Flexplay: The Disposable DVD that Failed (Thankfully)

I mentioned the tragedy of the commons a couple of times in this video. This is an old but (in my opinion) underutilized term for the concept of what happens when shared resources are used by individuals acting in their own best interest. Although the term is flawed and some situations are far more complex than can be explained in four easy words, it’s a useful reminder that things that seem harmless on an individual level can scale in ways we can’t grasp. If you’d like to learn a little more about this concept, check out this website I found; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

I remember buying a couple of these just to see if it was possible to rip them to the computer before the disc oxidized. It was.

Thankfully, they patented every conceivable way to make a aelf destructing disc, so nobody else can create such an abomination

I am SO glad they were overconfident and patented everything under the sun.
Now no other company, no matter how foolish, will get to doing this

There is something so horribly depressing about this, I can just picture a little kid buying Chrarrolets Web and not understanding why their favorite movie just stopped

The tiny moments that kept dystopia dialed down. Imagine if in addition to region locks and DRM, companies could destroy your DVD remotely.

Another problem: The consumer is much more likely to rent another movie if they have to return the first one, continuing the rental cycle.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the “environmentalist pressure” was applied by the rental companies themselves.

They were so proud of the concept that they made the company self-destruct as well.

One of the earliest "nightmares" I had as a kid involved me reading books that destroyed themselves after 1 reading, and video games that self-destructed after you beat them. This kind of shaped me into the non-wasteful person I am now. Learning just now that something dystopian like this actually existed, makes me sick to my stomach.

Gotta love how he managed to futureproof for Disney+ when it was about half a year away!
Also, did Flexplay ever think about the obvious thing of just backing up the ISO file?

One missing aspects of the Flexplay attempted resurrection was Love's. For the unfamiliar, this is a truck stop. The "business travellers" in this equation are truck drivers. While Love's does still have an extensive DVD sales selection for their off-grid trucker patrons, returning a Flexplay disc for recycling would NOT have been an inconvenience since OTR drivers are VERY fuel brand loyal since truck stops reward such things and the parent company of most trucks work out special deals for buying ghastly amounts of fuel every month. So, I pick it up at a Love's in Indiana & recycle at my next Love's fuel stop in Nebraska. What's inconvenient about that?

Might be able to shed a little better light on this. Flexplay was NEVER developed with the intention of mass commercial usage. The technology of limited-play chemical self-destruct discs was developed for the use of award copies of movies and tv shows to be sent to groups like the members of the Academy Awards voting community. The idea was you could send the usual swag bags of “for your consideration” copies of entire movies and shows. BUT they would only last a couple of weeks presumably to give the recipient enough time to watch it a time or two for their vote, but not long enough or in a readable format for bootlegging (apparently they felt the worst people to bootleg their stuff was their own voting community of fellow actors, directors, production people, etc.). For THIS purpose, the tech worked great. But of course anything that seems futuristic or cool, somebody figured they would try and make some sort of market out of it on widespread distribution. But as your video thoroughly points out, nobody wants to pay for the hassle of a medium that they don’t get to keep AND have to drop off to recycle like it was a rental. Plus the tech was dodgy, some batches deteriorated within literally hours of opening, or had faulty leaky packaging and arrived at distributors DOA, etc. But yeah...the original developers of this were making it ONLY for the limited usage and audience of the awards voting crowd usually just around Hollywood. I know this because a friend of ours is in fact a prominent comedian/tv actor who hosted us at his house one year and while there he had in his living room a small stack of these discs and was really excited to show them to us and explain the principle behind them.

Talking about self-destructive media storage, Hideo Kojima (that Metal Gear daddy) once thought of using this kind of CD when developing Metal Gear Solid. He said if Snake died, the PlayStation disc would be permanently unusable. Good thing this tech never took off.

Of course I'm sort of biased, but I wish you'd talked about the chemistry going on in the disc. It's an absolutely fascinating (and really clever) process!

It's hard to say if this is more or less dystopian than the modern streaming subscription model. Nowadays your license to view a movie you enjoy can be revoked at any given time with no warning, and I have to imagine the massive servers have an environmental impact as well

The rental model worked quite well because upon return, usually the consumer would rent another one on impulse.

Surprisingly Redbox is still popular. The one at the grocery store I work at has people standing in front of it all day. I'm glad disc rentals haven't fully died out. Watching my mom come home from work with a Redbox disc in her hand was always an awesome treat and I always got excited to see what new movie we would be watching.

"You will own nothing and be happy"
This DVD concept was ahead of its time

DVD decryption apps were easily available back then as it is now, so the self-destructive DVDs were easily foiled. So of course Netflix / Redbox figured out that they were ripped before they had time to oxidize so they stopped doing that. And of course DIVX encryption was useless against the VLC media player with a special CPU-based DIVX decryptor library added (libdivx).

The flexplay patent basically made it impossible for other companies to try the same thing, so at least we can thank them for that.

I actually still have one I purchased from Staples, The Kite Runner. IT STILL WORKS! The disc has air gaps in the center that allows oxygen to slowly degrade the disc, BUT if you quickly apply superglue after opening to seal that gap.... no degradation! At the time this wasn't a mystery and info and methods were readily available online via forums. I only bought the disc for the challenge of making it permanent. I was an early Netflix and Blockbuster by Mail so even paying $5-6 to permanently own the disc wasn't that appealing because the selection was poor and I still had to drive TO the store to buy it.

I've been around VCR's, et. al. since their beginning. I had a Sony Betamax (which I really liked) and one of the first 500 RCA VCR's in America. I remember when that abomination, DIVX, was originally released - the sales people at Circuit City were paid a $100 commission for every DIVX player they sold.
What was not mentioned in these informative lectures was a major reason that DIVX and FlexPlay failed was because of Disney. Disney, by licensing their catalog to these two formats, helped their demise. How? Every parent knows that children will watch a Disney movie OVER and OVER! Acquiring Shrek on DIVX means that every few days the parents would have to pay for another couple days worth of watching. And with FlexPlay, the parents would have to run to the store and buy the movie again. People would rather pay more for a Disney movie and have the freedom to show it to their kids forever.

It was a perfect way to send messages to certain Mission: Impossible agents.

It's hard for me to imagine the environmental impact of these disposable disks would be that high in comparison to the constant deluge of clamshell packaging we go through after every trip to the store. Especially in 2008!

Interestingly enough, growing up in western Pennsylvania, the best video rental store was a sub-store inside Giant Eagle grocery stores. The “Iggle Video” stores severely cut into blockbuster’s business in the area, especially since you could grab the movie while getting groceries, and the rental terms were usually long enough that it was convenient to drop it off next week when you needed more groceries, and Iggle was just closer to the neighborhood, usually, also.

The Failure of Flexplay is one of the few indicators, that we do not infact live in the darkest timeline.

I have a huge video (DVD) library because I buy something & watch it countless times over the years. Anything that isn't rewatchable gets sold at Half-Price Books. Likewise for my library of books: I've owned some of them going on 30 years, & periodically reread them. Some of them are no longer in print!

the fun thing with these is that you could, if you had a home computer (most had CD drives at this time), burn it to your computer and have a permanent working digital copy.

Imagine a world where there are countless disks just laying around...
... a reminder of the 1990's with AOL and their constant spamming of physical mailboxes with their "Superfast 56K Free Trial" CDs

My grandpa invented the plastic used in these DVDs (I am not joking). His sister lived near the test market and so she bought a whole bunch. We still have a copy of Holes sealed in its package.

the good thing about their patent thingy is, if anyone had had that idea again in the 10 or so years until the patent runs out they wouldve had to pay that patent too in whatever way they wouldve made the selfdestrution of the dvd into reality. so they pretty much ensured it wouldnt be a problem ever again :D

Tested one of these back in the day by leaving it constantly running in a DVD player. After about a day and a half the image began to get scambled and it was unplayable within an hour

Imagine watching Mission: Impossible in this format at the 23-hour mark.

I got one of these to test out, but by the time I was in the mood to watch what it was, the disc was already unreadable on multiple drives and a perfectly working PS3

I seen something similar to this earlier at my local Goodwill store. There was 5 DVDs that had a price on the back on rental fees. I didn't bother looking at the disc but I feel it's the same thing. They were different from the one you featured in this video. The cardboard cases were just that. Thin cardboard DVD cases.

The most ironic store I remember that did movie and game rentals was Kroger. When I was kid, they were a legit threat to Walmart. They had a small selection of rentals compared to most places but they did offer a decent selection. My favorite rental place from my childhood was called Video Vision. God the experience there...even a distinct smell to the location. They had racks of movie and game boxes with tiny tags on each one. You'd take the tag to the counter and they'd give you the copy of the game or movie. I remember buying my copy of Sonic the Hedgehog there. It had the "not for resale" marking on it and I felt like I was a badass kid getting a special deal lol
As much as I love technology and where we've gotten now, I miss the experiences of the good-old-days

There was actually an attempt to market a self-destructing VHS format. I think it was called One-View. The tape would somehow erase itself as you watched it. Not sure if the resulting blank tape could be reused for recording or not.

To show you the power of Flexplay, I sawed the movie rental industry in half!

I was working a summer job during my college years at Staples in 2008. We got a single one of those cardboard stand things that are in the middle of retail aisles (I forgot the fancy retail jargon word we had for them) to put out. I thought it was the most random thing ever, about maybe 50 at most discs of a random assortment of movies, mostly very old. I had heard of the "no return" dvd concept before, but never actually seen it. I doubt we ever sold any (never during my shifts at least), and we DID get at least a few complaints about participating in that wasteful nonsense.

Ah, I remember these. I remember reading about them before they came out and hating the idea immediately. So much waste, so much greed, so much pointlessness when other solutions (video rentals, especially) already existed. I was very pleased to find that most of humanity agreed with me, and this stupid product failed hard.

I loled SO hard at the "open before 2009" on the inside of the sealed wrap! Another great early 2000's tech :)))

I stopped renting movies early on because by the time I remembered to return them the late fees were high enough I could have outright bought the tape...or later, disc, so that's just what I began doing. Now I have shelves and shelves of dvds and blurays (I got rid of my big vhs collection to make more room) and seldom watch any of them more than twice although there are a few I'll watch over and over again.

Imagine you just got your Freeplay-CD, then you try to watch it a day after, but the DVD-player suddenly burns in a second and explodes. That would be terrifying.

Disposable DVD what a nice way to produce huge amount of plastic waste.

I remember my dad talking about these. They were very popular with long-haul truck drivers. You could get these things at the major truck stops, watch the movie in the off time, then toss it. Most truckers had a portable TV/DVD, but not a ton of space to store movies. And since many places, especially in the Midwest, didnt have Redbox yet, it could be hard to return a rented disk on time.
Another perk was a trucker could buy these disks on the company account while buying other work supplies at the truck stops or even pay with cash. If a driver wanted to use Redbox, they woud have to use their own personal credit card.
So, I guess the Flexplay system did "work", but only for a relatively small market. Of course, when truckers started using Wi-Fi or smart phones, there was no need to use disks at all.

I’m actually really curious about how reliable these DVD’s were. Because first off 48 hours is a really convenient amount of time, wouldn’t it be hard to moderate the reaction to exactly hit a classic rental time of 48 hours. So was it really 53 hours and do the discs always expire at the same time or is there variation. But i think most importantly is there a decline in picture quality towards the end, if it goes from perfect to completely unplayable over like even an hour would be impressive.

11:26 "And now you've printed something out, to ship it back...to be destroyed" made me actually burst out laughing

I can only imagine what would have happened if this took off and became the defacto standard. What sorts of workarounds would people have figured out to bypass the degradation? Spraying the disk or immersing it in some transparent coating to somehow to block oxygen? Fun to think about.

It’s interesting what’s described as “disposable,” meaning single-use. I was just listening to someone talking about transitioning in their lifetime from traditional batteries to everyday rechargeable lithium batteries, and it occurred to me how retroactive the term “disposable” is, now that the idea of reusability is more popular in the public conscience. I wonder how these dvds were referred to / thought of at the time.

I'm old enough to remember getting fined for bringing a VHS back to Block Buster without first rewinding it.

I remember encountering these while driving back and forth across the US while I was in the Army, I was tempted to try it out, but I usually had a few DVDs that I could play in a portable player and listen to the movie during the drive.

Great video, I really enjoyed it! Say what you want of the 2000's, those years were so wild because of their 'experiments' and trying out new things. Mostly crazy things. But that was the best part of it!

So idea. Is it possible to resurface the darkened disc? I've developed ways to refurbish even deeply scratched discs using multiple sanding and polishing techniques that can make a disc readable again even if it got gouged deep enough to feel with the shin on your fingers. These restoration techniques do ultimately make the disc thinner, but readable again as long as the data layer isn't damaged. If you hold the disc up to a light bulb and not spots of the reflective layer are missing, the disc can be saved. If you see spots where light shines through, it can't be saved. If it's only an oxidizing coating on the surface, I can make those self destructing discs readable again by removing the layer of oxidized material. That red color tells me that they likely used iron to react with the oxygen in the air so that it would reflect the red LASER.

A classic case of a solution looking for a problem. I'd assume if it had caught on with the traveling subset there'd be enough disposal bins scattered about at travel stops and the like that one could just discard the disk on their next stop, but everything you pointed out still applies.

it is funny you say that because a few small grocery stores here in the UK in the 90s actually did do video rentals, it was surprising to see but they seemed to do well as the prices where extremely competitive

It's probably a good thing the patent included so many different ideas for self-destructing discs. Imagine the waste if people kept trying to make the idea stick and one of them did.

I remember seeing these at my local Food Lion back around 2008 or 2009, and I read the front and was like “well that’s really stupid”.

I vaguely remember seeing those cheap looking cases in grocery stores or smaller retail stores, had no idea they were limited use. Just their appearance kept me from ever looking at them and potentially asking my parents to buy one lol

This was a really good idea to bleed consumers of their money. It seems obvious why the big movie companies of the time were onboard with the idea. They could leverage their title without filling giving up their license to you. Besides the obvious problem of digitalization (which was right around the corner), I think the biggest issue with flexplay is that the idea doesn’t really help the buyer much. Again, it’s a genius idea to fill the pockets of the big studios and the retailers. The problem wasn’t just natural waste, it was also a bigger waste of time for the end user to just be left with junk.

That's crazy to consider how many hundreds of millions of DVDs would've been sent to landfills each year if this caught on.

I was shocked by the statistic that 50% of all DVD rentals were from Red Box at one time. I never used one once despite seeing them all over the place. I never bought a hot dog from one of those rotating glass boxes either. Dunno if those are related or not.

Man, companies always finding ways to make you not own anything.

the color of the disk isn't really a problem, it's something else. I had a black colored CD-R and it worked fine inside a computer DVD reader.

Don't worry! I'm old enough to grow up in the time where streaming services weren't a thing, so it's not an issue for me! I know exactly what you're talking about when it comes to physical media! :D

"Unfortunately it was something that nobody asked for." The #1 rule of business is providing value to the customer. Forget that rule and it doesn't matter how "cool" your item is.

honestly I like that they patented pretty much every way to make a self destructing disks
so that no one, not even if they wanted to, could make something so useless as a self destructing disk

11:51 I was thinking when you mentioned allowing other stores to get into video rentals, "it'd be nice if they could have a video rental system where you could return to any rental location and not just the one you bought from, even business travellers going to a different city could just return it there", glad to hear somebody else had the same idea and made it work.

“This message will self destruct in...”
I want every mission impossible dvd rental to do this.

Another reason no doubt movie rental stores in their heyday surely didn't want Flexplay, aside from making it so much easier for store outlets everywhere to compete with them.... is that it kept customers from coming back a 2nd time. And that second time often resulted in renting more movies, or at least seeing them.
Anyway this guys videos are well researched and interesting! good work

Silly me! I just found a Christmas DVD called NOEL in a thrift shop. All I noticed was that it was still in its original packaging. After unwrapping and trying to play it, at first I thought my DVD player was broken. After all, it's about as old as this disc. The screen went blank and I removed the DVD when it started making an odd, scraping noise. OIly THEN did I notice that it was dated 2004. After watching this Clip-Share video, I now know that not only the 48-hour time limit specified on the cover applies to Flexplay DVD's. Even kept in their original packaging, they don't work 18 years after the sell date! Imagine that! I htink I'll search Clip-Share and see if I can find a way to watch this movie. It has a great cast: Penelope Cruz, Susan Sarandon, Paul walker and Alan Arkin. MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Imagine having a dvd that self destructs after you rent it

the "Disney+ (trying to futureproof this)" bit actually sabotages how seamless it would've sounded for you to include that in the list to a 2022 viewer, haha

Late to the party, recently found your channel and I'm really enjoying it. Had to click on this one, because I remember grabbing a self-destroying copy of Reign of Fire back in '03. Then I never saw these things again. Had no clue they were released again in '08, but by then they wouldn't have made much sense I guess. Thanks for the video

If they made a VHS version, would it be called Flextape?

I worked at a market research firm in the 2000’s and ran market research for this product! Crazy!

The more companies fight against piracy, the more piracy there will be, Netflix almost achieved it with streaming but then the rest of the companies wanted a piece of the cake, And here I am, not being able to remember which was the last movie I paid for.

Blockbuster here in Denmark did have a self-destruct DVD, that contained a liquid over the data-layer. The laser from the DVD-player activated the liquid, so that the DVD would start self-destruct :D

A bit late to the party, but this was recommended to me and now you have a new sub because of it. Also, glad I never knew about this technology. This has to be one of the stupidest ideas for rental out there. And you're right. Returning the discs for recycling literally defeated the purpose of what they were going for. Glad it failed.

Man I remember renting Redbox every time I went to the store, I still have two Redbox movies in my movie library that I never returned. I wonder what the late fees on those are now...

Imagine if the disc destroys itself whilst you're still watching it haha

I remember seeing these at a truck stop once! We were on a road trip and I thought it was neat because we could get one to watch at the hotel that night and not have to worry about turning around to return it. Obviously Redbox does this much better but as a kid I felt like a spy with a secret self-destructing message.

I used to take badly scratched discs to a game store and they had a machine that would basically sand the surface smooth again and it would make the disc work so maybe it could remove the corruption on the disc.

everything from 2:40 on is hilarious! Your humor and sarcasm is top choice mate! the cuts used ( and then you cut and you're not sitting there) -- i just love it. ive literally watches that section up until you get up to see the tv 4 times.

This is my guess at the point of seeing the DVD package being opened and displayed to us - it will work partially, or it will fall apart in the player due to age, so you have to open it up and clean it out to be able to use it again.

You're great, dude. Too many times I find myself dragged away from my homework over a recommended Technology Connections video and smiling at my monitor like a goofball at your corny ass jokes lmao. Keep it up man you seriously are a gem of nerd youtube. never change!

Truck Driver here: these were cool, but kinda on the expensive side if I recall. They were great for us, as getting back into a place to return a DVD could never be guaranteed. Hence, the truck stops you mentioned them being in: captive audience. Except that audiobooks were cheaper, and in only a year or two, smart phones were available so these were much less useful.

Yup I absolutely remember these it sounded crazy and stupid at the time and they weren’t very cheap, also I remember that you could just copy the disc.

I remember walking through an airport terminal and seeing a kiosk that was renting DVDs along with portable players. I don’t know if the DVDs were destructible, but the DVD players certainly weren’t, so you’d have to return something (again, negating the self-destruct feature).

Even kids like us knew about blockbuster, my little sisters are familiar too, you Clip-Sharers really give us a tough break.

Actually during the heyday of video rentals many if not most grocery stores ended up having a video rental section. The vestige of this is the fact they continue to sell some movies.

Imagine a world before streaming services? Sounds wonderful!

The jokes on them. I store my DVD player in an airtight box filled with nitrogen.

i remember back when netflix dvds were mailed! I actually almost ruined our brand-new playstation because i saw disc go in = movie, and since i was a toddler at best, i decided to shove dvds in until they worked... 5 dvds later my parents wondered where all the dvds were, gave me another disc and watched in horror as i shoved it in the disc slot. Luckily the dvds and playstation were all fine after!

I remember both this and DIVX. These were pretty much universally panned. I really wonder how either of these were assumed winning ideas.

There was one of those red boxes in front of a local grocery store but they NEVER had movies that I was wanting to rent.

Ahh man I miss Blockbuster. I loved going there and grabbing a new movie and seeing how good or not it would be. Even older then that I remember Hollywood Video store.

I do miss DVDs, they were great collectors pieces for fans of that specific movie

Me: "Mom, can we watch Charlotte's Web?"
Mom: "Sorry honey, it expired last week."

Wow! I'm familiar with DivX and the Redbox very well but I've never heard of a self destructing DVD by Flexplay. Thank goodness I was able to buy regular DVD's in high school and college bypassing Flexplay. Could you imagine watching a film at least once on the day of the purchase and then it no longer works after 24 to 48 hours? All hell would break loose in the living room. Lolz!

It’s interesting they thought of the laser itself as if someone were to store the disc itself in an Ar atmosphere for storage, if that were to be a practical thing to circumvent the protection mechanism. I am curious as to once the reaction starts, can it be arrested by some chemical methodology?