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Napster to Offer Movie Downloads
sebFlyte writes "silicon.com is reporting that Napster is going to move into legal movie downloads. They are aiming particularly to tap the younger video-game generation."
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It is simply good business sense to move into this largely untapped market, especially if you already have a platform for charging for and delivering digital content. Though they aren't the first; MovieLink and CinemaNow are already offering movies for legal download.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Considering how much I dislike watching movies on a monitor, I doubt there are many people out there interested in downloading movies instead of renting or buying.
Frankly, I can't see a major online content vendor not delivering video in the future. Napster and iTunes and all better be prepared to enter the movie market once the technology is ready (bandwith).
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
I wonder if the speed will compare to Bittorrent.
...not that I've ever used that for movies...
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Hey this sucks, it started out like The Matrix but 3 minutes in, it just loops continously.
If you think
Does this mean that they're going to be selling Tron, Cloak and Dagger, and The Wiz?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Napstar got to crap...,
Bring back the good old days of BBS and copying Games ( on tape) of Accoustic Coupler....,
Old school Phreaking + Cracking...,
Damn Kids have it to easy....?!?!?
I wonder if they will adopt a good streaming format which is a good tradeoff between not waiting too long before being able to start watching the movie and not experiencing unwanted delays during watching...
You don't like it so no one else will? Um, okay. Considering how many people download movies off of bittorrent, I think there IS a market out there.
However, usage of legal movie download sites has paled in comparison to that of illegal film distribution
You don't say!?!?
You have a constitutionally protected right to be wrong, and I the right to ignore you.
They cost money !!!! Whatever happend to information wanting to be free and that since the movies suck, they should be free to download anyway.
Yes, but they can then be easily burned to standard MPEG DVD format. And many people have LCD screens or TV connected directly to their PC's.
The next step however, would be to have the equivelant of a DVD ISO because I'd want the "extras" too... that's kind of one of the big points about purchasing/renting a DVD.
Since when do movies have something to do with young video gamers? I mean, what are they going to be offering, Mario Bros, Street Fighter and Resident Evil movies for example?
I don't know about you guys but Mario Bros movie was a hell of a movie.
Considering how much I dislike watching movies on a monitor, I doubt there are many people out there interested in downloading movies instead of renting or buying.
Considering how much I dislike hearing music on my laptop speaker, I doubt there are many people out there interested in downloading movies instead of renting or buying.
Many people I know watch movies from their computers, either onto monitors apparently better than yours, TV's, and even projectors.
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
Considering how often I see MythTV mentioned,I doubt anyone in America DOESN'T have their TV hooked up to a computer.
Or so the Apple rumor mill says.
Netflix got some cometition now!
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
Hey this sucks, it started out like The Matrix but 3 minutes in, it just loops continously.
Then it must have been "Matrix Revolutions" that you saw..
Don't associate the two. Seriously. Also, is the Internet ready for this kind of traffic?
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
After people watch the movie, they want to talk about it with their friends. How much fun is watching a movie by yourself?
The only exception is pornography. Unless Napster intends that its service will be predominantly for pornography downloads, Napster will not achieve much market penetration (pun intended).
Perhaps, Napster should offer a special deal: After 10 downloads, you receive a free jar of vaseline. <chuckle>
But I wonder what encoding they will use?
Will it be usable if say I have a media PC? Would it look decent if I downloaded a movie and hooked my computer up to a TV?
If they can do that, and make download decent... it's got a good shot.
Unlike Kazaa, Napster is clean of viruses, trojans, and other garbage infecting files in hopes of getting a loophole in your buggy media player.
"Original music download heavyweight Napster is considering remaking itself as a movie download site too."
So let's see... no business plan, no decisions on DRM or encoding format or anything remotely technical, just the statement that it's being "considered..."
Should this really be considered news? I mean, a lot of groups are looking at doing movie downloads...
I thought the average age of gamers nowadays was 29.
Considering how many people download movies off of bittorrent, I think there IS a market out there.
You say many people in relation to those who read Slashdot, I am talking about the public in general. Sure there may be a market, but I don't see it being that big until this would allow easy veiwing on a regular television set.
There are now DVD, DivX players that support video on demand files... You download the movie, burn it and play it on you Digital projector to a big wall in the living room, turn up the volume in your home theater system... It is certainly cheaper than having to go out in the cold to rent a movie that is not yet in the satellite or cable channels. You download the movie, make a few snacks, burn it ro DVD while you get your cute neightborg (that cute chick always smilng at you) and BAM!!! It is somewhat the future of movies so to speak. We are already isolating ourselves from the world by using our "capsules" called cars to go pretty much anywhere so why not move to the next step and stay home isolated from everything. Have a good one.
===== "Every head is a different world so don't invade mine you FREAK!" smartSAGA said
I didn't see television mentioned in the article. $2.99 for a movie...how much for a TV show? Maybe they could charge by season. If we're going for video on demand, I'd like to see some of the older shows. They can keep the reality TV for themselves.
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Considering how much I dislike watching movies on a monitor, I doubt there are many people out there interested in downloading movies instead of renting or buying.
Maybe you won't think the same after realizing that for a small 2 hours download you can watch the latest episode (fansubbed) of Xenosaga: the anime series.
Movie downloads may not be really popular, but the anime market shows promise. Unfortunately I don't think it can be legitimized due to the marginally-legal status of fansubs.
If this were the case though, tech gadgets similar to Apple's Airtunes/Airport Express would be enviable. Imagine: "Apple AirShow."
I'm on the outside looking in. I wanna put together a box to run MythTV but nothing too expensive. I also fear that once i hook it up to my 32" 8yr old Sony, that it's going to look like crap output wise(for web surfing) and ofcourse lack the video-in that i need.
Until an online movie store with lienient DRM arrives like ITMS, I really doubt online movie sales are going to go anywhere. Just too slow and too much bother for most people.
The Tivo/Netflix thing may have a good shot though, being a lot like pay-per-view and well integrated into the box. I don't think any cable service would partner with any of the movie download places as they would want to control that all themselves.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Did I mess it up again?
Considering how much I dislike hearing music on my laptop speaker, I doubt there are many people out there interested in downloading movies instead of renting or buying.
It should be:
Considering how much I dislike hearing music on my laptop speaker, I doubt there are many people out there interested in downloading music instead of renting or buying.
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
The article makes no mention of the quality of the downloads - DVD rip or VCD or something a little more compact, nor do they mention any DRM scheme to be attached. This isn't news yet, aside from a company saying they have a vague idea to take an idea already being done through BitTorrent effectively and charge for it.
With the size of the movie files, I wouldn't be surprised if they actually implemented a distribution model like bit torrent to ease the server load. At 10$ per album, which could be anywhere from 50-100 Mb, for movies, cinemanow.com says its DVD quality. The amount of bits to required to generate half the money is astronomically larger than for the music equivalent. That, plus at least in Canada a number of cable/dsl packages aren't unlimited. 10 Gb down a month goes pretty fast, that'll generate alot of animosity from the unknowing public when they pay $3 to download but $30 to the ISP.
Plus if its not a p2p system similar to bit torrent, then it will probably slow down as it gets popular, and have a reputation for being slow.
I see this implementation of a good idea tanking.
groooaaannn ahahaha
Considering how some people have bigger monitors than TVs, I can see how some people prefer to watch DVDs on the larger screen.
hey, you forgot to sa4Zj2 [NO CARRIER]
Perhaps I am wrong on this, but I would say tha statistic given in the article (not really backed by the link) that one in four people online have downloaded a film sounds rather high.
I know it is spreading in popularilty, but even so I know very few people at work (for example) that even know what Bittorrent is, much less have downloaded a film!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Since iTunes came out, I started paying for my music. I don't mind doing so, but it's easier to obtain from iTunes rather than hunting down files on news or torrent. But, downloading movies is a completely different realm.
* Are there any decent portable movie players?
* Can we burn our movies to DVD like we can burn our music to CD?
* I have a Mac & PC, but for everyone here who lives on *nix, will there be cross-platform software?
* Are we going to be downloading 4.6GB DVD's or compressed divx-like files? Also, how are you going to pay for all that bandwidth without killing your customers with additional charges?
* Finally, what will be the selling point to downloading movies to your computer. Why not just go out and rent, or even yet, rent online through NetFlix or Blockbuster?
These are all very valid points that need to be addressed before anyone tackles this. Napster has yet to do this and I see them headed for a bust.
http://www.allometry.com
Some people like watching movies on their laptops, yes, but I would hardly call it a vast market. However, earlier commenters are correct: internet delivery of movies will eventually become mainstream.
So what's the catch? I don't want to sit around for a few hours while my laptop downloads a movie, only to have to burn it to a DVD to watch it on my TV (or plug my laptop in to the TV, making it useless for anything else). What *I* want is the ability to browse, order, download and view movies from my TV.
I think this is where TiVo, or perhaps and Apple/TiVo partership, would kick ass. Being able to buy and download a movie through my TiVo, and when it's ready, I can watch it all I want on the TV... or burn a DVD right there on the device. Or copy it to my laptop if I really want to watch it there.
THAT'S the way to go.
My computer is probably what I watch movies on most-- and thats not to say I have a bad home entertainment system. I find myself watching my rented Netflix while on the go, flights, road trips, and even at the library in between classes (I study sometimes too ;]).
As soon as someone rolls out a decent service with all of the titles I'm looking for I will probably cancel my netflix account and move to something like thus.
Peep that
Whatster?
Ohhhh. Napster. Yeah, I remember that. So this is some sort of commercial for them then?
I moderate "-1, Fool"
They are aiming particularly to tap the younger video-game generation.
Is this some marketing term for the young kidz who like totally radical xtreme eye popping special fx at the touch of a button?!?!?!
Are "video games" the mark of the young generation? Are these a target group for downloading movies? Right now, the generation that "grew up" with video games would be anyone 35 and under. So is the main feature of everyone under 35 that they like video games?
What does any of this mean?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Considering how much I dislike hearing music on my laptop speaker, I doubt there are many people out there interested in downloading music instead of renting or buying.
Except portable music devices are a huge market, and CD burners are nearly ubiquitous in computers these days, plus you talking about the difference between a couple minutes and a few hours worth of downloading.
I am not saying this will never be a valid medium for movie distribution, but right now I just don't see the market being that large.
I think they're trying to target people that are already ..cough...cough...downloading movies. I think in the future, it will become more mainstream. Think of it like pay per view. The technology to get a movie from the computer to the livingroom is already here. If Itunes can make money, I think there's a shot for Napster.
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Heh.
.
.
.
Considering how much I hate brussel sprouts, I doubt there are many people out there interested in downloading movies instead of renting or buying.
Considering how much I hate being kicked in the face. .
Considering how much I hate you. . .
Considering how creepy most people think I am. .
=)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
The average TV is probably 24 to 27", and the average monitor is probably still 17" or less. I can't think of a single person I know (except people that down own a TV) who owns a computer screen larger than the TV they own. Unless there's a way to watch these movies on my TV, I wouldn't pay $ for a movie that would only play on my computer.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
i really hope catwomen is on the list...
> You don't like it so no one else will? Um, okay.
> Considering how many people download movies off of
> bittorrent, I think there IS a market out there.
Except that this plan (such as it is) is aimed at a totally different group than torrent users. I mean, we're talking about a group who probably have a reasonably good idea that you don't stick the power plug up their nose, but not much better.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
plus you talking about the difference between a couple minutes and a few hours worth of downloading.
Laptops need to charge. Wi-Fi hotspots in semipublic areas such as coffee shops could allow a digital movie rental to download while the laptop is charging, faster than a Netflix DVD rental could dream of arriving.
What *I* want is the ability to browse, order, download and view movies from my TV.
Try Akimbo.
sure, it's not a great comment, but hardly a troll!
XBMC
Whoa. Déja vu.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
Ultimately the cable companies will be the winners here. They have a high speed digital cable running into a box which is attached to your TV.
What more can you possibly say?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I am not saying this will never be a valid medium for movie distribution, but right now I just don't see the market being that large.
It's a chicken and egg thing. There are portable media players that will play the movies, but they won't be popular until there are plenty of easy and cheap ways to get the content legally.
portable music devices are a huge market, and CD burners are nearly ubiquitous in computers these days, plus you talking about the difference between a couple minutes and a few hours worth of downloading
1) the mp3 player market didn't spring up over night out of nothing.
2) DVD burners are becoming a lot more common, and will probably displace CD burners. Besides, other than capacity, are they all that different? Both utilize Shiny Disc technology.
3) It can take many many hours to DL an unauthorized copy of a movie on the file sharing networks, but people do it (often to find that what they downloaded is not what they wanted). Some people will happily pay a few bucks to guarantee that their getting the movie they want, that they can find it easily, and that it will download in a reasonable amount of time.
Anyway, these things just don't happen by themselves. A company has to actually try and deliver a product or service, or there is no market.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
What we really need is TV by internet. Break the semi-monopolies of networks, cable & sattelite! I'm cool with snail mail for movies with Netflix. I am sick of needing to program VCRs or whatever to catch a show live. Everything should be downloadable, with commercials or for pay, from the internet! Where's are broadband media center box with full access to existing shows!? Maybe when those flying cars that we've been reading about for 50 years come, we'll get TV on demand!
I think you're giving "torrent users" too much credit. All it takes is clicking the mouse and a download starts. I've heard a lot of people talking about napster, morpheus, kazaa, etc... that couldn't tell you what a zipped file was. Heck, I know people that use bittorrent and still refer to their monitor as their computer. People that downloaded music in Napster's golden days were made up of a pretty broad spectrum too.
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Are there any decent portable movie players?
Most modern laptops have a TV output.
I have a Mac & PC, but for everyone here who lives on *nix, will there be cross-platform software?
Napster and iTMS music downloads don't work on POSIX-conforming systems with X11-based primary GUIs either. Besides, what percent of the movie enthusiast market doesn't have at least one machine running Windows 2000/XP or Mac OS X 10.2/10.3? Most paid download services have trouble accommodating even Macintosh computers; how would you make a business case for hiring extra developers and tech support for FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, and the like?
Also, how are you going to pay for all that bandwidth without killing your customers with additional charges?
Two ways: First off, they'll start by offering service in the United States, where bandwidth is much cheaper than it is in, say, New Zealand. Second, the success of BitTorrent has proven that swarming downloads can work.
Finally, what will be the selling point to downloading movies to your computer. Why not just go out and rent, or even yet, rent online through NetFlix or Blockbuster?
Given strong enough broadband, I see a potential for 1.0 GB MPEG-4 movie downloads to have a much faster turnaround than online DVD rental orders. In addition, anything online can have a much larger selection and doesn't require round-trip bus fare in addition to the rental fees, and online stores can be open when video rental stores and bus lines are not.
One of the defining characteristics of the "younger video-game generation", IMO, is their tendency to share with their friends.
I doubt this will catch on very well if Billy can't give a copy of a movie he's just downloaded to little Jimmy.
As far as I can see, this is still the same old business model with a slightly different distribution method.
Not that I'm suggesting a new business model (ooh, how about voluntary micropayments to the temporaily formed company that made the film instead of "If you don't pay you can't see it" payments to the distributor?), I'm just saying the old one doesn't really work anymore.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Hey this sucks, it started out like The Matrix but 3 minutes in, it just loops continously.
Yeah, it could be worse though. It could have Madonna telling you to quit stealing movies. And we know how bad movies that let Madonna in front of a camera are...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I don't want to sit around for a few hours while my laptop downloads a movie, only to have to ... plug my laptop in to the TV, making it useless for anything else
When you watch a movie, you are useless for anything else. Unlike music, which a fellow generally listens to in the background while doing something else, movies are intended to be watched as your foreground process.
I have a laptop and connected to it is a 21" CRT monitor I got a long time ago. It doubles as a second monitor for working on, or if I'm watching a DVD, it plays fullscreen on that and whatever window on my laptop. I also have a TV tuner that behaves the same way (which leads to the idea that it's a video card/drive features) and it's the best thing that has happened.
Now, this is my bedroom, and when I'm in bed, it's about 10ft from the monitor to my eyes. It's a very convenient system and I didn't even know the video card in the laptop would be capable of it, nor did I look for this feature.
As for your second point, I can agree because I bet there are droves of people that rent from Netflix or Blockbuster and rip the DVD, return, repeat. Either that, or pay for and wait for a movie download (can it stream? seek?) and deal with DRM restrictions if your end result would be to steal the movie.
For the legal folks, I imagine telling Napster or whoever "I want to watch Movie X this Friday night", so it downloads data in time to watch the movie and your limited time to watch it (if it is limited) begins when you press play.
Deja-vu... they're coming.
The big question is will they get enough paying customers to more than make up for their costs.
I think that they probably will.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I abandoned those days (though it took YEARS) when I found out about the whole free software movement. Why pirate when you can have free/OSS legally?
Where is the free/OSS recorded music? Where are the free/OSS feature films?
One application of this I'd be interested in is perhaps the opportunity to buy music videos in addition to songs. I almost never buy songs; I believe $1 is overpriced when I can get the whole CD used for $7 if I drive a couple miles to my local independent record shop in Pacific Beach. Since there really isn't a place to buy music videos unless the band released a DVD (in which case there's likely multiple videos -- the majority of which I likely don't want), this would be a product which I couldn't buy anywhere else and I can somewhat justify a dollar or two.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
"I think this is where TiVo, or perhaps and Apple/TiVo partership"
On many Mac forums, the popular catch-phrase is "Trojan horse", as in "the Mac mini is really a Trojan horse that Apple is using to get penetration in the living room before they reposition it as a media center". I think it's only a matter of time before the iTunes Music Store makes the transition to the Apple Media Store.
I just don't see the demand right now. You already have plenty of options. You can buy the DVDs, you can use a service like Netflix, or you can take a quick trip to the rental store to get what you want most of the time.
For music, your only option other than downloading is to go to the store and throw down the $10+ for the entire CD. The market was there for online music distribution, since you can save time and money by downloading online.
Until downloading movies saves you both time and money, and is easy to use, I don't see the service becoming too popular.
- one in four people online have now downloaded a film, the MPAA says The MPAA lies so bad. There is no way that one in every four people online have downloaded a film. One in four is an insane amount of people. One in four slashdotters, sure, one in four of everyone...no way.
Yep. That's the Matrix for you.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
If Napster sticks with WMV, one possibility is for MS to offer a product to allow you to stream the media from your PC to XBox and view it on your TV. The necessary hardware is already present (I watch MPEG4 video on my modded XBox all the time), so MS just needs to develope software that can maintain the DRM protection while allowing us to view the media. It would also be good marketing since I doubt MS would give the DRM decorder to Sony or Nintendo.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
They get ONE chance to win our trust and our praise on this, and one chance only. They screw it up, and they will have paved the road for Apple to do it right, which they inevitably will.
Napster needs to offer no DRM, fast downloads, no annoying and invasive advertising in the middle of the movies or anything, and a wide selection. If they can't do it, someone else will. Frankly though, I don't have much hope for them doing the right thing.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Hey, that Madonna clip was great - it spawned its own remix project.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
I just don't see the demand right now.
The demand is there, otherwise we wouldn't see such a huge black market dealing in unauthorized copies.
Until downloading movies saves you both time and money, and is easy to use, I don't see the service becoming too popular.
I mostly agree with you, but it needn't save both time and money. Change your statement to "time or money", and I totally agree with you. Consider this: I want to watch some very obscure movie or TV show, and my local Blockbuster doesn't have it. Now, I can buy it on Amazon for retail + shipping + wait time, or I can purchase a single viewing download for $2.99, with the option of burning to DVD for another $10.
Whoever can execute this scheme the most successfully will make a good deal of money, and will be hailed as the movie equivalent of iTMS. Unless it's Apple, in which case we'll criticize the proprietary nature of their product/service combo, the DRM, and the pricing. =)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I saw a commercial where napster jumps to a swimming pool with the headsets on his head, literally showing a suicide act, many others followed him.
Napster is dead, let him rest in peace.
`I am shocked! Shocked to find gambling in this establishment!'
'Here are your winnings sir.'
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
The only thing that I see as a requirement would be instant viewing of the movie. People download music from iTMS b/c they get instant gratification. Less than two minutes and you have whatever song you want. In order for an online movie buying business to work, they are goign to have to be able to play the movie well before it finishes downloading, and with decent quality on their TV. Otherwise, people will just rather spend the 3 hrs goign out to a rental place and purchasing a movie, or just get Netflix.
I came, I saw, She conquered.
Some Mega64 maybe? ;)
BytesTemplar.com
Okay,I know not everyone has a cable box, but assuming the primary market for downloadable movies are people with either digital cable or satelite capable of movies-on-demand, I am having a hard time seeing how this is better.
Like the iPod/iTunes simplified music buying and listening, I think the cable industry has already solved the movide buying thing.
If they would just increase the library of movies on demand and allow us to save them in our PVR, burn to DVD, etc, then you have an easy way to buy, store, and view movies.
THe Napster way, I am still going to my computer, downloading the whole thing (takes longer than going to Blockbuster) and in the end, It cost me the $XX.XX they will charge, plus I now have to burn my own DVD (more $ and time) and then I can finally watch it in my home theater.
Not as clean as the movies on demand model we have had for years.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
I'm also willing to bet there are a few bands out there that'll allow you to download their music for free -- the ones that are looking for exposure, etc.
Say you have an independent band whose members write the band's songs, and they put at least a couple singles on the web for downloading at no charge. How can they prove in a court of law that the songs they wrote are in fact original musical works?
I have a 19inch samsung syncmaster 910T with 1000:1 contrast ratio on my desk at college with a stereo hooked up as my speakers and a pitiful 13 inch TV with built in speakers in my dorm room, guess which I watch stuff on?
It all depends what equiptment you have at your disposal, at home I will usually use the 40-something inch TV in the living room, but if its being used my 21inch CRT monitor on my computer with its dolby 5.1 setup function admirably as TV/movie watching devices. Plus as I d/l many TV series that I dont get on cable in college, its already on my comp, why bother burning it to a dvd to watch on an inferior screen?
maybe you just have a crappy monitor?
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
But I have a Napster subscription for unlimited music at £10/month. Sure I can't burn it or sync it with my portable player, but as long as I have internet access it works. Would unlimited movies be included in this package?
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
What kind of person owns a 20" LCD but not a 20" TV? You have to work pretty hard to find a 20" TV these days.
I do, my monitor (as I mentioned in another post) is a very nice 19 inch screen, my TV in college is a 13 inch crt, I spend far more time on my computer that I do watching TV (not counting all the media that I usually watch on my computer), so I'd rather spend the money on my monitor.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Hey those kids now days are playing videogames right? Well videogames are on TV, know what else is on TV, yep movies. Lets sell those videogame playing kids movies. They're not using our legal music download service, but I'm sure they'll use our movie service.
mkay now people are getting way out of hand. There's no need to moderate a "not a troll" comment as offtopic. JEEZ!!!!
I'm not sure I agree with the pricing model, though... I'd rather just pay a single charge to own the movie in digital form. None of this "your movie will self-destruct" funny business that (the original) DiVX tried.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
because the only thing better than downloads games for free, is download movies for money.
i don't get it.. the CEO said that they are "considering" and that there "could be" a role for napster. did anyone RTA?
why does this mean that napster is definitely going into the movie distribution business? lots of companies are considering lots of things - this is not news. and the headline "Napster to Offer Movie Downloads"? wildly inaccurate.
No sarcasm, I found a case where the parent's idiot logic actually works!
Slashdotters: You are all a bunch of faggots.
Do you hear me, you repulsive faggots? NO DIGG.
Um if meory serves, kids started using mp3's around 1997 the first players appeared a few years later.
The music came before the player.
this time the player really came before the video. Though content is being distributed, bandwidth is a pain, quailty sucks, and storage requirments are high.
Of course MP3's were killing dial-up. So the questions are what will happen first. 10-20Mbs internet access? or high quailty content? Will consumers switch to watching movies on small screens when the bulk of the population can't focus on such devices?
I say this as I download a whole TV series episode by episode, because I am tired of missing it on TV. Then again, I use my powerbook to display the shows to my TV.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
If the mac mini is designed as the machine that we hook up to our HDTVs (I currently have a modded G4 cube doing that for now.)
And assuming (this might be a stretch) that the "Asteroid" box is really a HD video box (Jobs said it's the year of HD) and that my iPod Photo has the hardware already to play movies then Apple will have a perfect set of distribution/watch on HDTV/carry on iPod. A formidable concept.
Apple is putting into place the exact pieces to create the iTunes store for movies. With Steves experience in the film business (Pixar) he already has more connections than he did with the record companies and now he has a track record, no, he has written the book on legal downloading.
Napster is talking abut dilly-dallying around with the concepts that Apple is preparing the major groundwork for.
I hate to say it, but these legal movie download services need to move into the porn sector. There are plenty of people (mostly couples) out there that would rather (legally) download a raunchy flick than brave the local rental place or wait a few days for a mail-order to arrive.
With stories about Apple having trouble making money off of music downloads, they only make money by people who buy hardware to play it, I have to wonder how any company thinks they are going to make many on movie downloads. For an album they charge 10.99??, and that's for probably about 50 minutes of music the way most albums go these days. That's maybe around 200 megs encoded. Probably way less. A decently encoded movie is 700 MB. I wouldn't even pay for a movie that's that badly encoded. A movie I would buy would probably be around 2 Gigs. At the cost that they would have to charge to download that much data, not to mention the time I would have to wait, I'd much rather just go to Walmart and buy it. That way I could play it anywhere instead of just on my computer, or having to fork out more money for DVD burner and discs. Not to mention the fact that I trust the reliability of a burnt disc about as far as I can throw the factory that produces them.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
that is all this is.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Yeah i think its a great idea!
If it has a huge list of movies and a no wait download or any waiting time, i would personally watch them.
Instead of waiting on that hard to find movie coming from amazon that you ordered weeks ago, paying for postage and packaging , why not load up your napster client hit in your search for that movie and up it comes , sit back relax and watch the movie you cant find in the shops, or a new movie in the cinema maybe.
But how far will they go , will warez groups have the ability to rip them or will they have some kind of software that magically overlays the stream.
Whatever they decided to do, i hope for a price they let you fully buy and have the legal right to burn a copy for your DVD player.
Napster have had there ups and downs and we should all support and look forward to seeing what the future brings for them.
Napster died a long time ago... right before I stopped buying close to two CD's a week...
Dressing up a monkey in a dress doesn't turn the monkey into Charliese Theron...
The link went to a page noting the arrests of a number of bittorrent pirates, giving a figure for the number of people downloading and number of movies downloaded - so your guess is probably correct!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When I was still running the Open Music Registry, it used to annoy me greatly that articles online and off would refer to "legal music downloads" in a manner that implied the only way to legally download music was to pay for it. No reference to or acknowledgement of the public domain. No open-licensing. Just "pay or it's illegal."
Obviously that pet peeve is ripe for renewal on a different front: "legal" movie downloads. {sigh}
No Laughing Allowed!
Right - and meanwhile, Netflix said (at their recent quarterly earnings call) that their online movie download service will launch in 2005.
In some countries, especially third world countries, this is how most people watch movies. When I was in palestine most people didn't have dvd players, but nearly everyone has access to a computer, either in an internet cafe (for between 2 and 3 sheqels an hour, which is about 50 us cents) or in their own home. since copyright laws aren't enforced in the occupied territories, you can buy any movie or software program that is popular for 5 sheqels (about one us dollar) from one of the movie/software/computer shops that are on every corner. if it's less popular, you can download it through file sharing or get the local computer expert to do it for you. there aren't any movie theaters that most people could reach. there used to be one in gaza, but hamas blew it up, and i don't think the one in ramallah is still operating, and if it were, most people in the west bank wouldn't be able to reach it due to travel restrictions. so people there watch movies on a computer, and they don't seem to mind watching them that way.
I've also noticed that a lot of people in the usa watch movies on their computer too since most movies aren't worth paying for, but maybe are worth the time it takes to download and watch.
if these movies were priced at a dollar or two to download (like itunes), i could see people paying for it.
They are aiming particularly to tap the younger video-game generation
.
I think they misspelled tapster.com
Background story>
sorry for the archive.org link, apparently tapster - like its lesser known brother - has succumbed to the power of the RIAA. Or was it because they streamed in dobly?
Let me guess: massive Digital Restriction management, viewable only n times, no possibility of a backup, low resolution, Windows only, and about $5 per downloaded movie (which will cost me the download as well, depending onmy ISP).
I like my way better: there's a robot DVD shop around the corner. Open 24h. Costs me just one buck to rent a film for three hours (more if I keep it longer, of course).
Plenty time to view it and decide if I want to maxe an Xvid of it.
Anonymously. No restrictions. For a dollar. In any resolution. On any OS.
Could be too late for offering movies to download.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Re the download video market - we're not quite there yet in terms of infrastructure, but there is a lot of demand for this stuff (TV episodes and films). When you can download quickly and reliably from a store that offers a lot of choice, this sort of thing will really take off. Why would you tun on a TV on the off chance something is on if you could choose exactly what you wanted to see? Most of the appeal of an online music store is that you can buy something straight away.
Re distribution/bandwidth problems - use Bit torrent in your custom client and/or provide Bit torrent links, problem solved.
that Yoda had a side gig as a chiropractor?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
If we weren't spending 5 bucks for a coke and 4 bucks for a box of sno-caps, and another 4.50 for a lunchbag full of popcorn, then another 13 bucks to see the movie, which is prempted by a half an hour of commercials. People would probably go to the movies more.
I know I don't go because I can't afford to spend 50 bucks every time I want to see a movie with my wife.. We would rather just pay the netflix subscription and wait for it to come out on dvd. If napster provided the movies for a cheap price, in iso format, and dolled out enough bandwith... I'd be happy to invest some of my hard earned cash into it.
The frenh ISP club-internet is proposing movies since one year at least. For 3 or 5 euros, you get a 24-hours licence to watch a streaming video. So you can interrupt, go back, and replay, but you can't burn it on a CD or DVD. The image and sound quality is like a DivX- file. Also, you need windows and media player 9.
Lets try to profit off the generation with no money!!!
BRILLIANT!
Are you going to donate your bandwidth for the sake of Napster's profit? I'm not. If they want to microcredit back to me something for the bandwidth I contribute or have a lower price for uploaders, then, sure.
They'd probably have to write an extention to BitTorrent to hand it though.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Cable is really taking off vs. DSL and it's faster than DSL (my Comcast account is 3mb down).
At that speed, it should be able to watch a high quality video stream in realtime as it's downloading.