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iPod Video Coming to a Car Near You
_am99_ writes "In the "one more thing" media event today, an iPod that can play Video was announced. The initial content seems to be music videos that can be purchased from the iTunes Music Store." In related news aquachannel writes "Apple has just updated their iPodYourCar page to include a slew of new car companies. This means that there'll be a lot of cars that you can buy off the showroom floor and use your iPod with your car - right off the floor and out of the box."
Even more than the price comparison, the big deal here is that Apple has gotten a big content provider to agree to a different distribution method than broadcast TV. Up until now, you were lucky to get the content providers to agree to video-on-demand for cable subscribers (only HBO and a few other cable outlets signed up). If ABC is going to offer shows for sale via Internet download, this could be a watershed event.
Pixar is also making six short films available through the iTunes Music Store for the same $1.99 USD price.
Yep, the $1.99 price point seems pretty nice. I think this is the beginning of the end for DVDs and services around DVDs (Blockbuster, NetFlix, etc). Putting Pixar content up there is a way to show the movie industry, "Hey, look what we can do here. Extremely low distribution costs, instant access for customers." Does anybody know if this video content is HD? If so, then the format wars for HD DVD will become meaningless pretty soon.
Bradley Holt
Act III: iTunes. You know, we have distributed over 200 million copes of iTunes now in the world, and those are only the copies we know about. iTunes in the US has an 84 percent market share for all legally downloaded music. We released iTunes 5 just five weeks ago, but a lot has changed. And so today we're introducing iTunes 6. We've been busy!
1. (1) Gifting. This has been the most requested feature. You can gift (i.e. buy) iTunes songs for someone else by song, album, or playlist.
2. Customer reviews.
3. Just for You. Personalized recommendations. We're going to be recommending albums and singles based on what you've bought before. It's going to be a beta, we'd like your feedback on it.
4. Video. If we're going to be able to play video on the iPod we're going to need away to buy video. Starting today we have 2,000 music videos for sale.[Shows Madonna catalogue]
What do they cost? $1.99 each. But we didn't stop there; we're adding some other videos you can buy. Pixar is putting up six of their award-winning short videos. $1.99 each. We are downloading videos 320 x 240, which is the native resolution of the iPod. They're about the size of six songs. All songs are governed by FairPlay. You can play them on up to five computers. They're not rentals. You own them -- they never time out. [Demo of gifting, customer reviews, Just for You, and videos including "Vogue," a U2 live exclusive. Demo of watching U2 video using Front Row on an iMac, playing photos and videos from an iPod on a big screen]
One more thing...
We have one more thing today, a pretty big thing. We're announcing one more thing that you can buy off the iTunes store today, and that is TV shows. What's the number one show on TV? What's the second? Lost. And who has these shows? ABC. And who owns ABC? [Disney logo on screen.] I know those guys!
Lost, Desperate Housewives, Night Stalker, That's So Raven, The Suite Life.
Yes, you can buy current episodes, and you can buy them the day after they are broadcast. They're ad free so you don't need to fast forward through the commercials, 320 x 240 again. An hour show is about the size of five albums. Depending on your speed it's about 10-20 minute to download an episode. What are they going to cost? $1.99 an episode for current season and past seasons. We have free previews on every episode.
Thanks everyone!
"Scientists don't change their minds, they just die." -- Max Planck
This is ridiculous. I'm sure I'm not the only one of the several thousands who must have submitted all the OTHER news:
-iTunes 6
-New iMac with built-in Firewire camera
-New app called FrontRow for playing media from your sofa, 6 button iPod-like remote -compared to Microsoft Media Center's 40 buttons
-New PhotoBooth app for taking pictures that actually uses iMac's screen as a flash
-Television shows and music videos for sale through iTunes at $1.99.
Etc....
Instead, we get "Yeah, they mentioned iPod video today, and here's a lame car link. Disregard all the other news, like Apple taking Microsoft on directly in the living room..."
"Sufferin' succotash."
Don't forget iMovie; Apple is big on people creating their own video.
Looks like Handbrake just got a lot more popular.
Uh, is anyone kind of wondering why Slashdot didn't also mention iTunes 6 (five weeks after iTunes 5), Apple releasing a living room media center app called FrontRow with an iPod-like remote (which has 6 buttons compared to Microsoft Media Center's 40 buttons), a new iMac with built-in iSight cam, television shows for sale from ABC, etc.?
Instead, it's kind of like..."Yeah, it looks like they released video-based iPods and some other stuff. Hey, here's stuff about cars. Ho-hum."
"Sufferin' succotash."
Yes, it's a tiny video screen, but you can attach the iPod to a monitor using S-Video plus audio cabling.
Sure, but realize that it won't increase the resolution beyond what is viewable on the iPod's display.
How can an organization like the RIAA justify wanting more than 99 cents per song when you can purchase 44 minutes of audio and video for two dollars?
The answer to that is simple. Music has high replayability. You can listen to a song hundreds of times over the course of a year. But video media, such as movies and television programs, loses its appeal very quickly. I find it difficult to watch most movies a second time, let alone a third or fourth.
Plus, music is something you can listen to while doing other things, such as walking down the street or working on your computer. Videos are not well-suited to that, and that makes them somewhat less useful. Yes, sometimes less is more!
How is an encumbered DVD, with its CSS DRM that you can bypass with DeCSS, different from Apple's AVC (H.264) with FairPlay DRM, which can be similarly bypassed?
With a DVD, you'd have to rip it, then reencode it into DIVIX or something appropriate for a portable, which takes a LONG time. Apple's solution seems rather smart, and looks like a very natural extension of the iTMS.
I like options:
If you want high quality media, you continue buying CDs and DVDs, and rip them yourself at whatever bitrate makes you happy.
If you want the convenience of an online store (the new "Just for you - Beta" looks pretty cool) and instant access to lots of pop content, you can pay a small fee and download smallish, ready to go files.
Apple is offering both options to fit the desires of a broad swath of people.
Compare this to Microsoft's WMP, which sought to kill MP3s entirely, and replace them with locked up WMA files with brutal restrictions, and very limited playback options.
Keep in mind they may also see the way the RIAA companies are acting now about the 99 cent price point ITMS has. This time, the content providers have hindsight. I suspect there will be a serious effort to keep Apple from entrenching themselves in this media market as well as they did music. Personally, I hope those efforts fail :)
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
Please note the assumption of 100 episodes of Dr. Who. While there may be numerous people on Slashdot who know the precise number, based on average human knowledge of actually relevant information, the number of 100 will be used to keep the math simple.
The number is 13 so far for the new series.
13x5 = $65
When you consider that ABC and Fox makes a fortune selling 26-episode boxed sets of their biggest shows on DVD for about $40 each, it's obvious that $65 for downloading low-res rips of a 13-episode series (Bring Your Own Storage Media), is downright extravagant. Even at $26 for the season, they would make a killing.
Consider this: Let's say that, of the 300 Million people in America, only 0.1% would be willing to pay for Doctor Who episodes. That's still 300,000 x $26, which would be an extra $7,800,000.00 made on a show which has already paid for itself via distribution in other markets!
Yeah... Just under 8 million dollars... hardly worth the trouble, eh?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Help me out, because I'm genuinelly curious. For four more dollars you get the DVD with no DRM, which you can rip with free software down to a portable format, which comes on its own physical media in case you ever have to free up some harddrive space, which has all the extras (if you care). So in other words, you spend an extra 4 dollars and you get both versions.
I don't get why you'd even consider the download. I see the value added in buying tonights episode of Lost if you missed it and want to watch it on the train tomorrow, but once it's out on DVD I'd need a much better price break than 11%... personally I would've expected pay per view kind of prices, 3-5 bucks for a movie, maybe 10 bucks for a season of Lost, I dunno if that would even cover cost of bandwidth, but it's about what it's worth IMO.
Now, the real nice gadget is the Tivo (or whatever DVR) to IPod dock, so people who already have a DVR can take their TV shows on public transit and airplanes and such without paying again.