Qflix was introduced at CES earlier this year. When a feed item crossed my PC this morning, it looked interesting. QFlix DVD players allow you to download movies from CinamaNow and burn them to disk. These are now being offered as options in certain Dell PCs for $20. As I started to read more about how this system works, I realized that this is not how to allow people to legally copy movies. At least not how to make money at it.
Here’s what you need to burn these movies to a DVD:
- A Qflix DVD burner
- CinemaNow purchase
- Special Qflix DVDs ($10.99 for five at Dell.com)
Let’s look at the player first. It’s a DVD player…oh but I have no doubt it’s full of DRM restrictions of some sort. Even if it isn’t, they’re still charging you a $20 premium ($99 for a stand alone burner).
Next is the disks. If you look at the QFlix you find out that they ship with your new Dell PC or your can buy them at Roxio…oh, but that’s coming soon.
CinemaNow isn’t too bad of a service. Back in the MCE 2k5 days there was a plugin that would allow you to rent and buy movies from right in Media Center. They have available some of the newest titles so this is the one strong point in this scheme.
So let me see if I understand all of this. You have to pay a premium to get an internal QFlix drive or buy an external one. You have to buy special disks only available at currently one, but soon two locations and you can only burn movies from one service even though you may not like that particular one. Yep, sure fire way to not get people to burn movies.
I guess this might be an option for someone who wants to start buying digital content online and wants to back it up but I have a feeling there are cheaper ways in the long run. (Anyone heard of Windows Home Server?)
