Frustrations with Digital Copies of Films

I'm a big lover of technology and also am a lover of films.

Despite my love of digital, I've not found moving away from DVDs a particularly easy process - I watch Blu-Ray for some films where High Definition is more of an issue, but don't have Blu-Ray capability in all rooms (yet).

As a result, I've been buying double and triple play packages recently. For watching in the various rooms of my house, this works fine, but I also have mobile devices, which is where complications arise.

All these "legitimate" options use DRM - Digital Rights Management. I hate this - it limits you to using this on persons iTunes account, which doesn't work particularly well when like me you share this media with your partner, but have separate accounts.

So, we bought a few films recently that came with digital copies - these were the A-Team, Crazy Stupid Love, This Means War and Sherlock 2.

2 of these used a system called Ultraviolet and interfaced with Flixster. It wasn't immediately intuitive that you could get these on to the iPad or iPhone. Eventually I worked out that you could use the Flixster Movies app, which you could then download the film to.

This is then locked to those devices, but at least we could get it on there.

Sherlock 2 was fairly simple - iTunes allowed us to enter a code and that downloaded nice and smoothly straight away.

The A-Team experience was a massive fail on Fox Movies part. It came with a digital copy on a disc, but the code that came with it didn't work. It did say that a few issues had been had with some, and that you could request a second code. So I did that, and it said I had no allocations left!

I then had to email Fox, who did a day or two later email a fresh code, which did work.

What frustrates me with all of this the most, is that whilst these are now available on my girlfriends mobile devices, I can't use them myself on my mobile devices (maybe I'm greedy, but we each have our own ones to help us with our digital lives).

Also, for one of the Harry Potter films, I didn't immediately download the copy of the film, which resulted in "losing" the copy, as it expired. This drove me insane - I wanted to get a copy of this digital film, that I'd paid for, and was blocked from doing so!

Whenever we've been given copies of video from more dubious sources, using an App like Buzz Player allows you to use just about any video on all devices. 


I avoid deliberately, illegally downloading. But I can see why people do it. It's easier, it's faster, you jump through far less hoops, you can use it more easily across devices.


I understand that the big film studios want to protect their assets, but they actually make it considerably harder than it needs to be. DRM has been dropped from most music sources, and from the figures I've seen have shown digital revenues increasing. This hasn't been happening that I can see for the film industry - I'm sure there is growth, but most digital video I've been using has been coming along with physical copies.

I think ultimately, the Oatmeal sums it up perfectly, with "I tried to watch Game of Thrones and this is what Happened"! Go read this, it's excellent and funny!

Windows 8 Won't Play DVD Videos - a Backwards Step

I just read this article on Gizmodo, about how Windows 8 isn't going to play DVDs natively.

Whilst I can see the sense in this to a degree in terms of cutting costs in licences for Windows, it seems such a backwards step to remove a feature that so many people will just assume exists within the operating system.

In my day job I'm always helping out folks that are not the most technically savvy - they just want things to "work" straight out of the box.

Whilst many people are now much more used to downloading video files, and need players to support various codecs and the like, there is still a large gap of understanding, particularly with the silver surfer generation.

Removing these things that have always just worked is likely to cause confusion to these people.

There are of course, plenty of ways to get a free bit of software to install that will handle this. I can see that my grandparents are all likely to be on the phone to me to help me to get them install it though, as I've suggested for their security that they don't tackle these items alone!

Options for Personal and Small Business Cloud Hosting Drives

I guess my intro post doesn't really count as a "first" real blog post, so next up, following the launch of the Google Drive project, I've decided to look at the various cloud "drive" hosting options that are available at the moment.

Dropbox

An established player in the market, dropbox is a really simple to use cloud backup system, allowing you access to your files wherever you are.

With desktop, mac, smartphones and tablets all supported with its own software, coupled with browser access to your files, you'll never be unable to reach them wherever you are in the world.

Here is a video introduction to Dropbox:

You can get up to 18GB free based on how many people you invite, or can monthly fees based on the amount you require, with discounts for purchasing annually. You do however, only start with 2GB for free.

One of the most useful aspects of Dropbox is its ease for sharing between individuals and groups. With a large user base installed already and more people signing up via referrals all the time, if you need sharing of these backups amongst many users, Dropbox has historically been the best option.

Dropbox is probably the market leader in this space at the moment, so the reviews of the remaining options will be comparing against this benchmark.

SkyDrive

Brought to you by the IT behemoth that is Microsoft, SkyDrive has very similar features to DropBox, with access to files across PC's and Mac's, mobile access and simple sharing options via web browsers without any need for signing in.

There are also really simple options to share with social media websites.

You also get a whopping 7GB on a free account - 5GB more than you start with on Dropbox!

Here is a video introduction to SkyDrive:

Google Drive

Only launched this week, Google Drive has been making waves, not only just in its name.

There has been plenty of chatter of some fairly controversial terms of service, which imply that Google can do anything with anything you upload, in all likelihood, this was just poorly written, and isn't likely to be too great a concern.

Particularly useful for those users who are tied up in the Google ecosystem with Android, GMail and the like, Google Drive starts you off with 5GB of storage and has aims to integrate with all of the mobile devices in the near future (iOS wasn't supported at the time of writing for iPad or iPhone).

It also ties in with the Google Docs system allowing huge amounts of collaboration.

My main fear about using this is the combined level of information Google would have about everything I do... Lord knows they have enough already!

Here is a video introduction to Google Drive:

SugarSync

Another service giving you 5GB for starters, this outsider in the market is full of the features used by the others. Again you have support across multiple devices, mobile and sharing facilities (I guess this is the point of them all though).

Some of the unique features of SugarSync are that you can sync any folders on your machines, it interacts with Outlook, SugarSync is one of the most flexible cloud storage options available.

Here is a video introduction to SugarSync:

Conclusions:

I've been using Dropbox for a long time now and have built up a good amount of storage, but in the shorter term many of these allow for much greater volumes of storage initially without going through the referral process. That said, I wouldn't be without the sharing features built in to Dropbox for how I use it.

I'd love to hear any experiences you have with working with any of these, or any other comparable tools? 

Over and out...

Welcome to My Small Business Technology Writings

Hi There! Thanks for stopping by and welcome to My Small Business Technology Writings!

My name is Ben Jones, and I'm going to be writing about my experiences and investigations into the world of technology. I've got lots of friends that I am helping advise on technology for their businesses (which are mostly small), and we'll be looking at various options that they have to be implementing things.

I also play with gadgets a lot, so will likely get writing about those from time to time.

If there are any things that you would particularly like to see me writing about, leave a comment and I'll see what I can do!

Hope to see you here again soon!