New Self Destructing DVDs
 

A French company has developed a disposable DVD, or DVD-D, which self-destructs after a few hours. Like the classic DVD, DVD-D is made of polycarbonate, but it contains an extra layer of coating that reacts to an oxidisation process which begins as soon as the disc is exposed to air. The self-destruct process can be pre-set to occur between eight and 24 hours.

It is not the world's first suicidal DVD. Last year, Flexplay Technologies, based in New York, announced a DVD with a 48-hour viewing window. Like the DVD-D, a Flexplay-enabled DVD works in all players, DVD drives and gaming systems designed to accept a standard DVD. The makers of the DVD-D claim their product is much cheaper to produce. The company also says there are no ways to repair the disc after the weathering process has made it unreadable. Solutions to repair the disc would be extremely complex.

Both DVD-D and EZ-D target the home entertainment rental market. The products would give consumers easy access to recently released titles, both movies and music, without worrying about returns, late fees or scratched discs.

Buena Vista Home Entertainment last year released some products on EZ-D - the first movie to be available on DVD-D will be Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions, which won two prizes in Cannes 2003 and the 2004 Oscar of the Best foreign film. Seven hundred other movies will also soon be available on DVD-D.

Despite the growing interest from big film studios, disposable DVDs haven't been much of a success. According to some reports, demand for EZ-D has fallen completely flat, and the retail chains carrying the discs have decided to stop stocking the format. ®

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Probably never take off. To many chances for liable. What would happen if the consumer forgot to remove the dvd from the dvd player?

nice try, but the idea doesnt really have a need... what they should have been working on is anti piracy dvd techology...

does it just melt away and vanish in thin air?

I bet it just weathers the bottom, probably like melting it, so the laser can't read it anymore. (just a guess though, I have no idea)

i think its a terrible idea. dvds and cds can't be recycled because they contain both metals and plastics, nor do they biodegrade obviously. last thing we need is more shit clogging up landfills.

Seems cool,

Don't think it'll take off... sounds like what Circuit City was trying to do with Divx... exept with it, you could reload the movie on the DVD...

the layer of data just degrades, so its an unreadable disc

A product like this will probably refuel another round of "DVD backup" spam campaigns.

A life of a few hours seems pretty short, what happens if you get interrupted in the middle of the movie (say, to go to lunch with a friend) and by the time you get back the disc is unreadable?

So what's to stop these DVDs from being copied and thrown in the trash? DVD burners are getting pretty cheap :glugglug

Great, another plastic product to be thrown out daily by the millions. Just what we need to help slow the dependence on foreign oil.

Good think it will never take off. Why would the rental chains want to eliminate late fees? That's their cash cow.

Microsoft DRM will have some appliance features soon... should be very good for this industry as well as others.