Apple's preps iTunes 7.6 with support for movie rentals - Page 2

People are downloading music videos left right and center without iTunes so there has never been a need for an iTunes video hack. Same thing with movies. If the market demands that videos not be restricted to 24 hr viewing people will hack it. If the consumers don't care business/downloading goes on like it already is. I don't know one person who uses iTunes for music or videos. Everyone just hops on over to countless torrent sites. But that was when iTunes music was restricted to a very limited catalog. Everything is changing now and maybe eventually you will be able to find ANY song on iTunes as well as any movie. Hopefully that does happen. I personally have no problem paying $0.99 cents for a song. I don't have a problem with a $3.99 movie either provided I can burn it to SD/BR. If not I'll be continuing my 720p HD downloads on countless 720p and 1080p HD torrents sites. There are hundreds out there.

You can't legally copy rented movies so you shouldn't expect that to happen with iTunes movie rentals. This will be a convenience over going to a brick-and-mortar store or waiting for videos to arrive in the mail, and should allow you to watch them on your iDevice without a long a tedious conversion process. That is the potential convenience this will offer the consumer. I know I'll be renting very frequently.

lol ok Dad. Morally I don't expect it. Technically I more than expect it and it will happen.

I see, "I don't have a problem with a $3.99 movie either provided I can [legally or illegally] burn it to SD/BR." I thought you were expecting them to provide you with a method.

lol maybe we are agreeing then With or without Apple I will be burning these movies to DVD and I will not be forced to watch them within 24 hrs.

Don't worry, when these methods become available everyone will know about them just like the iPhone stuff.

Uh, no.

It's much better than VHS, but not as good as DVD.

VHS only has vertical resolution of 240 lines at best.

Plus the video lines from over sharpening, and the low S/N, and VHS is far worse than what Apple is now offering. But, it could be better.

720 x 480 would make a big difference.

Sure, it would be somewhat more work, but I don't know if it would be enough to slow it down noticeably.

I'd love to see that too.

What's the betting around here? Will we see more than 480i or p?

Will we even see 720 x 480?

I would have thought so especially as downloads won't be 'on-demand' for most people. If you download a rental overnight you'd have lost a few hours by the time you get around to watching it.

48 hours would be better for me especially as iPod video watching is usually fragmented. In fact, why would you watch rented films on an iPod? Surely this service is destined for AppleTV?

McD

The BDA better start putting itunes copies on their disks too, it'd be crazy if finally we get that on dvd, then dvd dies and we've gotta start this whole process over again.

So long as they're being 'oppressed' people will rebel and use whatever justification works for them, that's one choice we don't have. Personally I don't rate torrents much, your content choices are limited by swarm availbility to the point where if you're looking at an old TV series it takes forever to download. That technology effectively restricts you to the latest fad, so much so it's become a 'label' in its own right but because they chose which site/client to use most people may not see it that way.

720p would be nice but Apple would need to do something really special to avoid multiple downloads per device type, time/quality taxing transcodes for iPod &/or awkward media management.

McD

Why WMV? Does it have any real portable video marketshare? Wouldn't it just be a waste of valuable DVD space?

McD

There is a higher percentage of PMPs that can play WMV than there is OS X in the PC world. But what you have to consider is all the Windows notebooks out there. You will longer have to rip or carry your DVDs with you. Can you just take the WMV or iTunes H.264 file with you on a trip.

We'll have to see how this affects the bonus material.

That's not how AppleTV or iPods work, they're extensions to iTunes. That way you get to manage your 200GB media library with more than a click-wheel or a 6 button remote! And syncing AppleTV is automatic so there's not intermediate step.

It would be nice to order via AppleTV like you can with an iPod Touch - I think that will be announced.

McD

Because it's illegal? Morality aside if loose design from a cash-rich company like Apple is seen to facilitate piracy & quantifiable loss of earnings the lawyers would have a field-day (on it not under it unfortunately)

McD

Why is it illegal to rip a DVD that you own but OK to rip a CD? Why haven't the lawyers then shut down Handbrake? If you own - you should be able to rip it.

I think we're obessing with specs of limited relevence. The spacial decimation used in most video codecs means the quoted resolutions are only a starting point (like JPEG). The bit rate is a better indicator of quality assuming the same encoder is used i.e. better to have 640x426@2.5Mbps than 720x480@1.5Mbps. Though even this isn't necessarily so as 3ivx will do better with a given bit-rate with MPEG-4/ASP than Apple seem to with the more efficient MPEG-4/AVC due to better decisions in subjective data loss. Even this is fraught as all these assume good source content & I'm sure I read Apple bought in the content pre-encoded leaving them at the political (more than technical) whim of the studios.

In short, let your eyes (not the specs) tell you what's good. iTS iPod-resolution video has got much better and probably could still with the right encoding deal (raw video source & the purchase of 3ivx). It must be embarrassing for Apple that handbrake does better from a DVD than their professionally encoded video!

McD

Ah! I was assuming the target audience would be handhelds as VGA res on a notebook at close quarters might be a bit painful. Even though a lot of PMPs could play WMV I didn't think they were being used for that as no WMV download service has touched iTunes video download marketshare. I thought they'd be outnumbered by iPods/iPhones and the majority of the 10m-ish units sold in the last quarter will be video-capable and a faster-growing target market.

I didn't get where you were coming from with OSX %, the H.264 would be playable in iTunes on the Windows notebooks.

McD

NetFlix has this (instant DL) for PC and soon will for Macs.

That's because of the DMCA, a law in the US that forbids the circumvention of digital copy-protection schemes, even for "fair-use". I think that the Handbrake developers are not based in the US, and if I remember correctly the software includes a warning that ripping a DVD might be illegal in "your country".

Standard audio CDs don't include copy-protection, hence can be ripped for personal use. Ripping a CD on a friends computer and giving him the songs (while keeping the CD) would still be illegal.

There has been a few attempts to add DRM to CDs but these failed one after another (the worst case being the Sony DRM rootkit fiasco).

I like to entertain the idea that in a parallel world where the iPod (and the iTunes store) didn't exist, that by now the music industry would've phased out the uncompressed, unprotected audio CD's completely from the market, replacing them with CDs containing only WMA DRM audio. The transition wouldn't have been hard, because you can bet that without the iPod success, the Windows default WMA DRM would have taken control of the market pretty quickly, and 95%+ of the media players (including CD players) would support WMA's DRM. And by abandoning standard unprotected CD audio completely, the music labels wouldn't have to include rootkits and other nasty schemes to try to hide the unprotected audio from ripping programs.

I can also imagine that at that point, Microsoft would have forced its WMA licensees to abandon native MP3 playback (providing some MP3 to WMA tools to ease the transition). And the DOJ wouldn't have done anything about it, because it would be seen as a way to combat piracy.

I also think that in a world without iPods, the case against DRM would've been much weaker. Remember that the main argument against DRM is interoperability problems between devices (iPods and other players for example). If WMA was supported everywhere, this argument wouldn't have any weight, except maybe for linux and Mac users, and if it was the only argument left, the only "consumer-friendly" thing I could see happening is Microsoft releasing linux and Mac OS WMA DRM software programs (or being forced to release them, just like Real was forced to release RealPlayer for linux.)

As for Sony, with its ATRAC format, they would've been Microsoft's only competitor when it comes to audio DRM formats, and we can assume they would've failed to compete, eventually giving up and adopting WMA. Remember that the DRMed tracks added to the infamous Sony rootkit CDs were WMA, not ATRAC. And in our world, where the iPod dominates, with or without that rootkit scandal, the fact is DRMed WMA and ATRAC tunes can't be played on the iPod, so this scheme had not chance work as planned.

At the time Sony in their FAQ about the DRMed CDs, publicly blamed Apple for not licensing Fairplay to be used in "rippable" tracks in these protected discs. Ironically, you could rip the high-quality audio from the DRMed discs on a Mac without any problems, as the rootkit scheme was Windows only.

Now, we see Apple licensing FairPlay to do what they didn't want to do with Sony, but this time for videos on DVDs. What's the difference? Why are they doing it with video and not audio discs? The reason is simple, and it goes back to the beginning of this post: while you can copy just about any music songs in the world from a CD to an iPod legally, ripping a DVD to an iPod or Apple TV is not (at least in the US), so it's in Apple's interest to provide a legal way to transfer movies from DVDs to iPods, especially since the iTunes store movie selection is relatively small. Apple needs to provide, or facilitate the acquisition of legal video sources for use on the iPod and iPhone, they can't let WMV dominate this particular market segment.

Different laws to do with copying digital video (I think copying analogue video is OK). It doesn't make alot sense to me either I'm afraid even if the DVD rip was DRM'd to keep it yours only that would be something. The point is Apple would be too good a target for the lawyers to pass up whereas handbrake seems to be a free, open development operation and not rich enough to pay up.

McD

So then Apple should buy TIVO or better yet SONY.

Okay all is fine with iTunes and movies. But... could I fetch me a movie using my iPod Touch and just play it? The whole ripping thing or converting movies and syncing are a PITA.
I'd like to fetch movies the same way as I can with music from the iTunes Music Store.

Allowing distribution of fairplay encoded content on DVDs is not the same as licensing the technology. The latter would allow other manufacturers devices to play the content and this isn't the case as with Sony's original complaint.

I could be wrong but I thought digital copyright laws didn't allow any duplication (even personal) of digital video content. Even syncing a legitimate download onto an iPod breaks this as would copying the iPod compatible video from a DVD but I guess the studios won't be pursuing as they're distributing for this purpose.

Also the vocal outcry against DRM didn't come from the masses and given the market dominance of iPods was always more of a perceived issue than a real one. The real agenda was to allow free sharing of media between users not technologies but perception is everything.

In the world without iPods those irritatingly unusable gizmos with badly designed host software would have ensured the longevity of CD players not the rise of a single interoperable DRM standard. iPods gained public awarness & acceptance of digital media players and with this, and some good blueprints for others to copy, Apple created a market which otherwise would have been slower to emerge if not a total failure. Largely thanks to them I'm skipping a hard-drive HiDef camcorder and going solid-state.

Posthumously transposing a failed maket model onto the results of a successful one isn't a clever thing to do but alternate reality is always fun.

McD

I can't remember from when I set my friend's one up but I take it the iTunes store on the Touch doesn't have movies listed? I'm not sure about 'just play it' you could argue that the download would be too long but I know some public WiFi sites here with 10Mbps rates (better than the 6.5Mbps for my ADSL) hypothetically 18 minutes for a 2 hour iPod movie - and it's free with a coffee!

McD

That's BS. I own the 40GB AppleTV and use a Mac Mini to feed the AppleTV and 4 iMacs iMacs in our house. I have finally finished ripping my 200 DVD's with Handbrake to 640 by 480 to maintain compatibility with all our iPods.

The video quality of the AppleTV and the ripped DVD's are absolutely beautiful. Everyone that visits us is astounded as I scroll through 200 movies and we pick one to watch. I have NEVER had anyone complain about the video quality or say that it's not as nice as watching a DVD.

When I first started responding to people bitching about AppleTV and the video quality a few months ago I only had 6 friends and family members buy a Mac and an AppleTV for themselves. That figure has changed after Christmas. I have helped 17 people (friends and family) set up their Mac, Airport Extreme, and AppleTV - All because these people were so astounded that they just had to have a setup for themselves. I won't even bring up the Wii and the buying frenzy it brings on.

Other than forum geeks, paper-spec queens, and Microsoft Astro-Turfing Bloggers there is no one that is complaining about AppleTV's video quality. It's quite the opposite. It's quite amusing to watch the dropped jaw effect. I've even explained that the XBOX 360 can do the same thing just not as simply, but have had no one interested in going the game box route.

So i guess it's true that there is a real world out there that does not live in the on-line forums, bitching about the AppleTV, and pontificating about how the 360 does it better...

Content is one issue with AppleTV, Apple knows it and it looks like that's being addressed. The other issue is visibility. Apple does nothing to promote AppleTV, I hope they address this as well.

That's great news. Lets just hope it's DRM free.

I looked up "Home Recording Act" in wikipedia and found that the law is actually titled "Audio Home Recording Act". This is the law that the courts have interpreted as permitting the shifting of audio content between formats and devices for home, personal, non-commercial use. Video was not mentioned.

As far as copying legitimate iTunes downloads and DVD WMV and Fairplay files to the iPod. If the content provides agree that copying these files to the iPod or any other device is permissible then it is legal. No issue, no problem.

It's going to be a great MacWorld.

Actually, "Fair Use" is fairly well established in law in the U.S. and the DMCA does not expressly forbid it. I believe that the compatibility of the DMCA and Fair Use has still not been tested in any U.S. court. It is debatable as to whether or not it is illegal for an individual to rip a disc that they own for their own personal use, whether or not they must circumvent DRM/copy-protection to do so. Indeed, this page claims that whilst section 1201(a)(1)(A) of the DMCA states, "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.", it also contains the explicit exception: "Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title."

The irony comes in that the DMCA does make the distribution of software whose primary purpose is to circumvent DRM/copy-protection illegal. So, whilst you are allowed under fair-use to rip a DVD, there is no legal way to acquire the necessary software (although it would be the person giving you the software that is breaking the law, not you).

From what I recall, ripped DVDs take up considerable space depending how long the movie is. Because DVD storage space is at a premium, wouldn't it be easier to simply just to include a code that allow an individual to download the same movie off of the iTunes store?

I can't imagine that there is enough room on these DVDs (dual layer or not) to also include a mini version of the same movie (much alone in multiple formats like MP4 and WMV).

Dave

The easiest thing would be for the studios to allow Apple and others to implement DVD ripping in iTunes/other programs. Applications could add DRM to prevent sharing of the ripped copy and request you insert the original DVD into your optical drive from time to time in order to deter ripping of rented DVDs.

Then users could rip at a setting suitable for their target application (e.g. DVD resolution and high bit rate for AppleTV, lower resolution and bit rate for iPod.)

I like the idea but because of the DMCA, that functionality can't be added to iTunes.

Dave

This is my point. It's all up to the studios. The DMCA disallows the distribution of software whose primary purpose is to circumvent DRM and/or copy-protection.

If Apple came to agreements with the studios first, and implemented DVD ripping as described above, they wouldn't be taken to court under the DMCA.

No, no no!

Either would cause far more headaches than they would be worth. They aren't Apple's business model. To try to force that would destroy any value either company has.

You're one of the few people I read who seems to have gotten it right.

The DCMA is Federal law. It specifically states that it is illegal to circumvent encryption. While the copyrighted work is owned by the studios they can't tell an indivdual (or Apple) its okay to break Federal law and circumvent the DVD encryption. Nothing written in the DMCA allows content owners this level of control.

Dave

Who's going to take Apple to court over it if the labels agree?

And anyway, if they are license holders of DVD encryption (they are) and implement DRM they are not "circumventing" the copy protection, they are replacing it with another form (probably better) of copy protection.

Okay. Let's step back for a moment. I believe you brought up the idea of giving iTunes the ability to rip a DVD here:


I am arguing that the studios can't give Apple or any other company the ability to rip the DVD. The studios are only the license holders of the copyrighted work contained on the encrypted DVD. They only have the ability to distribute the work. They don't have the ability authorize Apple to rip (i.e., break encryption) a DVD. They do have the ability to give the encryption keys to Apple so they can decrypt DVD contents (if this is what you mean by your past statements).

The news story on AI, was the idea that the studios would inlcude another electronic file on the DVD in which iTunes could read. This is fine. But it isn't giving Apple (or anyone else) the ability to circumvent DVD encryption. The iTunes compatible file will be like the DVD extras that are only accessible on a Mac/PC.

Dave