Report claims iTunes movie service due in September
Apple Computer in mid-September will announce that it plans to start offering movie downloads through its iTunes Music Store, according to BusinessWeek.
Citing unnamed sources, the publication on Thursday said Apple will charge $14.99 for new releases and $9.99 for older movies. The multi-level pricing tier was reportedly a compromise between motion picture studios and Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, whom had hoped to sell all flicks at a fixed rate of $9.99.
But so far, only one studio is reported to have committed to making its content available for the initial service launch. That company is none other than Walt Disney, where Jobs is the largest shareholder following the entertainment conglomerate's purchase of his Pixar Animation Studios earlier this year.
According to BW, News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group may join in later, as might independent Lions Gate Entertainment. However, their involvement is said to be contingent on other studios joining the iTunes bandwagon. The remainder of the studios have reportedly passed on joining the service.
Posing as a roadblock for Apple and potential deterrent for the studios is retail heavyweight Wal-Mart, BW claims. As the largest reseller of DVDs, it will account for roughly 40 percent of the $17 billion in DVDs that will be sold this year. Earlier this year, the retailer threatened not to sell Disney's High School Musical after Disney initially released the film through iTunes.
In order to play nice, Wal-Mart is reportedly demanding that it be supported by studios when it launches its own planned download service. It wants Hollywood to trim the current $17 wholesale price for DVDs, which would allow it to slash its own prices to the same $15 or so that Apple would charge.
But as BW notes, a large wholesale cut for Wal-Mart would amount to hundreds of millions in lost studio revenues each year at a time when DVD sales are slowing.
Jobs declined to comment on the report. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart acknowledged that it's talking with studios about starting its own download service but disputed that it is "dissuading studios from conducting business with other providers."
Citing unnamed sources, the publication on Thursday said Apple will charge $14.99 for new releases and $9.99 for older movies. The multi-level pricing tier was reportedly a compromise between motion picture studios and Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, whom had hoped to sell all flicks at a fixed rate of $9.99.
But so far, only one studio is reported to have committed to making its content available for the initial service launch. That company is none other than Walt Disney, where Jobs is the largest shareholder following the entertainment conglomerate's purchase of his Pixar Animation Studios earlier this year.
According to BW, News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group may join in later, as might independent Lions Gate Entertainment. However, their involvement is said to be contingent on other studios joining the iTunes bandwagon. The remainder of the studios have reportedly passed on joining the service.
Posing as a roadblock for Apple and potential deterrent for the studios is retail heavyweight Wal-Mart, BW claims. As the largest reseller of DVDs, it will account for roughly 40 percent of the $17 billion in DVDs that will be sold this year. Earlier this year, the retailer threatened not to sell Disney's High School Musical after Disney initially released the film through iTunes.
In order to play nice, Wal-Mart is reportedly demanding that it be supported by studios when it launches its own planned download service. It wants Hollywood to trim the current $17 wholesale price for DVDs, which would allow it to slash its own prices to the same $15 or so that Apple would charge.
But as BW notes, a large wholesale cut for Wal-Mart would amount to hundreds of millions in lost studio revenues each year at a time when DVD sales are slowing.
Jobs declined to comment on the report. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart acknowledged that it's talking with studios about starting its own download service but disputed that it is "dissuading studios from conducting business with other providers."
Comments
All of this speculation is meaningless without speculation on video quality. If its just as bad as the iTMS TV Shows, there's no chance I'll be buying them. I tried several pilot episodes, and on a "real" TV (big screen, not some dinky 20" monitor or something) the artifacts and blocking was just glaring.
Duh.
When will people realize that the videos on iTMS are for your ipod, and not global dvd/hd/blu-ray/television domination.
Buying a movie from iTMS for your iPod for $15 is like buying a $2 can of coke at the ballgame. Yeah its rip-off, but guess what? those vendors make $$$!
I imagine this was done to allow for backward compatibility with the "true" video iPod
720 x 304 - 2.35:1 (Anamorphic = thicker letterbox bars)
624 x 336 - 1.85:1 (Academy Flat = thinner letterbox bars)
624 x 352 - 1.78:1 (16x9/U.S. Digital Television = thinest letterbox bars)
512 x 384 - 1.33:1 (4x3/NTSC Analog Television = no letterbox bars)
Is shit like this that makes wal-mart time and again one of the worst companies in the world. They are exactly what's wrong with big box retailers.
Regardless, they are the biggest retailer...better make that "company"... in the world, and when they jump, the whole world shakes.
Rumor sounds fishy to me.
Another thing, as far as the purchase model goes, seems like this would eat up way more hard drive space than most people would would want. I've got a 15 GB iTunes database now, and that's with only a small collection of video content. Start adding a bunch of feature films to that, and suddenly you have a storage problem.
I don't understand why they wouldn't build this in as well instead of an either/or thing, as it would probably generate MORE revenue for the company...
I would love to be able to use iTunes to search for and preview movies.
Instead of managing playlists, you could manage your rental queue.
The NetFlix user experience is great and Apple could easily make it even better.
This would also give them more leverage with the movie studios.
Duh.
When will people realize that the videos on iTMS are for your ipod, and not global dvd/hd/blu-ray/television domination.
Buying a movie from iTMS for your iPod for $15 is like buying a $2 can of coke at the ballgame. Yeah its rip-off, but guess what? those vendors make $$$!
I think walmart will/would get targeted by the US govt for antitrust if they are in fact doing such a thing.
hmm... tv show downloads. They are nice for me. Here's why:
1. I have no television.
2. Therefore, I don't watch television.
3. $25ish is a fair price for an entire season of a show, when compared with season releases on DVD.
4. I don't have a bigscreen anything, and Battlestar Galactica looks fine on my computer. Not expecting cosmic graphics and audio anyway.
5. I really only watched it once. Same as I did with STTNG, which I paid, as Irecall, around $80 per season for.
Having had BSG reccomended to me by my sister and her husband, I decided that it would be worth checking out. After buying and watching the miniseries, I got both regular seasons. DVD quality would be nice, butt even on my 15" 1024X768 LCD, it looked fine.
I personally wouldn't buy movies for either 9.99 or 14.99 if they were not available in lossless format and burnable to DVD. Kinda like what Audible does, but with even higher quality available. When you buy an audiobook from Audible,you will usually have 4 different quality levels available. Good way to do it I think.
BTW, I do not have a video ipod. maybe for christmas.
... I've got a 15 GB iTunes database now, and that's with only a small collection of video content. Start adding a bunch of feature films to that, and suddenly you have a storage problem.
If you've got a problem, Apple probably has a solution in the works.
Introducing iRAID - 1 Terabyte of storage, in your closet.
Regardless, they are the biggest retailer...better make that "company"... in the world, and when they jump, the whole world shakes.
Ahem.
Exxon-Mobile: 403.37B
Microsoft: 256.93B
Wal-Mart: 185.92B
Anyway, since it is most reasonable to assume that the next (video) iPod would be introduced at the same time as the movie store, this delay has allowed Apple to both hone the capabilities to be introduced (especially if it is a non-touch), and to take advantage of component capability increases and component price decreases for screens, chips, drives, and batteries. So even at the $299 40GB hard drive price point, I hope Apple will put in a chunk of flash to make it less battery-intensive to play video.
I expect Apple to really surprise us and blow the Zune (last generation design which Apple has been expecting since Jan 2006) out of the water.
Regardless, they are the biggest retailer...better make that "company"... in the world, and when they jump, the whole world shakes.
[nitpick]They're the biggest employer, not the biggest company (which is usually measured by market cap). (I think they're closing in on a million employees; they had something like 750,000 employees in 2000...)[/nitpick]
But your point is still valid.
Movie download issues:
1) What will the quality be? (They should be 480p, unless they want to get hammered in the press...people expect very different things from movies than they do from an episode of the Colbert Report. And if the price is virtually the same as for the DVD, why should the quality be so much lower?)
2) What kind of extras are we talking about?
3) Languages? Subtitles?
4) Burnable? Will the quality suffer even more in being transcoded to MPEG2?
None of these seem to promise too much... I'll just reiterate my extreme skepticism here, and refer everyone to previous threads where I've stated why... I don't want to sound like a broken record. (Hey, does anyone even get that phrase any more?
The storage issue is important too. Especially with the Mac mini using 2.5" HDDs.
On the plus side (for Apple's business plan, at least), remember that Disney was the only channel on iTunes at launch. Now look at it.