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.

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.

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?

[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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.