Movie studios to launch own cloud service as Apple readies iCloud - Page 2

Really? Maybe you should have a look at the price of a movie from Apple, there is something that is overpriced.

The studios are run by some of the dumbest people on the planet. Just look at most of the crap they produce! They are a pathetic lot of supervises who have fought every effort at innovation yet somehow think they know best what the consumer wants. Not. They only think about their pocketbooks, the consumer be damned. This effort is bound to fail just like all their past stupid mistakes. They should really study Steve Jobs and what made him, and Apple so incredibly successful. Give the consumer ease of use, high quality, and great customer service and they will pay for it. Step one, look at the quality of your product you clowns!

Duh! Hey clown fish, the studios are setting the price, and they still think its too low!

Really? Blade Runner (terrible movie by the way) is only NZ$17.99 (AUD$14) in the NZ iTunes store, you can buy it on Blu-ray for a similar price.

Are they? If that is the case they must have no interest in digital downloads, it is cheaper for me, and I get a higher quality product to get a disc sent half way around the world than get a digital download locally..

And what's with the name calling, usually a sign of someone that has no argument...

Exactly, why pay for one movie when you could get a couple months' subscription to a streaming or DVD rental service for the same money? Hardly anyone is going to watch it more than once on any sort of regular basis

This sort of business model of "owning" the film in whatever form was dead several years ago, it's just bizarre that Hollywood still hasn't grasped this

A real ANDROID!!!!

Cheers

Therein lies the problem for me, I don't want to buy physical disks anymore.

Digital copy to download/stream or no purchase.

+1

I haven't either. I don't mind 720p for my bedroom TV, or even Den TV (50" 1080p)- but for my media room (110" and 1080p) I have to watch Blu-Ray now. The difference between 720 and 1080 is vastly different.

I know I'm in the minority (in Dallas where media rooms are dime a dozen because our house pricing is so fantastic)- but Blu-Rays are amazing quality, and it won't be replicated for a while. 50gb discs (where on occasions like Avatar- 50gb is JUST the movie) are going to make it impossible to duplicate the sound and video quality because you'd need a 25TB hard drive to keep all my movies (500).

I know I'm a dying breed- and people will eventually choose convenience over quality, but things like this will hopefully help get the studios a little more physical media sales. Unlikely, but hopefully.

BTW- Blu-Rays aren't that expensive. You can get them used at Blockbuster for Buy 5 for $20 all day long (and almost brand new releases at that)- www.blu-ray.com Great deal site.

That's coming. As I mentioned above, I would argue the point of Ultraviolet is to move movie ownership from the physical to the digital world.

What are you people pissing and moaning about? Did any of you even bother to read the article? It's just seems like most of you read that it involved the movie studios and NOT working with Apple then jumped onto the "if it's not Apple, it must be crap" bandwagon.

It sounds like a great, simple idea to me. If you buy a physical copy, you get access to a digital copy as well. Through one account. A copy that isn't tied to Sony devices or Apple devices or Samsung devices or any other stupid limitations like that. If a device has an Ultraviolet application, it can play the movie. It's not stuck tied to iTunes thankfully. Sorry, I know a lot you here love being tied completely to Apple, but that's not for everyone.

Of course, 'perpetual' in this context means until they decide to shut it down in a couple of years.

It's pretty obvious what the motivation of the studios is here. They want to completely control all access to content and eliminate any distribution competition so they can fix the prices of what are essentially micro-monopolies. Consumers should, and I think will, reject this service, mostly because it will be too complicated and unreliable.

And what? Go with the micro-monopoly of the iTunes Store instead? Different gatekeeper, same problem. That's also the issue with relying on streaming services; they might have the movie one month, but next month their license to it might be gone.

And now they're giving us a remake of 'Footloose'.

They have that already minus the cloud. Last movie I got that included a digital download, the code didn't work. When I contacted their tech support they told me I was out of luck. Nice work folks, instead of fixing the problem (which probably would have just been emailing a code that works) you got me to never buy one with a download included - I guess ripping the disk is a better option after all.

Screw that. The customer is at the mercy of the failed technology and has no recourse if the studio doesn't deliver what was paid for.

Physical media is far from dead, but it's certainly in decline. Blu-ray is up about 20% over last year and I believe last year at this time it was up 46% from 2009 (I don't have access to the numbers from where I am.) DVD is certainly down, but is being largely (but not completely) replaced by BD sales. IIRC, U.S. physical sales grosses are equivalent to theatrical boxoffice, so the numbers are still quite large.

Furthermore, 2011 will be the first year that digital downloads will exceed physical media in the music business.

If there's any proof that physical media is not dead, it's the furor over the recent Netflix decisions and reversals in their attempt to isolate the physical media business.

The fact is that physical and digital media will exist concurrently. They both have their advantages and disadvantages. And Blu-ray remains the way to view movies with the highest picture and sound quality, especially at home. Having said that, there are plenty of people who have no problem watching a movie on their 3" smartphone.

Partnering with Apple, Netflix, etc., does not set anyone "for life". If you want proof of that, look at the music industry. U.S. industry sales (for both physical and digital combined) are now half of their 1999 peak and that's not even taking inflation into account. However, the music industry has one major disadvantage that the the film industry doesn't have: what's killed the music industry is the fact that due to digital downloads, it's once again become primarily a singles market.

Some other posters are proposing date and date home video distribution for movies. Although some studio execs agree with you, this will kill the theatres. If you kill the theatres, you kill the budgets for movies and most movies will have the quality of "direct to video" releases. IMO, the industry should return to longer theatrical windows to insure that theatres survive, because movies are becoming a commodity that no one really cares about anymore, but that will never happen because they're more concerned with quarterly cash flow than anything else, which is why all the CEOs care about is opening weekend. IMO, the industry is on a slow train to suicide.

All this studio cloud thing is really about is providing a way for purchasers of physical product to be able to also watch their purchases on other devices without the studios having to supply a "digital copy" in the physical package. And for people who move away from physical or don't want the physical, they'll have the infrastructure already in place. This isn't necessarily a bad idea as long as ALL the studios, including the independents and the TV show distributors participate. But Disney going its own way is insane. And at the very least, it provides competition to Apple and Netflix, which will encourage them to keep prices low and quality/experience higher.

The connection is as strong as ever. The estate still owns the assets. Who will own the estate might become apparent via the probate court, but more likely, the majority of the Billion$ were in trust already, and the ultimate beneficiaries will remain a closely-guarded secret.

Unless Steve was a financial wizard (not so far fetched) the bulk of his money was managed by third parties already. When you are dealing with Billion$, it is usually more work than one man can handle. A whole company's department-worth of people are likely employed doing nothing but handling Steve's money.

Usually, Wall Street Types handle the money for rich corporate CEOs and their families. I think it likely, or more likely than before, that Wall Street will handle the Billion$ and will turn them into even more Billion$ for Steve's chosen beneficiaries.

So for now, the Disney stock and the Apple stock are most likely still controlled by the same Wall Street Types.

Maybe not so much of a problem:

In the North American, Western, and global markets, the major film studios, often simply known as the majors, are commonly regarded as the six diversified media conglomerates whose various movie production and distribution subsidiaries command approximately 90 percent of the U.S. and Canadian box office.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_film_studio


90% of the market is controlled by six entities. Apple users are decidedly mainstream, so it is likely that even a higher percentage of them are mostly customers of only the big 6. And the big 6 are banding together, so most likely, most Apple customers will be content with only signing up once or twice.

Sure, the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently - they might watch indie flicks. But the Apple customers are likely to be content with the mainstream.

You've never bought a faulty product before? Even if it had worked, you're currently still stuck in one of two ecosystems: iTunes or Windows Media Player. If I'm getting a digital copy, I'd rather it be just like the disc it came with, free of restrictions to a particular ecosystem.

Did you even read the article? You set up one Ultraviolet account to access all of your movies, not a separate account per studio. It's not really much different than what you'd do to access content from the iTunes Store.

You might want to widen your sources of information. Most of them say neither, but instead, say that Blu-Ray is SOTA and iTunes is mediocre in quality.

But if your only take-away is that physical media is dying, you'd be close to accurate.

I gave away all of my CDs to friends. I kept the DVDs, but I can't imagine that they will survive much longer. Most movies are not worth watching repeatedly. My music collection is now fully digital (except for the vinyl, which often sounds better), with much of it lossless, and so I have lots more shelf space.

The really spectacular movies are still better on DVD, or at least, are better on DVD unless one wants to use multi-gigs of disk space to store them.

A home media server with multi-terabyte RAID is in my future, but not quite yet.

The vast majority of consumers value convenience over quality. It is true not only of streaming media, but is also true of almost every type of consumer good and service.

If you expect high quality, also expect inconvenience. For example, McDonalds and Starbucks sell billions of dollars worth of food and beverages each year. Local farmer's markets don't.

The question I have is, if in the future I buy a movie from Target/Wal-Mart/BestBuy where the package says "Blu-Ray + DVD + Digital Copy", will I no longer be able to download that "digital copy" into my iTunes library and watch it on my AppleTV if it's an "UltraViolet" digital download?

If that's the case, I guess I'm back to buying the cheaper DVD-only disc and wasting a half-hour of my time ripping and tagging, or finally just buying it through iTunes (as long as the studios keep their content there). Depressing. I refuse to make an Ultraviolet account and access only certain movies through certain portals. If I can't get it through my AppleTV somehow, from MY iTunes library, forget it.

Hopefully you can choose to manage the digital copy with either iTunes, WMP, or the UltraViolet app/site/whatever.

If you guys were to trade physical media, you would be covered by the First Sale Doctrine of Copyright law. If you guys sign away your First Sale rights via contract with a DRMed streaming service, you lose.

The First Sale Doctrine has been a thorn in the sides of big media companies ever since the days when they tried to make public libraries illegal. Now, in the digital age, the public is volunteering to waive their rights.

Very sad state of affairs. I say Fuck DRM.

Most websites seem to assume that the user has a normal-sized, 16:9 monitor. IMO, anything other than 16:9 is suboptimal for web surfing.

Very few people have ever cared about quality. They have always been the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. Apple used to do a nice little business by targeting them in its marketing campaigns and products. The mass media outlets have always targeted the masses, however.

Apple now also targets its offerings to the masses. They value things different from quality - convenience for example.

Ultraviolet is a great idea and I'm glad it's coming. (I can only give a to many of the posts in this thread: Inane blathering.)

My frustration is that it will take a LONG time for Apple to step in line with it. I don't want to buy a blu-ray and then ALSO buy from Apple to get it streaming on my Apple devices. I have an Apple TV and I'd love for my blu-rays to also stream from UV to it. Don't see that happening soon. MAYBE it will help out disney, but that's questionable, as well. It's frustrating to see this sudden conflict of interest. (I'd love to use Amazon streaming on my Apple TV, too, but that ain't gonna happen.)

I don't buy many blu-rays. Basically, I'm careful to buy only things I expect to watch multiple times like LOTR or especially kid's movies (which get watched dozens of times). For those that I buy, the option to stream them to an iPad would be sublime in some circumstances. Never went for the whole "digital copy" thing. This is basically a much improved version of the "digital copy". You don't have to manage the storage.

I've noticed that Flixter (the Rotten Tomatoes iOS app) supports Ultraviolet in its latest update, so this thing is getting widespread support. Where are you Disney?

UV sounds great to me but only if they get Apple on board. I would still see it as a win for Apple since they have the rest of the ecosystem and I can't see their overall sales doing anything but improving. I'm still old school in that I like to own movies, mainly the classics. I find it ironic though that the film industry wants to encourage more people to purchase movies yet they only offer limited HD content for purchase on the iTunes store. Most HD content is rent only for the ATV and iPad which caused me to leave the iTunes store for movie purchases. I now buy Blurays and rip my own which is a PITA but at least it's HD.

Another thing that's getting old is storing terrabytes worth of data on external drives and then streaming from the Mac to the ATV. When you want to watch a movie, you have to first fire up your mac, log in, launch iTunes, tell everyone to not close iTunes, and then you're finally able to use the ATV. If everything would be available to stream from Apple servers, that hassle could be avoided. If Apple makes iTunes match music available to stream on the ATV along with their TV shows, a deal with UV would be the final piece for all media to be played on one little ATV box, all without a computer.

Hope this works out, maybe we'll get some nice surprises at the end of the month with the iTunes Match launch.

I hope you're right. I stopped buying DVDs a while ago and now buy/rent all my movies through iTunes. My only concern would be that the studios would use Ultraviolet as a way of reducing the content they supply to iTunes thereby reducing competition and no doubt leading to higher prices. I like iTunes. Everything in one place is very convenient. I buy all my music, movies, books, games and apps through iTunes now.

That's why consumers like iTunes... because Apple thinks about what the consumer wants and gives them just that. Personally, I DON'T WANT TO BUY DVDs OR BLUERAY DISCS. The modal is broken. Please stop with the physical media and let's go digital and DRM-free. I just want my entertainment and will pay you it.

So Movie Execs, please get your head out of your bum and give me what I want and I'll gladly pay for it. Oh, by the way... you should just use Apple since they have that figured all this out already.

O RLY???
Coulda fooled me. I'm looking at websites all day in portrait mode on the iPhone and iPad. There's nothing suboptimal about it.

I am a consumer and I disagree. I want my Blu-ray disc and it works great, I get the movie and the storage. I own an AppleTV and I am tired of buying external hard drives to store the DVD's that I rip. Movies and shows from the internet, they should be free like hulu, cbs.com, abc.com. I like that model.

I'm a consumer too and also disagree. Until streaming or iTunes can get NEAR Blu-Ray quality- count me out. Everyone mentions the video quality, but the audio quality is way worse. Most Blu-Rays offer true lossless (not compressed) audio. Throw on saving private Ryan on a good tv and sound system and tell me you'd rather watch it from iTunes/apple TV.

Not even close...

(although I LOVE digital copies on my iPad for plane trips)

I think the best you can hope for is either (a) Movies include both an iTunes code and an Ultraviolet code and allow you to use both or (b) Apple opens up the AppleTV to apps so you can download a UV app for it.

You're just pointing out one of the main reasons I don't want to get stuck in the iTunes ecosystem for video: I only have one device choice for playing in on my TV, the AppleTV. At least with Ultraviolet, I'll have a range of devices to choose from including most likely the PS3 I already own.

I'm not sure you know what you want, Apples download movies have DRM

They still have no idea what the customer wants! They're trying to preserve a dying media format. They may as well try hanging onto cassette tape while they're at it! Geebuz!

I can't speak for everyone, but I no longer purchase physical discs. I much prefer having digital copies stored on a hard drive or have the option to stream them. I never thought i'd pay for movies via iTunes or AppleTV but the truth is it's so quick and easy I find myself doing it fairly often. How is it that these companies still don't understand this is the way to move forward??? It's working right in front of them!

The only thing I think is wrong with the current cloud-based offerings is that the releases lag too far behind the Theatre or Television release dates. They think they're protecting theatre spend but the truth is if I want to watch something I can download it elsewhere anyway. I still go to the theatre if I know it's a good movie or for social occasions, and iTunes or downloading early releases has not stopped me from doing that. (or anyone else I know)

If television shows and movies were available online simultaneously and at a reasonable price they would seriously increase the studios profit and Pirating would decrease.

I have no issue paying for digital content, and I know many who say the same thing. The problem is that studios treat us like the enemy and fight against the way we want to spend our money. A great example is the Mac App Store, I have purchased so much software through that over the past year (even re-purchased software I had previously pirated) because it was quick, easy and very affordable and I feel good about doing it.

Having all these separate proprietary formats/services that do exactly the same thing is bad for business and consumers. Consumers are going to get the shits and return to pirating because as soon as things get confusing or complicated they will drop it in a blink of an eye.

The movie studios and networks should stop trying to rescue DVD and BR sales and embrace iTunes/Netflix and just negotiate better deals if that's what they're worried about.

Of course, that will always be an issue with DRM'd digital media. If you're worried about continued access to digital content your only choice has always been (and will continue to be) the purchase of physical disks.





I think that's almost guaranteed to happen. Amazon and Google will likely have the same problem.

The solution provided to these companies will be a simple (albeit contentious) one... they need to join the Ultraviolet Alliance.