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."

Comments

Future

[someguy456]

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).

"tap the younger video-game generation"

[Qzukk]

Does this mean that they're going to be selling Tron, Cloak and Dagger, and The Wiz?

How about TV?

[rjelks]

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.

Re:I don't see the interest for this being too gre

[Ohreally_factor]

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.

Music Videos

[SlashdotOgre]

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.

Re:I don't see the interest for this being too gre

[Ohreally_factor]

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. =)