Jari Ketola
17 May 2003 16:54
Disney, the friend of the environment, will start producing self-destructing DVD-discs. The idea is that consumers can "rent" a DVD, or EZ-D, as it's called by the developer Flexplay, by purchasing the disc and then viewing it freely for two days. Once opened the disc's coating will start reacting with oxygen and eventually turns black. The DVD won't be readable after that.
Although the price for the discs has not been announced yet, there will surely be demand for low-cost rental DVDs that are available in numerous retail stores, and that you don't have to worry about returning. But the discs should obviously still be properly recycled. If the buyer is too lazy to return a rental disc, it's quite naive to think that he'd go further than his trashcan to dispose of the EZ-D. Pay-per-view HDTV would make much more sense to me. In any case, the EZ-Ds hit the stores this August.
Of course it is possible to extract the DVD to, say, hard-disk during the 48-hour period, as it is with any rental DVD.
Source:
Flexplay press release