By Larry Jaffee, January 12, 2004
A progress report on Flexplay, the company that invented the "48-hour" DVD disc that renders itself unreadable by DVD players 48 hours after being opened, was provided at the recent Media-Tech show in Frankfurt, Germany, by Robert Thompson, a company vice president, who described in detail the enabling technology and processes.
The disc format, dubbed EZ-D, is currently being tested by Buena Vista Home Entertainment in five U.S. cities, and is playable on all standard DVD players.
"So far we've had only three complaints," said Thompson. "Somebody tried to open the package with scissors, and a store cut through the package with box cutters," he added.
Two replicators--Technicolor and Evatone--are manufacturing the discs, which are replicated with a proprietary system from M2. Thompson said Flexplay has two M2 lines at its R&D office in Saco, Maine.
Replication yields have hit successful disc rates of "85 to 87 percent and, in some cases, 90 percent," he said.
Flexplay also operates a chemical lab in Woburn, MA. Thompson noted that Flexplay has received U.S
. government approval that its chemistry "doesn't pose an environmental hazard." He added that the company is working on receiving similar approvals in Asia and Europe.
The Flexplay disc itself uses a specialized dye. Once the DVD's package is opened and the disc is exposed to oxygen, the disc's content is readable for a 48-hour period, although the technology could enable a theoretical use period of up to 100 hours, Thompson noted. "Once it's exposed [and hits its time-out period], it falls out of spec and can't be read anymore," he added.
The Flexplay disc carries standard CSS copy protection; the limited-play feature is not an anti-copy solution but, rather, "anti-pass along," Thompson said.
Initial movies offered on the format include The Recruit, Rabbit Proof Fence, 25th Hour, Frida and Signs.
The disc format currently offers the capacity of a DVD-5, but that will be increased to DVD-9, thus offering the potential for extras-laden titles, as opposed to plain-vanilla releases that offer primarily the movie.
Thompson pointed out that Disney went to Technicolor and asked them to produce the Flexplay product. "We've learned that new formats must be driven by the content owners," he added.
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