New DirecTV PPV Rules
This isn’t really “new” news, but I just noticed this on my DirecTV DVR:
Effective April 15, 2008, DVR recordings of PPV movies will be available for 24 hours of unlimited viewing after purchase. Major movie studios have required that satellite and cable providers alike may no longer allow their customers to view these recordings for longer than 24 hours. During the 24 hour viewing period, you will continue to enjoy all of your DVR features such as pause and rewind.
What a pile of rubbish. You can find their FAQ at this URL:
“http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/global/contentPage.jsp?assetId=P4540022″
To me, that looks like a URL that will break. So I won’t link to it.
What year is this? Even with old school hand coded Servlets and JSPs, clean public URLs are a piece of cake. Does some programmer really think “contentPage.jsp?assetId=P4540022″ is a good URL? Why not something ending in “ppv/faq/”?
Movies, like music, should be DRM free. And URLs should not expose implementation details.
Apple TV rentals are the same way, which is why I won’t buy the device. It’s rare that my wife and I start watching a movie and finish it in the same sitting. With the 24 hour rule, the movie expires by the time we get back to finishing it. I think 72 hours is reasonable.
Apple and DirecTV say movie studios dictate the 24 hr. rule, but I don’t see them making any effort to advocate for consumers either. They should just tell the studios to shove it and refuse to carry rentals/PPV until they relax the rule. Yeah, like that’s going to happen any time soon. DRM is evil.