I don't have a problem with a $3.99 movie either provided I can burn it to SD/BR.
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.
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.
I would like to see 720p quality but this rampant torch and pitchfork party against iTS video is unfounded from my point of view. Wouldn't using 720x480 resolution tax the CPu and therefore reduce the battery of your iDevice since it would have to work harder to alter the unbalanced resolution to fit the display?
Sure, it would be somewhat more work, but I don't know if it would be enough to slow it down noticeably.
I'd like to see 720P HD resolution, the stuff AppleTV supports. Not quite DVD resolution doesn't cut it especially when we lose all the bonus features DVDs carry when we buy or rent them.
When we give up so much for "convenience" sake w should at least get a better picture.
I sure hope the timer starts when I first play the file, not when it's first downloaded.
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?
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.
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.
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.
If you read the macrumors blurb, in the link on the appleinsider new site you will see the line: However, indications are that both WMV and H.264 (iPod/iPhone compatible) digital copies will be distributed.
Why WMV? Does it have any real portable video marketshare? Wouldn't it just be a waste of valuable DVD space?
Why WMV? Does it have any real portable video marketshare? Wouldn't it just be a waste of valuable DVD space?
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.
Exactly- and it should download directly to the AppleTV not some other location.
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.
And you can rip the DVD too- right? Using Handbrake of course.
iTunes will only rip music but not videos- what's up with that?
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)
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.
Pixel ratio might be 640x480 but it's HIGHLY compressed video, meaning it's NO WHERE NEAR DVD quality. Pixel ratio alone does NOT = high picture quality.
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!
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.
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.
I'm sure that Apple has studied up on all of the usual suspects in the movie rental market - everything from the 99¢ movie I can rent from a Red Box machine at the Albertson's up the street to Post Office-delivered Netflix to drive-your-car-to-Blockbuster to the local mom-and-pop video rental store to a PPV movie from Dish Networks. Bottom line: I'm guessing that Apple is betting that next-to-instant-gratification is worth a premium, and that most people will most likely watch an internet-delivered rental movie IMMEDIATELY upon paying for it.
This is just me, but we have a 1-year old 67" Mitsubishi rear-projection TV that, when coupled with HD content over our Dish Networks satellite service, it just stunningly real. I'm not much of a movie buyer (we own a few movies, but realized that we seldom watch an owned movie more than once or at most twice), but we like to rent a movie from time to time, and if we could rent a movie with at least DVD quality (and optionally HD quality), start watching it relatively soon after we rented it online (in other words, watch it as it was downloading), didn't have to sit through a bunch of previews (some DVDs won't let you go straight to the main menu without first watching the previews), and didn't have to pay a huge premium over other movie rental models, we would be a customer, no question about it.
NetFlix has this (instant DL) for PC and soon will for Macs.
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.
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.
Comments
I don't have a problem with a $3.99 movie either provided I can burn it to SD/BR.
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.
You can't legally copy rented movies so you shouldn't expect that to happen with iTunes movie rentals.
lol ok Dad. Morally I don't expect it. Technically I more than expect it and it will happen.
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.
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
Don't worry, when these methods become available everyone will know about them just like the iPhone stuff.
DVD's use mpg4
Uh, no.
I think he's implying that iTune videos/movies look like crap on an HD TV, which they do in their present format.
I would rather buy a DVD for $9.99, rip it, and throw it out rather then buy the downloadable VHS -quality version currently on iTunes.
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.
? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video
I would like to see 720p quality but this rampant torch and pitchfork party against iTS video is unfounded from my point of view. Wouldn't using 720x480 resolution tax the CPu and therefore reduce the battery of your iDevice since it would have to work harder to alter the unbalanced resolution to fit the display?
Sure, it would be somewhat more work, but I don't know if it would be enough to slow it down noticeably.
I'd like to see 720P HD resolution, the stuff AppleTV supports. Not quite DVD resolution doesn't cut it especially when we lose all the bonus features DVDs carry when we buy or rent them.
When we give up so much for "convenience" sake w should at least get a better picture.
Stan
www.pollywogtheater.com
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 sure hope the timer starts when I first play the file, not when it's first downloaded.
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
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.
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
If you read the macrumors blurb, in the link on the appleinsider new site you will see the line: However, indications are that both WMV and H.264 (iPod/iPhone compatible) digital copies will be distributed.
Why WMV? Does it have any real portable video marketshare? Wouldn't it just be a waste of valuable DVD space?
McD
Why WMV? Does it have any real portable video marketshare? Wouldn't it just be a waste of valuable DVD space?
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.
Exactly- and it should download directly to the AppleTV not some other location.
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
And you can rip the DVD too- right? Using Handbrake of course.
iTunes will only rip music but not videos- what's up with that?
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
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.
Pixel ratio might be 640x480 but it's HIGHLY compressed video, meaning it's NO WHERE NEAR DVD quality. Pixel ratio alone does NOT = high picture quality.
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
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.
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
I'm sure that Apple has studied up on all of the usual suspects in the movie rental market - everything from the 99¢ movie I can rent from a Red Box machine at the Albertson's up the street to Post Office-delivered Netflix to drive-your-car-to-Blockbuster to the local mom-and-pop video rental store to a PPV movie from Dish Networks. Bottom line: I'm guessing that Apple is betting that next-to-instant-gratification is worth a premium, and that most people will most likely watch an internet-delivered rental movie IMMEDIATELY upon paying for it.
This is just me, but we have a 1-year old 67" Mitsubishi rear-projection TV that, when coupled with HD content over our Dish Networks satellite service, it just stunningly real. I'm not much of a movie buyer (we own a few movies, but realized that we seldom watch an owned movie more than once or at most twice), but we like to rent a movie from time to time, and if we could rent a movie with at least DVD quality (and optionally HD quality), start watching it relatively soon after we rented it online (in other words, watch it as it was downloading), didn't have to sit through a bunch of previews (some DVDs won't let you go straight to the main menu without first watching the previews), and didn't have to pay a huge premium over other movie rental models, we would be a customer, no question about it.
NetFlix has this (instant DL) for PC and soon will for Macs.
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.
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.