04.06Survey: Yes, people want to rip their own DVDs
Got an interesting press release today: the National Consumers League surveyed people about their DVD habits and desires, and found that nearly everyone who responded to the survey thought backing up a DVD to a computer ought to be an inherent and obvious right. From the release:
According to the survey, 90 percent (and 93 percent of those with children in the household) agree that DVD owners should be able to copy a DVD to their computer in the same way that they save music from a CD.
I concur. Further highlights: 51 percent found it troublesome that they’d need to crack encryption (i.e., break the law) or pay more for a DVD that allowed a digital copy, while 46 percent of those who wanted the ability to back up their media said they had, in fact, had to repurchase DVDs in the past that were lost or damaged. Plus, and I think this is notable, the survey points out how many people are watching DVDs on their computers — 69 percent overall and 74 percent of respondents with children. DVDs aren’t just about home theaters anymore, and the less flexible they are, the more portable they have to be, which only increases the danger that they’ll be lost or damaged.
The release takes a slightly threatening tone (of which, I admit, I approve) by noting that in these troubled times, when those surveyed also reported buying fewer DVDs, it might be wise for the industry to realize that continuing to sell these overpriced, crippled little coasters that don’t even let you fast-forward past trailers pimping other overpriced coasters might be a losing proposition. I might have rephrased that a bit. But almost every time I watch a DVD, I am astonished anew at how stupid and frustrating DVDs are. And Blu-Ray, in addition to being saddled with most of the usual annoying restrictions, also brings the exciting Russian roulette game that is HDCP compatibility concerns. Better hope that every single piece of your home theater is HDCP-compliant, or risk your overpriced disc giving you a nice little error about how it can’t play. Is it any wonder we’re so excited about digital distribution?
I’m sorry, Blu-Ray, but the DVD is dead. As Netbooks proliferate, more of our personal computers are without optical drives, and these physical discs make no sense. More and more people have robust home networks capable of storing and backing up digital media, and streaming it to different parts of the house. This is becoming standard consumer behavior, and before you start to argue that we all just want to pirate movies, let me break it down to just one simple real-world example. My household has one TV. I have a workout DVD I use regularly. Why can’t I, legally, rip that DVD, store it on my Netbook or even my network-attached storage, and then play it back in another room so I can work out without monopolizing the television? Is that so hard? Is backup so hard to believe? This is basic fair use behavior that’s been prohibited for too long, and as the results of this survey show, these disc-based restrictions on backup and ripping are incomprehensible in the digital age. Get with the picture, DVDs, or get out of the way.
5 Responses to “Survey: Yes, people want to rip their own DVDs”
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With digital media boxes (AppleTV and the like) replacing the family VCR and even DVD player, we (consumers) should be able to rip our DVDs.
As an example, we are looking to replace our bedroom TV which has a built in DVD player. I don’t want to limited as to what HDTV I get for a built in player. I want to hookup an AppleTV instead. It’s small and I get all kinds of media on it. At the same time, I want to be able to put all my DVDs on a media server and pull them up on my AppleTV. Right now that is illegal unless I forgo physical media and go with pure digital. Yet the distribution of that media is terrible, currently, unless you rent or illegally download.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Oh so true, so true. Heck my case, moved to Oxford, England from the US. I sure as heck wasn’t bringing my 200+ dvd movie collection or massive DVD TV collection. Ripped them and have them stored on justa couple of external hard drives.
Also even if I did want to bring the dvds, I’d either have to bring a Region 1 DVD player, buy a region free DVD player or hack a dvd player to be region free! How stupid.
I’m not going to pay for my movies/tv multiple times. I accepted it for going from vhs to dvd, but not from DVD to digital. I can do it with my CDs, I’m doing it with my dvds.
April 6th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
“Is it any wonder we’re so excited about digital distribution?”
That really should be phrased “is it any wonder we are so excited about the IDEA of digital distribution?”
Because the REALITY of digital distribution thus far has proven to be a heavily balkanized clusterfrack that makes the headaches of HDCP handshakes seem like child’s play. Everybody’s got their own boxes and everybody is all about keeping you locked into their little ecosystem. Few of them give you the freedom to movie content around (much less back it up)… that is unless it’s to a custom device that they mark up with a hefty premium and sell you. And to make matters worse each ecosystem has a different deal with the content providers and these licensing arrangements seem to change daily… movies get yanked added with equal speed (isn’t this now its here nows its gone nonsense exactly what we all find so frustrating about Hulu?). Well get ready because The Cloud is proving to be more of a mechanism for even more studio control than the content utopia geeks love to dream about.
This is not a future to which I am looking forward at all.
April 6th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Amen, sister!
April 8th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Molly,
Thank you for giving voice to this issue. They’re both discs. One has music, one has movies. I bought them. What’s the difference? This is absolutely ridiculous.
In fact, I’ve purchased so many DVD’s, well over 200 now, that I keep forgetting which ones I already own, and have accidentally purchased some more than once.
I would really like to have a AppleTV/FrontRow style library to browse through all of the DVD’s I’ve already purchased from my couch.
I’m surprised Apple isn’t fighting for this more aggressively. There’s no way the iPod would ever have taken off if we couldn’t get our music libraries started with the CD’s we’d already bought.
Imagine how much their movie sales/rentals would take off if people got accustomed to not needing to make an extra trip to Blockbuster to return a movie, or never getting frustrated from a movie skipping back to the beginning from scratches on the disc.
Anyhow, if anyone wants an extra DVD of Sleepless in Seattle, let me know. =)
John
July 7th, 2009 at 10:13 pm