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).

Re:if it's anything like p2p music downloads

[BuddieFox]

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..

Re:Move quick! You are the third to arrive...

[DrLZRDMN]

Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must have Windows 98/SE, ME, 2000 or XP, which support certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies. We do not support Mac or Linux.

To watch films on CinemaNow you will need the minimum of Microsoft Windows Media Player version 9
No problem realy I wouldn't want ot pay the movie industry any more then the music industry.

Key word: "Considering"

[schmidt349]

"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...

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.

Does the market even exist yet?

[allometry]

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.

Cable companies will win

[popo]

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?

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.