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iTunes Music Store Sells Videos
bonch writes "With the recent release of iTunes 4.8 and its ability to manage and play videos, several users are discovering that iTunes is now selling videos through the online store. One example is the 'Feel Good Inc.' single used in the recent rollerskating iPod ad. The videos are provided in DRM-less .mp4 format encoded in 3ivx D4 4.5 and are available with purchase of the album."
Hopefully the next release will incorporate a preview - a few seconds to help those of us who would otherwise have no idea what these videos may be.
Video Phone Blogs send video messages straight to the web.
I didn't even know people still made videos.
can soon be rated with the number of available movies of Steven Seagal.
However this could be balanced out with some porn so.... Apple, be wise.
I'm sure this is just a toe in the water for Apple to start offering movies and other on-demand video with ITMS. Anyone who's been watching how movie trailers are hosted by Apple, how iTunes interfaces with HQ trailers, how Jobs has been talking of late, and how ITMS has been dabbling in video can't help but see the writing on the wall. Apple wants to be your one-stop media shop, not just the place where you buy songs or little music players. They're looking to marginalize entire swaths of the old regime in one fell swoop, and for my part, I'm rather looking forward to the shake-up.
Yes, a lot of the preceding has been hinted at by Cringely, there's nothing wrong with agreeing with someone else's take on things. :)
I know I would order, as long as it's not too ridiculously expensive or restrictive.
Ocean is land, covered with water.
Hello Anonymous Coward, can you be my friend? ;-D
This video thing is great, but I just wish they would sell higher quality/lossless audio files first. Bandwidth wouldn't be much greater than these video files they will be selling. I won't even mind paying $2 a song if they were in FLAC or Apple Lossless format.
SP
I wonder if this is a sign that the next generation iPods (which are bound to be out fairly soon) will have video playback.
Where's the video iPod????
Building a device perfectly capable of playing video and using it to display photos is insanity.
Is there a stevenote at the WWDC this year? Do you think maybe they'll announce a video iPod then?
Also: if the videos are un-DRMed mp4, does this mean they could be loaded onto a PSP or Nintendo DS play-yan?
Ah, no... just the Shuttle.
Now that's a big iPod!
I think that music videos are the perfect feeler for other non-drm media - like movies. If people really buy videos (which they will) then I think we can expect to see other kinds of video follow... like possibly TV shows through iTunes. Which would make the TV industry a fortune as a LOT of people would pay $5 for a high-quality version of a TV episode even when they could go and find the bittorrents.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That is just what I needed. Another method to purchase & transport porn videos.
Obligatory.
I haven't read any comments on how the Gorillaz are the greatest animated band ever. (I do nod in Daft Punk's direction however)
iTMS has had the ability to play music video's for a while so its really not a huge stretch to download them.
Also the video's (atleast from past albums) were freely available from the Gorillaz's website...
iTMS Australia. Talk about vapourware!
It's only vaporware if they said it was coming. I try to keep up on Apple news, but I don't remember Apple ever promising that iTunes was coming to Australia, so therefore they owe you nothing. I've heard that an actor and a musician said it was coming, but not Apple. If they made that promise, please post the link. I'd love to get more Chumbawumba songs. (No, really, I would.)
World's tallest building rises in the desert
C'mon, man, tell us all about how this is a prelude for some awesome iTunes Movie Store. (I'm not being sarcastic.) You haven't posted for a whole day!
In fact, come to think of it, you stopped at comment #666. What could it all mean??
Do they have older videos available? I'm not that interested in a lot of newer, higher profile artists, but if I can find some old videos that I loved from about 5+ years back, it might convince me to actually give iTunes a try. Second, how much do these videos cost to buy, and how much do the record labels get out of this, I need to know how much disgust I need to have for myself when I start giving the RIAA and their companies my money. (oh the dilemnas)
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
Blame the record labels in your country.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
The videos aren't in 3ivx format, they're in QuickTime MPEG-4. QT reports them as being 3ivx if you have the 3ivx codec installed, which is likely where the confusion arose.
People have offered video stores for years, as people offered music stores for years before the iTunes Music Store. People await the iTunes Video Store because they know that when Apple finally does it, it won't suck.
I've wondered since shortly after the mini was released if it wasn't a PVR in disguise. Virtually every plasma and LCD television sold today features a DVI connector... just like the Mac Mini. Combine that with Apple's excellent streaming technology and the established ITMS distribution channel, and Jobs might be on to something (again).
With a big external firewire drive the mini could make Apple the first serious contender to mass-market full-length HDTV content over IP.
No, pretty much everything you said here is wrong.
The Mac mini is meant to be a computer, nothing more. It was designed to be an inexpensive entry to the Mac product line for people who already own PCs and want to step up to something better. It doesn't have anything like the CPU power required for HD playback. You might be able to squeeze 4 Mbps out of it, maybe, if you hold your mouth just right and you're willing to live with some dropped frames. But anything more is not going to be an option this year, and maybe not next either.
And the iPod is not repeat not gonna say it one more time not meant to be a video-playback device. It's not even remotely designed for it. The iPod has a tiny hard drive that's designed for embedded applications, and a 32 MB (I think it is) RAM buffer cache that's optimized for dealing with song-sized chunks of data. That's about 4 MB. Even a half hour of HD content is gonna be half a gigabyte. There's basically no way for the iPod to play that without constantly keeping the hard drive running, and that will burn out the drive very quickly. Seriously, under constant use, the iPod hard drives' life spans are measured in tens of hours.
(How can we do photos, then? Easy. Photos are even smaller than songs. And unlike video, people often do want to carry photos around with them. Keep reading.)
Remember when I said the problem was part technology and part psychology? People like to listen to music while they do other things: Ride on the train, exercise, shop. People like to multi-task with their music.
Video, whether short-form like TV or long-form like movies, isn't like that. Video is an immersive experience. You sit down and you watch it, and you don't do anything else until it's over. That's a totally different interaction model than music.
So there's basically zero reason for video to be portable. You're not going to carry it around with you. You're going to watch it at home.
Exceptions? Sure. But Apple isn't a company that makes a habit of marketing to the exceptions. We shoot for a pretty clearly defined target market and let the exceptions buy their gadgets somewhere else. Chiefly because there aren't nearly enough exceptions out there to make it worth going after, financially speaking. We'd never be able to recover what we invest in R&D and design by selling a few hundred thousand units. We have to sell millions of units per quarter, otherwise the business plan just doesn't work.
I don't think he will have time. He seems to reply every story like 100 times!
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
FWIW that's not 5 burns per song, it's per playlist. All you have to do is make a new playlist and you can effectively burn any given song an unlimited number of times.
People keep saying you could use it as a PVR, but just how do you plan to do this? Sure, it has DVI, but so does every modern graphics card. From what I've read, its simply not powerful enough to handle video encoding + playback at decent levels at the same time.
To turn a mac mini into a decent PVR, you would need an external encoder, external storage, an IR receiver + remote, and good software to manage it all. At that point, you're talking about a hell of a lot more then the $499 sticker price, and taking up space with external hardware, so why exactly would you want to use a mac-mini for that?
Now that's a big iPod!
Too bad it's so crash-prone.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
ok ok you're right. it isn't/wasn't vapourware, just plain frustrating. Should really be complaing about the Sydney Morning Herald i guess
I know Jobs is talking up HD video, but imagine this: Apple starts selling downloadable movies, but only in standard VHS/broadcast resolution. That saves mucho bandwidth, won't matter to many people watching on small screens (like the rumored "video iPod"), and placates the MPAA and Hollywood, which can reserve HD for DVDs, etc.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
I purchased the Gorillaz's Feel Good Inc. single about two weeks ago using ver 4.7. Shouldn't I qualify for the video downloads?
I'm guessing Apple only validates new purchases, eh? Hmm. Anyone else had this experience?
That's been an option for a little while now, and doesn't require iTunes 4.8. iTunes 4.7 is handling it fine right now.
He does seem to have Job's style, doesn't he? Lots of Slashdotters have criticized him for being arrogant, and he definitely is. But he also really knows his stuff. I haven't seem him be wrong yet. And he's not afraid to stick the middle finger up at the Slashdot conventional wisdom, as he did here with the "no video iPod" thing. He's obviously not karma whoring. And he's obviously not astroturfing, because he ADMITS working for Apple. He's a legitimate insider. Only question is, who? I really love the Jobs idea. It almost seems like the sort of thing he'd do, doesn't it?
Who is As Seen On TV?
Just like EVERY GRAPHICS CARD IN THE PAST 5 YEARS. Give me a break.
Excellent? Really? Quicktime streaming isn't any better than any other streaming technology I've seen. Besides, it's not as if Apple's streaming server is some secret technology that only they happen to have access to (as iTunes is), absolutely anyone else could stream media using the exact same protocols and even the exact same software.
No it couldn't. The Mac Mini isn't really powerful enough to playback HDTV video in realtime on it's CPU, and it only has hardware support for MPEG-2 playback. Nobody is going to want to download 30+GBs of MPEG-2 video just to watch a 30-minute video (minus commercials). So, any HDTV service would use a more advanced codec such as MPEG-4 AVC (H.264)/VP6/etc., which the Mac Mini doesn't have the power to playback.
Besides, if the Mac Mini was intended as an HDTV PVR, it would have come with a 3.5" HDD that could hold 300GBs, not a tiny drive, requiring numerous external expansion devices. Remember the iMac? Jobs would simply never put out a device that needs all sorts of add-on hardware.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Oh and never mind that they keep relentlessly plodding forward with the video technology like Pixlet and Core Video.
So, yeah, go ahead and scoff. A lot of people scoffed at the iPod and iTunes at first too. However, to those of us paying attention, this almost seems obvious at this point.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
But why would Steve Jobs spend all his time posting on Slashdot?!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
At the time I agreed with him, but then a few million people, discovered Bittorrent and now use their computesr like TiVOs.
I still agree that I don't consume films like I consume music, but I would love to be able to watch a 30 minute show in my lunch hour, or on the train to work, or whilst I'm waiting for my girlfriend to get out of the changing room.
I see very few reasons why Apple's DRM system couldn't be transposed for TV:
- Watch the program as often as I liked
- Put on as many of my own iVids as I liked.
- Burn it to as many DVDs as I liked
- Only watch it from 5, centrally registered, computers
- Delete it, you've lost it and you have to buy it again
I also think the current price is fair, 79p (99c) an episode, £12 for a season, is perfectly fair for ad free television that I will likely watch once and then delete a month or so later withou watching it again (just like video tape).Movies are an experience for me. I like to watch them in cinemas, or at home on a big screen tv with huge surround sound I really can't see me sacrificing the emersion aspect of film for the sake of being able to watch it on the move, and if I do, I'll watch it on my laptop not my iVid (the screens bigger and its got a huge harddisk). I would love to be able to download a new feature on the day of release, but to be honest, 2-4GB (H.264) is still a lot of harddisk space (I have hundreds of DVDs) and thats before we go HDTV. TV I want now. I'll watch it on my laptop until a iVid is released.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
I can play a movie in the same way with a notepad!
rm -rf
Or he's a karma whore who has figured out the number one secret about karma whoring: you don't necessary have to know what you're talking about as long as you act like you know what you're talking about, and he does a very good job about that. The simple fact that he's convinced you he "knows" so much when he hasn't offered any support to back his claims is proof of that.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
I've wanted this feature for forever- being able to add music videos to an iTunes playlist so that if, say, I'm entertaining people, I can have the visualizer playing for the regular audio content and the actual song video playing for those songs that I have a video for...
The simple fact that he's convinced you he "knows" so much when he hasn't offered any support to back his claims is proof of that.
I think that makes him a consultant.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
That may be true, but it won't be the current mini. As another poster pointed out, the mini's hard drive and processor are not up to the task of HD.
Consider the recent hardware launches. Apple waited until the release of 10.4 to put half-decent video cards in the iMac, eMac, and base Power Mac. When Apple introduces on-demand video, it will introduce a new machine to match.
That's what Apple says and I've verified that a G4 doesn't cut it - on my 1.5 GHz G4 PowerBook the HD videos Apple has up for offer play at much less than 30 fps. Totally unacceptable as a video component. The Mac mini is the only current Mac that seems viable as a set top box, but that has a lowly G4 and tiny 2.5" hard drive - it's right out. No one is going to put a G5 tower next to their HD-TV and the iMac G5 has an extraneous display and would be precariously balanced on or near a TV, so you wouldn't want it there either. Of course this may mean they have a G5-based set-top box in the works, but then they have to deal with the heat - having fans in such a box won't cut it IMHO, and it needs to be thin. The "year of HD" may be coming, but I don't know if it will be soon.
--- What?
You can get DRMed full length movies, as many as you want, from Real and Starz now for $13 a month. The quality is excellent, and if you commute long distances able to use your laptop, it's pretty cool.
The catalog is actually pretty big, 400 titles I think. The picture is damn good on a TV as well (you'll of course need a video out).
R(k)
... a processor powerful enough to playback HDTV
... a video card able to decode MPEG-4
... an OS that includes a H.264 client
... a BTO option for a 400 GB, 7200 RPM internal hard drive
... a double-layer DVD burner capable of archiving large movies
... a VESA mount for dramatic installations
... and a 17" or 20" 16:10 aspect ratio screen built in?
Give up?
Now that's what I call an Apple PVR!
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Seriously, under constant use, the iPod hard drives' life spans are measured in tens of hours
This is bullshit, and all sorts of other Apple employees are quite pissed at ASOT for repeating it.
There are reasons Apple doesn't want employees ad-libbing like ASOT does, and this sort of best-intentions misinformation is a perfect example.
As an Apple emplyee myself, I have little doubt that ASOT works for Apple. I also know how working here gives one a ton more insight into what the company is up to. But that doesn't make people an authority in every area of the business, and seeing that ASOT appears to have no self-restraint, it'll be no surprise when he finds himself in a noose of his own creation.
You won't see a G5 PowerBook. Ever. It's not good on power. Period.
You will, however, see dual-G4 PowerBooks. This makes the most sense and would provide the biggest gain in performance for not much tradeoff in heat and power consumption.