A major hurdle in the legitimate download-to-burn services taking off has been removed: At its Nov. 29 meeting, the DVD Forum gave formal approval to a new type of recordable disc that will accept movies encrypted with CSS, the same copy-protection system used on retail discs, for playback on set-top DVD players, reports Video Business.
The step was considered critical: any other DRM carried the risk of incompatibility between burned discs and standard DVD players. This will help services such as Movielink, CinemaNow, Guba, Amazon Unbox and even Apple iTunes to allow users to download movies form their service, burn it on a DVD, and then be able to play it on normal DVD players hooked to a TV, not just watch on a computer DVD players, as some of these services have been offering.
Packaging for the new discs will include a special logo and description to help consumers distinguish them from ordinary DVD-Rs. The new logo also was approved by the DVD Forum. The downside is that consumer will have to buy special blank DVDs, as opposed to the ones they have. Then there will be the issue of retail distribution of these new kind of DVDs…expect them to be sold on these services’ websites.
More on these technical specs here.