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?"

Comments

Follow or die

[BrowserCapsGuy]

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.

say no to blogs

[timmarhy]

am i the only person that's grateful to the poster for NOT linking to a stupid apple fan boy blog?

no hd?

[timmarhy]

one thing i'd like to point out - these movies aren't even dvd quality. not sure what the point of that is? seriously if people ripping captures from hd tv can manage dvd quality, you'd think apple with all it's resources could do better.

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.

Re:no hd?

[BiggerIsBetter]

When the majority of people seem perfectly happy with YouTube quality, why invest in more bandwidth/storage/quality?
Because YouTube is free, and Apple wants use to pay. Because DVDs are cheap to rent. And because the pirated copies we can download are generally top quality rips. If I'm paying for movies from Apple, I want something of competitive quality that gives me a reason to spend my dollars (including bandwidth costs, which are significant in some markets).

Besides, Apple wants to sell these movies to play on their users' iPods, whose screens dont't even have NTSC resolution.
Then they're missing an enormous chunk of their market.

Re:no hd?

[hcdejong]

At 750 Mb, it won't be DVD quality, let alone the quality expected when you say 'HD'. It may be 720p, but it'll be compressed all to hell.

Gotta say: "Who Cares?"

[OverlordQ]

I for one would rather go buy a more expensive DVD then get a crappy quality video from iTunes.

Re:Gotta say: "Who Cares?"

[Mr2001]

You've been modded down, but you're right. In most cases, the DVD doesn't cost more than $5 over Apple's price, and you get slightly higher video quality, bonus features and commentary, and you can play it anywhere. There's no PlayFair or QTFairUse for iTunes's video DRM, so the movies you buy there will only play on a computer, an iPod, or the stillborn Apple TV.

What about Europe?

[lucason]

Yada, Yada, Yada... All this is useless to me as long as we can't buy anything over here in Europe.

I think Apple will beat Google

[CrazyJim1]

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.

Re:how about the capacity to use OSS to play it ba

[norminator]

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.

Re:how about the capacity to use OSS to play it ba

[Captain Splendid]

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.