In reply to:

Or you could pay $19.95ish to unlock the movie forever.


But as you pointed out, that $19.95ish would only give you the right to play that movie on your player, not your friends or neighbors. So even though you purchased the movie, you'd still get whacked if you brought it to a friends house to watch.

Here's my take on the technical details of the failed format...

You purchased a DIVX disc at your local and convienient Circuit S***ty store for about $5.00. From the moment you first played the disc, a 48 hour timer is started. You can watch it as much as you want for 48-hours. Once that timer expires, the disc is no longer free. At that point, if you put the disc in for another viewing, the player essentially charges you $2.50ish, and unlocks the disc for another 48-hours. So it didn't charge you for EVERY viewing, but it did hit you for 48-hour viewing blocks.

On top of all that, there was the DIVX "Silver" option. This allowed you to pay a flat fee and have unlimited viewing rights to that movie... the catch is - only on YOUR DIVX box. Nobody elses. If you travelled to grandma's to watch one of your movies, she'd get smacked with a $2.50 charge.

The other option that never saw the light was the DIVX Gold disc.... this option was a freely playable disc on all DIVX players... no extra charges. This tier was never sold, and a pricepoint was never set for it. It wasn't without fault, though. Although it could be played on all players with out a fee, it could NOT play on a standard DVD player. It had to be a DIVX player. And considering the prices hadn't been announced for them, I can only imagine they'd be more than the DVD prices we are seeing now.

The major problem, besides information security and wasting your own personal shelf space (or landfill space) with what amounts to someone elses rental selection, was that the studios were 100% behind it. DVD's as we know it today would be non-existant, and all of the control would be flowing to the execs at CC and the studios. Who's to say that, in 5 years, they wouldn't raise the rates on things?I wanted to retain "control" over the movies I purchased, so I was vehamently (sp) opposed to the format, and would go into CC and sabotage the salespersons efforts. (heheh)

Talking about an off-topic run!

Ok - back to work...
-Greg