Suicide is painless More trashy technology from the entertainment industry BY JESS KILBY

Imagine if you could buy a DVD for $5 at the supermarket checkout line, instead of making an extra stop at the video-rental store and shelling out $3.49 — plus the inevitable late fees. The catch? Your cheap, new DVD will render itself unplayable 48 hours after you open it.

Too far-fetched to be possible? An environmental nightmare? A greedy, shortsighted move on the part of at least one major movie studio that could potentially put independent, and even chain, rental stores out of business? If you guessed B and C, you are, unfortunately, correct.

Welcome to EZ-D, the not-so-new technology from the New York company Flexplay, which Disney has decided to take for a spin. Nearly identical to the product developed by Rhode Island–based Spectra Science that was featured in a January, 2000, Wired article, Flexplay’s EZ-D DVDs come vacuum-sealed and coated with a resin that begins to change color once it’s exposed to air. When the witching hour arrives, the data side of the disc has turned from red to black (SpectraDiscs turned blue); the newly opaque surface is unreadable by the DVD player’s laser beam.

In August, Disney will roll out eight EZ-D titles in four test cities (breathe easy, Portland ain’t on the list): Signs, The Recruit, The Hot Chick, 25th Hour, Frida, Equilibrium, Heaven, and Rabbit-Proof Fence. The list of titles is relevant because, as the astute reader may have noticed, these flicks will be available to buy or rent in " normal " DVD format long before August.

" Why are they holding it back? " says Videoport owner Bill Duggan. " Because independent retailers don’t like it? Because even Blockbuster doesn’t like it? Nah. Who’s the most powerful retailer today in the world? Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is who’s saying ‘No, you can’t put this out, day and date, with your regular DVD. Because what’s going to happen then, is we’ve got people who come in and spend at a $20 to $25 price point on Frida, now you’re going to knock them down to six bucks, and we’re only going to make 50 cents instead of making $3.’ So that’s who’s saying right now, ‘No. You’ve got to give us some space.’ Because they can do anything they want to Disney. They can say ‘Fine, we won’t take your product for two months,’ and then Disney will be screwed. "

Duggan predicts this lag will be what kills the EZ-D format, and he hopes, for the sake of his own business, that the disposable discs do, indeed, fail. Otherwise, he says, the rock-bottom profit margin on EZ-Ds (around 10 percent, opposed to the 35 percent Duggan makes now) would cripple his operations.

" If they somehow managed to change the world so that all consumers wanted these, I would be dead. It would be over, " he says. " I couldn’t pay health insurance on my staff. I’d have to have all part-time, 16-year-olds making minimum wage, and I doubt I’d be able to pay the rent in the location I’m in. "

Duggan says that, although studios " make more money from [rental sales] then from any theatrical exposure or cable or pay-per-view, " they’re still trying to " squeeze more blood from the stone. "

" They want a piece out of every time a new set of eyeballs sees their product, " he says.

But Duggan is confident that, given a choice, Videoport customers would choose to rent their movies the old-fashioned way.

" I think my own consumers . . . would be offended by the fact that it was trashed — that it was just disposable, " he says. " I think that people here are more environmentally conscious. And I’m not talking about anybody who’s especially active — I’m just talking about, well, look at the percentage of households here that recycle. "

Duggan doesn’t think Videoport renters see the return trip as much of an obstacle, either. In fact, many people use the opportunity to rent more movies, and Duggan says the store’s downtown delivery service is " completely underutilized. "

" Most people just want to go out and shop, " he says. " They want to be out and about, and we’re just one more stop on the way. We tell them, bring your dog down, walk down, whatever. Just make it part of your neighborhood. "

What Duggan does worry about, though, are areas of the country where sprawl is rampant and Wal-Mart shoppers will be more than happy to embrace this wasteful technology, rather than climb back in the SUV and drive 20 miles to return a video.

" And once all the chains start getting into it, the problem is, then the other format starts to lose support and eventually that other format becomes unavailable, " he says. " So then, even though my customers want regular, plain-old ‘let me rent it or buy it and keep it forever,’ now they don’t have a choice anymore. "

But, of course, by the time EZ-D might come to Portland, even the unwashed masses will have the point-and-click technology to burn their own DVDs — a process that takes far less than 48 hours.

And though you can’t stick the wasted disc in your recycling bin once it’s, ahem, burnt out, Bull Moose Music owner Brett Wickard confirms that the store still uses old discs as gift certificates, and he’d be happy to put Portland’s exhausted EZ-Ds to good use.

Jess Kilby can be reached at jkilby@phx.com