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Apple to Offer MGM Movies
UnknowingFool writes "Apple announced today that it will be adding MGM movies to its movie catalog. With Apple already selling Disney and Paramount movies, how long will it be before the other studios work out a deal with Apple?"
It seems to me the other studios will eventually have no choice but to accept this new method of distribution. Man that sounds dumb. But it's true. Good for Apple for forcing a change that I think most honest, paying customers have been demanding.
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am i the only person that's grateful to the poster for NOT linking to a stupid apple fan boy blog?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Cool and all, but how long does is it gonna take before TV and Movie content trickle down to other iTunes stores, like Australia.
Sadly, my guess is never.
oh and wake up and smell the codecs - h264 can do dvd quality at 200megs per hour, you can't tell me peopel with adsl wouldn't be able to download that.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
It's good to see the Video content of iTunes progressing, obviously a must for Apple TV's success. Still, I have to say, it's only in the USA.
The rest of the world are still have no Movie/TV content whatsoever (other than Music Vids & Pixar short films). Effectively making Apple TV a USA only device.
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Why do studios care whether the movie is sold through DVDs or downloaded? All they care about is total revenue and profit anyway. An additional revenue is always good, and the people who would buy/rent a DVD vs the people that will download the movie probably wouldn't overlap that much.
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The companies that created the DMCA, the law that outlaws reverse engineering, have joined forces with the company that sues security researchers who find security flaws in its products. Together, they will suppress the work of anyone who doesn't code Microsoft fan club apps in Visual Basic! At last, our country is safe.
Shall we tag this oldnews? I mean... who doesn't subscribe to the Apple Hot News RSS Feed?
April 11th != April 13th
Personally, while this is a good move, I'm not going to be hugely interested in online distribution of films until A) DSL speeds, which are crap in Australia, get better, and download limits either abolished or increased dramatically - so that I can buy a film and come back in an hour or so for it; B) VOB files or DivX/Xvid- I want to watch a DVD quality film on my TV, not my computer; C) Prices that aren't comparable to a DVD - I'm getting a (hopefully) burnt disc, not a proper pressed unit with cover and insert; and D) Utilisation of Bittorrent? Effective way to get films now, so there's no reason they couldn't get that working..
;)
But yeah, well done to Apple for getting another on side, look forward to seeing if XBox live can come up with something similar (or, um, badly copied
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
How old will these downloadable files possibly be? It's been pretty clear the track record of the studios offering many old titles and few new/current titles (and charging a substantial amount for the old and roughly a DVD's price for the new/current)..
One thing I wonder is where Apple will stop. Similar to explicit lyrics in music, what happens when Apple starts allowing users to download some not-quite-g-rated-movies. I'm not against this change- I for one would actually welcome more content, regardless of whether I even decide to download or not. But I also forsee Apple having some issues/lawsuits/negative publicity. Apple has made some poor choices as far as content goes (anyone remember those Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition vids?), and with Apple growing as quickly as it is, there are going to be issues.
Maybe if this sig is witty or clever enough, someone will love me...
Let's hope they go from selling movies online with DRM to selling movies online sans DRM. If the record labels (ok, EMI) went from no real online presence to the iTunes store to DRM-free music in less than five years, there's hope the movie studios can learn the same lesson.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
So, does this mean we will finally have access to all those classic movies which never made it to DVD?
MGM started in the 1920s. That is a lot of movies that have not seen the light of day in may years. And, will the silent movies (which I don't believe for a second we'll ever get) sell for as much as the modern movies?
The article says they "own" 4,000 (which would be about 50 per year since the 20s). Where is the list of those movies?
How about the UA collection? MGM bought UA in 1981. That means all the Bond movies, and the Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, etc. What of that will we see?
And who knows what rights got suffled around int he whole Turner buyout.
IT: AACS Cracked Again4 228 Just kidding
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/12/16
It looks like Apple is moving away from the operating system business and towards Hollywood's fat pipe into our homes. I hope they find a good buyer. Or better yet they open source it.
What?
I for one would rather go buy a more expensive DVD then get a crappy quality video from iTunes.
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all of us outside the US?
All I get here in Germany is the podcast crap from the public TV Stations, I wish I could get some US movies, but noooooooo....
Damnit, Imus. You had your fifteen minutes of fame already. Please stop hogging the headlines.
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We of course mean 2 days ago. Slashdot, you have gotten oh so slow.
Coming soon to am all exclusive autostarting myspace-widget near you...
while its user interface is lacking, right now there is, bar none, no higher quality video playback than vlc.
i dont want to use itunes to play back video.
in fact.. i want my OLD itunes back.. the one before the RIAA started monkeying in the code and removing features, like internet streaming, then adding needless bloat.
i want my itunes to be a music player and only a music player. apple's philosophy has always been to make one application for the job, and make it good, and theyre way off base with what theyre doing to itunes.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I'm scared whenever I get a iTunes update notification.
My first reaction always is, what feature did they remove in this update?
This news release seems to have been timed to divert attention from a bigger issue. Herb Greenberg points out that the iPhone is in trouble. A late iPhone is a real problem for Apple, because the other phone vendors aren't standing still. Apple could get into the position Sony finds itself with the PS3 - last to market at the highest price.
Yada, Yada, Yada... All this is useless to me as long as we can't buy anything over here in Europe.
How long before you ship true high-def movies worth watching on today's equipment, rather than this low-res stuff?
-and-
How long before you let me burn that movie to DVD for substantially less money than the $19 it costs me to buy it in the store, so that I can watch it more than once?
Until you can meet at least one, if not both, of the above, you really aren't attracting me as a consumer.
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In the war of online video, I believe rights to media will beat out youtube.com Now YouTube will have it's uses, but for distrobution of movies and television, gaining the rights is the way to go. I think there is more profit in movies and television than there is with YouTube.
God spoke to me.
Although examples of recent films were given, the MGM name (and its back catalogue) is most strongly associated with films made during its heyday, which ended around the late 1950s. (The company was a pale shadow of its former self from the 1960s onwards).
Because of this, MGM is particularly associated with.... musicals! If the "Apple is teh ghey" trolls were actually smart, they'd have connected the dots and pointed out that Apple users would just *love* being able to watch The Wizard of Oz on their Apple TVs.
Then again, film rights are one of those things that change hands a lot, so someone else probably has the rights to those films. Cue lots of Apple fans short-circuiting their iPods with tears as they realise they won't be getting Judy Garland after all...
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Hmm. Can't you just find the video file on your computer and open it in QuickTime Player or any other QuickTime-aware app? As long as your computer's authorized, iTS videos should play fine.
Agreed with you about iTunes sucking balls (damn PC users holding back development), but as far as I know, you've never been restricted to iTunes to play protected video.
comma
I think the point the parent is trying to make is why would you spend $$10-$15 to download what's basically an Xvid-Rip quality movie thats DRM'ed to hell, when you can just go to Walmart and get the full DVD for the same price or cheaper and rip it yourself? Oh and on top of that for most people you can likely drive there and back in 1/2 the time it takes to download. Even at 5 Mbps it's going to take you about 20 mins to download 700 megs.
These studios really need to lower the price point on these things. We're seeing the same crap that was tried to be pulled whne they first started selling digital music online - way too much $$$. As soon as they hit the magic price point of $1 or less the things started flying. I think the same thing will happen for movies when they hit around $5.
Why so cheap? Because it's not like music where the brick+mortar media is overpriced - DVDs are actually quite cheap for what you get. If you actually think back I remember spending $25 on VHS releases that were crap nowadays I spend $15 and get a DVD with an assload of extra content and way better quality.
Downloads have to be cheaper than DVDs for people to bother.
too. If they dont, "other parts of the world" will be continuing to "acquire" their stuff from "different sources".
Read radical news here
People are seeming to forget the videos are distributed to play on an ipod and the cmoputer. The ipod hads some limitations on bit rates and image quality that are much lower than on the computer. I think the movies and TV shows are encoded to be the best quality the ipod can put out (640x480 at some max bit rate...)
We don't need more DRM? Seriously, the only effect this "new method of distribution" would ever have is to make DRM even more ubiquitous than it already is, and I for one don't think that's "awesome" or "blazingly modern". Not only does DRM take away any and all fair use rights that are guaranteed by law, it brings up the interesting question of "what the fsck am I gonna do with all these crappy videos I bought now that Apple's out of business?". Of course, the MPAA would just say "buy it again", but that's another story.
No! Your quick, easy and logical solution is not how things are done here. This is Slashdot. If they aren't providing $.01 high-definition movies in at least ten different formats, with helpful phone calls from AppleCare detailing exactly how you can put this on your media device of choice as a complimentary service, then they're just mindless slaves who are seeking to cripple your system with DRM, Satanic rituals, and kicking puppies. Any software other than iTunes is better by definition because it's not Apple.
IAALS.
...MGM is pwned by SONY, so no going around buying MGM content off of the Apple store now, ya hear?*
* does not supply to the more rational-thinking people who stated to only boycott SONY BMG.
Apple could get into the position Sony finds itself with the PS3 - last to market at the highest price.
You can already get smartphones with media players and good web browsers for less than the iPhone *today*, and a 4GB secure digital card for your smartphone will set you back less than the price of an iPod Shuffle.
QuickTime will play it, but his question was about OSS software, VLC specifically. Non-Apple software can't play Apple-DRM'ed videos. VLC knows how long the video is, and pretends to play it, but there's no video or audio, just a moving progress bar.
On a related note, was anyone else bothered by Steve Jobs' explanation of why there won't be non-DRM'd movies from the iTunes store? He said that with music, 90% of it is already sold without DRM (i.e., CDs), but that with movies, those are usually sold with DRM. I'm presuming that the DRM he was thinking of was CSS. But CSS only requires that the manufacturer of the DVD player acquire a CSS license. It doesn't require the user to do anything, and it doesn't differentiate between different DVD players. When I play an iTMS music file in iTunes, the software knows which of the 5 authorized computers (authorized via my iTunes account) I'm using to listen to that song. When I play a DVD on my computer, or on my DVD player, there's nothing to check to see who bought the DVD, or if the hardware/software playing the DVD has been linked to my account. That would be DRM. DVDs do not use DRM. They use a weak form of encryption.
And music is not different from DVDs in that regard... I'm sure if the first publishers of CDs would have forseen the future of digital music, with mp3s and CD burners, they would have created a CSS-like system for CDs, too.
I get scared, too. And when I get scared, I throw feces.
On the other hand, every time there is an iTunes update, I end up with an upgraded monitor.
No kidding. As someone who hopped on literally days after the first version was released for the Mac (Still before OSX no less), it's been really educational to watch a once fine piece software get steadily bloatier over the years. Maybe the critics are right, maybe Apple is the next Microsoft.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Last I checked (a few months ago) the quality of Apple releases were substandard. Amazon's ubox (or whatever) used a much higher resolution and a cost of file size. Apple's were below way below that of even dvd's. At the time i just ended up going to the store and picking up a box set of the series i was downloading from them (which was actually cheaper then $2 bucks and episode as there were 24 episodes and the box set was $39.x.
Until apple's quality increases there is no reason to go with them unless your movies will only be played on something like an ipod.
Hmmm... Pie...
would you like some cheese with that whine?
It really doesn't pair all that well... the whine is too bitter and astringent to accentuate the flavors of the cheese. I would greatly prefer, kind sir, that you provide me instead with a good antipasto sampler, perhaps some carpaccio, prosciuto, and maybe some artichokes.
Give it time. EMI said that they are going to sell drm less music on itune. Movie will most likely follow once the mpaa goes to the same conclusion that the RIAA came to... some time in the next five years
I think you're confused. This is Slashdot. Screw the 'helpful phone calles from AppleCare'. Full disclosure in a robust online FAQ is what we would want. And an angry BOFH who answers the only phone line and yells "RTFM!" to the dweebs who call.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It's a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance...
BTW, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a 1950s flick, and it's not propaganda of the sort you're thinking of.
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