Rumors have been swirling for weeks (see here and here) that Apple will soon be selling full length movie downloads on the iTunes service. This morning, Business Week is stating, based on unnamed sources, that the service will launch by mid-September.
And adding color to the story: WalMart is pissed off.
Apple is pushing for, and apparently getting, $14 wholesale movie prices on new releases. They plan to retail new releases for $14.99 and older movies for $9.99. Normal wholesale DVD prices are $17. Walmart pays that normal wholesale rate, and now anticipates losing a significant share of their 40% market share in the $17 billion annual DVD market. Given that it will be trivial for iTunes users to simply burn a DVD of these movie downloads, Walmart has good reason to be worried. Netflix should be nervous, too.
Look for the initial announcement to only include movies from Walt Disney (Apple’s Steve Jobs is Disney’s largest shareholder), and possibly Fox and Lions Gate.
Note that Amazon may also soon have its own movie download service.
Hmm, the question is the quality difference between the original DVD and the downloadable mp4-s. I won’t pay $15 for an recompressed movie file when I can buy it in original quality for $2 more.
My question is?…
Are they trying to slowly turn us into “Addicts” that need their Tech Fix on a daily basis…
First they sell us a “Cute Toy” with a few freebees included and when we are hooked it seems we need the next more expensive one and then they “Tease Us” with more things that we can spend our hard earned money on… We are becoming “Tech Junkies”…
Things used to be so Simple in the Old Days… Anyone remember those???…
Love the Walmart angle. Seems they ran everyone out of business with a new business model but can’t handle the same treatment themselves
It will be interesting to see if these movies can actually be burnt to a DVD and played on any player, which would be great but seems unlikely, or heavily DRMed to be locked down to the PC, which would make the service virtually pointless in my opinion. Who wants to be stuck watching a movie on the PC when they can get a DVD for a few more dollars?
That’s my exact point / concern too, Chris. About the quality and only getting to view these d/l movies on a PC. If the movie’s good, I’d want to keep a high quality version and paying an extra few bucks would be worth it.
1 Move 14.99 + My precious Time + Hard Drive Space +and Connectivity Cost + etc === No Thank you.
I will pay 4.99 per movie (That’s it). But I may pay for 14.99 if they have a “Hard to Find” movie available. Sometime I look for specific title that are virtually impossible to find and often amazon and other site put it on back order (e.g. Ann of Green Gable took a long time to arrive for me)
More media, please. =)
I think rather than just building rumour stories on whos pissed of with whom, it would make better sense for everyone to first wait for apple to make movie downloads available. Once that happens and the prices are there for everyone to see, should people start contemplating what is going to happen to others in the dvd market.
What is the basis for this statement?: “Given that it will be trivial for iTunes users to simply burn a DVD of these movie downloads…” This is not the case currently, (if it is tell me how to do this!) Is there information that Apple is going to make this trivial going forward? This would indeed be news! Especially given the DRM issues… How many times will a movie track be able to be burned? Currently there are some limits on how many times audio tracks from the iTunes Music Store can be burned, (fairly generous limits for most people). I wonder if limits on video files will be so nice.
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the movies will be in h.264 format (if you haven’t seen it it’s gorgeous and a razor sharp codec). An entire dual-layer movie will fit in about 3-4gb, and be easily burnable to a DVD to play.
It will also store “album artwork”
The initial “store” will ship with a hell of a lot more than Disney movies like you think. Apple has been signing on studios for the past 1 1/2 years, and is making relatively exclusive contracts with about 90% of everyone listed under it’s “TV Section” under iTunes.
Just take a look at all the Studios and Networks. In the beginning the movies will be all DVD quality with a few HD movies available as well.
More high-def h.264 (what good blu-ray movies are going to be build around, not the current mpeg2) when Leopard Mac OS 10.5 comes out.
its interesting what you consider web 2.0….?
Is this web 2.0?
I can’t understand the logic in bying the $15 digital movie. If you want to own a movie than I would spend extra $2 to have a real DVD with cover art, inserts, etc. The time it takes to download and burn a DVD plus the final product does not justify $2-4 dollar difference. At this moment it is easier to go to the piratebay to download the same movies in DiVX for free and then just throw them away after you done watching it. I guess this is the first step in the long path of the media distribution revolution and sooner or later we’ll get to the point where the prices will start falling and the movie downloads will cost below $10 but I think the sweet spot for the downloads will be the $4-5 price which is the price of renting the movie on payperview or local blockbuster.
@Keith L. Dick
The “simple things” are for newbs
even at 1 megabyte per second download it will take over an hour to download a dvd at 4gb, I can drive to walmart in that time and buy one. I only get 200k/s now, so waiting around for 5 hours just plain sucks.
h.264 codec looks great on a pc, but have you seen it burned to a dvd and then played on a big screen? I am skeptical the quality will be compelling.
Regular DVDs — encoded mpg2 @ 720×480 — on my 56″ 1080p TV — don’t always look so great. These iTunes movies will be encoded h264, which cannot be played back on a regular DVD player. So your computer will have to re-encode for mpg2, then drastically reduce the bitrate to fit on a 4.7 GB DVD, then burn to DVD. This is guaranteed to look like crap.
3GB - 4GB h264 download -> convert to
6-8 GB mpg2, with a generation loss (lower quality) ->
re-encode mpg2 to fit on 4.7GB DVD, with lower bitrate, with another generation loss (yet even lower quality)
no thank you! The only way this would be marginally passable is if you could watch the original h264 download directly on your TV, like if you had a Mac or PC hooked up to your fancy TV. Or if Apple finally comes out with their long-rumored Airport Express replacement that streams video as well as audio.
What resolution will these be?
If it only looks good on something the size of a vide iPod then this is a total rip off.
Um… are there going to be bonus features included with those downloads? If not, then I’ll just pony up an extra $2 for the physical DVD, thanks.
I’m a movie junkie but I think they are going to have to be more clever than just posting movies on iTunes for purchase/download. Almost all of the full-length movies I see are rentals (via Netflix or digital cable on-demand or pay-per-view). The few I buy are the hard-to-find ones. Realistically, how many times can you see most films? I understand purchasing them for kids to watch over and over and we all have our favorite classics but there are too many movies and not enough time. This is a very different market than music. Having spent tons of hours downloading/converting/buying content for the video ipod, I can safely say I wouldn’t want to do this with full-length films (yet)! Since I’m sure none of this is news to Apple, I’m curious to see what they come up with.
Ive been watching a lot of DVD movies on my Imac anyway so this will be cool. As for the Video Ipod, who knows, they may actually wind up making the screens bigger in the future.
I figure same as the TV-shows this will only be available to US-users. But if I can my hand on some more gift-certificates for US-itunes I’d be happy to pay 10,50€ for a new movie. The only thing really bothering me is DRM.
>dumbfounder
I mean 150kbits/second [T1 or so] for download is good enough to get movie from the net.
The truth is USA is like third world for xDSL and cable speed. ALL the big cities [ie metropolitan area] should a minimum ReliABLe download speed 150kbits/second.
In Europe and Korea they have a minium of 750kbits/second for less than $30 per month. No comment on the poor offers we have in the US even in the big cities.
And no we don’t need fiber optics [yet] to achieve xDSL speed of 2000kbits/second.
I am talking about wired networks only of course.
Being able to purchase movies online will be great - and many folks will probably go out and purchase a Mac Mini that they can hook up their iTunes downloads to their huge HDTV’s pretty easily. And when they (apple folks) add HD movies, the endless debate over HD-DVD and Blu-ray will go the way of the Laserdisc. But Apple still needs to prove that people want to actually purchase (rather than rent) movies.
Music is great to sell outright because most people listen to songs over and over again. Movies are very different - with few exceptions, most people watch each movie once or twice. And while no one will argue the success of DVD-sales, it remains to be seen whether the rental business model or actual sales will prove most successful. Apple doesn’t seem to like offering subscription, at least for music, but maybe they can make an exception for movies.
Without rentals, this is a non-starter. Movies music. No one wants to buy movies online.
I say power to i tunes, business is war and all is fair in love and war besides they have a built in market. Walmart by sheer size when they enter a market dominant it, many of the same users of itunes will be lined up for downloadable movies it’s just the upsell.
Monkey Bites is reporting the possibility of a new Ipod with a wider screen.
Gee! Am I the only one who thinks that renting a DVD for just
a dollar from RedBox is the easiest thing to do these days.
No lines…no hassles…open 24hours…take back to any other
RedBox in the area. They are even in supermarkets now!
Everytime I comtemplate renting one from BlockBusters for
$3.99 I think–Wow…that’s FOUR DVDs from RedBox!!
Still will use old sources for OLDER movies…but more and more
these days I don’t want to spend time watching movies over
and over again…life is too short!
And I certainly won’t be spending time downloading and burning them…sheessh! Who really has time for all of that!
Not to mention that the “virus guys” are probably already
cooking up ways to screw us on the DVD download deal
this very moment.
That’s my piece.
Blue Laser DVDs are based on VC-1 not H.264
This may catch on just because there are some people are so loyal to/hooked on iTunes…
Dima is right though, the price is too high. $4.99 would make sense to consumers.
“And adding color to the story: WalMart is pissed off.”
Haha…
I’ll admit though that I would like to get this, but I wonder if its worth it in the end to have it on your iPod and not be able to watch it on your TV if a really good quality.
So with that said, I’m not too sure why Wal-Mart would be too pissed about it.
This makes me wonder why Sony hasn’t done the same thing… rather than forcing a specific technology down our throats, I could buy a DVD and play it on my PSP or at home.
“Am I the only one who thinks that renting a DVD for just a dollar from RedBox is the easiest thing to do these days.”
No. But you are one of the very few customers in RedBox’s 6 markets. Which is exactly the point…the Apple Movie Store will serve *all* US customers from day 1.
You might want to add to your posting that this is not “itunes” but “itunes in it’s US store”.
I don’t see that Netflix has anything to be worried about at all. This is for people buying movies, not renting them. I watch 4 or 5 movies per month (via Netflix), and I’m on the low end - lots of people watch 2-3 times that. I only buy maybe 1 or 2 per year (seriously, how many times will I want to watch Daddy Daycare?).
Unless Apple comes out with a time-limited movie that competes price-wise with renting, I don’t see Apple and Netflix as being in competition.
Wal Mart (and Best Buy for that matter), on the other hand, do have something to worry about. I’m happy about that, as the fewer reasons I have to go to Wal Mart, the better.
We need higher bandwidth, atleast T1 lines, then it will workout.
Most of the country dont have this type fo facility.