Android Scans DVD Bar Codes, Downloads Movies 181
cars writes "Remember how you can scan any bar code with an android phone and it will tell you where to find that product for cheaper? A new Android application called BarTor (formerly ScanTorrent) can scan any DVD bar code and then signals either uTorrent or Vuze on your PC to download the movie from BitTorrent. How long do you think this will last?" Other features include purchase opportunities on barcode lookup, Google base product lookup, and site-level filtering.
Re:Charging 2.99 (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect a lot of people download movies rather than paying for them because $30 for a movie is just not viable.
People may well buy that application for $2.99, because $2.99 is a reasonable price for a little phone application.
They charge you for it? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the MPAA didn't hatch this idea, I bet they wish they would have.
Quality? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:nice (Score:4, Interesting)
The barcode recognition is the biggest feature IMHO. Imagine the apps you could build with a good barcode recognition.
Scan a list of 'to buy'. Sort of a "Wedding registry" but how many times are you out and you see something that looks like a decent product but you want to check reviews? Scan a barcode, dump it into a Google docs document.
The biggest IMHO is "crowd sourcing" grocery lists. So you go to the store and scan in what you're going to buy, punch in the price and it gets added to a database. Use the GPS to determine the store.
Get a few hundred people checking prices and you'll have a fairly accurate database of prices. Then you go home, made a grocery list and have it calculate where the cheapest place to shop is.
Re:Charging 2.99 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Charging 2.99 (Score:5, Interesting)
I kinda wish you had logged in. You gave the first respectable list of reasons to pirate this site has ever seen, without succumbing to the temptation to make it look noble. I commend your honesty, even in the face of your cowardice.
Re:Charging 2.99 (Score:3, Interesting)
I go to starbucks for the "buy a small coffee, stay in a comfy chair with free electricity and wifi for hours" promotion
Re:Charging 2.99 (Score:1, Interesting)
Apparently, we only have to pay for what we use if we like it. Try doing that at a restaurant, hehe.
Buskers survive on this payment model, because it doesn't cost them anything to have more people watching the show. The same applies to movies when distributed via bittorrent. It does not apply to restaurants.
Re:nice (Score:2, Interesting)
the solution isn't to limit technology, but to encourage non-profit cooperative... at a non-profit grocer all prices can stay rock bottom for even the highest quality goods.
plus, with the national co-op networks in place co-op grocers, and therefor the buyers themselves, can work together to encourage the manufacturers to make better products that cost less than, rather than more than, the crappier products.
[i call this the wall-mart strategy, since they're notorious for successfully setting their own buying prices and demanding changes in manufacturing practices.]
a good example of this could be: a sugarless wholegrain cereal at a co-op could cost less than a high sugar content bleached and then re-enriched cereal, or a sugarless organic peanut butter--which is naturally sweet--could be cheaper than sugared inorganic name brand crap.
this would do away with the need to waste a customers time scanning the products at every grocery store to create a customer friendly database of product pricing schemes across a city/nation.
please take note that such a system could be modified by retail agents.
also note the fact that: in most areas the majority of the grocers are owned by the same organization. in seattle it's really just kroger vs wal-mart, and whole foods vs co-ops. all of kroger's stores are strategically designed to appear in business against each other in order to influence the sales of certain items. [i am the horses mouth]