Unintended Consequences?
One side effect of the DVD CCA vs. Kaleidascape lawsuit that I’ll bet the DVD CCA folks didn’t think about is that it may might end up accelerating the death of the DVD movie format.
It’s unlcear what the intentions of this lawsuit are, but it has put some fear into product innovators that I know regarding DVD based products. The innovators have either changed their plans, or put their plans on hold, awaiting the outcome of this lawsuit. Perhaps that is exactly what the DVD CCA wanted to happen.
However I’m sure what they didn’t want to happen is for these same innovators to come up with plan B, the ‘take the DVD out altogether’, plan. CinemaNow and their download to rent/own system doesn’t require a DVD. Netflix is supposed to be coming out with a download service, sans DVD. The innovators I know are most likely looking at the Internet model as a way around the Kaleidascape problem. When you combine these concerns with the looming format wars of Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD, it makes the idea of having a optical disc based movie system more of a legal challenge than a technical one.