Blu-ray Disk with Digital Copy Not Zune Friendly

Apparently the very public desire to have one's owned videos loaded on a portable media player is starting to pay off ... sorta.

I, personally, am an avid animated movie buff.

There are a number of animated movies that have come out of the leading studios over the last couple of decades that I can watch over and over again with the kids ... and yes, even twice in the same day of we are having a -30 degree Celsius "there is no way I am going outside" kinda day.

For those of us older birds who are/were into Trek, Heinlein, Floyd, Monty Python (Just a teensie wafer), Are You Being Served, Fawlty Towers, Heavy Metal, and others of their ilk, there is an inkling into the somewhat bent nature of our humour and imaginations.

What truly amazes me in a lot of the modern adult/child oriented animated movies are the implicit and explicit references to the various entertainment sources we were really into in our younger years.

A lot of the humour in movies like Wallace and Gromit Curse of the Were-Rabbit, or Robots, or Cars taps into so much history in the way of music, print, television and movies, and so much more. It can be a bit embarrassing to "get" a moment in the movie and laugh out loud while the theatre remains relatively silent around me. Talk about "dating" myself! ;)

We picked up a Blu-ray disk based movie for the kids to watch with the family since it was the first movie I took my 4 year old daughter Anne-Marie to last Fall.

The cover says "Digital Copy Special Edition" on it. The back of the case indicates that there is an actual Digital portable copy contained in the case to.

There is a caveat though: The file is DRM enabled. Whether through iTunes, or Windows DRM, there are restrictions on the file including a serial number that is required to unlock the "download to PC".

Reading through the fine print there is another caveat: The digital copy is not compatible with both Sony PSP and the Microsoft Zune. The file is Windows Media Video, so why it is not compatible must be to do with the DRM.

We certainly hope that the struggle over fair use rights is resolved with a win-win solution for both consumer and producer. It would end the pain points of failed DRM tactics such as rootkit installations, failed DRM on systems designed to play that content, device playback restrictions as is the case here, and so much more.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.