems to boil down to the status of the patents and their inherent value. At that point it is a risk-reward evaluation -- without awarded patents it is difficult to completely assess the value. I would suggest that we consider one other perspective...
Prior to ivieiwit (approx Feb 2000) the video we (WB Online) delivered on the web was QCIF (160x120) or smaller and was below full frame rate. At the time of our first meeting we also identified On2 along with ivieiwit as two solid players who could deliver full screen full frame rate web video. All who saw it were impressed. Greg and I visited ivieiwit in August and reported back that they had filed patents on scaling techniques that hinged upon a visual 'trick' which allowed the human eye to accept 320x240 video scaled to 640x480 at 30 fps as close to VHS quality. We checked with Ken Rubenstein and others who provided some solid support for ivieiwit, and Chris Cookson asked Greg and I to continue to work with ivieiwit in an R&D capacity.
In the fall of 2000 iviewit also met with a number of folks at WB Online (in September and October) and demonstrated their process and techniques to Sam Smith, Houston, Joe Annino and others. Sam contacted ivieiwit a number of times and requested the patents, along with specifics of the ivieiwit process to evaluate what they were doing. I was not part of these meetings, but was aware they had occured, as Jack Scanlon kept me up to date.
When I sat down with Morgan and Houston in March 2001 to see what technology they were using to encode video, it was clear that they were using some of the techniques that would overlap with iviewit's filed process patents (still pending), but it is not clear that these were all learned from iviewit -- we may wish to explore this a little. This meeting was to determine what equipment we would get for our lab at 611 Brand. This same information was also provided to ivieiwit by Morgan as they were establishing the company as an outsourcing
facility for encoding our content.
I am aware of several meeting held between ivieiwit and WB Online to share information of techniques and process, and was invited to a few of them.
We all signed ivieiwit's confidentiality agreement. So to the other perspective....
We have an opportunity to establish a license with ivieiwit for a modest fee at this time, and establish a MFN. In good faith we signed the confidentiality agreement, iviewit revealed their processes and techniques, and we now
use those techniques in encoding. As we have discussed on a few occasions, these techniques now appear in the public domain to some extent in documentation for Real Producer, WMP Developer Guides, Media Cleaner
Pro, etc, but they were not available in 2000. I would not suggest we learned the techniques completely from iviewit (I actually do not know the answer), but a modest licensing fee may be appropriate and honorable considering our good faith relationship in signing the confidentiality doc.
If we choose to pass at this time the risk is primarily from iviewit's main investor, Crossbow Ventures, gaining control of the IP and approaching WB later for a license -- I do not believe they will be as friendly considering their
dealings with ivieiwit and it's employees since Feb of 2001. It is estimated that the patents will be completed in 8-12 months.
As you are all aware I have a personal relationship with Eliot Bernstein, the founder of iviewit, and as a result, I left the evaluations and decisions to Greg, and others, and only assisted iviewit to get to the correct people in WB
and AOLTW. I wanted to add this perspective as we consider if there is an option to pursue with iviewit -- they are facing continued financial pressure right now. There are many other threads to our interaction with iviewit and I
would be happy to discuss.
Thanx,
David

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AnswerManJul 17th, 2006 - 20:57:21

Note that this article was written in April. Now it's July and only one online movie provider, MovieLink, appears to have a real deal with Hollywood ... allowing users to download movies that can be burned to DVD to keep. But, there are a number of flies in this ointment.

First and foremost, quality. I'm assuming that they've merely acquired a license to sell what they're already renting - and already selling for computer playback only. If this is true, note that the filesize of an over-two-hour film download is roughly 650 megs. To attain even the minimum quality that would be considered DVD-quality, a film of that time-length would normally have a filesize of 4.3 gigabytes. And that's just bare minimum quality. Professional DVD releases which already cost much less than Movielink's current computer-only purchase prices require the film to be burned to a two-layer DVD holding about 9 gigs of data. FWIW, I've already downloaded one of those films from CinemaNow for rental (650 megs) and the quality, when viewed on my 27-inch Curtis Mathes TV is atrocious.

Secondly, let's assume they REALLY provide a DVD-quality film download at the lowest possible size of 4.3 gigs (for 2-hour films). Two snags. Even if you were lucky enough to get a respectable download speed from the provider, downloading would take longer than watching the film itself in real-time. This assumes you have the traditional cable or DSL hookup. Rich persons with T3 speed access might fare better ... and I do mean MIGHT fare better. But, assuming you were willing to wait the length of time needed to download movies, tying up your computer use to that specific purpose, how long do you think it would be before you got a nasty email from your ISP telling you your bandwidth usage is a problem?

If you want to get a REAL feel for downloading DVD-quality movies, a website already allows you to do this FREE. All movies on this site are public-domain films (old films) but still eminently burnable and watchable. As an example, download the movie HERCULES (3.8 gigs, MPEG2, 1 hour 44 minutes runtime) from the URL below and see if this is something you'd want to tie up your computer time with:

http://www.archive.org/download/hercules/hercules.mpeg

... tick, tick, tick, tick ... see what I mean?

Thirdly, there's the price issue. Right now, you have to pay Movielink more to download their computer-only permanent copy of a film than it would cost you to buy it on DVD. When they finalize the licensing agreements with studios allowing people to KEEP and BURN those movies to DVD, do you think the price is going to go up or down?

Frankly, I don't think the DVD retail industry has anything to worry about in the near or possibly distant future.

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