...what will drive the studios to agree to super low prices? I wonder what they get for a movie sale from ITS right now? Right now you have gobs of people buying DVDs for $10-20 in stores and some paying %10 through ITS. Sure you can rent Netflicks or drive to blockbuster but both of those require a wait or pre-planning. I imagine that if people can get $2-3 high quality rentals on demand without budging from the couch DVD sales (download and physical) would be in great peril. I'm sure that thought makes studio bean counters' bloods run cold.
The thing that will get the studios to agree is the money, copy protection, and savings over the cost of producing DVDs. DVD sales and rentals coexist, even within the same store, today very well, and the will in an online distribution model as well. I'm sure that the studios are making money off of Blockbuster rentals, and they would on an iTMS model as well.
Apple will need to have the storage space for the movie file one way or another, so that is paid for. Rentals will add to that revenue, or in the case of a subscription model such as NetFlix Apple gets a steady monthly income to help pay the bills. The only thing to work out is the price and amount of additional infrastructure that will allow Apple to maintain the same profit margin for themselves and the studios as they have for movie sales. Also, lets face it, Apple does a lot less advertising for iTMS than Blockbuster and NetFlix and they would have need of less "Physical" space for their business as well as fewer employees so they should be able to match or beat their pricing models. At the high end of the price scale they would at least have to come in lower than the cable companies do for their ondemand services.
iTunes movie rentals and (potentially) TV show rentals might actually get me interested in buying an AppleTV. Sure I could use Handbrake or other programs to rip my DVD's for AppleTV, but that has always struck me as sort of pointless with the DVD player still sitting there next to the TV anyway. I ripped one movie with Handbrake and it took about as long to rip the video as it would have taken to watch the movie. Multiply that by all the DVD's I already own and it could easily take until all of my non-work time until the end of the year to rip all of them (not to mention several hundred dollars in external hard drives to store them). Much more practical to just skip the whole ripping process and buy a bigger shelf unit to hold my DVD's.
Can anyone answer this question for me: If you purchase a video from iTunes, can you start watching it immediately (or virtually immediately) on the AppleTV or does it need to be completely downloaded before the AppleTV can start playing it? For rentals, I see it being necessary for them to be bought directly from the AppleTV and quickly playable on the AppleTV as well. If I have to wait an hour or more to watch a movie I rented, I'm just as well off going to Blockbuster or wherever and renting the DVD. And if there is that kind of delay, Apple needs to follow the Amazon Unbox methodology and allow remote purchases over the internet to be directly downloaded to the AppleTV for viewing.
Can anyone answer this question for me: If you purchase a video from iTunes, can you start watching it immediately (or virtually immediately) on the AppleTV or does it need to be completely downloaded before the AppleTV can start playing it? For rentals, I see it being necessary for them to be bought directly from the AppleTV and quickly playable on the AppleTV as well. If I have to wait an hour or more to watch a movie I rented, I'm just as well off going to Blockbuster or wherever and renting the DVD. And if there is that kind of delay, Apple needs to follow the Amazon Unbox methodology and allow remote purchases over the internet to be directly downloaded to the AppleTV for viewing.
I think the answer is no, at least right now. Apple does have streaming capabilities built into Apple TV and uses them for movie previews and to stream video from iTunes, but at the moment you cannot buy a movie via the iTMS on your computer and start watching it on your Apple TV immediately. That could change as the distribution model changes.
The comment came in reference to a shareholders comment, the speculation (from the analyst) is that he was referring to rentals and not just HD content and the timeframe that Apple could launch a rental service. Take it with a grain of salt, we all know that HD content is coming sooner or later and that Apple could probably make a lot of money as well as add a lot of value to the Apple TV by adding a rental service. I would buy one today if they had a rental service and I'm sure that a lot of other people would as well.
Thanks for filling in the blanks. As usual, AI only half-reported it.
Thanks for filling in the blanks. As usual, AI only half-reported it.
I think that the exact quotes took a while to get on the web and AI was just reporting what the analyst told them. Hopefully the smile was about some form of alternate to purchasing video content and not just about 720p content becoming available on iTMS. I think that for Apple TV to really make a dent in the market they need more options than there currently are by October at the latest, possibly with a hardware update by then as well. If they ink some kind of deal to link to the networks "advertised" streams as well as some news sources then it really does start to become an alternative to Cable and DVD. Whether this is realistic in the near future or not I don't know, I think there could be some major streaming lags with todays technology.
The header says Apple hinted at movie rentals, but the story says an analyst projects it. Those are not the same thing.
I was at the meeting. When the question was asked about video rentals, Steve Jobs responded with "You never know what's coming." That's all he said. My interpretation - AppleTV 2.0...
Comments
...what will drive the studios to agree to super low prices? I wonder what they get for a movie sale from ITS right now? Right now you have gobs of people buying DVDs for $10-20 in stores and some paying %10 through ITS. Sure you can rent Netflicks or drive to blockbuster but both of those require a wait or pre-planning. I imagine that if people can get $2-3 high quality rentals on demand without budging from the couch DVD sales (download and physical) would be in great peril. I'm sure that thought makes studio bean counters' bloods run cold.
The thing that will get the studios to agree is the money, copy protection, and savings over the cost of producing DVDs. DVD sales and rentals coexist, even within the same store, today very well, and the will in an online distribution model as well. I'm sure that the studios are making money off of Blockbuster rentals, and they would on an iTMS model as well.
Apple will need to have the storage space for the movie file one way or another, so that is paid for. Rentals will add to that revenue, or in the case of a subscription model such as NetFlix Apple gets a steady monthly income to help pay the bills. The only thing to work out is the price and amount of additional infrastructure that will allow Apple to maintain the same profit margin for themselves and the studios as they have for movie sales. Also, lets face it, Apple does a lot less advertising for iTMS than Blockbuster and NetFlix and they would have need of less "Physical" space for their business as well as fewer employees so they should be able to match or beat their pricing models. At the high end of the price scale they would at least have to come in lower than the cable companies do for their ondemand services.
Can anyone answer this question for me: If you purchase a video from iTunes, can you start watching it immediately (or virtually immediately) on the AppleTV or does it need to be completely downloaded before the AppleTV can start playing it? For rentals, I see it being necessary for them to be bought directly from the AppleTV and quickly playable on the AppleTV as well. If I have to wait an hour or more to watch a movie I rented, I'm just as well off going to Blockbuster or wherever and renting the DVD. And if there is that kind of delay, Apple needs to follow the Amazon Unbox methodology and allow remote purchases over the internet to be directly downloaded to the AppleTV for viewing.
Can anyone answer this question for me: If you purchase a video from iTunes, can you start watching it immediately (or virtually immediately) on the AppleTV or does it need to be completely downloaded before the AppleTV can start playing it? For rentals, I see it being necessary for them to be bought directly from the AppleTV and quickly playable on the AppleTV as well. If I have to wait an hour or more to watch a movie I rented, I'm just as well off going to Blockbuster or wherever and renting the DVD. And if there is that kind of delay, Apple needs to follow the Amazon Unbox methodology and allow remote purchases over the internet to be directly downloaded to the AppleTV for viewing.
I think the answer is no, at least right now. Apple does have streaming capabilities built into Apple TV and uses them for movie previews and to stream video from iTunes, but at the moment you cannot buy a movie via the iTMS on your computer and start watching it on your Apple TV immediately. That could change as the distribution model changes.
From Mac Rumors, also on MacWorld:
The comment came in reference to a shareholders comment, the speculation (from the analyst) is that he was referring to rentals and not just HD content and the timeframe that Apple could launch a rental service. Take it with a grain of salt, we all know that HD content is coming sooner or later and that Apple could probably make a lot of money as well as add a lot of value to the Apple TV by adding a rental service. I would buy one today if they had a rental service and I'm sure that a lot of other people would as well.
Thanks for filling in the blanks. As usual, AI only half-reported it.
Thanks for filling in the blanks. As usual, AI only half-reported it.
I think that the exact quotes took a while to get on the web and AI was just reporting what the analyst told them. Hopefully the smile was about some form of alternate to purchasing video content and not just about 720p content becoming available on iTMS. I think that for Apple TV to really make a dent in the market they need more options than there currently are by October at the latest, possibly with a hardware update by then as well. If they ink some kind of deal to link to the networks "advertised" streams as well as some news sources then it really does start to become an alternative to Cable and DVD. Whether this is realistic in the near future or not I don't know, I think there could be some major streaming lags with todays technology.
The header says Apple hinted at movie rentals, but the story says an analyst projects it. Those are not the same thing.
I was at the meeting. When the question was asked about video rentals, Steve Jobs responded with "You never know what's coming." That's all he said. My interpretation - AppleTV 2.0...