DigitalSandbox

File this under “Missing the Point.” In what at first blush appears to be a smart move by movie studios, Warner Bros. has announced that they will begin to offer legal movie and TV downloads via BitTorrent. But just to make sure that we understand that they still don’t get it, they have crippled the downloads to the point of hilarity.

Naturally, the movies/TV shows will employ a mode of DRM to ensure that they are not pirated. Many people point out?correctly?that DRM only actually punishes the legimate users since they have paid for a product that they can do less with. While I agree with that, I also understand that content creators are not going to release their stuff without some form of protection. The problem with the DRM that Warner Bros. will be using is that the movie will only be able to be used on the computer that it is downloaded to. That’s it, no other devices.

You can burn a DVD, but that DVD will only be able to be used on the computer you downloaded to. It will not work in a set-top DVD player. So you had better download it on your Home Entertainment PC. What? You don’t have one? Well, I hope you enjoy watching movies at your desk then.

Then, to really drive home the point that they just don’t understand file traders, the price point is all wrong. The movie will cost about the same as a regular DVD. TV shows don’t seem too bad as they will likely be only 1 dollar per episode which is half the price of an iTunes TV download.

So for your money, you get a movie that you can enjoy on one computer. The ability to burn it to a DVD that you can enjoy on that same computer. And, you get to…ummm…I guess that’s it. All for about the same cost as a regular DVD. If you buy the DVD you get a movie that you can watch on any DVD player or computer with a DVD drive. Likely some good extras on the disc as well.

Warner Bros. is going to milk you for everything on this deal. They give you a movie where they don’t have to pay for art and packaging. They don’t have to pay for bandwidth since they use BitTorrent to distribute it. And they are charging you about the same amount as a DVD from the store, so they are making a ton of profit off the deal.

They are billing this as an attempt to lure illegal downloaders. You know, like iTunes did for music. One problem, they aren’t going to fool anyone who is technically savvy enough to know how to download movies via BitTorrent into thinking that this a good deal. File traders already understand that this is a bad deal and are going to stay away. The reason that iTunes worked was a combination of ensuring that the user got high quality file that were easy to locate at a reasonable price.

With the amount of crippling they did on these downloads, I don’t think you can convince many people to pay more than $5. Even if you allowed it to be used in more devices and locations I doubt that many people will pay more that $10 for a downloaded movie.

I would probably pay $10 for a movie download if I was downloading the actual DVD disk image that I could then burn and play on my set-top box. That includes everything you get on the retail disk. If you really want to get me on board, offer the hi-res artwork files so I can run off my own copies and insert into a case. Then offer a smaller file size version (like an H.264 compressed version) of the movie that I can use on my iPod or just smaller file size to leave on my laptop. You have to offer extra value if you are going to lure illegal downloaders back to the “light side.”

Even if you offer all that, I wouldn’t pay much more than $12-$13. Considering that virtually no one pays full retail for a DVD you can’t really justify going above that since many DVDs can be had on sale for around $15. $10 dollars is probably the sweet spot. It will be to movies what $1 downloads was to music. Provided the DRM is structured similar to iTunes where I can use it on a combination of devices and not feel restricted by the DRM.