Film giant Warner Bros. introduced an in-store option to turn physical copies of movies into cloud-based digital files rather than have people do it themselves.
Warner Bros. President Kevin Tsujihara announced the “disc-to-digital” program on Wednesday, saying the initiative is a convenient way to convert existing DVD and Blu-ray libraries. The company notes a large part of future movie sales will be in digital file form. But, before we say goodbye to DVDs and Blu-rays, officials say in-store DVD-to-cloud conversions is a bridge to the inevitable.
“We’re leading industry efforts to launch services so consumers can convert libraries easily, safely and at reasonable prices,” he said, announcing the initiative at Morgan Stanley technology, media and telecom conference in San Francisco.
Some critics are not happy. Prime product naysayer Public Knowledge went as far to say “Warner Bros. embarrasses self, everyone with new ‘Disc-to-Digital’ program.” The organization is fighting for consumers to keep rights to copies of their own purchased DVDs.
The non-profit public interest group created a graphic showcasing the inconvenience of an in-store only option to create a mobile file of a DVD. Warner Bros. process would involve this: “Have DVD, find shop, drive to shop, pay for movie again, find clerk, hope it works, drive home, want, hope machine works.” As opposed to the traditional: “Have DVD, make a copy, play it.”
There’s no word on pricing plans for cloud conversions, according to the L.A. Times.
Warner Bros. is hoping to lure consumers away from pirated DVDs online and on the streets with the new product.
The initiative will take place in parts. The first phase will allow DVD and Blu-ray owners to take their hardware into stores for conversion (think: CD to MP3). Online retailers — Amazon.com for example — will soon be able to email digital copies of movies to customers.
Warner Bros. says it was trying to appeal to people boosting large DVD collections and mentioned that a huge market for digital in-store conversion. U.S. consumers have bought more than 10 billion DVDs plus another 10 billion purchased internationally.
What do you think of this method for converting films to digital files? Do you think people should be able to make copies of their movies?
Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr, dearsomeone
Source: Mashable
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