“Live Free or Die Hard” Comes With Digital Version

Written by: Michael Hickerson (SoSF Staff Journalist)

While the fourth installment in the Die Hard saga may not have broke any new ground in the action genre, it appears the film will break ground in the arena of content distribution.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, when “Live Free or Die Hard” comes to DVD on November 20, the special edition DVD will come with an electronic copy of the movie that can be played on a computer and select portable video players.

“This may be the killer app, where you have physical media that allows you to have a big-screen experience and at the same time move the file around to other devices and have a great experience there as well,” said Mike Dunn of 20th Century Fox.

“The industry has sold nearly 12 billion DVDs to date, and the release of ‘Live Free or Die Hard’ is the first one that allows consumers to move their content to other devices,” Dunn said. “With the myriad of viewing options available to consumers in our rapidly evolving digital world, a DVD with Digital Copy offers a simple way for consumers to satisfy their growing desire to watch what they want, when they want and, most importantly, how and where they want.”

Users who purchase the two-disc special edition of the film will insert the second disc into the DVD-Rom drive and follow a series of instructions to extract the digital copy onto their computer. 20th Century FOX hopes to limit duplication and distribution of the film by having a 16-digit code on the back of the DVD clamshell to authorize the digital copy transfer, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

And while “Live Free or Die Hard” will be the first commercially-released DVD to offer the digital copy to consumers, it won’t be the last. A month later, fans of boy-wizard Harry Potter can extract a digital copy of the latest “Harry Potter” film when “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” comes to DVD.