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Apple to Announce iTunes Movie Rentals?
An anonymous reader writes "Think Secret is reporting that the next Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference may be the company's platform to announce movie rentals via iTunes. The files would probably have a built-in shutoff timer, or only allow a certain number of viewings." From the article: "Apple is said to have ironed out agreements with Walt Disney, Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and Warner Bros., and is currently in talks with other major movie studios as well. It's unknown to what extent content will be available come the August 7 announcement, or whether Apple will announce all of its studio deals at that time ... Apple had been trying for months to persuade the movie studios that the a-la-carte model of buying individual titles, as the iTunes Music Store offers with music, was the way to go. The studios, however, have been fixed on offering only a subscription or rental-based model."
First they give you a fairly liberal DRM.
Then they tighten that DRM slightly with iTunes 'security' updates.
Then they introduce DRM that enforces ppv / rentals / time limiting.
Next? (remember that lucky ITMS buyers get whatever DRM Apple wants them to have!)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
From the article: It is not known exactly how the coding system will work, but industry experts tell Think Secret that the software would likely either limit the number of playbacks or provide unlimited viewing for a period of time, after which the movie will be "turned off" and no longer available.
So now I can pay to spend an ungodly amount of time and energy to get some 320x240 jittery so-so contrast version of some big screen movie. And I'll have to watch it in a certain time period or lose it? Or, they'll restrict the number of times I can watch it? Somebody pinch me, I must be dreaming. Could life really be this good?
Somebody stop the Earth, I'd like to get off.
If the consuming public goes for this, it only brings the lie that is the new generation is "tech savvy", cuz if they were tech savvy, they'd know they're being sold a bill of goods and what's being offered is dumbed down, diluted quality, highly compressed pap.
(An aside, also from the article: " The subscription business makes sense for everybody. We'll all make money. " WTF? The subscription business makes sense for everybody? We'll all make money? Wow, I've always known the whole point of offering services, creating companies, etc., has been about making money.... It just becomes a little more obscenely transparent each day. I remember the good old days when companies at least pretended to want to please the customer.)
(Also, couple of questions:
- How LONG will the movie
stay around?
- How MUCH is this going to cost?
- What OTHER
viewing options besides the iPod screen?
- How MANY viewings
before expiration?
)I like this idea. I have a fairly heavy movie consumption (1-2 a week). If we could get DVD quality rentals from iTunes for $2 a day. I'd be happy. Cheaper than going to the stor and faster. As long as it can get theough our restrictive firewalls on campus....
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
Pirates announce a hack you can download from some website that turns off whatever that flag is, the studios go berserk as millions of copies of movies circulate from ipods onto some movie-napster-like site, and we start the whole music-anti-piracy rigamarole again but with ipod movies. Will no one ever learn?
stuff |
If Netflix is on top of their game, they had better move quickly and setup deals with the studios to offer movies for download, or else they will quickly see themselves cast to the wayside.
... the widescreen iPod?
Please state what functionality the updates took away. Making it harder to circumvent is not removing functionality, as circumvention was never promised.
This is for the alleged new video rental product, not the current audio product. Please explain how this is feature creep, as it's not on an existing product.
If you don't like it, don't buy it.
I'm still appalled by audio DRM! And now they're trying to shove this down my throat? Yet another useless, restrictive technology that I will boycott (vote with your pocketbook).
Hell, it seems to me that more restrictive formats give rise to more piracy (arrrr).
noobcake or noobmuffin? It is the same price...
This was poorly headlined. Here's the fix:
"Studios Aim At Toes Despite few left"
And the sub-headline:
"Apple only too glad to accomodate"
A time-bombed rental for low-resolution video? Be still my beating heart!
Dvd jon ... start your engine.
Say it ain't so.
I can't wait to see the sugar coating.
Frankly, he should have told them to stuff it. I figure what happened is that they went full on developing the video iPod and supporting software figuring they could bully their way over the studios. Now with the hardware in hand and no progress he is being forced to do something to move the new product.... aren't shareholders wonderful - can't let the carpet ride end.
Still, no way, no how. I don't care who packages the DRM of this sort. Its wrong. If I pay for it I want access to it when I want to access it. Otherwise refund me when it expires.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If it only costs a couple of bucks, and I can load it on my iPod, then connect it to my TV, I'm good. The music I've downloaded from iTunes I've listened to hundreds of times. Most movies aren't worth owning, and many of the ones I do own I've only watch a few times. If they can keep it under $3, my video store is going to lose a lot of money.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
What I'd like to know is that if it's the case where you're only allowed to watch it, say twice, does it count if you start to watch it? I mean, it's a film, so it's going to be longer than an hour. What if I pay my $28, download it, start to watch it and get a BSOD because I've got a buggy codec (and also, hey, it's windows)? I reboot, do the same to make sure it wasn't a freak incident and it BSOD's again. So now I've started to play it twice (say my limit is two) and been unable to watch more than 5 seconds of it and can't fix the problem and watch it again because the file's gone and locked itself.
Do I get my money back?
Not even that, lets say I get an hour through my hour and a half film, and there's a corruption in the file which causes it to stop playing. The player crashes, so I load it up again, navigate to 59 mins and it crashes again. Do I get my money back? How do I prove that it was corrupted on download and that I didn't fire up notepad and let my mind go beserk.
This isn't so much of a problem for music, because the files are relitively small. With film, I'd guess that there is a higher chance of a problem just because the files are bigger and the codecs more complex.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
> Please state what functionality the updates took away. Making it harder to circumvent is not removing functionality, as circumvention was never promised.
Well, they changed the number of burns to CD. That is removing a function you could do (the 8th copy, or whatever).
> If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Do you get your money back from iTunes if you decide you don't like the change? No? Well, it's too late, then.
If it follows the iTunes music model, not only will the quality be bad, not be interoperable with other devices, locked down and DRMed, and temporary, it will cost twice as much as walking down the street to a video store. I can rent a new release for two bucks at the video store or buy it for fifteen but I'll bet they want fifteen to rent a downloaded, degraded title. And as with iTunes music, they have no inventory to track, no brick storefront, none of the overhead that goes with a storefront.
A significant number of people, sucking down 5-8Gb every day or so. I think we'll start to see the ISP's enforcing their (unwritten) bandwidth limits.
Fromlawgeeks
Surely you knew that Apple reserves the right to change the terms you can use its music under?
If you don't like it, don't buy it.
I don't and I won't, however as I'm a helpful person, I'm letting others know the potential dangers in buying any DRMd music.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Renting 320x240 videos? Not like you can see any real decent amount of detail in such a small screen, without bringing it close to your face and squinting, anyways. And personally, I'd much rather Apple fix their current problem with their new iTunes update, which has prevented my fiancee's iPod from syncing up with his computer. (Computer sees iPod, iPod sees it's connected to the computer - iTunes fails as the intermediary transfer program.)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
... not an official announcement.
It's funny to see everyone commenting and producing all kinds of opinions based on a rumour from thinksecret. How many rumours have they actually ever gotten right?
It seems unlikely to me that S. Jobs who has already explicitely stated he does not like the rental model on several occasions, would suddenly change his mind (though I would not rule it out as an option). And he "managed to be convinced by Disney et al."? That must be real hard for Disney to do(considering he is the single biggest shareholder of that company and notoriously difficult to convince of anything).
Jeez lighten up. It's a rumour. On a site. That barely ever gets anything right.
J.
Now if they could only get my iPod battery to last long enough to get through more than 70 minutes of video... I really don't think that movies on an iPod are going to be viable until the batteries improve. Either I will have to watch a movie in two parts or I will have to watch it tethered to my PC in which case I might as well use a service other than iTunes.
It is not known exactly how the coding system will work, but industry experts tell Think Secret that the software would likely either limit the number of playbacks
1) Download screen and audio capture utility (google)
2)Download movie
3)Install screen and audio capture utility
4) Run screen and audio capture utillity
5) PLay the movie in full screen mode
6) Burn recorded movie to DVD 7)Enjoy! and/or Profit!
or provide unlimited viewing for a period of time, after which the movie will be "turned off" and no longer available.
Unless you have to phone home every time you want to watch the movie, this timer would probably be based on the system clock. Remember those old demo's that only allowed you to play them for a month or so? Remember how you could always get around that by simply changing the system clock to an earlier date (hell you could do it for older versions of Adobe Illustrator)? Yeah.. I'm not sure how many ITMS users are computer savvy enough to make changes to their systems BIOS, but those that are won't have any trouble doing this.
Ah, I had to look that one up. That happened with 4.5, which was before I started using it, so I didn't know
Still, the number of burns to a CD was for the same exact playlist. Granted, they shouldn't remove what they promised you, but 8 CDs of the same playlist?
How many times do you even burn 7 CDs from the same playlist? Even if you do it's easy to get around, just add one more song to it and it's a different playlist so you can burn it 7 more times. It's not so hard so quit acting like it is.
This is one of the real big threats to the telcos cable TV roll out. I have Verizon's FiOS 20Mbps service and a Mac mini hooked up to my HDTV. I wonder how Apple's service will compete with Verizon's video-on-demand. I would think that it would be a pretty serious competitor to VOD. I hope that I can access the video library via my mac remote and frontrow.
Assuming Apple uses some sort of P2p system like is being rumored AND it becomes wildly popular (Apple seems to have the Midas touch). Can you imagine the load that will be put on ISPs?
Even if it DOES NOT use a p2p system all those people downloading multi-gig sized files is gunna really piss of the likes of comcast, cox, ect.
Oh, now you're attacking me personally? How very grown up.
Okay, moving on...
They also increased the number of computer you could authorize from three to five.
Obviously. So?
I've got a feeling that Apple wouldn't be able to sell anything without DRM attached; it's the record companies that require this. Last I checked, pretty much every "legitimate" online music seller has some sort of DRM attached and requires being played with "crippled" software.
Really? You asked them?
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
Limited viewing wouldn't be a very good route to go; considering that other services are already allowing you to purchase a downloadable copy of all available movies which can be viewed indefinitely, and according to this CNET article, they're also expanding to allow you to burn them to DVD.
Yah, thanks, I looked that part up when someone else mentioned it. I have only ever used iTunes 5.x :)
Lots of people are speculating that a movie will be gigs of data and that ISPs are going to freak out as a result. You can already download full 1 hour episodes of TV shows. Without commercials this is probably 40-44 minutes. Any reports that someone's ISP wouldn't take their money and give them a connection to the internet after they bought a season of a TV show on iTunes? Lots of movies come in at the 90 minute mark which is about the same as downloading 4 episodes of Scrubs or 2 episodes of Lost... (both popular on the iTunes video store) News Flash: The internet didn't breakdown when Apple started selling TV shows and it probably won't break down when they start selling/renting/whatever movies either.
I wonder if this will mean an end to Netflix. I am not sure if will go to the trouble of downloading a movie, watching it on my computer or burning it into a DVD (if Apple allows it) and watching it on my DVD. Netflix is very convinient right now. I also hear that Apple is having a lot of trouble negotiating with 20th Century Fox about this program. Rupert Murdoch wants more share and stronger DRM.
I bet Blockbuster is jumping for joy to see this announcement. It's bad enough their shares have dropped with just the introduction of NetFlix.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
They did increase the number of computers that can be "authorized", but what about users who are not happy with this change? Apple did not give them a choice about this. What if Apple reduced the number of CDs that could be burnt to 0, but increased the number of computers that could be authorized to 7. Would that be fair, too?
The "record companies require it" justification for DRM is flawed. If that's the case, Apple should refuse to do business with record companies that require DRM. Just because Apple can make money by selling DRM music doesn't mean that selling DRM music is "okay".
There are some things that I prefer renting over buying, and movies are one of those things. With the exception of a few "classics", movies don't have enough replay value for me to justify paying more to buy them. Heck, if DVD's were as cheap as rental I wouldn't buy them because they would just be one more thing cluttering up the house.
However, the concept of rental clashes with the nature of the online and digital world. Everything that exists can be copied in exact form. You can't return data - you have a copy, not the original. The way I see it there are two options, the concept of rental can be preserved artificially with the introduction of DRM, or it can be abandoned in favor of purchases.
As a consumer I don't have a problem with the general idea of DRM on a rental - my fair use rights aren't being violated, because I don't have the right to backup, timeshift, or format shift rentals to begin with (unlike media I own, for which any DRM is intolerable). Where the problem occurs is the proprietary nature of DRM. At best, the rental DRM would be an "Open Standard" meaning anyone who pays RAND* patent fees and signs an NDA will be allowed to implement a device, and be given keys (specific to them) to decode the data. Then I could buy online rental devices or software from any number of manufactures, and it would be guaranteed to work with any number of online rental stores. This is similar to the legal workings of DVDs, Blueray, WMV. At the worst you have proprietary technologies, where each company has it's own format and player, like with Apple or DVIX (the first one). In both cases there will never be an open source player - the best we could hope for is something like the new Real Player that has an open source core with proprietary plug-ins. Even that is unlikely, as the movie industry is demanding end-to-end security (HDMI, Trusted Computing) which an open source operating system would not provide.
In the other option, the internet utopia dream was that the price of media would drop to the point of making rental unnecessary and removing the allure of piracy from the general public. The media industries are strongly opposed to this model of the future, and the only way it will ever happen is if independent media producers embrace it with success, and eventually put the current media companies out of business. This is also unlikely given the weight that the media companies have in government. Therfore, media purchases will also be hindered with DRM for the conceivable future, and will continue to be priced at traditional rates.
So given DRM on rental verses DRM on purchase, I definitely prefer the previous, but there is another potential risk with DRM rental and it is a biggy. The media companies have shown themselves very fond of the idea of DRM rental, as seen with Napster. They like the model where people don't own copies of media, but instead just subscribe to services that provide them. If too many people embrace these services, we could end up in a situation where everything is locked up. We continue to hear stories about how the original archive copies of important cultural media is being lost due to the extreme length of copyright, and the mismanagement of the copyright holders (Dr Who, classic films). But in most of those cases, at least lower quality copies exist in the form of consumer media. However, if we can no longer record broadcast media, and there are no purchased copies of media, the copyright holders will be the only ones capable of preserving the records of our popular culture. Time and time again they show themselves inept at doing so.
Anyway, I plan on sticking to buying CD's and renting locally for as long as those options exist, and continue to support those independent producers who treat their customers with respect. I'll keep trying to inform my representatives about the issues. But I'm not optimistic. We'll see what happens.
* For the uninitiated:
RAND = Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory
NDA = Non-Disclosure Agreement
Jeez lighten up. It's a rumour. On a site. That barely ever gets anything right.
Indeed, I wouldn't at all be surprised if Jobs has convinced the studios to at least try a purchase model for movies. After all, iTunes has been an excellent vehicle for TV show sales, generating new revenue for the studios. While the media companies obviously see Apple as a competitor, if Jobs can convince them that iTunes is a distribution network that is already proven and ready for action, they may recognize that they'll make more money if they piggyback on the success of iTunes. So far everything they've tried on their own has been rather underwhelming. In the end, these guys will follow the money, and my guess is Jobs has figured out a way to show them the money.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Jobs isn't stupid. An earlier comment said he likely had the video iPod in hand and he had hoped he could just run over the studios...almost certainly true. I'm sure this isn't his preferred method, and I think it's very likely he's actually hoping this does poorly (Rokr, anyone?) so he can go to the studios and say, "See, you were wrong and I was right. Now, do you want to make lots more money?"
Yeah, it might look almost as bad as 240-line VHS.
I've looked at iTunes' video quality. (I got a freebie.) It's watchable for SDTV-sourced content, but not something I'd want to use for a film.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Ahaha... Hum, I would love to see you explaining that to stakeholders. Btw, if you don't like DRM, don't buy music with DRM. If enough people do the same, probably record companies will have to change their minds. But it's utterly their right to sell music they own, the way they want. it is their's property, not ours. I can choose not to buy what they sell, and they can choose what to sell and how. I don't like DRM because it restricts legitimate uses. But blaming apple for it is totally stupid
Your ad could be here!
some other news: artists mostly no longer make these decisions. Perhaps they sold-out, perhaps they are dead. The modern "Stationers" media companies often have the exclusive control.
Some choices to obtain music:
1. Buy music infested with DRM, which may overstep the US legal copyright limits.
2. Buy music from Russian MP3 sites, which may avoid US legal copyright limits.
3. Only subscribe to DRM-free music services like emusic.com.
4. Only buy from opensource/creative-commons music labels like magnatune.
5. No music
If state that only 3-5 are really legally legitimate, many people will ignore the legal or moral problems with DRM music or Russian music, because they do not directly see any negative impact.
Though I would suggest 4 if you really want to encourage healthy legal creativity.
I live in a city, which means the post office does not collect outgoing mail, so Netflix is inconvenient
Huh?
What do you mean, it doesn't collect outgoing mail?
I live in a city too, and you can't go two blocks without tripping over a USPS "blue box." Plus, every apartment building that I've ever been in has an outgoing mailbox, right next to the incoming boxes (which are actually superior to the way you do outgoing mail in a rural area -- where you put it in your regular box and put the flag up -- since it can't be stolen).
I'd say that Netflix is much more convenient/practical for people in urban areas than in rural ones, since the delivery turnaround times are usually faster, and in many cases you can send the discs back faster. When I lived in a rural area, I'd stick them in my mailbox and wait for the carrier to pick them up the next morning; now that I live in a city, I put them in the USPS box on the corner, and they go out that afternoon (pickup at 4:30 pm), effectively cutting a day off the mail-in time. When I'm feeling lazy, I just put them in the box on my house and they get picked up the next day.
I can't think of any situation where you can receive mail, but not send it back out. If you use lockable boxes, there should be an outgoing-slot or receptacle nearby. (I think this is required by the DMM.) If you use a box affixed to your house without a flag, then you put your outgoing stuff in it and the carrier will take it out before putting the incoming mail in, and if you have a rural streetside box, then you put it in there and set the flag up.
Any carrier delivering mail will also accept it (assuming it's of "nominal amount" -- you can't hand them a 20 lb package and expect them to carry it around the rest of their route), so if you have mail delivery, you should have a way of sending it back out.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
TFA doesn't mention anything about if you can watch on a regular TV. Does it still have to be watched only on an ipod. I've never owned an ipod and fall smack in the middle of the I love'em and hate'em crowds but is this really something that ipod owners want? I can't imagine watching movies on it unless I can plug it into my tv.
Am I the only one who remembers when they tried this with DiVX? It didn't work then, it's not going to work this time either. Not to mention, for the majority of this country, I bet those movies will take a day to download... that sounds like fun!
I see mailboxes, but if I leave the bus to put discs in a mailbox, I lose my bus fare and have to wait 60 minutes for the next bus.
The original Netflix plan was downloading. But that depended sufficient broadband. Colleges with InterNet2 can download two hours of quality video in minutes, but it is still on the order of an hour for your average home broadband.
the failed DIVX experiment...sans the media. At least with DIVX we got a pretty cool comic character. I mean look at him. Drunk electronic are funny, what do you think made Bender so great...
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I don't know how accurate this may be...
I can see buying a movie online, at DVD quality (or better yet 720p), for $10. That I can live with, I'd probably do so for some titles.
I can possibly, possibly see renting a DVD quality movie online that went "Dark" after, say, a month. For... let's say $1. No, say $.50.
That's why I can't see the rental angle here. How do you make any money at all when bandwidth charges for a movie are greater than any fee you could charge that people would accept? A Bittorrent like delivery system may alleviate costs, but I'm not sure even that would be enough.
Also, what about the iPod - is it going to be able to play these time-limited movies?
The whole thing just sounds really suspect to me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They also increased the number of computers it is usable on from 3 to 5, which is far more useful than the number of times you can burn the playlist (not playlist, not song).
Slashdotters would be blasting them. But since its Apple, they're given a free pass. It is the Apple fanboism that is making people turn to alternatives to this site (like Digg).
That's irrelevant. If they can change the terms after the fact in that way, they can change the terms in any way. It's entirely possible (albeit unlikely) that tomorrow Apple could force you to start paying $10/day to continue to listen to your music, and you would be able to do nothing whatsoever about it.
That kind of risk should make DRM completely unacceptable to everyone; AFAICT the only reason it doesn't is that most people don't understand and realize it.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"- The "if you don't like it, don't buy it" excuse isn't good enough in this case, because Apple isn't saying "buy encrypted songs only playable with Apple products", they're saying "buy music online". I know that Apple's music store sells encrypted files that can only be played with crippled software, but most users do not realise this and Apple does not make it clear to them."
So the number of people who care about the files being encrypted, would that be in the high or low hundreds?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
It doesn't matter. The bottom line is that Apple could change the terms to anything it wants after the fact, and you have no choice but to bend over and take it.
That's what's so bad about it!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"If enough people do the same, probably record companies will have to change their minds."
We've already seen what record companies do; they say people arent buying because of 'piracy', and promptly bribe and/or trick politicians into enacting some law intended to give them money anyway.
"But it's utterly their right to sell music they own,"
Bullshit. They have exclusive legal monopolies on the reproduction of certain data because it suited the English royalty four centuries ago to have monopolist sockpuppets doing their censorship for them in exchange for protection from competition.
It's time to get over that now. Intellectual monopolies are a hinderance to the free market, damaging to the economy, disasterous for the flow of information and the evolution of culture and science, and are rapidly proving themselves to be dangerous to democracy and they need to go. Now.
Can I buy a movie that will be full-screen DVD quality and play it through my Tivo Desktop to my television? That would be cool. TivoToGo http://www.tivo.com/4.9.4.1.asp, is compatible with iPod, but would it be compatible with iPod video downloads (iTunes), rather than recorded programs? I don't want to buy and watch a 2+ hour movie on a tiny iPod screen, if that's where this is going. Oh, and I'm not buying, I'm renting according to the article. Not as good, but I'd try it. I guess a high quality download would be too big. Would it? How big is a 2 hour feature film download at good or very good quality?
Apple has
1. A powerfull, widespread and high quality media system (QuickTIme)
2. A powerfull, widespread and high quality distribution system (iTunes)
3. A powerfull, widespread belief that Apple is high quality (the Market, seeing ITMS success)
So in other words, it is perfect for Apple, they are in the best position of any company out there to succeed with this. Combine with a Media Mac, FrownRow software, shake, and you have a lovely competitor to WinXP Media Center. (:
Cheers,
. Knut
I admit, I have felt a bit locked in to an operating system by my iTunes music. My iTunes music is one of two things keeping me from dumping Windows for Linux. But I knew when I started buying music that it had these restrictions, so while I wish Apple would create a version of the iTMS for Linux users, that was never part of the agreement.
I'm not quite sure how this comment justifies a flamebait moderation, but its parent doesn't.
Horrendously mis-stating the truth for a more "accurate" version of the truth does not change the truth.
Case in point? "As soon as I can buy new movies for $10 I will buy them." "I do buy the older movies in stores as a legal hard copy but I had them for a while downloaded because I don't want to shill out $50 for the latest content."
Actually, new movies are only slightly above the $10 price point. Target and Walmart provide new releases for $15, and some of themore obscure or smaller market movies (Nightwatch, Jesus is Magic) range from 16-20 (depending on which store you visit, prices based on last weekend.)
Then the argument becomes some dreck like "Oh, I don't shop at Walmart and Target because I believe they're unhealthy for the US" or some similar unfounded yet popular crud.
Well go to Amazon where the widescreen V for Vendetta or RV are each 16, and Akeelah and the Bee, She's the Man, Sentinel (I know, it's a range of good to crap but they're what Amazon has showing for new releases)
When you refer to paying $50 for "latest content" and "new movies" are you refering to TV season sets? Because those rarely if ever get clearanced down to $10. Fox will do a $15 sale of many first season sets during the Christmas season (at least they have the last two) but don't pretend that you picked up season one of Smallville or Gilmore Girls or Chapelle Show for $10 at some kind of age discount. In fact, price cuts on season sets is usually avoided because it causes fan uproar (like the repricing of X-Files or when Farscape was re-released months after finishing the first set of releases with twice the episodes for about the same price.)
If you have to justify your piracy, fine but don't lie about it. Don't pretend that you're only holding on to your bootleg edition of Pirates of the Caribean 2 until the price cuts kick in, bringing it from $50 for two hours of entertainment to $10 when the truth is it'll come out in 4 months on DVD for $20, immediately on sale for 16 and maybe, just maybe you'll see it down to $12 at some place.
If you don't like the price, don't buy it but don't pretend that's a great defense for piracy.
Quality? Digital video quality has been fine for over a decade. Anybody can purchase the technology off the shelf. The great trick Jobs pulled of is making DRM cool to naive high school kids.
*sigh*
Slashdot used to be a pro-freedom site. I guess that's why Digg is burying slashdot these days. Looks like Apple worship the ascendecy of Apple apoligists has finally driven tired old slashdot into the ground.
RIP, taco.
If this is like netflix with downloads instead of DVD, it would rock. I already pay about $20 a month to netflix to get movies. If i get unlimited downloads with the same amount, i would gladly shell out the money and cancel my cable subscription at the same time. This has the potnetial to really hurt netflix AND blockbuster really hard. Combine this with some sort of mac mini home theater set up and you are all set.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
So what, they're not going to. If you think they're just going to make it so you can only burn 1 CD for example you don't really know Apple.
What's this got that DIVX ain't got? DIVX, backed by the might and power of Circuit City?
Or FlexPlay (EZ-D) "self-destructing" DVDs, launched into the stratosphere by the hit 2004 Christmas movie, Noel?
Or RCA's single-play cassettes that would mechanically lock at the end of one play and could only be unlocked by the rental store with a special tool?
You do remember all of these, don't you?
You don't? That's funny. I wonder why not.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Granted it's your standard NTSC tube set, 20-something inches--not plasma, digital, LCD, or anything like that. But I was really surprised. I downloaded some episodes of "The Office" from iTunes and they really look good on the TV screen, about as good as a DVD actually. There was good color, very good contrast, nice and sharp with no pixel effects visible at all.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The success of the DVD market is proof positive that consumers will accept DRM, and that DRM done properly doesn't hurt the market.
After that the success of the iTMS is further proof that DRM is acceptable.
If you really hate DRM that much, you need to be fighting the current DVD industry, too.
GPL Deconstructed
They're not going to, but they still could. I object to it in principle!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
They took away a function that has no impact on most users (in fact, you'd be hard pressed to find me ANY user that actually burned 8 copies of a single playlist) and you counter with the slippery slope of how eventually they can charge anything for what they want.
Here's why this slippery slope won't work: Most people buy iTunes because it's the same reasonable price many had been asking for since the days of absolute piracy (no legal alternative for downloading music)
If they suddenly imposed a $10 a day fee, then you would still be able to say "screw that, I'll get my songs illegally" and you would. Or you'll rip them back off the multiple copies you've burned before getting locked out. Or you'll just buy real CDs and refuse to consider using iTunes again.
iTunes will lose money from a mass exodus (similar to the ones online games face when they change play structure to something other than what they're used to) and what is far more likely is that some enterprising young lawyer will put on a class action suit with TV spots saying "have you downloaded a song from Apple in the past 2 years? You may be able to join our class action!"
Telling someone they can only burn a song 5 times instead of 8 will be seen as almost nothing in the eyes of the court. How many people would have used the service they're taking away? Did you really buy a song for the ability to burn 8 copies of it and 5 just won't do, or did you buy the song to listen to? Apple will also argue that they gave you a much better benefit (I will probably lose/break/give away 8 burned CDs far faster than I would go through 5 computers and I'm assuming that many people are in a similar position.)
The court would place the value of that one feature of the song as a certain percentage of the value of the song itself and so I think it's fair to assume that the ability to play the song is a big reason for people to want the song. That's 60 cents out of the dollar. The ability to burn it to a CD? Very handy for my wife's car so that's 15 cents. Able to download my entire collection to my new computer without having to worry about untold burning times? About 10 cents. So what value, of the remaining 15 cents, do playlist burns 6, 7 and 8 have? Congratulations, if you take it to court, you might get iTunes to refund you (in store credit if they choose) 6 cents for every song you purchased before iTunes 4.5 came out.
More than likely though there's language in the ToS that you signed up for saying "we reserve the right to change features at our discretion." It's how banks are allowed to raise fees ("what? I signed up for an account with you guys 3 years ago with the understanding that the fee for this transaction was only $1. I demand you honor that agreement!") and your credit card company can go bankrupt tomorrow leaving you without a card to use.
Nothing whatsoever is a big claim, one that is rarely applicable and the consumers will always have the right to say "we disagree with what you did. We're not buying from you again."
Why isn't it okay to sell DRMed music?
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
Rentals are essentially what happens with torrents and p2p systems anyway. I mean who keeps a ton of movies on their hard drives? Even Steve Jobs who has apparently "relented" has said that videos are a different animal than music. You listen to a song a zillion times, but watch a movie only a couple of times. Unless it's like LOTR collector's edition or something else I'd like to own, this would be just fine provided the download doesn't take forever and the price is reasonable. Besides it's also a proven business model.
"You shore got a purdy mouth!"
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
... are usually the most against laws protecting those that do create. Not saying that's the case here, it's just my opinion from seeing similar arguments from people I know.
Your intellectual monopolies/hinderance to the free market/damage/disaster argument has no basis in reality. How about some examples of free information being better than protected information? There are countries like China and Korea have been laughed at since the days of the bootleg 500-in-1 Nintendo cartidges and probably before that, so what important advances have they been able to make with bootleg Harry Potter books? Flow of information? Ha.
Let's use the open source software argument! It's taken how many hundreds of contributors how many dozens of hours to produce Open Office which is (and many people will agree) only about as advanced as the MS Office of a few product cycles ago. Just so this doesn't turn into an OO argument I'll admit that many people only use and will only need a fraction of the power of either office product but that's not the point.
The point is that because that product is (slightly) protected from widescale piracy, money goes back to Microsoft who is then able to pay the programmers to continue innovating and putting out the next wave of the product.
We've actually seen some benefit to the copyright system (which I'll admit could use some overhauling) but show me some mbenefit to your copyright free society where the only incentive to produce content is fuzzy feelings.
I don't really see what the big deal is about having a movie rental DRMed. I mean, come on, it's only for a limited time anyway. You don't own the movie. If you want to watch it in higher quality on DVD than go to Blockbuster. But if you want convenience and want to download a movie rental, and are willing to use the video equipment available on your computer, then except to have some sort of software to limit how long you can have it. Otherwise no one would delete the movie after their "rental period".
I can see with buying music you may want to use it on various devices, since over time technology changes and you get new equipment and so forth--and you actually own it--, but in this case I can't see any reason why you shouldn't have DRMed movie rentals.
will be "Big."
Well, let me put a bit of context here,
I have been a loyal ITMS customer since the onset, looking at my "purchased music" menu in iTunes (which includes TV shows) there's almost 900 items there (granted a couple of them are the 4 disc Final Fantasy soundtracks). I'm okay with the lax DRM on it, I burn CD's of the music for friends, and I burn both raw AAC files to DVD and AIFF copies on CD as backups. As I live in Ireland but use a US billing address, I use iTunes to watch the few TV shows I follow, namely Battlestar Galactica. Price-wise, an album costs less than half the price on iTunes than it does in shops here in Ireland (21 for a new album, that's about $29 - $30) so I haven't bought a CD in years.
I also have a couple UMD movies that I got fairly cheaply for the PSP (so I can be a sucker too... But really, UMD was a better format than this is, higher resolution, on a better screen and the occassional special feature. It was killed by 2 things: dumb prices, it should be $10, not more than a DVD, and the fact that they flooded the UMD market with crappy movies from the studios back catalogue. Who's gonna shell out for Cheaper By The Dozen on UMD? They ought to have made all the initial releases out of box office hits and films that got oscar nominations...)
But there's no way in hell I'll get a subscription based file. Thing is, I love movies, I am an animator in training so someday I may be working in movies... but the subscription model was why I could brag that iTunes was so much better than its competitors, now they buy into it... When I buy a movie, I like to scrutinize it privately, to observe editing, shot selection, etc, then I like to watch it with a few friends. I understand there's a hell of a lot of downright awful movies out there, but I dont even bother renting them, I wait for them to come on TV if I am at all bothered to see them. Thing is, the DRM on the iTunes music does allow you to share music with your friends just the same way CD's did, the only thing it stopped you from doing was making 30,000 copies or immediately dumping it onto limewire. It was designed to inconveniance people whose only intent was mass redistribution, but it let me give a copy to a buddy who was interested in it. The TV shows, on the other hand, don't let you burn the video to a readable DVD, thus, if I wasn't using it to keep up with TV shows that aren't in Ireland, it's just too closed for me to really be interested.
The problem is that the industry sees you loaning a DVD to a friend as a threat, a lost sale. This is crap, someone who's only willing to watch something if it's loaned wasn't necessarily inclined to buy it, and if the product is legitimately GOOD, after they watch the loaned copy, they should be more likely to buy it for themselves.
It all comes down to the industry finding ways to maximise profit without fostering good products. Sorry if the post is long and incohesive, I'm off to watch Zhang Ziyi on my PSP...
Yup...
There are already a bunch of other companies that are doing this. I signed up for Starz movie download service called Vongo. The movie quality is pretty decent and you can start watching it while you download. You get to keep the movie for as long as Starz has the rights to it, plus you can put it on any Plays for Sure video player, so you can watch it at home and on the road. Plus, they offer a flat $10/month subscription. All the movies you want for $10. Flat fee subscriptions are where it's at. I watch movies I'd never pay for on their own, some of them I end up liking, some I don't, but if anything it exposes me to more of the crap the studios are churning out. I've passed on other services with better catalogs, only because I like the flat fee. There are some other options with better catalogs that charge about $4 per download and let you keep them for 30 days. I'm not sure what their portable support is. But Apple's folly is that they are offering it through iTunes, which is solely for your iPod. How much video do people actually watch on their iPods anyway. It would be more successful to cater to the media center PC crowd. I'm all about getting my programing on the intarwebs. I just don't want some crappy Apple DRM all over my movies. I want to pop some popcorn and watch a movie with booming surround sound and a big screen, not huddled over my iPod and not tethered to iTunes.
Not to stupid. No, not stupid at all. This is nothing but Video on Demand using existing infrastructure (iTunes client & server) to offer a thing in a way it will work. Rather than the others that are still choking at with windows media player problems, bandwidth problems, active x problems, caching problems and connection problems and compatibility issues (T-Online VoD over here only works with IE and Media Player and Windows).
:-)
Now all we need is an easy way to dump this data into a non-self-destructing format.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
if you guys check out ilounge as well as a variety of other video sites, you'll find out that the ipod supports more than 320 by 240 with very high bitrates -- i've watched stuff at very high bitrates in mpeg4 at high resolutions that exceed the quality of dvds that i've rented
"...it all comes down to the industry finding ways to maximise profit..."
Actually, the industry is trying to maximise REVENUE, not profit. These business practices might spike revenues in the short term, but it will have a long and - and negative - impact on profit, for many of the reasons you've (correctly) pointed out.
Look no further than the record companies for proof of this.
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Like most of Apple's iPod/ITMS-related endeavors, this will probably be highly successful. Apple might have spent 15 years getting pushed around by the PC market, and to a certain extent its recent successes have only happened as it has given in and adopted Intel and Windows pre-installations, but it has consistently made all the right moves with iPod/ITMS, and has consistently been in the driver's seat there. While Microsoft's plans to compete with ITMS will keep Apple on its toes, all indications are that they will be able to fend off the competition.
Concerns that have been raised on this list so far can all be addressed:
Argument: People want to own their media, they don't want to rent it for an established period of time or viewing. That is why subscription services like those offered by Real and Napster have been less successful that ITMS, which sells the content outright. People will hate a subscription service that puts them in a world of red tape.
Response: One big reason for Apple's success has been its ability to understand that consumers hate complex technology and complex agreements. One of the reasons the iPod was so successful was that it is such a simplistic model, both in terms of hardware and the ITMS. The contrast with other companies is very clear, and I think this parody drives that point home better than I can do. If Apple goes with a subscription service for movies, they will present it in a clear and easy-to-understand manner. That goes a long way toward improving consumer confidence. Also, unlike music, people often "rent" movies, so the concept is a familiar one, and will be embraced by consumers if the price is low enough to make the restriction worth it. Also, if Apple is smart it will continue to fight to sell outright ownership copies alongside the rentals, to give people a choice. Finally, it is well-known that the ITMS DRM can be subverted by burning a copy to a disk and then ripping it back - so Apple will probably disable burning for subscription files, but outright owners will probably retain that option in the worst case scenario. I'm not saying this is an ideal solution, and others are right to point out that this makes consumers captive to Apple, but on a purely objective level, if the IMMEDIATE terms don't seem too restrictive, people will ignore potential long-term harms. (Also, if Apple decides to eliminate that loophole, it will probably still be possible to find an earlier ITMS version that still contains it.)
Argument: The resolution on videos sold by ITMS is way too low for people to want to buy movies from them.
Response: I actually completely agree. I have only bought a couple of TV shows from Apple as a result of this problem. However, I think that the movie sales and/or subscriptions will be released in tandem with the new, larger-screen video iPod, with higher resolution on all offerings to boot. That said, for it to really be worth it, the resolution has to be higher than what even this larger-screen iPod can display. It really does need to be sold at basic DVD quality (higher quality is too much to hope for at this point, but "DVD Quality" is good enough for consumers right now). People might buy TV shows at low quality because they're not available anywhere else until years after airing, but DVD's are available in DVD quality in many locations. Apple does need to get beyond the paradigm of selling videos intended only for the iPod video, and start selling for computer viewing. But, again, I think they will probably do this. Certainly they will never sell the videos at 320 X 240. They know that would make them a joke.
Argument: Bandwidth is not high enough for this.
Response: Previews can be offered in lower quality. The people consuming the most bandwidth will be paying for the downloads, so it will be worth it to Apple. They are also paying for their DSL. (IMHO, this is why net neutrality is a bad idea, b
Not all of us sell out our Fair Use Rights so easily.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
A 2 hour movie in DVD quality will take about 4+ Gig.
If it's compressed with a codec that that is optimzed for the iPod, the size will be around 500M per movie, since you don't need much detail.
So 5-8G only if you're buying 10-16 movies per day.
The ISPs just want to legislate this out of existence (in favor of their own, extra-cost services) instead.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
A significant number of people, sucking down 5-8Gb every day or so. I think we'll start to see the ISP's enforcing their (unwritten) bandwidth limits.
I agree, once the "tubes" start filling up the ISPs are going to start sending out bandwidth over-limit notices to more and more people. How long until we see a class action suit against some of the larger ISPs (Comcast, RCN, Verizon, etc) when all of a sudden your average Joe is finding out that "unlimited bandwidth" is actually limited? Up until now we've only really heard about, shall we say, more suspect[1] customers running up against unpublished bandwidth limts so it's been off most people's radars. And AFAIK these ISPs are still not publishing hard and fast bandwidth cap numbers, even when asked directly by those being accused of going over them. The ISPs of course want it both ways, they want everyone to think it's unlimited, because that's a great selling point, but it only works as long as people aren't even coming close to maxing out their connections. However, once the public at large start transferring gigs/day the ISPs are either going to have to start advertising caps, or upgrading infrastructure to handle the load (fiber finally anyone?).
[1] I say "suspect" because, let's face it, the majority of the people pulling down 10 gigs/day are not simply getting linux distros over p2p. Yes, there are valid reasons for that much data, but a good chunk of it, at least right now, is people pirating movies. Of course with the advent of youtube and other video streaming sites popping up I'm sure the bandwidth usage gap between legitimate users and media pirates is closing.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Remember, this is the same site that has been telling people that a touch-screen iPod is "on the way" for almost a year, and that the "iPhone" has been "delayed" for just as long.
These sites just tell you what you want to hear.
There are advantages and disadvantages on both sides of the argument...
Sure, in the first half of 2006, revenues for DVD rentals were $3.9 billion and $7 billion for DVD sales. However, the per unit margin and residuals from rentals have continued to rise since 1998 when revenue sharing began to replace fixed cost purchase... Incidentally about the same time the digital video market began to explode in the US.
Now the DVD market is reaching maturity, with rentals and sales declining 3.9 and 3.7 percent, respectively, in the first half of 2006. At the same time, the online rental business in the US and Europe surpassed the $1 billion mark for the first time in 2005. So there's tremendous growth opportunity here whereas the DVD is reaching the maturity of its product cycle.
Mind you I am not at all an advocate for MPAA but as a financial analyst I understand their reasoning.
On a qualitative level, there do exist advantages that appeal to a significant sector of the population, but first I'd like to point out a few things:
The movies you want to watch only exist because there's money to be made... They're horrendously expensive to make, whether they're good or bad... so there's always going to be a percentage of the films that bomb horribly for which others have to pick up the slack. Arguing against paying for movies, i.e. rationalizing piracy, is an ironic stance since the most popular pirated titles still tend to be some of the highest budgeted films. If you really hate capitalism, and it's not just a front to justify refusal to pay the market price for what you willingly desire (but ostensibly do not need), then show your support for independent films and stop pirating every crap movie that helps MPAA make a case with legislators for more absurd IP laws.
Mind you I'm not arguing that there's no such thing as art... but given that money simply is a representation of work exchanged for work through an intermediary (currency)... you give something, you get something. If you give nothing, the studios do not owe you Russell Crowe's latest polished turd of a movie.
There are many people who find buying every movie under the sun tremendously impractical... as is pirating every movie under the sun, simply because even with a pile of pirated movies, who has all the time in the world to pirate movies all day long? The unemployed, for one...
So, frankly, those who are less interested in possessing an endless inventory of movies are, more often than not, employed with some disposable income. They work, have less time to watch a zillion movies, owned OR pirated... and also because they work, at least a percentage of them can certainly afford to at least rent, if not buy movies.
So why might they be flustered with Netflix? Well, turnaround time. I can't count how many times I've popped over to Hollywood Video on the spur of the moment when I just didn't want to wait a couple of days (minimum) for Netflix to send me something. In this case, purchasing a download on the spot would be ideal for me. The "for me" is the key part here... Again, we're not talking about trying to replace the DVD distro market... that would actually cannibalize a good chunk of the DVD distribution business, much of which is OWNED by the studios. We're talking about target marketing.
The other advantage for a consumer might be budgetary. Provided there's premiums to incent people toward paying for rentals OR purchases, much like iTunes Music Store has proven they could incent people to buy despite a huge volume of piracy, by providing better interface design, ease of use, higher fidelity (AAC instead of MP3) etc. and consequently outperforming all P2Ps combined in total volume... the product itself is NOT the only reason to pay.
If given the choice between two identical products, repeated studies have shown time and time again that people will pay a premium for the one with greater convenience and better service. That being said, piracy generally does not trump service
Don't you all mean to say, "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame?"
my sig is an honor student
That's the Apple iShite, isn't it? ;)
Car analogies break down.
Now we have some contrary opinion to the "lots of artists have been asked how much allofmp3 gives them and since they don't answer they must be fairly compensated" of a few posts up, we have ends to investigate if we so choose, etc.
In my post I wasn't trying to insist that I had secret insider knowledge into the world of allofmp3, just that the poster above me (who was basing his entire argument on "lots of artists" not making public denials that they don't get paid from a dubious Russian website) didn't have any knowledge either and probably shouldn't tell others to stick to the facts.
Thank you for actually having some facts to stick to.
Yet, people have trotted off to their local video store for decades and paid more than a $1 for a movie that went "dark" in three days (assuming that's a typical rental period). New releases at my local store rent for $3 for two nights, and I have to get off my lazy ass to go pick it up and return it. Why, then, is it so hard to imagine paying a similar amount for downloading a movie file that would become unplayable after a specified time period?
Mainly because for most people watching a movie on the computer is not as convienient or nice or as easy as watching it on a TV. So they would then want to pay much less to do so to offset the reduction of one of those factors.
Furthermore, consider the rise of Netflix and the demise of local rental places, in conjunction with the recent Slashdot story posted not long after this one - with Netflix, you never have a movie "go dark" because you watch it when you are ready. That may be months later. In the post-netflix world there are a lot fewer people who are going to stand for a service that makes you watch a movie even in under a week. It's just not what people want to do anymore. Even rental places have "no late fee" polices now, which they had to adopt to fend off Netflix. I don't think the industry can go back.
I agree that low-resolution of the movie files could be problematic, however, but I don't see any real alternative for download services right now. It just takes too long to download a full resolution movie at typical broadband speeds. They have to start somewhere, however, and then increase the resolution as broadband speeds increase.
I don't think that's absolutley true - downloaded 720p versions of Battlestar Galactica or not terribly huge, a bit bigger and it still would be acceptible to aquire over a broadband connection. The lack of immediacy for any size video may put some people off the service though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They did increase the number of computers that can be "authorized", but what about users who are not happy with this change? Apple did not give them a choice about this. What if Apple reduced the number of CDs that could be burnt to 0, but increased the number of computers that could be authorized to 7. Would that be fair, too?
Then do what everyone else does. Change the playlist... then change it back. Playlist restrictions get reset (back to seven). They're just keeping people from easily making one-step pirate CD-burning factories out of iTunes. Apple's implementation was made to keep honest people honest, to stop the casual pirate. They don't blatantly stop people in their tracks; they give wiggle room for users. Notice that you can load an iPod with as many songs as you want from ANYONE's computer? You just can't casually unload all of them onto any one machine. However, they haven't stopped anyone from working out their own solution. And with authorized machines, you can deauthorize and reauthorize specific computers anytime you want.
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
The concept of rentals, and paying for a limited number of views is fine for most adults who watch a movie once or twice (starwars fanboys excepted)... sure I'd much prefer to own a movie, but I'll settle on a reasonable price to watch it a couple of times.
BUT.. SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
Am I the only one who's got friends with children that want to see the same movie again, and again, and again? I hope there's some sort of buy option for movies like Finding Nemo... otherwise they'll be shelling out the GDP of a small nation every month.
I can keep and watch a NetFlix DVD for days, even weeks if I choose. It takes up a slot of my subscription, but I incur no extra fees. Can I do that with a rented download?
Maybe, there's no reason it has to be time- or date-limited. It could be limited by number of movies, just like NetFlix. If you have three in iTunes ready to watch, and try to rent a fourth, you get prompted "please choose a movie to replace with your new rental" and you have to click one to get rid of.
Also, am I willing to spend all day tying up my DSL downloading 8GB of data for a DVD-quality movie? No.
For those who work from home this is probably a deal-killer. I work at an office though, so I wouldn't mind tying up the connection all day. And I sleep at night, so it could be tied up then too. I don't think it would too tough to add a smart downloader to iTunes that pauses or throttles back the bit rate when it detects you're using the Web. I mean you have to wait at least 24 hours to turn your NetFlix movies anyway, so the Apple service does not have to meet a high bar. They just have to beat 24+ hours.
Will downloaded movies that are much smaller have degraded video quality, lack extras and other things that equivalent titles on DVD have? Probably.
Maybe. My guess is that they would include all the DVD extras but take a chance on a more aggressive compression scheme like H264.
Somehow, I don't think NetFlix is going to disappear quickly, even if they don't do downloads.
Definitely true--Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are still around for instance.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Why would they announce this at WWDC? I can't see how this has anything to do with Macintosh software development.
Apple's on it's big media play, that's fine, but let's not waste the time and big money programmers are spending to attend WWDC. Let's hear two hours about Leopard running on the linux kernel and how the IOKit got layered on top of it; that's the kind of stuff WWDC attendees want to hear.
P.S. How do I disable this annoying DHTML "more comments" window that makes the top half of my slashdot window useless? That close X button doesn't work in Firefox 2 on Mac.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It depends. Is the poo in the white box a shiny glossy black?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
You're making a lot of assumptions and outright lying about other things.
... hmmm. CDs are compressed too you know. I suppose you only listen to 96Khz 48-bit masters though. Dumbed down? Brother, that's on Hollywood for spitting out the drivel they do. I don't care what format its in, most entertainment coming out is garbage, so don't even try and tell me that a hi-rez version of Batman Forever is any better than a cheap theatre-shot bootleg. No amount of tech wizardry could make THAT movie better. Same goes for most crap pouring out of the entertainment complex these days. But that's another story.
First, the content isn't jittery. Its usually 30fps, at least 24fps. That's not jittery. Sorry if it doesn't play back well on your computer.
And who says it'll be 320x240? Its been shown that iPods can play videos larger than 320x240 if the total number of pixels is the same or less. So you could have a much higher rez widescreen file with the same number of pixels that would look great on a TV and still play on an iPod. Trust me, I've done it. iTMS video looks fine on most peoples' regular ol' TVs. Contrary to what you bleeding edge types may think, most of us still have 32" or smaller CRT TVs, and iTMS content looks fine on them.
Your questions are valid. Except one: Why wouldn't you be able to view the movies on something other than the iPod? It seems absolutely ridiculous to assume otherwise. Currently you can view them on the iPod, a TV, projector, computer, basically anything that has a video input that will accept composite, S-video, or whatever outputs your computer has. As far as your other questions, IF this actually comes to pass, then you'll know.
As far as the unwashed masses not being 'tech-savvy' enough to realize that the content is 'dumbed down, diluted quality, highly compressed pap' - most people SIMPLY DON'T CARE. I've got one word for you: CONVENIENCE. THAT is the driving force in the economy. CONVENIENCE is what makes consumers drool. EASY is what makes consumers drool. And iPod+iTunes has that in spades. iTMS looks better than VHS in my opinion. Are you saying that people who used VHS are stupid for not going LaserDisc? Or Beta perhaps? Compressed
Keep the FUD to yourself, please.
yes. and I shall fight for your right to have babies. even though you can't have babies because you don't have a womb, it's still your RIGHT to have babies and no one should deny it.
I don't remember where I read this but someone was talking about Apple integrating bittorrent into all their software to save on bandwidth. I don't know if it's true or not, at the time it was simply speculation for the 10.5 release of Mac OS X. But it sure would make sense for them if they really are interested in moving into video.
It is well known that iTune does not make a lot of money, but iPod does for Apple. Following the same logic does that mean people will start buy Mac mini and the true Video iPod everyone has been talking about? Well the rental system work with a $399 PC from Fry's with iTune and QuickTime installed? This is very interesting......
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity....Calvin
Both Netflix and Blockbuster have major problems when working from a social gathering standpoing: with Netflix, if you have a party, and someone suggests a movie, you have to plan to get back together another day to watch it. With Blockbuster, you have to have someone leave the party, get in a car, drive to the movie place, and bring back a movie. This is why a service like this is going to be a complete boon for any party atmosphere, which makes up a large percentage of movie rentals. This will be especially the case for college students. Sure, it ties up your internet, but who cares? If you're in a social situation where you want to be watching a movie, chances are you're not going to be heavily surfing the web, unless you and your buddies are checking out the latest Strongbad emails, or having a LAN party. Netflix requires PLANNING, which is a huge deal killer... most people don't know what movie they want to watch until a few hours or minutes before hand. Most college students use their computers as their movie players anyway, unless they show stuff in the lounge, in which they, more often then not (from my experience), still use their laptops as the main DVD player. I wonder how many lives this will save, from drunk partiers driving to pick up "the movie".
The other demographic that will totally benefit from this are famillies with small children. "Mommy, I want to watch Spongebob, and I want to watch it NOW!", okay, Netflix is now completely out of the question, and getting the little ones all dressed to go out, hurding them into the car, having to keep them from running into people in Blockbuster, and other shinanigans, make renting out complicated and a pain for many parents. Simply sitting down for 5 minutes, starting the download, and then going out back to play catch with the kids for a half-an-hour seems like a much better option.
Of course, there's going to be a question of how to get the movie on the TV. It won't be long until various media-center PC options become available. Even if Apple doesn't get a Mac Mini media-center device out the door and in everyone's house, iTunes will work on any PC, so Apple will have a fairly seccure infrastructure, if the #1 media center is windows based.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
No, it's the iPood.
Shipping G5 Video iPods can play back 720x320 content when the video is encoded with MPEG4. I've tried this myself and can confirm that it works.
Given that iPod hardware can handle widescreen-aspect video at near-DVD resolution (DVD encodes are 720 pixels wide, although they're 480 pixels high - iPod is *definitely* widescreen here), file size and distribution are the only barriers to DVD-quality iTunes content.
Amarok is a better player than iTunes IMHO.
And SharpMusique does a good job of letting you get things off iTMS -- and your songs come un-DRM-d to boot.
HTH,
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Steve Jobs has long held that he does not envision the computer being television, nor the television being a computer. So if iTunes were used for movie rentals, how would the movies be watched? Is a video Airport Express waiting in the wings?
"Well, we've always been very clear on that. We don't think that televisions and personal computers are going to merge. We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.
Well, they want to link sometimes. Like, when you make a movie, you burn a DVD and you take it to your DVD player. Someday that could happen over AirPort, so you don't have to burn a DVD -- you can just watch it right off your computer on your television set. But most of these products that have said, "Let's combine the television and the computer!" have failed. All of them have failed.
The problem is, when you're using your computer you're a foot away from it, you know? When you're using your television you want to be ten feet away from it. So they're really different animals."
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Announce iTunes for Linux?!!
ARG!