GVLN - Are Torrents Destroying Hollywood? Part 5 and Final

English: improved version of http://commons.wikimedia.org/Sandy/Image:Bluray.png (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is the final part in our series of "Are Torrents Destroying Hollywood?".  This series has been very highly successful and so we are going to continue to explore various aspects of video downloads, burning, copyrights and so forth.  Each article in the future though will have it's own title and not be a part of an ongoing series.  In our final article here we have promised to discuss whether or not the disk is dead.  Arguments have been raging for several years now that the disk is dead.  That includes everything from music CD's, DVD movies, Blu Ray films, software and gaming disks.  The argument is that flash media, inexpensive mass storage hard drives, cloud storage, streaming media and instant downloads have changed the game.

  It has changed the game.  Sales on every type of media sold on disks is way down.  But does that mean that the disk is really dead?  We don't think so.  Here is why.  Let's look at the overall market force.  We are without question in some very tough financial times.  Sales on just about everything is down.  You can't site sales down in this area on a lack of interest.

  Another market pressure not usually considered in the sales numbers is the fact that the market is now flooded with all kinds of disks.  Retail marketing for disks of every sort is now available in more places and greater abundance.  Then there is the secondary market that is also very highly flooded.  Every thrift store, consignment shop, used or second hand store, pawn shop, flea market, yard sale and or garage sale has all kinds of disks for sale and now the prices are super cheap.  Local prices are between $2,00 to $4.00 per DVD title used.  CD's are now down to around $1.00 each.

  That's a lot of excess product out there.  There are a lot of people taking advantage of the lower prices on the secondary market that takes away from the primary retail market.  And the same with more retailers carrying more and more DVD titles.  Discounters have huge assortments to choose from these days and that includes movies, games, music and software.  Again, in the local market, if you don't want to pay the $10.00 price tag on a lower end jewel case game, wait until it is pulled off of Wal Mart's shelf and you can find it a week later at Ollie's Bargain store for only $3.99.

  Yet further considerations are the large amount of people without high speed Internet or even no Internet at all throughout rural and even suburban America.  All of these folks have no choice but to buy disks.

  Another area to consider is Blu Ray movies.  You do not want to play a hacked version of a Blu Ray movie on your Blu Ray player due to the fact that the next movie you buy may just shut the player down from playing that and all future Blu Ray movies again.  (Limited but becoming more common.  CLICK HERE for more information on this issue.

  We don't see the disk disappearing off the shelves for many years to come.  Also, compare the price of a 4 gig flash drive to a single layer DVD disk when transferring files and then giving the information to someone else.  A disk is still a much cheaper medium than a flash drive.

  One further issue.  When it comes to software, I would rather have the disk version than the download version any day of the week.  Re loading or setting up a new system and retiring an old system is much easier when you have the software disk.  Many downloaded software titles these days are not transferable to other computers even in the freeware arena.

  So no, the disk is not dead.  It's just fighting a highly saturated market force in a down economy.

We are ending this series with a nice freebie for everyone.  A Free downloadable video.  This is a legal video download and is in the MP4 format.  The title is Petticoat Junction - Herbie Get's Drafted.  This is an early 1960's sitcom.  It's in Black and White.  About 25 minutes in length and is around 111 mb's in size.
CLICK HERE for your free download.

  If you have problems with trying to figure out how to download the file. we have a link at the top of this site to one of our other sites that has full instructions there on how to get your copy.

Coming up next is a new series titled, "The Fight To Control Your Mind."

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GVLN - Are Torrents Destroying Hollywood? Part 4

Blu-ray disc front (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In our last article we left off with the promise that we would explain what is legal and what is not legal in the way of films.  Here is what is legal.  It is legal to make one backup copy of any disk that you own.  Whether that disk is a video, music software or what have you.  Now here is the catch.  Even though you have the right to make one backup copy of any disk you own, you do NOT have the right to break any copyright protection on any disk here in the USA.  That means that when you buy a DVD or a Blu Ray movie, most all of them contain some form of copyright protection.  So you do not have the right to make a copy of those disks by breaking the copyrighted protection on those disks.

  Now, if you can make a copy of those disks while keeping the copyright protection on them, then you are fine.  However, most all of the software out there that allows you to make backup copies of movies or software work by stripping off the copyright encryption that blocks you from making a copy of those disks.  When you backup a copy of say a Hollywood film, you have removed the encryption therefore violating the software owners rights.

  To date we have yet to find one software program that allows you to copy a disk and still maintain the original copyright protection.  We have heard of one, but have not been able to locate it.  So what does one do?  We have recently learned that through Wal Mart and their on line business, VUDU, you can now take a copy of any DVD you own and for a fee, have a digital copy made and stored on line.  The digital copy is good on any device.

  The draw back?  Wal Mart has to have agreements with the studio for that particular DVD title.  If Wal Mart does not have an agreement with that movie studio or for that title?  No copy.  CLICK HERE to see more about the service.
On the bright side?  Wal Mart is the first company to be doing this and your purchase remains in the cloud for many years to come.  The fees are very low starting at $2.00 per copy.

The bottom line is this.  If you purchase a DVD or Blu Ray disk, software or music that contains copy protection and you also buy software to crack that protection to make copies just for your own use and do not distribute any of the copies in any way including lending them to friends, then you will be breaking the law, but no one is going to come after you for it.

Maintaining backup copies is a good idea.  A new Blu Ray title is not cheap.  If you want to take a few disks with you on vacation it is a lot cheaper to have copies stolen than to have your originals stolen.  There isn't much of a market for copies of films already released.  If you are just making a digital version for your PSP, it's up to you to decide which is the best way to go.  If it's in the cloud through VUDU, you still have it in the cloud and can have it on your PSP as well.

Our final article will be on whether or not the disk is dead.

For all the latest news, please click on the Home button towards the top of this site.

Have a news story? Submit it above.

Some of Gloucester's most incredible history is found on this site in detail.

Gloucester, VA Links and News – A GVLN Website.

We cover what no one else will.

 

GVLN - Are Torrents Destroying Hollywood? Part 1

Hollywood Sign (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are torrents destroying Hollywood?  There have been a number of articles we have been reading all around in regards to just his subject.  Some complain that torrents aka peer to peer file sharing is costing Hollywood movie studios billions of dollars in revenue.  Others complain that Hollywood is doing it to itself.  We set out to see exactly what the real deal was as we have seen a lot of holes in all the stories out there.  You are going to be surprised at what we have found.   

We began by searching out a torrent software product that has an excellent overall rating.  Once we found the software and loaded it the rest was easy.  What we found was a real shocker.  We came across a host web site that could easily be compared to the Amazon of movies.  Though the selection was limited to just under 2,000 videos, the selection was still very impressive and hosted on an incredibly well laid out site where a great deal of both time and money was spent on the site.

The image to the right here is a sample screen shot of the listings from the site we are presently talking about.  If you click on the image, you will get an enlarged view.  This site has it all.  If you choose to view the info on the movie, you go to a new page where a brief synopsis of the movie is on the page along with usually 3 screen shots from the actual film.

You also have an option to watch a preview of the film you are considering.  The majority of the previews we have watched are the actual trailers for the film with only a few that were done by someone from outside of the movie studios.  Again, when you opt for the film preview, a new pop up window appears and the preview plays on the pop up.  This is some nice expensive software and design.  Again, look at the picture above.  That is a very well thought out site design.

  This site above is where we ran the vast majority of our tests.  Again the site is extremely well laid out and no expenses seem to have been spared.  Yet there is no charge for downloading any of these movies.  You read that right, no charge for downloading any of the movies on this site.  This site also has a very large Facebook fan page where they announce all their latest releases.

  On the torrent software, there are an average of between 200 and 400 seeds or people at any given time of the day or night that are both downloading these films as well as uploading them.  The way the torrent software works as you are downloading something, you are also uploading a smaller section of that same file to someone else as well as other films you have in your torrent list that others are looking to download.

  It's an exchange service of sorts.  The site we are discussing here makes the entire process seem very legitimate because of it's incredible professionalism.  What really shocked us is the new video release that showed up on the site a few days ago.  The Avengers.  This film is still being played in some movie theaters and has a release date of September 25th, 2012.  This torrent site already has the entire video available for download for free.  With hundreds of people downloading this video at any given moment during a 24 hour period, that means that thousands of people a day are getting this film before it even hits the store shelves.

  So on that end, yes, Hollywood is suffering huge losses on the potential sales of this and other titles before it even hits the shelves.  Plus as we have already said, this film is still playing in some movie theaters.  That affects the sales of tickets at the theaters as well.  The picture here shows the download from the torrent site.

This site usually offers the film in two to three formats.  1080 P full high definition, 720 P standard high definition and when available, 3D 1080 P.   The site has all three formats available for the Avengers film on line now.  More than a month before it's scheduled release date.  Amazon has a pre order price on the 3D Blu Ray version of 29.96 with free shipping and you have to wait for it.  It won't ship until release date.

  How do you estimate the loss on this one title alone?  We ran our tests for two weeks.  We were able to download about 50 films with a retail value of somewhere around one thousand dollars.  Again that was only for two weeks and we did not spend all day every day doing so.  We downloaded about 4 or 5 per day.  About 3 to 4 hours worth of time each day.

  We checked a number of items during this time.  We checked for back door attacks, viruses, open port hacks, malware, spyware and anything else that could go wrong.  We had no issues on any of the files or any of the times we downloaded and uploaded the torrents.  What about quality?  Here is where once again we were very shocked.  The quality of the torrents are extraordinarily good and the file formats used on just about everyone of these films were a universal MP4 format.  Only a couple of the films was in an mkv format.  The mkv format is not a common format and one will not be able to play the video without a special codec or video player to handle the file format.

  MP4 videos are about as universal to operating systems as MP3 audio is.  Microsoft, Apple and Linux systems can all handle these formats.  Even Andriod enabled products have no issues with this file format.  Every film we checked played very smoothly and was of true HD quality.  Only the mkv file formats had some motion issues.


Ending notes:  This ends part one of this series.  We have not mentioned the name of the exact torrent software nor the name of the site in this discussion for a reason.  The site contains illegal downloads that do hurt legitimate companies and their employees.  It is not our intention to teach people how to download illegal video files, but to educate people in the problems associated with these types of sites and issues.  We have since deleted the torrent software from our own system and will soon be deleting the downloads once this series is over.

For all the latest news, please click on the Home button towards the top of this site.

Have a news story? Submit it above.

Some of Gloucester's most incredible history is found on this site in detail.

Gloucester, VA Links and News – A GVLN Website.

We cover what no one else will.