$5 is too much to pay for a download, $15 is just laughable.
You can buy a new previously viewed DVD for $9 - $12 at any rental store.
Buy from Apple and:
1. Your paying more for less quality
2. Restrictions on where and how you view your purchase
3. Most likely to loose bonus features and audio features
4. You have to spend more money to back it up on a dvd yourself.
5. Spend even more of your money on ink and paper to print covers.
6. Your supporting a business model that hurts consumers
IMHO, screw the MPAA. If they go out of business, then good. Bring back local theatre, support your community. Get out and meet people, live a rich and fulfilling life.
It's not the end of the world to me if Tom Cruise makes less then 100 million in a year.
[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.
Both Chucker... both. A new release that has been previously viewed.
Thanks for posting.
You mean semi-recent. You can't buy it previously viewed for a few months after it's released.
And the term isn't new, it's used, scratched up, and generally fraught with disaster. I sure as hell wouldn't pay anyhting close to $10 for a used DVD.
I listen to the same songs all the time - I'll watch a movie maybe twice. I can't help but think this is most people.
If i could access any movie from the big studios at any time for a 3 day (for example) rental period I'd watch way more then I do now.... take my money!!!! open the iTMS Video Rental Store
Who gives a damn about a movie store that only schmucks would buy from anyway - the real news here is that this means they'll release the true video iPod.
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)
Apple would need to release the "true" video iPod at the same time. Who is going to pay $9.99 or $14.99 to watch a movie on the current models tiny non-widescreen display? Even rentals at 1/4 the price would be pushing it.
Let's see, in a couple years, I can either rent a HDDVD for 3 bucks, or through netflix for a flat monthly fee; I can buy an HDDVD for $15; I can buy a movie online that takes hours to download and has VHS picture quality.
Hmmmm, that there is a THINKER! How will I ever decide what to do?
To buy-download a compressed movie for $15 or $10.. it's a little too much. That's not too far from what they cost already in a store, with nice booklets and shiny print on the disc and stuff. It's a bad deal for everyone, because it won't sell well enough. I guess it's the movie industry that is afraid they'll loose money on it if they go too low, where instead they will earn money. And then we have Steve who likes the download-to-own model..
This WOULD work if there was a rental model to back it up. Rental for $3, buy old for $7, buy new for $15? Would that be good enough? I think the rental would be the thing that really kicked it going.
What is a "new release" anyway? Is it released the last 2 years? The last quarter? Or is it from this century?
I'm a little spoiled. I never bought DVDs untill I was in the Army, and then they were always $14.99 for mainstream new releases, and $19.99 for foreign movies like Anime. I love AAFES.
If Apple are having problems launching in the US because of WalMart, they could always launch the service somewhere else first - say the UK. We don't have WalMart here and the sale of DVDs is not dominated by any one player. Apple could do deals with the UK arms of the film studios and prove the service works and is profitable. Maybe that would give them more leverage with the US studios.
I'd pay up to $7.99 for a movie on my iPod. No more, though. Otherwise I'd just buy the DVD and find other ways to get the movie onto the iPod.
But then again, it's HIGHLY unlikely I'm going to sit staring at my iPod's screen for 2 hours. Hell, it's taken me a collective 3 months to watch all of the Inside the Actors Studio with Dave Chappelle (which is a 2-hour episode). I just kept watching little chunks of it over lunch here and there until I finished it yesterday.
There's also the whole issue of a 60GB iPod's battery only lasting about 2 hours playing videos when fully charged...
One studio? Disney? Where is that Jobs charisma to bring this off? I sincerely hope this report is wrong.
Did you get a chance to read the Variety article? Hollywoo'ds not to thrilled with Jobs' charisma. ("The [movie] industry is famous for not tolerating brash outsiders, no matter how successful or astute their plans.")
Of course, once a single studio succeeds, then others will follow - just like the iTunes TV episode downloads only started with a single network.
My surprise here is that if it's true that only Disney is indeed going to iTunes, then it's odd that have other studios put money into letting their movies be downloaded by other formats, such as BitTorrent (formerly a big movie industry foe) and even allow them to be burned to DVD by some other digital download companies.
I think the article holds true: Hollowood doesn't want to let a single company (iTunes) be the gatekeeper to their media the way the music industry did just in case they run into negotiation problems... the way the music industry did. Whether that's fair or not is a totally different discussion.
I will never pay $15 for a movie download unless the incentives were huge. At this point (even with a true video iPod on the way) I don't see a huge incentive to pay that much for something that may not have bonuc features or a cute little case.
Comments
You can buy a new previously viewed DVD for $9 - $12 at any rental store.
Buy from Apple and:
1. Your paying more for less quality
2. Restrictions on where and how you view your purchase
3. Most likely to loose bonus features and audio features
4. You have to spend more money to back it up on a dvd yourself.
5. Spend even more of your money on ink and paper to print covers.
6. Your supporting a business model that hurts consumers
IMHO, screw the MPAA. If they go out of business, then good. Bring back local theatre, support your community. Get out and meet people, live a rich and fulfilling life.
It's not the end of the world to me if Tom Cruise makes less then 100 million in a year.
You can buy a new previously viewed DVD for $9 - $12 at any rental store.
Which is it, "new" or "previously viewed"?
[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.
Wal-Mart has 1.8million employees. Wow.
Which is it, "new" or "previously viewed"?
Both Chucker... both. A new release that has been previously viewed.
Thanks for posting.
Is Apple legal is taking legal action to discover Business Week's sources, as they famously did with this site? Kinda doubt it.
Who gives a bleep at this stage, where's the bloody iPhone?
I still hope for rental.
Both Chucker... both. A new release that has been previously viewed.
Thanks for posting.
You mean semi-recent. You can't buy it previously viewed for a few months after it's released.
And the term isn't new, it's used, scratched up, and generally fraught with disaster. I sure as hell wouldn't pay anyhting close to $10 for a used DVD.
If i could access any movie from the big studios at any time for a 3 day (for example) rental period I'd watch way more then I do now.... take my money!!!! open the iTMS Video Rental Store
I think walmart will/would get targeted by the US govt for antitrust if they are in fact doing such a thing.
I wouldn't count on it.
The current iPod already supports the following resolutions of MPEG4 video.
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)
Apple would need to release the "true" video iPod at the same time. Who is going to pay $9.99 or $14.99 to watch a movie on the current models tiny non-widescreen display? Even rentals at 1/4 the price would be pushing it.
Let's see, in a couple years, I can either rent a HDDVD for 3 bucks, or through netflix for a flat monthly fee; I can buy an HDDVD for $15; I can buy a movie online that takes hours to download and has VHS picture quality.
Hmmmm, that there is a THINKER! How will I ever decide what to do?
Oh, and Walmart, fuck you.
Oh, and Walmart, fuck you.
The bastards just bought australia's biggest supermarket chain Coles.
fucking great.
Fuck u too Walmart.
This WOULD work if there was a rental model to back it up. Rental for $3, buy old for $7, buy new for $15? Would that be good enough? I think the rental would be the thing that really kicked it going.
What is a "new release" anyway? Is it released the last 2 years? The last quarter? Or is it from this century?
But then again, it's HIGHLY unlikely I'm going to sit staring at my iPod's screen for 2 hours. Hell, it's taken me a collective 3 months to watch all of the Inside the Actors Studio with Dave Chappelle (which is a 2-hour episode). I just kept watching little chunks of it over lunch here and there until I finished it yesterday.
There's also the whole issue of a 60GB iPod's battery only lasting about 2 hours playing videos when fully charged...
One studio? Disney? Where is that Jobs charisma to bring this off? I sincerely hope this report is wrong.
Did you get a chance to read the Variety article? Hollywoo'ds not to thrilled with Jobs' charisma. ("The [movie] industry is famous for not tolerating brash outsiders, no matter how successful or astute their plans.")
Of course, once a single studio succeeds, then others will follow - just like the iTunes TV episode downloads only started with a single network.
My surprise here is that if it's true that only Disney is indeed going to iTunes, then it's odd that have other studios put money into letting their movies be downloaded by other formats, such as BitTorrent (formerly a big movie industry foe) and even allow them to be burned to DVD by some other digital download companies.
I think the article holds true: Hollowood doesn't want to let a single company (iTunes) be the gatekeeper to their media the way the music industry did just in case they run into negotiation problems... the way the music industry did. Whether that's fair or not is a totally different discussion.