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Crazy Zediva streams movies only out on DVD
Want to stream a movie over the Internet that's not available for streaming on a service like Netflix or Amazon? Zediva can stream films that you can only get on physical DVDs--through a goofball workaround that actually has strong legal precedent. Zediva rents you a DVD but keeps the DVD in a player in its own facility. You then control this player remotely from your computer, and the output is piped over the Net to you. Think of it as a wall of Slingboxes, availablefor rent. If you want to watch a movie online that's only available on disc because it's in the pre-streaming, DVD-sales-only "window," this will punch through that restriction.Or will it? The service just launched today, and in my quick test, at about 5 p.m. PT, only 6 of the 49 "new releases" on the site's main movie selection screen were available for viewing. The marquee title, "The Fighter," was available, but "127 Hours," "Megamind," "Due Date," and most other titles were marked as "rented out." Unlike services such as Netflix, which can stream as many copies of a single video as it has bandwidth to support, Zediva only has so many copies of each DVD, and each lives in its own dedicated DVD player. When all the players holding a given movie are in use, nobody else can rent the film.Zediva founder Venky Srinivasan says the balance sheet on this mechanism works out, and the company can grow to support demand, but he does acknowledge that there will be periods of high load that may make some films unavailable to some users. An e-mail (and later, SMS) alert system will tell users when the movies they want become available again.The Zediva streaming experience is, by nature, much more like watching a DVD in your living room than streaming from other services. The service can try, on your behalf, to skip past the annoying previews and FBI warnings on a DVD you've rented. You can see it trying. It's just like when you angrily mash the buttons on the remote yourself, trying to get... to... the damn... movie.In my trial, unfortunately, just as my movie ("Dinner for Schmucks") was starting, Zediva threw me a connection error and disconnected me from my player. When I tried to play it again, it told me my film was rented out. Not an auspicious early experience.Launch-day capacity issues can be solved, of course. What we may be more concerned about is Zediva's future fighting the movie studios. But there is at least precedent for this idea. Zediva buys retail DVDs, and the first sale doctrine lets them rent those DVDs to consumers.Furthermore, the place-shifting service Slingbox is legal, and so is the concept of the "networked DVR," which is conceptually similar. Media industry disruptor Michael Robertson explains a key place-shifting ruling: As long as the consumer is pressing the buttons--even remotely--it doesn't matter where the video stream comes from. This argument may be extended to include the playback of rented DVDs. Zediva has not yet be challenged in court, Srinivasan says, but his company is "adequately capitalized" to mount a legal defense if necessary. (He would not disclose details of his financing)."We are confident that the law allows consumers to watch DVDs that they have rented. We hope the studios will see us a partner," Srinivasan says, adding that he makes sure Zediva stays in "strict compliance" with the law, that there's no back-room caching going on to boost availability of services. There are consumer benefits to the service, not the least of which is the (theoretically) instant gratification of being able to stream a film that's not available any other way except via physical DVD. Rental prices and terms are competitive. Movies cost $2 to rent and users have two weeks to watch each one. (Some other streaming rental services, like iTunes, only give you 24 hours once you press play.)Zediva is crackpot, but appropriately so, as it highlights how crackpot current laws and contracts are in the movie industry. It makes a reasonable person's head hurt to think that streaming content from a physical DVD player instead of from a identical electronic copy of the DVD somehow makes it legal. We don't know yet how the movie industry will react to this service. In an uncommon display of reasonableness, it has not so far done anything.

Road Angels taps social networking for roadside assistance
Breaking down while driving is always a stressful experience, and when Marcus Wong was told he had the wrong kind of vehicle, and therefore the company he'd trusted couldn't help him, he decided to take action."Imagine that, after paying for years of subscription fees totalling almost AU$2000, the company you trusted with roadside assistance refused to help you because you were 'driving the wrong car'. I mean, shouldn't policies cover people, not cars? This, unfortunately, happened to me," he said. "I was left stranded 30 kilometres from home with a flat car battery with no help on the way; so I had to improvise a solution. I walked around the area prompting strangers for a helping hand, and after an hour searching, I found a helpful elderly couple. They gave me a quick jump-start, and I was back on the road. I was so grateful I gave them AU$20 for their service. Out of the maelstrom of frustration, gratitude, anger and happiness came an idea, and Road Angels was born."Road Angels, a free iPhone app, lets you leverage your Facebook friends for help. When you break down, you can send a notification to up to 300 Facebook friends so that, if anyone happens to be nearby, they can pop by with a spare tyre, jumper cables or jerry can of fuel, and you can even sweeten the pot by offering them something in return."Our purpose is to make roadside assistance affordable, more efficient and accessible for everyone, regardless of location or socioeconomic status," Wong said. "We understand that many people living outside the Melbourne CBD experience extremely long wait times for roadside assistance, which can sometimes be upwards of two hours during peak periods. On top of that, many people do not possess a roadside assistance policy at all, meaning they have no insurance when things go wrong."As well as allowing you to ask your mates for a helping hand, the app â€" which won the Startup Weekend Melbourne competition earlier this year â€" has an assistant mode that helps you troubleshoot common problems and a quiz mode that gives you something to do while you wait for help to arrive.But the team has more in store; much like Airtasker and GoCatch, it wants to create a system where practictioners can be reviewed and approved."Our future plans include growing a grassroots roadside-assistance community, the 'Airtasker' of roadside assistance, where anyone at anytime can find vetted, skilled roadside-assistance practitioners (with or without professional qualifications) at the press of a button," Wong said. "As a natural corollary, these practitioners will be able to help those in need for a nominal fee of their choosing."You can download Road Angels for free from the iTunes App Store.