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High-speed movie kiosks coming
A Galway-based company has come up with revolutionary new technology that might change how we rent movies in the future. SCOPE investigates.. The video recorder was invented in 1971 and since then, we've been able to rent movies and watch them at home. In the past few years, digital DVD technology has replaced video and we can also watch movies on our computers, laptops and portable devices. In the future, it might be possible to download a movie of our choice from a kiosk at a train station or petrol station, and then play it back on a variety of devices, including our mobile phones. One company aiming for help us do this is Porto Media, whose high-speed memory card can download and store a 120-minute, DVD-quality Hollywood movie in under 20 seconds. It will save a trip to the video store, and even handier, the return trip. There'll be no late return fees either - the file just times-out when the renting period is over. Memory card So how does it work? Porto Media has earned Hollywood's endorsement by implementing what it calls next generation copy protection technology, called Copy Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM). The technology gives consumers a secure and fast way to download large digital files of films and TV programmes from a retail kiosk onto the flash memory card. The customer just needs to take the memory card to a kiosk to rent a movie. The kiosk will typically hold 500 movies and programmes - anything from sports to documentary - and the customer can then download the movie onto the card and take it away, to replay on devices such as portable media players and smartphones. Fast downloads Being able to download movies is nothing new, but the Porto Media card's speed is faster than current technology. "We can get 1gigabyte of data in 18 seconds," says Ian Gallivan, of Porto Media, who explains that a gigabyte is about 80 minutes of movie-viewing. But will quality be lost? "The cards hold lots of data, so things look good on the small screen or on your 42-inch plasma," he says. In the future, the Porto Media service could be available in many locations like shops, supermarkets, fast food outlets and petrol stations. "Anywhere where you can get power and an internet connection, you can put a movie kiosk," says Ian. The Porto Media sounds like a great idea, one that will save movie-lovers time and money, while making movie rental more convenient. However, at the moment it's still a prototype, so until it does hit the local shops, we will just have to drop into the old-fashioned video store. Learn more Visit Porto Media on the Web Learn about digital technology in movies Read how portable media players work. |
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