Fragile DRM

I'm sick and tired of DRM.

Now, while some might be opposed to digital rights management under any circumstances, I'm willing to put up with reasonable controls...but only if they work.

Case in point: Netflix's Watch Instantly feature. It's one of the most attractive features of the service, and when coupled with something like the Roku Netflix Player, it's hard to see why this isn't the future of media delivery. One thing though: it uses Microsoft's DRM, and in practice, that's fragile at best.

I used to be able to Watch Instantly on my PC and our home theater PC, both running Vista. Aside from the annoyance of having DRM software updates every couple of months, it was a pain-free experience. Until we upgraded to Vista Service Pack 1--which promptly broke Watch Instantly. Following the Netflix and Microsoft instructions to reset the DRM (essentially creating new keys and throwing out the old ones...you didn't need those old keys for other, um, protected content, right?), nothing worked. Some even said that Netflix was telling people to downgrade from SP1!

I finally reloaded Vista on my PC, and lo and behold, Watch Instantly started working again even with SP1. But to this day, it doesn't work on our HTPC. And now, the self-service instructions that Netflix used to offer have been replaced by instructions to call their technical support to resolve the problem.

And I haven't even hit the other frequent problems of the hardware fingerprint changing (such as changing a hard drive or motherboard) or running out of unique machines that Watch Instantly can be used on before having to call Netflix to increase the count.

Firefox? Opera? Mac? Linux? None of them work because Microsoft's scheme uses Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer (maybe Mac support by year's end, but you get the point).

"Handle with care" is all I have to say... Read more...

Creative Movie Posters

Once upon a time, I wanted to start collecting movie posters once I had a house. Although that hasn't come to pass (the collecting part, not the house), every once in a while, I see some posters that really make me want to start plastering my walls with them. A few years ago, it was the promo poster for HBO's Carnivale. Today, I ran across this blog post with a few good designs (and admittedly, some not so good ones--the posters and the movies).

My favorites are two from The Dark Knight (Joker/Batman/Dent and one with Joker), Lord of War, Max Payne, and, marginally, Cloverfield (which in itself, could have been so, so much better than it turned out to be).

Chronicles of the Fast and the Babylon A.D.

We caught Babylon A.D. over Labor Day weekend because my wife and sister both like Vin Diesel--alot. Don't get me wrong, I like him too, ever since Pitch Black, but B.A.D. (hmmm) is a collection of his typecast roles, from The Fast and The Furious to Chronicles of Riddick to xXx. A Children of Men clone (which I liked enough to buy on DVD but I was't as impressed by that movie as some), B.A.D. fails to capture even a tenth of the plot development of CoM.

The movie had promise, especially the first couple of acts as "Toorop" (whaaa?) and his package escape from Russia to Canada on their way to New York. I loved the dystopian future combined with the glimpses of future technology (interactive e-ink map, omnipresent Google, and the ginormous TV wall). I was hoping for more, but alas, it didn't even approach the futuregeekness of, say, Minority Report.

However, the movie ultimately falls apart because it doesn't give the audience a compelling reason to root for the characters, unlike CoM, which the very future of humanity was at stake. And don't get me started on the ending...I won't spoil it, but it was either the most blatant sequel setup ever or they ran out of ideas or money or both since there's seemingly no final act. I think the "WTF?!? C'mon!" reactions from the crowd as the director credit appeared sums Babylon A.D. up best.

With that behind us, bring on the next Fast and Furious. My sis and wife need a better Vin fix!

This Changes Everything

Wired has a great article this month about the RED digital movie camera designed by a team assembled by Jim Jannard, the founder of Oakley. It's insanely affordable ($17.5K for a professional movie camera), comes very close to film quality, and outputs in an easy-to-edit digital format. Moreover, it even handles focus similarly to film, allowing striking photography. Check out this sample:


BIKER teaser from Macgregor on Vimeo.

But what I'm even more excited about is a DSLR version that is supposedly in the works. It bodes well for our future if one day consumers can own a camera such as this. It could make our digicam shots today look like Polaroids by comparison. Given that RED is releasing a $3000 camcorder version of the RED One next year, maybe that day will be here sooner.