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.

Re:Follow or die

[limecat4eva]

Good grief, your comment--true as it is--almost begs controversy. I can almost smell them now, the unperceptive masses falling over their keyboards right now to claim Apple never pushes the envelope, only accepts the terms dictated it by the beige suits. Their lack of vision is almost as criminal as their lack of taste.

Re:Follow or die

[bradavon]

Have you not heard of Apple TV? Besides Windows is unique but it doesn't stop it from being so popular. The Ipod is popular as it looks nice and is easy to use. To the majority of consumers looks are the most important thing.

Re:Follow or die

[DrXym]

Yes I've heard of Apple TV. It's an additional $300 that still requires you download movies to a computer, and then sync them in order to watch them on your TV. It's a pretty stupid back-asswards way of doing things. I imagine in time that Apple will integrate iTMS into Apple TV but until they do, the system is a very clunky and convoluted way to deliver movies to a TV. Not like Apple at all.

By contrast, ordering movies on an XBox 360 for example is as easy as choosing the movie and just clicking on it assuming you have the points. I'm sure the experience will be fairly similar when Sony pull their finger out and offer their own service.

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?

Re:say no to blogs

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

Hey, I'm impressed that the poster actually linked to Apple's site. If Apple says it's gonna happen, then it almost certainly is gonna happen.

When in Australia??

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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?

[timmarhy]

with a decent codec like h264, a 720p movie only comes out at 750megs or so. whats so hard about 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?

[sheddd]

I've bought a bit from the apple store; the average bitrate for their sd content is ~1500kb/second. So assuming your modem kicks ass and you average 50kb/second, it'll take 30 hours to download an hour show, or more realistically, 20 hours to download an hour show that's actually 40 minutes minus the commercials. So your download power on a modem is about one show per day.

I doubt there are many dialup Itunes video users, but who knows?

Re:no hd?

[cosminn]

The movies aren't HD quality because even with average cable/DSL speeds the bandwidth required would be prohibitive. Don't expect to see super high quality downloadable movies until we have fiber to the home.

What about the Xbox360 movies? They're HD quality. Plus, if bandwitdh would _really_ be the issue, they could offer non-HD and HD versions for the movies.

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.

Re:no hd?

[iamacat]

You can however sign up for a free wireless service using fiber that usually runs away from your home.

Re:no hd?

[badasscat]

The movies aren't HD quality because even with average cable/DSL speeds the bandwidth required would be prohibitive. Don't expect to see super high quality downloadable movies until we have fiber to the home.

Two things:

1) We already have fiber to the home. But it doesn't take fiber download speeds (which aren't much higher than cable, which is fiber most of the way) to download HD.

2) We also already have HD downloads.

Apple is simply behind Microsoft, for once. No other way to put it. No use making apologies for Apple, either.

Personally, I don't think any of these download services are going to matter in the slightest until the rights issues get worked out - and that means more than signing a deal with a major studio. That doesn't automatically bring all that studio's movies onto a download service, because most of these movies never had download rights negotiated in the first place. Remember the early days of VHS? That's what we're in right now with digital downloads. It's going to take decades for all of these rights to be renegotiated on a film by film basis.

Until that happens, most people are just going to keep using services like Netflix with its 70,000 titles (Netflix is an example of the success of the "long tail" - almost all of those 70,000 films are checked out at any given time), including HD-DVD and Blu-Ray if you want high-def. They also offer digital streaming, though their selection is limited, just as iTunes and Xbox Live is.

Re:no hd?

[rahrens]

No, the AppleTV can do 720p. From the AppleTV specs page:

        * H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): Up to 5 Mbps, Progressive Main Profile (CAVLC) with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps (maximum resolution: 1280 by 720 pixels at 24 fps, 960 by 540 pixels at 30 fps) in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats
        * iTunes Store purchased video: 320 by 240 pixels or 640 by 480 pixels
        * MPEG-4: Up to 3 Mbps, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps (maximum resolution: 720 by 432 pixels at 30 fps) in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats

True, the iTunes videos are of lesser quality, but I think that's due to bandwidth costs to the iTunes store. I believe they're waiting for both content numbers and demand to get to a certain level before upgrading content resolution.

Of course, if YOU have higher resolution video from another source, the AppleTv will play it just fine.

Re:no hd?

[Kjella]

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

200MB/hr? So you're the guy who tried to cram the whole LotR EE movies (3,5 hours) in on a 1CD rip and claim it was DVD quality, I thought you were just a legend. Most seem to agree you can do 3-5x compression over MPEG2, which works out to about 2CDs for a regular movie.
1

only USA

[Riquez]

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.

confused...

[davidmillions.com]

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.

Shall we...

[paulthomas]

Shall we tag this oldnews? I mean... who doesn't subscribe to the Apple Hot News RSS Feed?

Ok, it's a step.

[Hawthorne01]

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.

Classic Movies

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Classic Movies

[Dogtanian]

Most of the colorizing was a hack job so it's hard to say if the original prints or negatives of a lot of the films were preserved. Colorizing during the 1980s (which is when I believe it started en masse, and when Turner did it) would still have been a far from trivial task. I expect that they would not have done it on obscure films, and that they certainly would *not* have destroyed the original prints/negatives of well-known films.

AFAIK, also digital colorisation that appeared during the 1980s was video based, and this assumes that they would have discarded high-quality film prints in favour of far lower quality video copies. Even then I assume they would have realised that this was stupid.

From the looks of things

[iminplaya]

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.

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.

And by "Today"

[PunkXRock]

We of course mean 2 days ago. Slashdot, you have gotten oh so slow.

how about the capacity to use OSS to play it back.

[plasmacutter]

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.

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

[mochan_s]

I'm scared whenever I get a iTunes update notification.

My first reaction always is, what feature did they remove in this update?

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.

If You Want My Business...

[Nom du Keyboard]

To me, it's not how long before the other studios come on board, but rather:

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.

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.

The point - overpriced

[brunes69]

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.

Am I the only one to comment that...

[Frenchman113]

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.

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.