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To: BillyG who wrote (34158)	7/6/1998 5:43:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

More on the Disney/Warner DVD deal.............................. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Monday July 6, 1:28 pm Eastern Time Company Press Release Buena Vista Home Entertainment Partners with Warner Home Video for DVD Distribution in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Former Soviet Union BURBANK, Calif.--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--July 6, 1998--Buena Vista Home Entertainment (BVHE) and Warner Home Video Monday announced a distribution agreement for BVHE product in the DVD Format in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the former Soviet Union. The agreement, encompassing more than 100 titles from Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures and various acquired motion pictures, commences this fall and runs through the year 2000. Under the terms of the agreement, Warner Home Video will distribute and market BVHE films on DVD in more than 30 regional territories. Each of the films will be released simultaneously with VHS. ''We are very enthusiastic about the DVD format and our signing of this deal marks our commitment to ensuring that it becomes a thriving business,'' commented Stuart Warrener, president, BVHE Europe, the Middle East and Africa. ''By unifying with Warner Home Video, we are creating a real benefit for the current and potential DVD retail base. By adding Touchstone, Hollywood and Disney titles to Warner's already-outstanding lineup of DVD product, retailers will have immediate and efficient access to an extraordinary portfolio of new and catalog 'must-have' films, enabling them to satisfy and grow consumer demand.'' The DVD rollout for BVHE product will include a powerful slate of live-action blockbusters. Releases during the first two months of the agreement include some of the Walt Disney Co.'s top performing films at the box office and on video, including ''Con Air,'' ''Air Force One,'' ''The Rock,'' ''Face/Off,'' ''Ransom,'' ''Crimson Tide,'' ''Phenomenon,'' ''While You Were Sleeping,'' ''101 Dalmatians'' (live action), ''Pretty Woman'' and ''Dead Poet's Society.'' Future releases will include Walt Disney Video Premiere films (''Beauty and the Beast: the Enchanted Christmas,'' ''The Lion King II: Simba's Pride'') and a wide selection of classics from the Disney library (''Alice in Wonderland,'' ''Dumbo''). More.............. biz.yahoo.com

To: BillyG who wrote (34158)	7/6/1998 7:06:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

Firewire. Hollywood wants you to pay........................... guidetohometheater.com "Robust" was a recurring term in Trawl's discussion of DVD copy protection, as in "Robust redundant key exchange protocols have been implemented to ensure the highest degree of content security." A mouthful like this is sweet music to Hollywood types. In plain English, it could mean that for you to play a DVD, the content provider---a film studio, for example---must have your credit-card number and your approval to bill to it, plus digital ID numbers of the various pieces in your system in case you attempt to copy a rented disc. In theory, pirated DVDs could be traced back to the original duplicating machine. Shades of Divx: your viewing may be monitored. Copy that DVD, go to jail. Disc replication isn't the only type of piracy the 1394 copy-protection scheme addresses. Unauthorized hardware is also addressed in the design, which can lock out pirated or unlicensed devices in the network. Consumers attempting to run unlicensed hardware will shortly find their black-market gear inoperative. "System renewability messages are sent to each device. Pirated devices with unauthorized IDs will be rendered inoperative," Trawl explained. The system can distinguish between authentic and pirated gear. Should a line of products be discovered to be illegal, the shutdown could apply to entire classes of equipment as well as to individual machines. Who exactly will be acting as system guardian wasn't explained. "Full authentication" will be required of individual devices in a FireWire system, meaning the manufacturers have paid all license fees. "Fees will range from a few thousand dollars to several tens of thousands for each manufacturer, depending on the production volume," Trawl stated. "It amounts to a few cents per device." Potential makers of knock-off 1394-enabled DVD players or recorders have been warned. Some attendees were curious about how the TV networks would deal with the copyright issue. "Films will likely be protection-encoded," Trawl said, "but we understand that a great deal of off-air material will be copy-free." He specifically mentioned NFL football games as being free of content ciphers. It should be noted that the entertainment industry has a long history of blindly opposing every new development in technology for consumers, as Onehouse CEO Jim Griffin is fond of pointing out. Movie studios and theater owners opposed the development of television. The music industry vigorously resisted tape recorders, even though prerecorded cassettes proved to be far more profitable than LPs. (Remember the "tape tax"?) Disney, with the support of other studios, fought against the VCR all the way to the Supreme Court and lost, while the machine sold by the millions. Even when the proliferation of home recording devices became inevitable, the entertainment industry saw only a threat rather than an opportunity. No one in the studios foresaw the profits to be made in the video rental business, which now enables even the worst loser film to break even.