According to the Financial Times, the DVD Download format has been approved by the DVD Forum who's members include Hollywood heavyweights like Columbia, Sony, Universal, Walt Disney and Warner Brothers. Developed for download-and-burn services and in store kiosks, the DVD Download format incorporates a content protection system to prevent unauthorized copying.
Shops only have room for a few hundred top-selling titles on their shelves but DVD Download kiosks being introduced this year will be able to access thousands of digitised movies, burn them to disks and print labels and covers.
Film studios' concerns over possible illegal copying of the disks had been a sticking point for the launch of the kiosks.
These fears have been overcome by the same content protection system already used on pre-recorded DVDs. This is being incorporated into the new standard, known as DVD-R for CSS Managed Recording, or "DVD Download", according to its new logo. DVD-R is the format of the blank recordable media and CSS is the Content Scramble System of encryption that will be used.
While CSS will keep the average Joe from making copies, we all know that it can be easily circumvented using downloadable utilities. Most likely, we'll be seeing other copy protections being used, like Macrovisions RipGuard and ACP technologies. If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here.
