Comments on: British Telecom offers free movie downloads

By: Zane

Zane — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 10:20:53 +0000

The question is why do we pay for movies at all, they are so chocked full of advertisements these days that we should almost be paid to watch them, or at least watch them for free.

This is a good idea though, it is a step in the right direction

By: Tankon

Tankon — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 01:27:48 +0000

Just googled “Hiro player” and confusingly it’s a codec for Microsoft’s Media Player. Additionally, BT Vision charges for films with just a few being given away to entice idiots to plug their details in the ad serving database.

By: Tankon

Tankon — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 01:17:00 +0000

The BBC iplayer has been out for over a year and it sucks donkey balls. It installs background services that hog nearly all your bandwidth even when the prog isn’t running. It also generally takes 3-4 hours to download a 1 hour show. That might have been impressive in 1997 but it’s just an ebarassment now.

By: Lasse

Lasse — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 21:09:28 +0000

why is there a monkey in the pic

By: Atlas

Atlas — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 20:57:45 +0000

BBC has been working pretty hard on online delivery systems. iPlayer should be coming out sometime soon. No, this can’t compete with scene releases, but that’s not why it’s great. Here in north america, telecom monopolies are crappifying the industry. Once IPTV is better established, it could kill basic cable forever.

By: Misteritsy

Misteritsy — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 20:09:45 +0000

Crap movies. The Punk Rock Movie was rubbish in 78,and still is ,with ads as well.God help us .Iff BT want customers they will have to do a lot better..BT give nothing for nothing..

By: toxi

toxi — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:45:02 +0000

yes, It needs to be followed. Now it dosn’t offer us anything except…..hope, that they will adapt to relesing movies directly on p2p but that IS a long way off…..their method is not good but it IS a step in the right direction.
Till THEY finally get with the program we’ll just keep d/l dvd rips of p2p just as we always have done, they WILL catch on…….very, very slowly.

By: dom

dom — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:21:56 +0000

@9: what, you want them to just give away free movies with no adverts at a loss to them? idiot.

of course you’re never going to get the same kind of deal as downloading movies. companies don’t want to lose money. the best you’re going to get is free movies with advertisements, and that’s absolutely fine. i’d actually be very interested in this if they were good movies. it’s impossible for companies to properly keep up with pirating, because it would put them out of business. this IS a good direction.

By: eitanois

eitanois — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:13:59 +0000

Is this better than Halo 3?

By: Mr. X

Mr. X — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:12:17 +0000

this is a puny attempt.

By: gtikool

gtikool — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:56:03 +0000

“We believe that sympathetically placed targeted advertising, combined with a viral film-sharing capability, will be attractive to customers in conjunction with free or reduced prices.”

This is a more p2p friendly solution, If your movies is god i might be convince to accomodate the ads if not … to the bin it goes .. jailing me for loading crap is just not right..

By: Baksteen

Baksteen — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:42:47 +0000

The rest of the world should just follow up on the Netherlands. Here it’s perfectly legal to copy and download anything for personal use

By: jv

jv — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:02:50 +0000

This is horrible.
Yet an other DRM’d Microsoft only provider.
They should shoot all jerks who create and use crap like that.

@Martin: How can you possible call this “a good direction which needs to be followed by other internet providers”?
Some twisted form of humor?

By: whois

whois — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:22:50 +0000

BT are scum and still operate with a manopoly mentality.

Scum!

By: toxi

toxi — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:51:58 +0000

It’s not perfect but they are moving in the right direction.
Off course illegal dvd rips are better but at least they are trying which is more than I see ANY other company doing. I would never put up with ads in the middle of the movie, however at the begining and the end would be a fine compremise and it better be targeted advertising. I mean I’m not putting up with another tv station where none of the ads are of interest to me. The ads could also be good for internet marketing too.
As for the player….screw that. I want to choose what software I use not what I’m told to use espially when I don’t trust branded media players of any type. Every one I have heard off has had spyware and such in it.

A common file type (such as divx) that can be played in a media player of ones own choice, good quality video and ads that are respectable enough to be accepted by the person who d/l’s the movie and we might be close to a win/win situation. At least thats my thoughts.