Apple sells 125,000 movie downloads in first week
Walt Disney chief executive Robert Iger said on Tuesday the company sold 125,000 movie downloads worth $1 million in revenue through Apple Computer's iTunes Store during the offering's first week, Reuters is reporting.
The entertainment conglomerate, which placed 75 movies for download on iTunes last week, expects the movie downloads to generate $50 million in added revenue during the first year of the program, Iger said.
Walt Disney Pictures and three other studios it owns -- Pixar, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films -- were the only participants in last week's gala iTunes movie store roll-out, which took place during an elaborate media event orchestrated by Apple chief executive Steve Jobs out in California.
Due to quibbles over licensing fees, other major studios have so far decided to observe Apple's iTunes movie download service from the sidelines.
Disney's movies become available on the iTunes Store the same day they are released on DVD, with new releases priced at $12.99 during their first week of availability, and $14.99 thereafter. Older "library titles" fetch just $9.99.
iTunes customers can purchase and download the flicks to watch on their computers and iPods, and will soon be able to beam them wirelessly to their flat screen televisions with Apple?s upcoming iTV digital media hub.
Analysts have said Apple's iTunes movie store and iTV media hub are just the start of what will be a multi-year assault aimed at capturing the living room.
The entertainment conglomerate, which placed 75 movies for download on iTunes last week, expects the movie downloads to generate $50 million in added revenue during the first year of the program, Iger said.
Walt Disney Pictures and three other studios it owns -- Pixar, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films -- were the only participants in last week's gala iTunes movie store roll-out, which took place during an elaborate media event orchestrated by Apple chief executive Steve Jobs out in California.
Due to quibbles over licensing fees, other major studios have so far decided to observe Apple's iTunes movie download service from the sidelines.
Disney's movies become available on the iTunes Store the same day they are released on DVD, with new releases priced at $12.99 during their first week of availability, and $14.99 thereafter. Older "library titles" fetch just $9.99.
iTunes customers can purchase and download the flicks to watch on their computers and iPods, and will soon be able to beam them wirelessly to their flat screen televisions with Apple?s upcoming iTV digital media hub.
Analysts have said Apple's iTunes movie store and iTV media hub are just the start of what will be a multi-year assault aimed at capturing the living room.
Comments
Well, I think the movie offering is a great start, but as it NOW stands it interests me not at all
* Low selection (this will grow--but Netflix is unbeatable).
* Lower than DVD quality. A 16:9 DVD movie is 720x480. An iTunes movie is 640x360. Really. Not bad, not noticeable.
* Can't burn to DVD, so can't take a movie to a friend's house without a video-capable iPod and cable.
* No special features.
* With all of the above the price would have to be much lower than DVD, but it's not.
I understand this is just a start, though. These things take time. One day the selection will be great, the quality will be HD, and I will have the 'net connection to download those massive files
Meanwhile, iTunes TV just got pretty good! Higher res! I can watch Galactica on iTunes FAR cheaper than I could get the sci-fi channel via cable.
I wonder how many movies Amazon has downloaded/rented in its first two weeks?
Why the first TWO weeks?
D
Madness!
* Can't burn to DVD, so can't take a movie to a friend's house without a video-capable iPod and cable.
* No special features.
Using the iPod as a transport medium is I think exactly what Apple is trying to get you to do. Rather than go over to a friend's place with a stack of cds and dvds, you can take one pocket-sized device. With the right dock, it would be easy to just put the iPod into place and with a good navigator (such as the updated front row on iTV), browse your media.
As far as the special features go, I agree with you. I think it would be really cool if the "movies" from iTunes were a single file but contained different sub-files that the player would recognize as different titles and display as a menu. (that thought was a lot more clear in my head).
3....2....1...
- the bigger problem in terms of quality is the low bit-rate used for the downloads
- i.e. 1.5MB/s for iTunes
- DVD uses anywhere from 6-10MB/s
- even though iTunes uses H.264, which is slightly better then MPEG-2 (maybe 30-40% better), there's just not enough bandwidth being used to offer 'DVD Quality'
- so you'll get blocky artifacts on fast moving scenes.
- of course, a higher data rate would need a longer download time, and more disk storage
- but perhaps iTunes should offer a choice of quality (e.g. real-DVD quality, or Pod Quality etc)
Cue the studios banging down Apple's doors to get in on the action in
3....2....1...
This is great news. I think it is a really good start considering that the 'true video ipod' nor the 'iTV' has been released and the selection is small. TV Shows have been out for just about a year and look how much they have grown. I think that by Christmas 07' nearly all studios will succomb to iTunes. Hell, their shareholders will make them when they see competing studios easily pulling in all that extra revenue.
This just came to mind, I wonder if Apple's new data center I think in Newark, CA is up and running yet...
$1million/125k downloads= an average of $8.00 for Disney. Apple is taking about $2.00. Anyone know what the bandwidth cost would be per download? About $0.25-$0.45?
17,850 movies per day
744 movies per hour
12.4 movies per minute.
This is a pretty amazing run rate considering this is the first week with only 75 titles. This is great news
i bet amazon sold more.
I bet you're real thirsty.
Wow, that sucks. They sold 1 million videos in 20 days when TV Shows first came out, and at the current rate they'll sell less than a third of that of their movies. I know that the movies cost more, but they also have a bigger audience.
Actually, I'd assume that TV has a bigger audience, only because when you buy a DVD, you have already seen the movie and want to keep it to watch whenever you want, And that is limited to the amount of people who actually go out and see the movie, and/or tell their friends to get the movie.
With TV, you sit in front of a box and just let the shows come to you. If there is a show you like, you watch it. A lot more people have TVs and watch TV than go out to movies. Hell, I haven't seen a movie in a theater since Grudge. The Last movie I bought (DVD) is The Incredibles.
And yet, I bought Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy the day iTunes Store opened. And I say that it is worth every penny, and is also in widescreen. Looks great on my 60GB Ipod too
Wow, that sucks. They sold 1 million videos in 20 days when TV Shows first came out, and at the current rate they'll sell less than a third of that of their movies. I know that the movies cost more, but they also have a bigger audience.
Movies have a bigger audience than *TV* shows?
Really? I kind of doubt that, to be honest.
Anyway, re iPods to carry movies around, vs. carrying discs. If you have an iPod that does video, than I agree, that IS better. Just as long as the iPod outputs 640x480 to TV, and not 320x240. Anyone know that answer? Maybe we won't know until the 5.5Gs are in our hands.
I was initially skeptical (well, I still am). And I remember posting about Apple getting hammered in the press for long download times, low quality (res/bandwidth), lack of features, etc. Well, here we go:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09...ovie_download/
I won't be downloading any movies anytime soon, given the quality and lack of features (I am actually someone who will watch a movie, then watch it again the next night with commentary, and since I have a little girl who likes to get out of bed, my wife and I have now defaulted to turning the volume low and turning subtitles on).
But if Apple is willing to change the res on TV shows, this makes me hopeful that they'll increase the res to 480p once the iTV and the "true" video iPod have the stamp of approval (MWSF07?). Hopefully, the bw will increase as well, since blockiness is actually more annoying than the slightly lower resolution.
Burning to disk is also a must since watching movies in our LAFRTs (long-ass family road trips) is now a necessity.
Here's hoping the iTS matures quickly.
- Movies: 125.000 in 7 days = 1.25 Mio. $ revenue
I predict that after 20 days, initial revenue from Movie downloads will have surpassed the TV show start by far and mark the beginning of another home run for apple.
Wow, that sucks. They sold 1 million videos in 20 days when TV Shows first came out, and at the current rate they'll sell less than a third of that of their movies. I know that the movies cost more, but they also have a bigger audience.
Actually, additively, TV has the bigger audience. This is great news, as the predictions in Hollywood were only for about this much in the first month in the best of predictions. Much like the TV offerings, this is surprising (and a good surprise). It will be interesting to see about Amazon. If iTunes can take and stay in command quickly, other studios will come in before they have a chance to rethink the situation. Once that happens, we could see a repeat of the music business (even if the model is completely different). I'd love to see if those numbers are padded in any way