Warner extends the expiration dates of digital copies (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Story from Engadget

 

[Doctorossi]

I still find it ridiculous that these things even have expiration dates.

 

[Chuck Anstey]

I still find it ridiculous that these things even have expiration dates.

I understand that sentiment in principle quite well and generally agree with it but I think there is an expiration date because of legitimate accounting / legal practices and not the usual Hollywood accounting where no movie in history has made money.
The problem without an expiration date is that a studio must maintain the ability to download any movie ever release with digital copy forever. That gets hard to account for 10 years from now on the books. With an expiration date, at some point they can legally say they no longer need to keep a spot open on the books and on a server for potential digital copy downloads. My father-in law accountant explained that to me when I asked why coupons from the company he worked for didn't all have "No expiration date".
The above is just a supposition based upon the difficulty of having any type of coupon with no expiration date.

 

[rayman1701]

I understand the codes having an expiration date more when they are just iTunes downloads, which I could see as being basically a coupon for an iTunes movie. But when they have discs with the data on it, then all iTunes is doing is verifying, and that shouldn't need an expiration date, just to verify if the code has been used or not.

On the plus side after seeing this, I was finally able to get the Digital Copy of Domino, which I bought last year on a good Amazon sale and the code had expired Jan. 2010. They gave me a new code and the disc finally copied. I had checked a few times and the site had always listed the same expiration date as on the card, so it was cool seeing the new date actually listed on the site.

The weird thing is that that has been the only code that didn't work, I've gotten other blu-rays with digital copies from other studios that worked well past the expiration date. So I'm glad I finally was able to get it to work. Sure it's not the reason I bought the movie, but they put the disc in there and I want what I paid for.

 

[Brian L]

Thanks for the tip on this! Would not have known about it save for this thread. I only had one title that I had with an expired code; The Blind Side, but it is my wife's favorite, so she will be happy to have the opportunity to load it onto her iPad for trips.
I have to give props to Warner for doing this. I don't disagree that there really is no decent reason to have expiration codes on Digital Copies, but they did not really have to do this.
To go somewhat off topic on a Digital Copy related note, I just got the Hunger Games, which does not use a disc for the DC; just a code that starts an actual download from the web. What surprised me is that this is the first Digital Copy that I recall which actually downloads an "HD" copy. I put "HD" in quotes because it surely is not the equal of a disc based HD movie (and less than 5gb, no shock there), but at more than double the file size, hopefully it will be superior to the SD download.
Brian