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expatriado ,

lets make a reusable item single use, cuz landfills won’t top themselves

Empricorn ,

I feel like you’re forgetting that shareholder profits can be maximized.

roofuskit ,

Relevant

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/7b4f5326-3d9c-4d7e-accb-13daf0f5ebef.jpeg

mipadaitu ,

To be fair, it was reusable, you just had to pay to use it again.

Unfortunately it relied on dial up internet, cause home broadband was pretty rare back then.

ch00f ,

It was reusable. The idea was basically the current iTunes model (rent for two days or buy forever) except with abstracting the license from the data since internet speeds weren’t fast enough to stream video.

So you’d “buy” or “rent” the license to watch the disc. Once your rental was up, you could give the disc to a friend who could buy or rent it. The idea was to basically use sneakernet to handle the heavy lifting and the internet just for license/DRM purposes.

Considering people today are willing to pay $10 to “own” a movie that’s on some server they will never see, it really wasn’t a terrible idea. Especially since the licenses were stored on the hardware, so your movies would continue to play even if the server shut down. It’s just separating content from rights management is a really abstract concept and they didn’t do a good job explaining it.

See also: people getting upset about day1 DLC being included on the game disc, but have no issue buying a digital download.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

And people forget that Netflix’s original model was also sneakernet. Before streaming was viable they would physically mail you a DVD, which when you were done with you had to drop off someplace or physically mail back. The difference with Netflix was that if you didn’t give the disk back they’d whack you for a (rather inflated, as I recall) purchase price for the movie. DIVX would just disable your ability to play it until you coughed up, obviating the need for a return trip for the disk.

mosiacmango ,

If you had a subscription, you could have a Netflix disc indefinitely. You just couldn’t rent any new movies/shows until you returned it.

If you cancelled your subscription and kept the disc, then yeah they hit you with a “higher than cost” fee.

Soggy ,

And it was a pretty great deal when you watched a load of movies, like my family did. We were very early adopters. Queue over a hundred titles deep and it never shrank because we added as fast as they came.

roofuskit ,

Even worse, there was a special “rental” DVD meant for sales in gas stations and convenience stores that didn’t require a special player like this one, but it literally would degrade and become unplayable after you opened it. And that’s how they controlled the rental period. So unlike this DRM scheme, it would literally be unusable garbage.

madcaesar ,

The amount of brain power and inginuity wasted on bullshit like this is so sad. Corporations once they get big enough all turn into evil pieces of shit.

SpaceNoodle ,

ITT: people confusing DIVX with DivX

not_woody_shaw ,

I knew there’d been some kind of thing with the same name as the open source(ish?) DivX video codec, but not living in the USA I never found out what exactly it was.

Poppa_Mo ,

Don’t act like they’re stupid for not knowing the difference because of the caps lol.

4am ,

I sure did

SpaceNoodle ,

Where am I doing that?

DivX was purposefully named to mock DIVX.

njm1314 ,

I guess it’s actually worse for Circuit City that I’ve never even heard of this. Like doing evil things is bad doing evil things and still being beneath our notice is probably worse for a company.

Ghostalmedia , (edited )
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

Circuit City’s downfall was due to a lot more than just a DVD player that didn’t sell well.

They also had famously bad customer service and made a lot of other very strange decisions about what products they would and would not carry.

When BestBuy started to take their market share, they had stores that were notcsurrounded in vultures and they actually sold dishwashers and whatnot.

Circuit City was run by a bunch of people who thought they could punch a penny here and there to optimize revenue, and they optimized themselves into become stores had terrible products and people.

aramova ,

They also had famously bad customer service and made a lot of other very strange decisions about what products they would and would not carry.

But but the jingle said ‘Service was state of the art’

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I remember it very well. You also needed a special player to play them, which only Circuit City sold. It was all cheaper than DVDs and DVD players, but obviously only if you watched it once or twice. And it was more expensive than renting it at Blockbuster.

Just a stupid idea.

dohpaz42 ,
@dohpaz42@lemmy.world avatar

Ironically the “viewable for 48 hours” is now the model for renting streamed movies using a special device. They were ahead of their time.

NegativeInf ,

Hopefully all these things follow the same path. Bankruptcy. Like their morals.

argh_another_username , (edited )

I remember DirecTV in the late 90s used this model. When you wanted to watch a pay-per-view, you had access to a channel that was streaming broadcasting it for 24 or 48 hours.

ramble81 ,

Oh o remember that. And it wasn’t on demand either, it was just that movie over and over again so you had to line up your viewing with their timeframe, right?

Sesudesu ,

It’s not that ironic.

Renting used to exist, and it required you to have a dvd or vhs player. Renting on streaming doesn’t require a ‘special device.’ In fact it is the least special device needed by comparison, as you can watch on so many different devices.

48 hours was pretty common on new release rentals too, if not even less time.

Imagine if instead you needed to buy another tablet that only functioned as a video rental device. And nothing else could watch the rentals. That would be closer to reality.

legion02 ,

What’s hilarious is that divx was the most popular pirate format back in the day before they went commercial use and xvid replaced it.

AllNewTypeFace ,
@AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space avatar

I think that was deliberate, and some pirate cheekily named the file format after a hated junk DVD format

BeigeAgenda ,
@BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca avatar

Ah the good old days when mplayer was needed to handle the partially corrupt divx files on 800mb CD-Rs with missing I-frames, and audio sync issues right and left.

A_Union_of_Kobolds ,

At the same time, nearly everything on PCs was watched with DivX, which made things annoyingly confusing

gibmiser ,

OK I knew something sounded wrong about this but couldn’t remember what

QuarterSwede ,
@QuarterSwede@lemmy.world avatar

Divx was a video codec and much better than the others at that time. It was super confusing when Circuit City announced their DIVX program.

0x0 ,

Guys, check out my new video streaming site that has a bunch more restrictions than you’d expect. It’s called yOuTuBE. What do you mean “that’s confusing”?

Bertuccio ,

Consumer hatred works.

People could have dumped Netflix and all this other shit and forced better products…

AllNewTypeFace ,
@AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space avatar

IIRC, they were just normal DVDs, with a layer which would gradually become opaque after exposure to air, turning them into garbage.

thedudeabides ,

Is Don_Dickle the gallowboob of Lemmy? Been seeing them everywhere

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Penny Arcade had a character that was a DivX player they bought, that grew arms and legs and started walking around the apartment fucking things up and insulting the other characters.

driving_crooner ,
@driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br avatar

Technology connections did a video about something related: youtube.com/watch?v=ccneE_gkSAs

Empricorn ,

Great video!

magnetosphere ,
@magnetosphere@fedia.io avatar

I remember this. I absolutely hated the DIVX format, and was rooting for it to die.

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