October 24, 2006

AOL Video Adds Paramount, Product Still Lags Market

Michael Arrington

11 comments »

AOL Video announced the addition of movies from Paramount Pictures today, adding to their catalog of films from Fox, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. They now offer more than 300 titles from major movie studios.

We wrote about the major movie download services (CinemaNow, MovieLink, GUBA, Amazon Unbox and iTunes) last week. AOL Video offers a number of services beyond the sale of premium movies (including full web video search care of their Truveo acquisition). Putting those features aside, we’ve compared AOL Video to the other major services. The product is average compared to the others, although prices are on the high side and the movie selection is near the bottom of the list. AOL certainly hasn’t created a standout product yet.

To be more specific (refer to chart in previous comparison post): AOL’s 300 titles is next to last on the list (iTunes has the smallest library, MovieLink has the most with 2,000 titles). Their pricing is on the high side, topping out at $19.99 for new releases. And they don’t offer lower priced movie rentals (all of the other services, except iTunes, offer rentals). Unlike CinemaNow and (soon) MovieLink, AOL does not offer a “burn to dvd” feature.

iTunes is the only service accessible by Mac users. All of the rest require a Windows machine, and most require the use of Internet Explorer as well to download the movies. When it comes to depth of movie catalog, MovieLink is far ahead of the others with over 2,000 titles. Guba has the lowest pricing.

For non-bittorent users, we continue to recommend iTunes for Mac users (their only choice), Guba for pricing (they subsidize movie prices to below cost) and MovieLink for selection. AOL isn’t a standout in any category, and every movie they have in their catalog is also offered by CinemaNow, MovieLink and Amazon Unbox.

A chart showing online distribution deals for each major studio is below.

Sphere It

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Comments

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richard

October 24th, 2006 at 3:43 am

There’s some very tough competition out there, but I wish them well with it.
Stuart Langridge

October 24th, 2006 at 3:48 am

Did I miss something? “And the only service with access to movies from Miramax, Pixar and Touchstone (all Disney-owned) is iTunes”, but the chart shows Touchstone being distributed by Cinema Now and Movielink as well (and Disney themselves are also available through Cinema Now).
Alex

October 24th, 2006 at 5:04 am

You would have though you guys could have come up with a better looking chart Haha. At least some colours could be in there ;).
Notsure

October 24th, 2006 at 6:50 am

Mike,

Bet your happy about the funding from Intel Capital ?

Take it means that Edgeio will be staying on the site for a while longer

Well done!

http://venturebeat.com/2006/10.....ieds-site/
Dave Zatz

October 24th, 2006 at 7:43 am

Where’s your Vongo analysis?
wayne lambright

October 24th, 2006 at 7:48 am

I’m waiting for netflix to go (on-demand). As far as AOL offering videos for download at 10 bucks, Seems very high. I’ll give a comparison. My first two years with netflix I watched 465 movies, Recently I canceled my cable TV, so basically we can’t even watch TV because our location has zero reception, and I upped my netflix to the seven at a time plan. There is so much content to watch on DVD’s I have zero reason to watch live TV. Conclusion, $10 AOL movie downloads are way too expensive, just my 2 cent’s maybe I’m totally wrong and Americans will be clamoring to spend 10 bucks. I just don’t see anybody I know spending 10 bucks for something they can own on a hardcopy for the same money.
David Mackey

October 24th, 2006 at 3:33 pm

I must agree with Dave Zatz - where is the Vongo analysis? Vongo’s collection is nearly as big if not as big as Movielinks, they offer a $10/mo. flat-fee rental program for most flicks and their prices overall are on the low-side. I’d say they are one of the most innovative companies out there!