Digital Copy (now over here!)
Over the weekend I bought Watchmen on Blu-ray. We can argue about the film some other time; right now let’s talk about Digital Copy! It’s a recent development in over-the-counter video media; one I saw develop across the pond with interest/envy but hadn’t realised it had reached our shores until now.
On the front of some DVD or Blu-ray retail boxes you may find reference to a “Bonus Digital Copy,” or some such thing. But what is it, and why should it interest you?
By now, the merits of ripping all your CDs into digital format and having iTunes or equivalent manage the lot is well understood. “All your music on your laptop, transfer to your iPod, yay!” Fun times. Everyone’s had a blast. Of course, the music industry may disagree. Which means the film industry isn’t going to take a dip in the digital waters until it absolutely has to; at least until it’s winced at music’s nasty shark-bite scars.
It’s not difficult to rip video in a similar fashion to that we’ve become accustomed to with audio1. The user experience is anything but polished however (your auntie would probably struggle2). This is largely because commercial software in this arena is quickly squashed3. Digital Copy is a positive step into legitimate movie ripping [sic] and, as we’ll see, forms a bridge between current physical retail sales and online digital distribution (the future).
Here’s how it works. In the DVD box there’s a disc with ‘Digital Copy’ marked on it. Put it in your PC or Mac and an autoplay application will walk you through the process. It’ll launch and prep iTunes (or Windows Media Player), which imports the content.
Also in the box is a bit of paper with a code on it. Type it in, sign in to your iTunes account and then then the Digital Copy is transferred from the disc into your library.
Check the Movies section and there it is.
That was pretty painless. And the result is a decent digital product. The file is DRM‘d (you were expecting that, right?), good quality (not HD, in my case 853×352) and professionally-encoded (H.264, with chapters, stereo and Dobly Digital 5.1 channels, tidy metadata, film poster artwork). Incidentally, have you tried taking a screenshot of a DRM’d movie in iTunes? I was trying to show off the chapter markers…
Yeah, that’s right. Take that modern cinema! I see your CGI effects and I raise you…SQUARES!!! See the nonsense tech folks have to implement when dealing with film (anti-) piracy issues? Sheesh…
From here it could go on your iPod or over to your Apple TV (being DRM protected it has to remain in the Apple-sanctioned universe—one step at a time, that comes next).
In conclusion, this is a nice stop-gap until a time the film industry fully embraces digital distribution. DVDs are still much cheaper than the iTunes Store, and for now Digital Copy mitigates the risk of buying physical media.
NB: Searching Amazon UK for “Digital Copy” gives a fair few results. Seems to be uniform adaption amongst the big players. Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox4…
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