p2pnet.net News > Paris:- Cdiscount, a French online discount resseller, will start selling disposable DVDs (DVD-D) on May 6. Part of the hypermarket Casino network, Cdiscount, has also bought the rights to sell DVD-D in Belgium and in the Netherlands.

Like classic DVD, DVD-D are made in polycarbonate. However, they have an extra layer of coating that reacts to 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.

The DVD-D will be sealed in a vacuum to protect it.

The first movie to be available on the new suicide discs will be Denys Arcand’s popular The Barbarian Invasions, which won two prizes in Cannes 2003 and the 2004 Oscar of the Best foreign film.

Seven hundred other movies in Cdisount’s catalogue will also soon be available on DVD-D.

Based on similar technology to the Thomson EZ-D self-destructible DVD already used in North America by Buena Vista Home Entertainment, the Cdiscount version is, “cheaper to manufacture,” Hervé Charle, Cdiscount ceo told 01Net.

However, experts wonder if the French suicide discs will fare any better than their US cousins.

A DVD-D costs a little more than a normal eight-hour DVD rental, which ranges from 1.5 euros to 2 euros. And, “cinema is about dreaming,” Gilles Darnois, development manager of GDS, a network of video rental house Vidéo Futur, is quoted as saying in Liberation.

“When it’s becoming disposable, the dream disappears.”

So although Cdiscount promises DVD-D are recyclable, they could nonetheless end up in domestic garbage cans – or on p2p networks.

Each DVD-D will cost 2.49 euros ($2.94).

Thuan Huynh

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