Revenge of the Fallen to Released on USB Drive

Paramount and Kingston team up for movies on flash memory

Sorry if its old news (i looked first) but it would be even better (and worth it) if it came on a Ravage USB stick.

Just saying, you know us fanboys...

FAIL

$30 for a non-HD copy of the movie and a memory stick that is already filled up (mostly)?

It's cheaper to buy both the BD and an empty stick.

If you could put it on Device Label Ravage, that would be awesome.

On the plus side, it'll take up very little space compared to Dvd and Blu-ray.

I'm sure the price will come down once they get out there. Lets let the market decide if an idea like this has a future.

I'm just worried about what kind of software these are going to try to force on your hard drive, in some futile attempt at anti-piracy.

People need to start getting prepared that THIS is very quickly going to become the next commonplace hardcopy (aka tangible) format for music & movies. I've worked in the music scene for almost 12 years now and this is something a lot of labels & studios have been seriously talking about, strategizing & planning over the past 1-2 years. The biggest thing that has prevented it from moving ahead full steam is that CD's & DVD's are still considered relevant formats due to how long they've been around. This is also why a lot of movie studios are not doing mass re-releases of their films on Blu-Ray - because many of them are not confident that it will be around for much longer, and anticipate it could be replaced by USB's and/or new flash cards (sized like a business card) as fast as Blu-Ray replaced HD less than 2 years ago. Plus Blu-Ray, almost by default, has been proving that people generally don't care about artwork & booklets anymore since virtually none of the releases include anything except a disc and a bare basic insert. People just want the content and will seemingly spend the same amount with or without elaborate packaging.

All in all, very interesting to see these Transformers movies continuing to be on the cusp of the 'next big thing' thanks to a savvy director and backing studio. Bay protested the lack of Blu-Ray back when TF1 was being released and it wouldn't surprise me if he had some direct involvement with making this happen with ROTF as well.

No it won't.

Because this will never take off. a new format for movies will never take hold if consumers dont support it, no matter what the companies behind it want.

Except that this is exactly what people DO want - smaller, space saving media products that are easily transportable and digitally transferable. It obviously has to go through an expected refining process (offer HD content, modern sound surround options, be compatible with cross platform devices, probably come down in cost a bit, etc.) and won't necessarily *replace* CD's or DVD's outright, but this absolutely is the next step in the world of music & movies continuing to be offered in a physically tangible form. For as many people that are buying Blu-Ray because of the better quality, for example, there's just as many doing it simply because it takes up less space. That's almost surprising, but when you look at everything else associated with these mediums (iPod's, Nano's, PSP's, etc.) along with the recent boom in digital book offerings ala Kindle, the writing has been on the wall for a while now that smaller is better when it comes virtually anything & everything that can be offered digitally.

Haha, but just to clarify, I'm not saying it's a GOOD idea. Personally I still love 'old school' CD's, DVD's & books. But I also know that time is running out for all them since I've been dealing with it firsthand via how my industry now releases its products. Then again, it's not really insider information anymore either. Walk into any store and it's clear as day what's happening and where we're going from here.

But this offers inferior sound and vision to BD, and most likely costs considerably more to manufacture, with the costs passed onto the consumer.

Hence why it's still being a refined format option and still being considered an "experimental" medium. It's not going to explode overnight since most personnel involved with it already know that if they can't do it as close to "right" as possible out of the starting gate, then don't it at all... yet. But we're close. And by "we" I mean the consumers. We're less than 1-2 years away from seeing these sorts of ultra-small / ultra-portable devices popping up everywhere *alongside* the more established traditional formats, but it'll be at least 5 years or more before they eventually overtake and/or replace them... no different than the current ratio of sales in digital music vs. CD's. Digital sales continue to increase and CD sales continue to decrease, but on paper, it hasn't overtaken yet... though it looks to by 2010.

Then of course there's the ever present "Joe Average" angle which labels & studios very much prey AND reply upon for broader sales - continuing to cater to the people who buy whatever is cheapest & convenient with no regard or care whatsoever about the technical aspects. That angle alone is pretty much the exact thing that has kept DVD's & CD's relevant in the first place, along with the few of us (mainly collectors) who are just too stubborn or paranoid to embrace a new format yet.

Direct Downloads will take over well before this ever does.

As for the hard-media segment, there is no chance this would ever surpass BD at this point. It's too expensive and inconvenient. Sure the studios may be in love with it, but they love a lot of things that are complete and total failures because the consumer couldn't care less.

I predict this idea goes the way of the ZIP drive. Sticks around for way too long, but manages to still be a failure the whole time.

at just 4GB it's likely inferior to the DVD! (and costs about twice what it should)

I do think the concept of media on flash-type drives has it's place though, as we move into a digital distribution era there are still going to be lots of regions that will be under-served by the bandwidth to take advantage of it. (not to mention people who just want something 'tangible' to own)

I'll keep buying BluRay/DVD thanks. =)

There's a lot of potential to this as a format, if people can make the mental shift.

The storage capacity of flash memory doubles almost every year(faster than Moore's law). And it gets cheaper all the time.

If you can stick a usb port on a TV, and bipass the middleman of a seperate player, it could become pretty universal.

I'm one of those people who wants the best quality possible. Despite the popularity of digital downloads, I'd rather go out and buy the CD or Blu-ray movie. Sadly, I'm in the minority, because most consumers would rather have convenience over quality. In this regard, Incepticon is definitely correct.

Now, if they put the movie on a 32GB flash drive with full 1080p video and lossless audio, they'd get me as a customer but this probably won't happen any time soon due to cost.

to jump in on the debate of whether this kind of physical media is desirable by consumers, i actually think something like this is exactly how you DO drum up interest.

I remember a few years back the White Stripes released an album on a limited-edition USB stick, there were 2 with custom cartoony art of each member silk screened on and they were hella expensive, $57.50 each!

found the article: White Stripes album sold on limited edition USB drives

so, as a promo-collectible type thing, this idea could have traction (i do agree that it'll never be seriously mainstream though)

Most likely its encoded using the WMV or DivX format and doesn't even use half of the space. The quality is probably on par with a retail DVD but the file will be chock full of DRM.

i'm just hoping in 3-5 years we see 1080p downloads as the regular "way of things"

ISP's will never go for it. Despite increases in speed, they still don't like it when their customers use a lot of bandwidth. They'd rather have you use their on demand video services which from my experiences look like ass due to the low bit rates.

3-5 years might be a tad optimistic, but you have to figure it's the eventual way of things. Even quality 720p vids would be nice ~ iTunes HD isn't bad, but the Bitrate throughput just isn't there yet.

I just wanna snip this because this is not what I want. I don't want a drawer filled with 4 GB USB Drives. As much as I'm not a fan of a large material DVD shelf, I much prefer the well organized shelf.

Also, doesn't matter the quality, I prefer watching movies and TV on my TV; not my computer.

If they want to get serious with this idea, they could come up with a special USB design for easy filing, with the name on the edge as well as the front.

It doesn't have to be any harder than filing Gameboy cartridges was back in the day.

Also, I agree, it should be possible to play these on a TV. It shouldn't be that big a deal for manufacturers to put a usb socket on a dvd player or on the TV itself.

It won't happen. The same thing happened to Betamax, Laser Discs, Mini Discs, UMD, and HD-DVD. The format wars have proven it time and time again.


Most likely this will be the reality before anything else new:

Nor do I. 25-50 GB downloads that I don't even physically own are something I don't want either. Blu-ray is the medium for me, thank you very much.

if it's an actual purchased download (vs streaming a file off a server) you own it just as much as you do a physical disc, it's just 1s and 0s and the likelihood of a total unrecoverable HD failure is probably fairly =/= with the chances of scratching a disc beyond playability.

i think in the coming years you are going to see the 2 rapidly converging, most likely to the point that your TV is essentially going to be a computer.
I mean, look at that new 27" iMac, that's as much a TV as it is a computer. and the 360, PS3, appleTV, Roku box and others are all bringing interweb media to your television in new and different ways.

just like the HD format war, it's going to take a while to be hashed out (and for bandwidth to hit the point it needs to), but ultimately physical media is an endangered species. I'd predict the scales will tip in less then 10 years, but also think there will be some type of physical media available for a good 10-15 years beyond that.

I agree with the notion that optical media is gradually dying. The HD-DVD vs. Blue-Ray format war was irrelevant before it started. There is just too much potential trouble with anything that plays optical discs, between the laser dying or the disc being scratched accidentally versus a copy on a flash or SSD media. Buying on a flash drive is probably a go-between for people who can't download from the internet for whatever reason yet. Games will do the same thing, still digital downloads, but you will be able to pick up a copy at the local Walmart if your ISP won't let you download it.

+-MWG-+

This

Can the movie on this USB drive be transferred to an iPod or iPhone? Or ANY portable device for that matter.
I still don't understand why ROTF didn't offer a digital copy.


As for the format debate above, I'm on the BD side fo sho.

That whole disc scratching argument doesn't really carry a whole lot of weight considering it applies to regular DVD's too, and look how that turned out.

Tech savy consumers might like the idea of a digital copy on a flash drive, but the market has already determined that disc based media is what sells the best for movies. All of the gloom and doom tossed at Blu-Ray hasn't been sticking very well considering all the growth it has seen in just the last year.

I call FAIL on this too. It just doesn't make any sense. It is not a good deal for a compressed computer format of the movie or for a 4 gb flash drive...put the two together and it doesn't get any better.

This idea seems more like a cash-grab from the un-saavy consumer (can we say wasted money on impulse X-mas present purchases?) rather than providing an enhanced or intriguing new product.

Why do I want this so bad? WHY?!

This should have been the Digital copy on a Special Edition DVD and Blu-Ray, for, oh, say, $5 more.

And if they want to charge that much for a crappy quality, they should have done it with Device Label Ravage, make him 4GB, whatever.

As it is, I can't see too many people buying this, other than impulse buys, and completionists. I can't see the average parent getting this version of it, especially when it is much more than DVD and more than a Blu-Ray

Yep, a dual-layer DVD (equating to the single disc version of ROTF) is about 9GB, and most of the disc is taken up by the movie.

So this is WAAAAAY below the quality of the DVD.

This is definitely not the first movie released on a USB stick. i saw Ghostbusters at a Sonystyle saw at least a year ago, if not longer.

FAIL. Everything is moveing towrds digital copys and it would be a bitch to see what movies you had all on Thumb Drives.

What a piece of crap. DVDs and BluRay discs are best when it comes to movies. Sticking them on a USB drive is what you do if you're downloading movies, transferring them between computers, or being an asshole (I don't know how that last one fits in, but oh well). The biggest problem is, how are you meant to play it on a DVD player? That's right, you're not, unless you've got the latest high-tech one that supports USB playback. Mine has a USB port, although I'm 100% sure what it's for, but it can't use it for playback at all. This is a stupid idea. Just like all the other stupid ideas they come up with. Let's get back to looking at new Transformers figures prototypes. That's more fun. Roll on more revelations, please.

One step closer to killing off the optical drives.

What many people here fail to understand is that optical drives aren't that special. Soon, we'll have such devices with the same features as DVDs on sticks, not fragile disks. I welcome this. With SD releasing massive memory cards and with USB 3.0 drives on the horizon (32gb to start with) devices with HD quality movies shouldn't be far off.

Plus, HD TVs these days come with USB ports and built in video decoding ability, not to mention different media boxes being released each year that are HDD based, not optical drive based. It's so much more useful this way.

*repeat

cool, not crazy about the price though. I wish they just had a digital copy on the dvd.

... hmmm a little late it may seem... as this movie has been on USB sticks for months ... and I think the price was much cheaper cheaper as well...

From what I've read so far, MASSIVE FAIL.

What I know I *do want* is : 32/64GB worth of MKV in 1080p with no DRM whatsoever. *Then* I *may* consider plugging it into my PC or laptop or netbook or whatever to play it back casually, or my "next gen" (whatever it is by then) home theater system to play it back on the TV with the whole surround works and everything.

But I dunno. By the time those folks get their act together, 64GB memory sticks could be lying on the floor and nobody would bother to pick them up ...

Movies on memory sticks It's Beta Max all over again lol

the Australian bluray version came with a digital copy shame the US version did not

Anybody who genuinely thinks this is the future of physical movie distribution is on crack. There is no other explanation for it. Do you people have any idea how cheap it is to press a DVD or BluRay disc?

The future is streaming media, like it or not, that's the way its heading. Some TV's have Netflix built in. Look at all these consumer devices that are Netflix ready Netflix: Rent as many movies as you want for only $8.99 a month! Free Trial

They're working on 1080p instant streaming which, I believe, already works on Xbox360 and is pretty good quality considering. Netflix style services for movies are what hollywood want because it gives them the power they want while providing consumers with a flexible option to access content. These services will only improve as time goes on.

Thumb drives are a novelty and a giant step backward and will never, ever catch on.

In the UK we get this sweet packaging:

Play.com (UK) : Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen Movie On 4GB USB Stick : Gadgets - Free Delivery

The thing is, this should never become common place. Can you imagine how much environmental damage releasing films on USB would cause. Instead of just shiny discs, which can be recycled quite well these days, we would have mountains of USB sticks which are a pain to recycle.

Its a stupid idea at best and a crime against the planet at worst.

Still, its a nice little gadget.

Whilst that's true, I pretty much hate streaming media. The only streaming I use is YouTube (which isn't that good) and streaming on my Xbox 360 via Windows Media Center and my PC. Other than that, I find it slow and bothersome.

I personally like to be a little be old-school, as it's starting to become, and have DVDs and what not. It's like downloadable games. The PSP Go, to me, is terrible because you have to download the content. But the normal PSP is fine. I always get satisfaction from removable media, and it really feels like you own something, whereas when it's all digital and/or streamed, it starts to lose that authentic feeling.

Physical media isn't going anywhere, but its market share will begin dropping significantly as internet gets better penetrationa and speed. Once consumers see the benefits of paying X dollars a month to access hundreds and thousands of movies on demand rather than spending more on a few discs I think the change will be pretty sharp. That's a fair way off, however. The transition to MP3 was far from overnight and right now streaming movies are where MP3's were in 1997; an interesting novelty for the tech savvy.

I would be more than happy to dump every one of my DVD's tomorrow if the UK had a Netflix like service. Alas we do not

No, because it'll use a much more advanced codec than the archaic MPEG-2 that DVD uses.

Still, this is a major fail. No HD, no DTS-MA, and 1.5x the price of the Blu-ray? No thanks.

This isn't a new idea by a long shot. Sony's already been trying it for a few years now- Spider-Man 1 2 & 3 are available on a single stick, as are Ghostbusters 1 & 2. Look near the floor in the "removable media" section in a Walmart electronics section and you may find them.

For further reading on the subject-
The New York Times says...

This is silly, making these are going to be more expensive than both DVDs and BRs in the long run. and the disc cases just look nicer as apposed to a bunch of random usb sticks.