You’ve heard of disposable cameras!
You’ve heard of disposable diapers!
How about, Disposable movies?
For this video to make any sense, I’m gonna need you to imagine a world in which Netflix,
Amazon Prime video, Disney+
(trying to future proof here)
and all those other streaming services
don’t exist.
It’s a desolate landscape, I know, but thankfully video rental stores existed to help you through
these trying times.
And, well actually Netflix did exist at this point but they were still only mailing DVDs to you.
How quaint.
But ya know what’s annoying about video rental stores?
You have to take the disc back to them.
Or, mail it back.
What a hassle!
I mean, needing to go back to the store?
And giving them the thing which I borrowed back?
How inconvenient!
I mean, it’s not like I’m gonna just go back and rent another thing.
Now I have to go out of my way to return my copy of Shrek 2.
Eugh.
But what if there were a way that I could rent a movie, and not have to bring it back?
Don’t you mean buy the movie?
No!
I mean, what if I could somehow bring home a DVD which will only work for 2 days after
I open it, and then it breaks itself!
All the savings of renting with the convenience of buying!
I’ll take 600!
This rather bizarre idea did actually happen.
It wasn’t a huge success, and I’m gonna argue that’s probably a good thing, but
in the early 2000’s there was an idea to put a clever spin [the PUNS] on optical disc technology.
Some of you might be thinking of DIVX, an earlier modification of DVD by Circuit City
which was a more technical solution involving special players that phoned in to a central
server to verify whether any specific disc could be played or not.
You could then upgrade your disc at an additional charge to be playable after the rental period,
or even upgrade it to a so-called DIVX Silver disc, at which point you effectively owned that title.
Ain’t that some dystopian DRM right there?
But we’re not talking about that.
Instead, we’re talking about something else.
After DIVX had proven itself a failure, a little company called Flexplay Technologies
decided to try that concept again and began to market what they initially called EZ-Ds.
These were completely compliant DVDs that would work in any DVD player, but that were
made with a chemical component that would effectively destroy the disc after two days
of being exposed to oxygen.
The idea was that you could buy these discs in a store for about the cost of a rental,
and since they were sealed in airtight packaging, they wouldn’t break down until you decided to watch it.
You could then watch the film an unlimited amount of times within 48 hours, after which
point the disc would blacken and become unreadable.
And of course I have one of these discs right here.
It almost certainly does not work but we will try it just in case!
That’s right, I haven’t opened this yet.
We’re gonna do it together!
I moved you a bit closer so we can do this toge--
hmmm.
What's that doing here?
Anyway, let’s open the package.
♫ swanky music begins in background ♫ I’m using a knife like a responsible person
and cutting towards me.
So this is just very basic
[music cuts]
….
[music resumes] So this is just very basic paper packaging
in shrink wrap.
[sensational shrink wrap struggles]
Very user friendly.
And inside we find a little package with some information.
And our disc.
Mmmmm.
This might possibly work, but we will see.
This is really, I will say, you would need scissors to open this
.. agh ..
or some sharp object like a utility knife.
So it looks like a normal DVD except the back of it is a very dark red color.
This may work, which would be surprising but we’ll find out.
I can’t see the TV so we’re just gonna see what happens.
[strange whirring noise from the DVD player]
It’s making really weird noises.
I’m gonna guess it’s not working.
It’s trying again.
This is nerve wracking.
I don’t think it’s working.
I just noticed this “For best results, open by April 2009” which is great because that
was inside the shrinkwrap so there’s no way you could really…
well I suppose on the shelf it wouldn’t matter
but if you took this home you better open at least this far to get a sense of when you need to watch this.
We appear to be getting nowhere fast.
This is attempt 2.
It really sounds like it’s trying its best.
Wait.
Did it get somewhere?
[more disc drive noises]
I have to…
I have to actually look at the screen.
I can’t stand this.
What’s very interesting to me is that the player hasn’t given an error.
It’s just continuously trying to play it.
So it’s almost like it can see something, but not enough to matter.
Well, that was an expected disappointment.
Since the disc is so old, oxygen has seeped through its packaging and has already destroyed
the disc.
In fact, the discs only had a shelf life of about a year.
If we were in 2008 or whenever this disc was made we would have seen a bright red disc.
And it would have, you know, worked.
Now, you might think that the red coloring is the special compound which turns black.
But it isn’t.
Instead it’s a weirdly forward-thinking countermeasure against them newfangled Blu-Ray
players they’re talking about.
See the black color isn’t actually black.
Light of certain wavelenghts could pass through it, much like how infrared light passes right
through the “black” coloring of a PlayStation disc.
And one of those wavelengths that could pass through this is the blue-violet found in the
laser of a Blu-ray disc player.
Coloring the disc itself red would block that blue light, so even if someone could manage
to read DVD-data using a blue laser (which, for the record, isn’t very easy at all and
is why Blu-Ray players have a red laser diode, too for reading DVDs)
their attempt would be foiled.
Are you wondering why I keep calling this black when it’s clearly a cherry-red?
Well, to make filming easier I filmed the written portion before I actually opened the disc.
Yep, it was movie magic!
Descriptions and images of these discs show that they literally turn black like a Playstation
disc, but this disc clearly hasn’t.
This is why I thought there was a chance the disc may have worked when I first opened it.
Either its packaging was somehow able to prevent the disc from turning completely black in
the 11 years between its manufacture and today, or describing it as “blackening” was simply
hyperbole and in fact it just got darker.
If the disc does turn completely black in the coming days, I’ll let you know and provide
some pictures in a pinned comment.
Well, links to pictures but you know what I mean.
So let’s talk about what this disc was actually trying to accomplish.
When you or I go to a store and buy a DVD or blu-ray disc, we’re not really buying
the movie.
Instead, we’re buying a specific license to watch that content in a private setting
for the rest of time.
Or at least, for the life of the disc, video tape, or whatever media contains it.
That’s what the FBI is always warning you about.
You didn’t buy a license to show this in theaters.
You didn’t buy a license to share this on YouTube.
You bought one license to watch this one film in your home for your own enjoyment.
But, you can watch it over and over again.
And once you buy it, you’ll never have to buy it again.
Unless of course you get tired of watching it on VHS and want to upgrade to some newer
format or whatever.
The cost of making the packaging and the disc itself is almost nothing.
DVDs cost pennies to make, but the movie is expensive because of the terms of the license
you’re buying.
If whoever the content owner is can only make money from you once and then possibly never
again, they’re gonna charge a lot for the option to outright own the rights to private
viewing indefinitely.
But, if there’s a set time limit on your enjoyment of the film, then the movie studio
doesn’t have to charge nearly as much.
If they have the opportunity to sell it to you again down the road, they won’t mind
if they only make a few bucks.
So, what Flexplay, and DIVX before it, attempted to do was to sell only temporary rights to
a film, and thus movie studios would only charge FlexPlay a couple bucks per disc,
rather than 10 or 20.
And, since DVDs are hilariously cheap to make, FlexPlay could simply sell you these discs
for the cost of a rental (about five dollars) and all parties involved would make their buck.
The advantage of Flexplay, of course, was that you needn’t bother returning to the
place you bought it.
The disc would simply become unusable and you could toss it out.
Now, while this may seem like a pretty stupid idea
--after all video rental stores already existed
so what’s the real advantage aside from enabling even lazier habits--
it could have been pretty revolutionary.
Flexplay wasn’t just trying to make a consumer’s life easier.
They were trying to enable any business to easily get into the video rental market.
Video stores like Blockbuster needed lots of square footage of retail space to maintain
their inventories, they needed to track rentals and charge late fees, and in general their
business was rather unique.
A grocery store probably isn’t gonna want to take on all those hassles just to make
a few extra bucks.
But, since Fle--
it’s back! How did…
But since Flexplay didn’t require you to return anything, stores could simply sell
them like any other product.
Any retail establishment, from grocery stores, to gas stations, to office supply stores,
to hardware stores could easily get into the video rental market.
Simply set up a Flexplay display, order some movies to sell, and watch your profits soar!
Except, of course, that didn’t really happen, did it?
Flexplay discs were first tested in 2003 with a small handful of Disney titles and the test
was a resounding failure.
First of all, let’s be honest, this is a weird product.
You’d think that the failure of DIVX would have been a warning that this ain’t gonna work,
and even in 2003 Billboard was skeptical of the product and thought it would create
a lot of market confusion.
They were pretty correct, as the test ran for only a year before the product was pulled.
A large part of why it failed was due to pressure from environmental groups.
Disposable DVDs don’t sound like a great product to catch on.
While it is of course possible to recycle the discs, for the test run Flexplay didn’t
seem to be that interested in figuring that part out, and of course needing to return
to the store where you bought it to recycle the disc…
kinda defeats the purpose.
The convenience aspect sold both to the business that sells them and the consumer that buys them
is pretty much lost if the consumer is expected to return,
and the business has to handle the recycling.
So what’s the point?
Disney is likely who caused the end of the trial, as environmental groups were pressuring
them to stop this Flexplay nonsense.
And they did, for rather obvious PR reasons.
But, Flexplay would return with a vengeance in 2008.
They had somehow managed to get Paramount, Warner Brothers, Starz, and New Line Cinema
to agree to licensing deals, and they also convinced Love’s Travel Centers,
Hudson News, Travel Centers of America, and notably Staples to sell their discs.
Apparently they were trying to go after the business traveler who wanted to rent a movie,
but was too busy to return it.
Or something like that.
To try and alleviate concerns from the environmentally minded, they partnered with a company that recycles
“Technotrash”
to provide recycling bins at places that sold the discs
(which again defeats the purpose)
and they also would allow you to print out a free shipping label
to return the disc for recycling.
Which again.
Defeats the point.
And now you’ve printed something.
To ship it back.
To be destroyed.
Apparently Flexplay did offer free return labels during the original trial run, but…
Really, the whole thing did seem rather stupid.
If you’re gonna mail it back, you might as well use Netflix and the disc can then
be enjoyed by dozens of people.
Rather than one.
If you have to return to the store, you might as well go to a video store and rent it there.
Or, you can just throw it out and be OK with the waste of plastic.
And then of course there’s this little company.
Ah, yes.
That one.
The product that lets retail establishments get into the video rental business without
taking on any of the hassle.
Which allows its customers to return their rentals to any of the machines, which are
purposely placed in front of everyday businesses to maximize convenience.
The product that costs a small fraction to use compared to buying a Flexplay disc, with
only a small convenience penalty, or if you were of the mind to recycle your Flexplay disc,
no convenience penalty at all.
But I’m sure Flexplay will do just fine!
Well it didn’t.
At a cost of $4.99 to $5.99, the product didn’t make sense at all.
Remember that Netflix discs were only $10 a month at this point, and that was for an
unlimited number of rentals.
(well, unlimited aside for the turnaround time of mailing it back).
As long as you rented just 2 things in a month, Netflix comes at the same cost or less of Flexplay.
And of course, you could keep the disc for a week and not… ya know
find that it destroyed itself.
Redbox rentals were still $1 per day, so if you wanted to go that route, you could rent
a movie for one fifth the cost of a Flexplay title.
And thanks to their positioning in front of convenience and grocery stores, you would
probably have a reason to go back and return it, anyway.
Plus, Redbox does give the retail establishment a commision for letting them use the space
for a machine.
So regardless of how icky throw-away polycarbonate frisbees may seem to you from a waste perspective,
it also frankly just didn’t make sense. At all.
Flexplay was pretty much the worst possible way to rent a movie at the time.
If, perhaps, things went to their plans and loads of bored business travelers stuck in
airports decided to pop for a movie from Hudson News, then maybe this would have worked.
But, I just don’t think that was really a viable market to begin with.
If it was, you’d think Redbox would be in airports, since you could just return the
disc when you get home.
But maybe they didn’t want to deal with the logistics of discs routinely going cross
country or something, I don’t know.
Pretty much the one sole advantage that you could say Flexplay legitimately had was that
the discs would be brand new every time.
You’d never have to worry about a scratched rental disc refusing to play, and then the
hassle of returning it and getting a refund.
But, this concept was already tried with DIVX and people didn’t like it at all.
Yes, DIVX was a weird product that wasn’t even compatible with DVD players so at least
Flexplay had that going for it.
But the resounding failure of DIVX was somehow brushed off by those pushing Flexplay, and
honestly they shoulda seen this coming.
I’ll grant it’s clever, and I remembering hearing about it and thinking it was pretty neat.
But for a commodity like video rental, a neat gimmick means a lot less than a practical,
inexpensive rental.
And that’s before we even get into the waste aspect.
Sure, the production and disposal of an individual DVD probably has a teeny tiny environmental
impact, but the Tragedy of the Commons means that as more people do it, the worse it gets
and possibly without realizing it.
If Flexplay had become mainstream, then imagine a world in which 70 million households were
renting one movie per month.
That’s over 800 million DVDs produced each year in the US alone, all of which will be
intentionally wasted if made by Flexplay.
In 2010 Redbox rented over 500 million discs.
According to this website I found, the average disc is rented 15 times.
So, those 500 million rentals were only made of about 33 million discs.
Redbox accounted for nearly half the rental market around this time, so assuming similar
numbers across the board, conventional DVD rental would require about 66 million discs
per year, vs. 1 billion Flexplay discs.
Yikes.
So I think it’s safe to say it’s a good thing Flexplay kinda fizzled.
Yes there are probably a few billion blank DVD-Rs floating around that will never be used,
but they weren’t meant to just be tossed.
Producing a DVD with a deliberately limited lifespan seems pretty… well of poor taste.
And I think that while we seem to live in a convenience-driven economy, there is a line
that seems rather crass.
And I think Flexplay crossed it.
Interestingly, a thought experiment has been floating around wondering if the environmental
impact of streaming services, with their vast amount of hard drives and servers running
24/7 sucking up that sweet sweet electricity might actually be worse for the Earth’s
health than physical media.
In many ways streaming services are the perfect candidate for a Tragedy of the Commons scenario,
because we can’t see the backbones that make them work.
But regardless, I think we can agree that producing tons of single-use DVDs is definitely
worse than simply renting them out the old fashioned way.
Before I close this video out, I’d like to discuss the patent.
The patent that I believe is the principle one owned by Flexplay is incredible.
Their patent was so broad that it covered basically any potential way to create a self-destructing disc.
Here are just a few samplings:
"In one embodiment...
Another aspect of the invention...
Alternatively, a timed destruction of the data...
They basically thought up as many ways to achieve a self-destructing disc as they could,
and wrapped them all up into an over-arching patent.
Pretty smart, actually.
In fact, it can best be summed up in this one paragraph:
Another aspect of the invention is a composition...
They even described a disc that would be chemically altered from the light of the laser reading
the disc, which could in theory limit the disc to a certain number of plays, and not
a specific timeframe.
They really did cover all their bases, here.
Too bad it was a product nobody asked for.
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♫ temporarily smooth jazz ♫
I will be amazed if this works.
And I hope it doesn’t because I already recorded what I did earlier, so let’s…
let’s try.
...was to sell only temporary rights to a
film, and the… no.
...is pretty much lost if the consumer is respected to...
Respected?
Expected!
...is pretty much lost if the consumer is res….
(disappointed silence)
Is expected.
...is very hard because.
Ahh!!
No!!
That’s not the line.
The…. dibbiybede
And loads of bored business travelers stuck
in… eugh.
I’ve completely forgot how I wrote this line.
We appear to be getting nowhere fast...