Today, Seagate announced in collaboration with Paramount Pictures the first hard drive to ship with a unlocked full length major motion picture.
The 500GB Free Agent Go ships pre-loaded with Star Trek for free, plus 20 other Paramount films that can easily be unlocked for consumption on a laptop, desktop, or TV using Seagate’s FreeAgent Theater+ home entertainment system. You can get your special edition FreeAgent Go here (Open in IE).
What is this all about? According to Mark Ducard, senior VP of Digital Distribution at Paramount, “And with over 38 hours of movie viewing enjoyment pre-loaded onto the portable device, we are offering consumers a great opportunity to jump start their digital libraries.”
I can’t argue with that. I only hope the trend continues. Will there come a day where I can build my digital library with stuff like:
- The compete history of Metallica (music, videos, live concerts, movies – Some Kind of Monster, etc.)
- Seinfeld – the complete collection
- MTV – the early years (when it was good)
It cannot be far away. Look at what has been introduced in the past few months:
- The Complete National Geographic on 160GB Hard Drive
- Lost – The Complete Collection on Blu-ray
- Clint Eastwood – 35 Films 35 Years
Perhaps, instead of saying, “The new XYZ is out on DVD”. We may just start saying, “The new XYZ is out on hard drive”.
Let’s only hope.
What would you want in your digital library?
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Image by: http://gadgethim.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Star-Trek-Webcam-3.jpg
Ooh so wait, this is just a normal ext hdd housing? its not in that Enterprise Starship shell??? bummer, I would have been all over that if it was like the picture.
Sorry Daniel…that pic is actually a web cam…pretty cool. You could always customize the shell c/o http://www.music-skins.com. Thanks for checking in.
ahh bummer I thought maybe you guys put a 500gb 2.5″ HDD in the crew portion of the enterprise and then the rest of the hardware in the engineering side. So thats a webcam huh well thats kinda neat will have to look around for that then. 🙂 Well thanks just the same.
Yes, a picture of the real product would work well.
Still, I don’t see the attraction of this. Why would I pay the purchase price of any of these movies, when I can rent/NetFlix/etc for a lot less?
$10-$15 for a movie file on my hard drive – not something “real” and shelvable that buying a movie for that price at the store includes? $5 per movie would be more reasonable. The upside *could* be that there’s no unskippable advertising on these versions. One can only hope.
Anyway, I’d like to see the proof that piracy is impacting DVD sales. I can think of a lot of other reasons:
1. Making movies I don’t feel the need to watch again. Or do they expect everyone to buy [romantic comedy variation #274] on DVD? Most people would be hard pressed to remember the movie let alone want to buy it.
2. Purchased DVDs are full of advertising and intro screens you can’t skip. I have actually converted all my DVDs to AVI files, so I can *just watch the movie* when I want to. Much better “customer experience” – hello.
3. Services like NetFlix would be impacting DVD sales a lot. Like CDs, people feel less inclined now to clutter up space with a rack full of DVDs.
4. The times are a’changin. Digital media all the rage – and they’re blaming *piracy* for dropping DVD sales?! Come on, as businesspeople they cannot be (and I’m sure are not) that dumb.
The problem is Hollywood doesn’t know how to change with the times. This product is a good example of that. It’s easier to blame pirates for it all, make up some figures to support that proposition and lobby government to protect their profits by turning the internet into one big paywall.
Hollywood is not struggling or losing money. They regularly rip off the artists they pretend to defend. This is why the Tolkein Estate (a charitable trust) is suing New Line cinema for cheating it out of at least $150 million from the trilogy. Google “hollywood accounting”.
Hollywood needs no help. Avatar made a lot of money, as one example, and that’s something people *will* buy on DVD. Gosh, they made a movie people want to see more than once! Amazing! Perhaps Hollywood should focus on quality over quantity – and offer a desirable product for the Digital Generation – before whinging to us all about dropping DVD sales. It’s their fault, not anyone else’s.
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